Nebraska
Nebraska is a state that lies in both the Great Plains and the Midwestern United States. It is bordered by South Dakota to the north, it is the only triply landlocked U. S. state. Nebraska's area is just over 77,220 square miles with a population of 1.9 million people. Its state capital is Lincoln, its largest city is Omaha, on the Missouri River. Indigenous peoples, including Omaha, Ponca, Pawnee and various branches of the Lakota tribes, lived in the region for thousands of years before European exploration; the state is crossed including that of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Nebraska was admitted as the 37th state of the United States in 1867, it is the only state in the United States whose legislature is unicameral and nonpartisan. Nebraska is composed of two major land regions: the Great Plains; the Dissected Till Plains region consist of rolling hills and contains the state's largest cities and Lincoln. The Great Plains region, occupying most of western Nebraska, is characterized by treeless prairie, suitable for cattle-grazing.
Nebraska has two major climatic zones. The eastern half of the state has a humid continental climate; the western half of the state has a semi-arid climate. The state has wide variations between winter and summer temperatures, variations that decrease moving south in the state. Violent thunderstorms and tornadoes occur during spring and summer and sometimes in autumn. Chinook winds tend to warm the state in the winter and early spring. Nebraska's name is derived from transliteration of the archaic Otoe words Ñí Brásge, pronounced, or the Omaha Ní Btháska, meaning "flat water", after the Platte River that flows through the state. Indigenous peoples lived in the region of present-day Nebraska for thousands of years before European exploration; the historic tribes in the state included the Omaha, Ponca, Pawnee and various branches of the Lakota, some of which migrated from eastern areas into this region. When European exploration and settlement began, both Spain and France sought to control the region.
In the 1690s, Spain established trade connections with the Apaches, whose territory included western Nebraska. By 1703, France had developed a regular trade with the native peoples along the Missouri River in Nebraska, by 1719 had signed treaties with several of these peoples. After war broke out between the two countries, Spain dispatched an armed expedition to Nebraska under Lieutenant General Pedro de Villasur in 1720; the party was attacked and destroyed near present-day Columbus by a large force of Pawnees and Otoes, both allied to the French. The massacre ended Spanish exploration of the area for the remainder of the 18th century. In 1762, during the Seven Years' War, France ceded the Louisiana territory to Spain; this left Spain competing for dominance along the Mississippi. In response, Spain dispatched two trading expeditions up the Missouri in 1794 and 1795; that year, Mackay's party built a trading post, dubbed Fort Carlos IV, near present-day Homer. In 1819, the United States established Fort Atkinson as the first U.
S. Army post west of the Missouri River, just east of present-day Fort Calhoun; the army abandoned the fort in 1827. European-American settlement was scarce until the California Gold Rush. On May 30, 1854, the US Congress created the Kansas and the Nebraska territories, divided by the Parallel 40° North, under the Kansas–Nebraska Act; the Nebraska Territory included parts of the current states of Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana. The territorial capital of Nebraska was Omaha. In the 1860s, after the U. S. government forced many of the Native American tribes to cede their lands and settle on reservations, it opened large tracts of land to agricultural development by Europeans and Americans. Under the Homestead Act, thousands of settlers migrated into Nebraska to claim free land granted by the federal government; because so few trees grew on the prairies, many of the first farming settlers built their homes of sod, as had Native Americans such as the Omaha. The first wave of settlement gave the territory a sufficient population to apply for statehood.
