The Ronettes
The Ronettes were an American girl group from New York City. One of the most popular groups from the 1960s, they placed nine songs on the Billboard Hot 100, five of which became Top 40 hits; the trio from Spanish Harlem, New York, consisted of lead singer Veronica Bennett, her older sister Estelle Bennett, their cousin Nedra Talley. Among the Ronettes' most famous songs are "Be My Baby", "Baby, I Love You", " Breakin' Up", "Walking in the Rain", all of which charted on the Billboard Hot 100. "Walking in the Rain" won a Grammy Award in 1965, "Be My Baby" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999. The Ronettes were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007; the girls had sung together since they were teenagers known as "The Darling Sisters". Signed first by Colpix Records in 1961, they moved to Phil Spector's Philles Records in March 1963 and changed their name to "The Ronettes". In late 1964, the group released their only studio album, Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes Featuring Veronica, which entered the Billboard charts at number 96.
Rolling Stone ranked it number 422 on its list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The group was inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2004; the Ronettes were the only girl group to tour with the Beatles. The Ronettes began as a family act where the girls grew up in Manhattan. According to Nedra Talley, they started singing during childhood visits to their grandmother's home. "Estelle and Veronica are sisters," she said in a interview. "I'm their cousin. Our mothers are sisters. We came out of a family that, on Saturday nights, home for us was at our grandmother's, entertaining each other." The Bennetts' mother was Cherokee. Their cousin, Talley, is African-American and Puerto Rican; the trio had a great-grandfather, Chinese."By the time I was eight, I was working up whole numbers for our family's little weekend shows," Ronnie Spector recalled. "Then Estelle would get up onstage and do a song, or she'd join Nedra or my cousin Elaine and me in a number we'd worked out in three-part harmony."Furthering their interest in show business, Estelle was enrolled at Startime, a popular dancing school in the 1950s, while Ronnie became fascinated with Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers.
In 1957, Ronnie formed the group which would become known as the Ronettes. Composed of Ronnie, her sister Estelle, their cousins Nedra and Elaine, the five girls learned how to perfect their harmonies first at their grandmother's house, they became proficient in songs such as “Goodnight Sweetheart” and “Red Red Robin”. Emulating Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, the girls added their male cousin Ira to the group and signed up for a Wednesday night amateur show at the Apollo Theatre run by a friend of Ronnie and Estelle's mother; the show started out as a disaster. "I strutted out across the stage, singing as loud as I could," Ronnie recalled. "When I heard a few hands of scattered applause, I sang louder. That brought a little more applause, all I needed." After their night at the Apollo, Ira and Diane left the group. After the curious renaming of the group to "Ronnie and the Relatives", Ronnie and Nedra began taking singing lessons two afternoons per week. Appearing at local bar mitzvahs and sock hops, they met Phil Halikus, who introduced them to Colpix Records producer Stu Phillips.
According to Ronnie, Phillips played the piano while the women auditioned for him, singing "What's So Sweet About Sweet Sixteen". The audition was successful, the group was brought into the studio in June 1961 and recorded four tracks: "I Want a Boy", "What's So Sweet About Sweet Sixteen", "I'm Gonna Quit While I'm Ahead", "My Guiding Angel". Colpix released "I Want a Boy" in August 1961 and "I'm Gonna Quit While I'm Ahead" in January 1962, the first singles credited to Ronnie and the Relatives. While both singles failed to chart on the Billboard Top 100, fate intervened in advancing the group's success. A fortuitous case of mistaken identity led to Ronnie and the Relatives making their debut – as dancers rather than a singing act – at New York City's hip The Peppermint Lounge in 1961, it was the height of the Twist craze, under-aged Nedra and Ronnie disguised themselves to get in. The girls' mothers showed them how to put on make-up and fix their hair to make them look at least 23; when they arrived outside the club, its manager mistook Ronnie and Nedra for the trio supposed to dance behind house band Joey Dee and the Starliters for the evening.