Nebraska became the 37th state on March 1, 1867, the capital was moved from Omaha to the center at Lancaster renamed Lincoln after the assassinated President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. The battle of Massacre Canyon on August 5, 1873, was the last major battle between the Pawnee and the Sioux. During the 1870s to the 1880s, Nebraska experienced a large growth in population. Several factors contributed to attracting new residents; the first was. This helped settlers to learn the unfamiliar geography of the area; the second factor was the invention of several farming technologies. Agricultural inventions such as barbed wire, wind mills, the steel plow, combined with good weather, enabled settlers to use of Nebraska as prime farming land. By the 1880s, Nebraska's population
I, Tonya
I, Tonya is a 2017 American biographical dark comedy film directed by Craig Gillespie and written by Steven Rogers. It follows the life of figure skater Tonya Harding and her connection to the 1994 attack on her rival Nancy Kerrigan; the film states that it is based on "contradictory" and "true" interviews with Tonya Harding and her ex-husband Jeff Gillooly, suggesting they are unreliable narrators. It features darkly comedic interviews with the characters in mockumentary-style, set in the modern day, breaks the fourth wall. Margot Robbie stars as Harding, Sebastian Stan plays Harding's husband Jeff Gillooly, Allison Janney plays Harding's mother LaVona Golden. I, Tonya premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, 2017, was theatrically released in the United States on December 8, 2017, grossed $54 million worldwide on an $11 million budget, it received critical acclaim, with major praise drawn towards Janney's performances. At the 90th Academy Awards, Janney won for Best Supporting Actress, while the film earned nominations for Best Actress for Robbie and Best Film Editing.
It earned three nominations at the 75th Golden Globe Awards, winning Best Supporting Actress for Janney, at the 24th Screen Actors Guild Awards, it won Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role for Janney and was nominated for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role. At the 71st British Academy Film Awards, the film earned five nominations, winning Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Janney. In 1970s Portland, four year-old Tonya Harding is forced to ice skate by her abusive mother, LaVona Golden; as Tonya grows up, her parents take her out of school to focus on her skating career, as she trains under coach Diane Rawlinson. Tonya becomes one of the best figure skaters in the United States, but is held back by her "white trash" reputation, home-made costumes and unconventional choice of performance music. At 15, she begins dating 18-year-old Jeff Gillooly, the two marry, but Jeff becomes abusive; when LaVona scorns Tonya for putting up with it, Tonya blames LaVona for her raising her badly.
After a dispute with Diane, Tonya hires Dody Teachman as her new coach. Tonya becomes the first female figure skater to complete two triple Axel jumps in competition. At the 1992 Winter Olympics, Tonya fails to stick her finishes fourth. Defeated, she moves in again with Jeff and takes a job as a waitress, but Diane convinces her to train for the 1994 Winter Olympics. On the day of her November 1993 competition at the Northwest Pacific Regional Championships in Portland, Tonya receives a death threat and chooses not to compete. In retaliation, Jeff instructs his friend Shawn Eckardt to send death threats to Tonya's rival Nancy Kerrigan. Tonya makes a phone call trying to locate her practice times. Eckardt hires two inept crooks to attack Kerrigan after a practice session in Detroit. On January 6, 1994, Eckardt's henchmen strike Kerrigan's knee; the hired henchmen are arrested. Eckardt's bragging leads the FBI to him, he points the finger at Jeff, horrified to learn that Eckardt gave orders beyond sending the letters.
Tonya qualifies for the Olympic team and is in turn horrified by Jeff, realizing that she will be found guilty by association. She goes to the FBI and tells them what Jeff and Eckardt did, but they show her interview transcript to Jeff after his arrest, he races home to confront her, she speaks to Jeff climbs out the window, leaving him for good. Jeff implicates Tonya, saying she knew about the attack. LaVona offers her kind words. Jeff and the henchmen are charged, with Tonya's hearing postponed until after the Olympics. Tonya finishes eighth and Nancy Kerrigan wins the silver medal. Tonya is banned from competitive figure skating for life. Heartbroken, she begs the judge to give her jail time but not to take away the one thing she knows how to do. Jeff acknowledges with honest regret, he changes his name, opens a hair salon, divorces. LaVona has no contact with Tonya either. Tonya remarries, takes up professional boxing, becomes a landscaper, house painter and deck builder, she now lives with her seven-year-old son and third husband.
Margot Robbie as Tonya Harding Tonya Harding as old Tonya Harding Mckenna Grace as young Tonya Harding Maizie Smith as Tonya Harding Sebastian Stan as Jeff Gillooly, Harding's lover and friend husband Allison Janney as LaVona Golden, Harding's mother Julianne Nicholson as Diane Rawlinson, Harding's skating coach and Bob's wife Caitlin Carver as Nancy Kerrigan, Harding's skating rival and Olympic teammate, the victim of the 1994 attack Bojana Novakovic as Dody Teachman, another of Harding's coaches Paul Walter Hauser as Shawn Eckardt, a bodyguard and friend of Gillooly Bobby Cannavale as Martin Maddox, a former reporter Dan Triandiflou as Bob Rawlinson, Diane's husband and Tonya's attorney Ricky Russert as Shane Stant, hired by Jeff and Shawn to attack Nancy Anthony Reynolds as Derrick Smith, Stant's uncle, previous friend of Eckardt, first hired to attack Nancy before recruiting Shane h
HD DVD
HD DVD is a discontinued high-density optical disc format for storing data and playback of high-definition video. Supported principally by Toshiba, HD DVD was envisioned to be the successor to the standard DVD format. On 19 February 2008, after a protracted format war with rival Blu-ray, Toshiba abandoned the format, announcing it would no longer manufacture HD DVD players and drives; the HD DVD Promotion Group was dissolved on March 28, 2008. The HD DVD physical disc specifications were still in use as the basis for the China Blue High-definition Disc called CH-DVD; because all variants except 3× DVD and HD REC employed a blue laser with a shorter wavelength, HD DVD stored about 3.2 times as much data per layer as its predecessor. In the late 1990s, commercial HDTV sets started to enter a larger market, but there was no inexpensive way to record or play back HD content. JVC's D-VHS and Sony's HDCAM formats could store that amount of data, but were neither popular nor well-known, it was well known that using lasers with shorter wavelengths would yield optical storage with higher density.
Shuji Nakamura invented practical blue laser diodes, but a lengthy patent lawsuit delayed commercial introduction. Sony started two projects applying the new diodes: UDO and DVR Blue together with Philips, a format of rewritable discs which would become Blu-ray Disc and on with Pioneer a format of read only discs; the two formats share several technologies. In February 2002, the project was announced as Blu-ray Disc, the Blu-ray Disc Association was founded by the nine initial members; the DVD Forum was split over whether to go with the more expensive blue lasers or not. Although today's Blu-ray Discs appear identical to a standard DVD, when the Blu-ray Discs were developed they required a protective caddy to avoid mis-handling by the consumer The Blu-ray Disc prototype's caddy was both expensive and physically different from DVD, posing several problems. In March 2002, the forum voted to approve a proposal endorsed by Warner Bros. and other motion picture studios that involved compressing HD content onto dual-layer DVD-9 discs.
In spite of this decision, the DVD Forum's Steering Committee announced in April that it was pursuing its own blue-laser high-definition solution. In August, Toshiba and NEC announced their competing standard Advanced Optical Disc, it was renamed to HD DVD the next year. The HD DVD Promotion Group was a group of manufacturers and media studios formed to exchange thoughts and ideas to help promote the format worldwide, its members comprised Toshiba as the Chair Company and Secretary, Memory-Tech Corporation and NEC as Vice-Chair companies, Sanyo Electric as Auditors. The HD DVD promotion group was dissolved on March 28, 2008, following Toshiba's announcement on February 19, 2008 that it would no longer develop or manufacture HD DVD players and drives. Much like the VHS vs. Betamax videotape format war during the late 1970s and early 1980s, HD DVD was competing with a rival format—in this case, Blu-ray Disc. In 2008, major content manufacturers and key retailers began withdrawing their support for the format.
In an attempt to avoid a costly format war, the Blu-ray Disc Association and DVD Forum attempted to negotiate a compromise in early 2005. One of the issues was that Blu-ray Disc companies wanted to use a Java-based platform for interactivity, while HD DVD companies wanted to use Microsoft's "iHD". Another problem was the physical formats of the discs themselves; the negotiations proceeded and stalled. On August 22, 2005, the Blu-ray Disc Association and DVD Forum announced that the negotiations to unify their standards had failed. Rumors surfaced. By the end of September that year and Intel jointly announced their support for HD DVD. Hewlett-Packard attempted to broker a compromise between the Blu-ray Disc Association and Microsoft by demanding that Blu-ray Disc use Microsoft's HDi instead of BD-J and threatening to support HD DVD instead; the Blu-ray Disc Association did not agree to HP's demands. On March 31, 2006, Toshiba released their first consumer-based HD DVD player in Japan at ¥110,000.
HD DVD was released in the United States on April 18, 2006, with players priced at $499 and $799. The first HD DVD titles were released on April 18, 2006, they were The Last Samurai, Million Dollar Baby, The Phantom of the Opera by Warner Home Video and Serenity by Universal Studios. The first independent HD film released on HD DVD was One Six Right. In December 2006 Toshiba reported that 120,000 Toshiba branded HD DVD players had been sold in the United States, along with 150,000 HD DVD add-on units for the Xbox 360. On April 17, 2007, one year after the first HD DVD titles were released, the HD DVD group reported that they had sold 100,000 dedicated HD DVD units in the United States. In the middle of 2007, the first HD DVD Recorders were released in Japan. In November 2007, the Toshiba HD-A2 was the first high definition player to be sold at a sale price of less than US$100; these closeout sales lasted less than a day each due to both limited quantities and high demand at that price po
Million Dollar Arm
Million Dollar Arm is a 2014 American biographical sports drama film directed by Craig Gillespie and produced by Walt Disney Pictures from a screenplay written by Thomas McCarthy. The film is based on the true story of baseball pitchers Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel who were discovered by sports agent J. B. Bernstein after winning a reality show competition; the film stars Jon Hamm as J. B. Bernstein, Bill Paxton as pitching coach Tom House, Suraj Sharma as Singh, Madhur Mittal as Patel, Alan Arkin; the film's music is composed by A. R. Rahman. Produced by Joe Roth, Mark Ciardi, Gordon Gray, the film was released theatrically on May 16, 2014. Million Dollar Arm received mixed-to-positive reviews. J. B. Bernstein is a big-time sports agent who, along with his partner Ash Vasudevan formed their own company. All of J. B.'s clients have retired, he is unable to reel in star football player Popo Vanuatu. Desperate to find new clients, J. B. realizes India, with over one billion people, has real potential for untapped baseball talent.
He approaches investor Mr. Chang with his proposal—a talent contest staged in India called "Million Dollar Arm." Contestants score points by demonstrating they can pitch a baseball with accuracy. Along with the prize money, two winners will be flown to the U. S. and receive coaching to become legitimate baseball prospects within two years. Chang commits to providing the funding, on the condition the prospects are ready within only one year. With no alternative, J. B. reluctantly assures Chang the winners will be ready for a major-league try-out within one year. J. B. approaches veteran baseball pitching coach Tom House who explains that cricket, the main sport played in India, baseball have different motions for bowling and pitching, getting a good recruit ready for a try-out in one year is unlikely, if not impossible. J. B. points how House has nothing to lose and everything to gain by taking up the challenge, House agrees. While Ash is holding down the fort in Los Angeles, J. B. flies to India.
He is bewildered by the traffic, the overcrowding, the lax way Indians conduct business. He is joined by the curmudgeonly Ray Poitevint, a longtime major league scout, hires Amit Rohan as his interpreter. After lengthy try-outs in numerous cities, two youngsters emerge as the winners — Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel, they are flown to the U. S. to begin their baseball training. The pair, who grew up in poverty in India and do not speak or understand English, are overwhelmed by the sights and sounds of America, although Rinku develops a liking for pizza. Things soon come to a crunch when they are detained by hotel security for messing with elevator emergency controls, inadvertently getting themselves stuck and setting off the fire alarm. J. B. is subsequently forced to invite them to stay at his home. For their baseball training, J. B. dumps the pair by House and his staff while he runs off to close more deals. In being treated so, the pair feels like social outcasts. J. B.'s tenant Brenda Fenwick is the only person.
When J. B. takes the boys and Amit to a party thrown by Popo, whom J. B. hopes to sign, things get worse when Amit gets drunk after mistakenly drinking a punch with alcohol and Rinku becomes sick from overeating and as a result, both vomit on J. B.'s windshield, forcing an enraged J. B. to drive them home, forfeit the deal with Popo, who signed with someone else. Brenda makes him realize he is treating the two boys like a business deal; the next day, J. B. joins the boys for their prayers. Ignoring J. B.'s pleas of the two boys' lack of readiness, Chang insists his terms be fulfilled and the boys demonstrate their baseball skills one year from the time they arrived in the US. ESPN, Sports Illustrated, local media are joined by numerous major-league scouts to watch the boys pitch; the try-out is a complete disaster, as the pair is both nervous and pitch without speed or control, failing to impress anyone. Brenda convinces J. B.. Chang refused to go along with it, no scouts are interested in wasting their time on another fiasco.
All hope is lost until Ray arranges for J. B. to meet the Pittsburgh Pirates head scout, away in Puerto Rico for the first try-out, agrees to come. Chang sees the second try-out of Singh and Patel; this time, J. B. insists the boys have fun. The scouts are impressed as the pair deliver 90+ mph fastballs thrown and both are offered a contract by the Pittsburgh Pirates. Jon Hamm as J. B. Bernstein Aasif Mandvi as Ash Vasudevan, J. B.'s business partner Suraj Sharma as Rinku Singh Madhur Mittal as Dinesh Patel Bill Paxton as Tom House Lake Bell as Brenda Fenwick Alan Arkin as Ray Poitevint, a sports scout Greg Alan Williams as Doug Pitobash Tripathy as Amit Rohan, a baseball fanatic hired by J. B. Allyn Rachel as Theresa, J. B.'s assistant Darshan Jariwala as Vivek, a local Indian guide Tzi Ma as Will Chang, a sports business investor Bar Paly as Lisette Rey Maualuga as Popo VanuatuESPN personalities Jayson Stark, Karl Ravech, Steve Levy, as well as retired Major League Baseball players Barry Larkin and Curt Schilling, have cameo appearances in the film.
In 2008, television sports producers and brothers Neil and Michael Mandt began documenting the training and tryouts that Singh and Patel were undergoing at the USC campus. Using original footage they had shot, they created a nine-minute trailer as a presentation piece for a projected movie about the two players. In December 2008, the Mandts began a collaboration with producers Mark Ciardi, Gordon Gra
DVD
DVD is a digital optical disc storage format invented and developed in 1995. The medium can store any kind of digital data and is used for software and other computer files as well as video programs watched using DVD players. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than compact discs. Prerecorded DVDs are mass-produced using molding machines that physically stamp data onto the DVD; such discs are a form of DVD-ROM because data can only be not written or erased. Blank recordable DVD discs can be recorded once using a DVD recorder and function as a DVD-ROM. Rewritable DVDs can be erased many times. DVDs are used in DVD-Video consumer digital video format and in DVD-Audio consumer digital audio format as well as for authoring DVD discs written in a special AVCHD format to hold high definition material. DVDs containing other types of information may be referred to as DVD data discs; the Oxford English Dictionary comments that, "In 1995 rival manufacturers of the product named digital video disc agreed that, in order to emphasize the flexibility of the format for multimedia applications, the preferred abbreviation DVD would be understood to denote digital versatile disc."
The OED states that in 1995, "The companies said the official name of the format will be DVD. Toshiba had been using the name ‘digital video disc’, but, switched to ‘digital versatile disc’ after computer companies complained that it left out their applications.""Digital versatile disc" is the explanation provided in a DVD Forum Primer from 2000 and in the DVD Forum's mission statement. There were several formats developed for recording video on optical discs before the DVD. Optical recording technology was invented by David Paul Gregg and James Russell in 1958 and first patented in 1961. A consumer optical disc data format known as LaserDisc was developed in the United States, first came to market in Atlanta, Georgia in 1978, it used much larger discs than the formats. Due to the high cost of players and discs, consumer adoption of LaserDisc was low in both North America and Europe, was not used anywhere outside Japan and the more affluent areas of Southeast Asia, such as Hong-Kong, Singapore and Taiwan.
CD Video released in 1987 used analog video encoding on optical discs matching the established standard 120 mm size of audio CDs. Video CD became one of the first formats for distributing digitally encoded films in this format, in 1993. In the same year, two new optical disc storage formats were being developed. One was the Multimedia Compact Disc, backed by Philips and Sony, the other was the Super Density disc, supported by Toshiba, Time Warner, Matsushita Electric, Mitsubishi Electric, Thomson, JVC. By the time of the press launches for both formats in January 1995, the MMCD nomenclature had been dropped, Philips and Sony were referring to their format as Digital Video Disc. Representatives from the SD camp asked IBM for advice on the file system to use for their disc, sought support for their format for storing computer data. Alan E. Bell, a researcher from IBM's Almaden Research Center, got that request, learned of the MMCD development project. Wary of being caught in a repeat of the costly videotape format war between VHS and Betamax in the 1980s, he convened a group of computer industry experts, including representatives from Apple, Sun Microsystems and many others.
This group was referred to as the Technical Working Group, or TWG. On August 14, 1995, an ad hoc group formed from five computer companies issued a press release stating that they would only accept a single format; the TWG voted to boycott both formats unless the two camps agreed on a converged standard. They recruited president of IBM, to pressure the executives of the warring factions. In one significant compromise, the MMCD and SD groups agreed to adopt proposal SD 9, which specified that both layers of the dual-layered disc be read from the same side—instead of proposal SD 10, which would have created a two-sided disc that users would have to turn over; as a result, the DVD specification provided a storage capacity of 4.7 GB for a single-layered, single-sided disc and 8.5 GB for a dual-layered, single-sided disc. The DVD specification ended up similar to Toshiba and Matsushita's Super Density Disc, except for the dual-layer option and EFMPlus modulation designed by Kees Schouhamer Immink.
Philips and Sony decided that it was in their best interests to end the format war, agreed to unify with companies backing the Super Density Disc to release a single format, with technologies from both. After other compromises between MMCD and SD, the computer companies through TWG won the day, a single format was agreed upon; the TWG collaborated with the Optical Storage Technology Association on the use of their implementation of the ISO-13346 file system for use on the new DVDs. Movie and home entertainment distributors adopted the DVD format to replace the ubiquitous VHS tape as the primary consumer digital video distribution format, they embraced DVD as it produced higher quality video and sound, provided superior data lifespan, could be interactive. Interactivity on LaserDiscs had proven desirable to consumers collectors; when LaserDisc prices dropped from $100 per
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert was an American film critic, journalist and author. He was a film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert became the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Ebert and Chicago Tribune critic Gene Siskel helped popularize nationally televised film reviewing when they co-hosted the PBS show Sneak Previews, followed by several variously named At the Movies programs; the two verbally traded humorous barbs while discussing films. They created and trademarked the phrase "Two Thumbs Up", used when both hosts gave the same film a positive review. After Siskel died in 1999, Ebert continued hosting the show with various co-hosts and starting in 2000, with Richard Roeper. Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times said Ebert "was without question the nation's most prominent and influential film critic", Tom Van Riper of Forbes described him as "the most powerful pundit in America", Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times called him "the best-known film critic in America".
Ebert lived with cancer of the thyroid and salivary glands beginning in 2002. In 2006, he required treatment necessitating the removal of his lower jaw, leaving him disfigured and costing him the ability to speak or eat normally, his ability to write remained unimpaired and he continued to publish both online and in print until his death on April 4, 2013. Roger Joseph Ebert was born in Urbana, the only child of Annabel, a bookkeeper, Walter Harry Ebert, an electrician, he was raised Roman Catholic, attending St. Mary's elementary school and serving as an altar boy in Urbana, his paternal grandparents were German his maternal ancestry was Irish and Dutch. Ebert's interest in journalism began when he was a student at Urbana High School, where he was a sports writer for The News-Gazette in Champaign, Illinois. In his senior year, he was class president and editor-in-chief of his high school newspaper, The Echo. In 1958, he won the Illinois High School Association state speech championship in "radio speaking", an event that simulates radio newscasts.
Regarding his early influences in film criticism, Ebert wrote in the 1998 parody collection Mad About the Movies: Ebert began taking classes at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign as an early-entrance student, completing his high school courses while taking his first university class. After graduating from Urbana High School in 1960, Ebert attended and received his undergraduate degree in 1964. While at the University of Illinois, Ebert worked as a reporter for The Daily Illini and served as its editor during his senior year while continuing to work as a reporter for the News-Gazette of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois; as an undergraduate, he was a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity and president of the U. S. Student Press Association. One of the first movie reviews he wrote was a review of La Dolce Vita, published in The Daily Illini in October 1961. Ebert spent a semester as a master's student in the department of English there before attending the University of Cape Town on a Rotary fellowship for a year.
He returned from Cape Town to his graduate studies at Illinois for two more semesters and after being accepted as a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago, he prepared to move to Chicago. He needed a job to support himself while he worked on his doctorate and so applied to the Chicago Daily News, hoping that, as he had sold freelance pieces to the Daily News, including an article on the death of writer Brendan Behan, he would be hired by editor Herman Kogan. Instead Kogan referred Ebert to the city editor at the Chicago Sun-Times, Jim Hoge, who hired Ebert as a reporter and feature writer at the Sun-Times in 1966, he attended doctoral classes at the University of Chicago while working as a general reporter at the Sun-Times for a year. After movie critic Eleanor Keane left the Sun-Times in April 1967, editor Robert Zonka gave the job to Ebert; the load of graduate school and being a film critic proved too much, so Ebert left the University of Chicago to focus his energies on film criticism.
Ebert began his career as a film critic in 1967. That same year, he met film critic Pauline Kael for the first time at the New York Film Festival. After he sent her some of his columns, she told him they were "the best film criticism being done in American newspapers today"; that same year, Ebert's first book, a history of the University of Illinois titled Illini Century: One Hundred Years of Campus Life, was published by the University's press. In 1969, his review of Night of the Living Dead was published in Reader's Digest. Ebert co-wrote the screenplay for the 1970 Russ Meyer film Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and sometimes joked about being responsible for the film, poorly received on its release yet has become a cult classic. Ebert and Meyer made Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens, Up!, other films, were involved in the ill-fated Sex Pistols movie Who Killed Bambi? Starting in 1968, Ebert worked for the University of Chicago as an adjunct lecturer, teaching a night class on film at the Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies.
In 1975, Ebert received the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. As of 2007, his reviews were syndicated to more than 200 newspapers in the United States and abroad. Ebert publish
Bill Macy
Bill Macy is an American actor. Born in Revere, Massachusetts to Mollie and Michael Garber, a manufacturer, he was raised in Brooklyn, New York, worked as a cab driver before pursuing an acting career. Macy played Walter Findlay, the long-suffering husband of the title character on the 1970s television situation comedy Maude, starring Beatrice Arthur, he has made more than 70 appearances on television. He appeared as the Jury Foreman in The Producers in 1967. Other memorable roles include the co-inventor of the'Opti-grab' in the 1979 Steve Martin comedy The Jerk, as the head television writer in My Favorite Year, his other film credits include roles in Death at Love House, The Late Show, Movers & Shakers, Bad Medicine, Tales from the Darkside, Sibling Rivalry, The Doctor, Me, Myself and I, Analyze This, Surviving Christmas, The Holiday, Mr. Woodcock. In 1986, Macy was a guest on the fourth episode of L. A. Law, playing an older man whose young wife wants a music career. Macy appeared in the popular television movie Perry Mason and The Case Of The Murdered Madame as banker Richard Wilson.
He appeared on Seinfeld as one of the residents of the Florida retirement community where Jerry Seinfeld's parents lived. He appeared on the short-lived Fox sitcom Back to You. Macy portrayed a demon in a guest appearance on Millennium. Macy made a guest appearance as a patient on Chicago Hope, as an aging gambler on the series Las Vegas. Macy was an original cast member of the long-running theatrical revue Oh! Calcutta!. Bill Macy on IMDb Bill Macy at the Internet Broadway Database Bill Macy at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