He put them onstage to perform in their place. During the show, Starliter David Brigati handed the mic over to Ronnie when she started to sing Ray Charles' "What'd I Say". Soon afterward and the Relatives became a permanent act at The Peppermint Lounge, each earning $10 per night to dance The Twist and sing a song at some point in the show. Ronnie and the Relatives soon became “The Ronettes”. Colpix issued the first two singles credited to the Ronettes, "Silhouettes" and a re-issue of "I'm Gonna Quit While I'm Ahead", on its May label in April and June 1962, respectively. Both singles disappointingly failed to chart; that year, they were flown to Miami to open a Florida branch of The Peppermint Lounge. After their performance at the Miami gala, radio host Murray the K came backstage and introduced himself to them, he asked the women to begin appearing at his shows at The Brooklyn Fox in New York. They agreed, taking the Fox stage in 1962 and completing a transition from Murray the K's "Dancing Gir
Hugh Grant
Hugh John Mungo Grant is an English actor and film producer. Grant has received a Golden Globe, a BAFTA, an Honorary César for his work; as of 2018, his films have grossed a total of nearly US$3 billion worldwide from 29 theatrical releases. He first received attention after earning the Volpi Cup for his performance in the film Maurice but achieved international success after appearing in Four Weddings and a Funeral, he used this breakthrough role as a frequent cinematic persona during the 1990s, delivering comic performances in films such as Mickey Blue Eyes and Notting Hill. One of the best known figures in 1990s British popular culture, Grant was in a high-profile relationship with Elizabeth Hurley, the focus of much attention in the British and international media. By the turn of the 21st century, Grant had established himself as a leading man, skilled with a satirical comic talent, he has expanded his oeuvre with critically acclaimed turns as a cad in Bridget Jones's Diary, About a Boy, American Dreamz.
He played against type with multiple roles in the epic sci-fi drama film, Cloud Atlas. He is known for appearing in period pieces such as The Remains of the Day and Sensibility and Florence Foster Jenkins. Most he received critical acclaim for his turns as Phoenix Buchanan, an antagonist in Paddington 2, as Jeremy Thorpe in the BBC One miniseries A Very English Scandal. Within the film industry, Grant was cited as an anti-star who approaches his roles like a character actor, attempts to make his acting appear spontaneous. Hallmarks of his comic skills studied physical mannerisms; the entertainment media's coverage of his life off the big screen has overshadowed his work as an actor. He has been outspoken about his antipathy towards the profession of acting, his disdain towards the culture of celebrity, his hostility towards the media, he emerged as a prominent critic of the conduct of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation during the News International phone hacking scandal. In a career spanning more than 35 years, Grant has claimed that acting was not his true calling but rather a career that developed by happenstance.
Grant was born at Charing Cross Hospital in Hammersmith, the second son of Fynvola Susan MacLean and Captain James Murray Grant. His grandfather, Colonel James Murray Grant, DSO was decorated for bravery and leadership at Saint-Valery-en-Caux during World War II. Genealogist Antony Adolph has described Grant's family history as "a colourful Anglo-Scottish tapestry of warriors, empire-builders and aristocracy", his ancestors include William Drummond, 4th Viscount Strathallan, Dr. James Stewart, John Murray, 1st Marquess of Atholl, Heneage Finch, 1st Earl of Nottingham, Sir Evan Nepean, a sister of former Prime Minister Spencer Perceval. Grant's father was an officer in the Seaforth Highlanders for eight years in Germany, he ran a carpet firm, pursued hobbies such as golf and painting watercolours, raised his family in Chiswick, west London, where the Grants lived next to Arlington Park Mansions on Sutton Lane. In September 2006, a collection of Capt. Grant's paintings was hosted by the John Martin Gallery in a charity exhibition, organised by his son, called "James Grant: 30 Years of Watercolours".
His mother worked as a schoolteacher and taught Latin and music for more than 30 years in the state schools of west London. She died 18 months after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. On Inside the Actors Studio in 2002, he credited his mother with "any acting genes that might have". Both his parents were children of military families, despite his parents' backgrounds, he has stated that his family was not always affluent while he was growing up, he spent his childhood summers hunting with his grandfather in Scotland. Grant has an older brother, living in Portugal. Grant started his education at Hogarth Primary School in Chiswick but moved to St Peter's Primary School in Hammersmith. From 1969 to 1978, he attended the independent Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith on a scholarship and played 1st XV rugby and football for the school, he represented Latymer on the quiz show, Top of the Form, an academic competition between two teams of four secondary school students each. In 1979, he won the Galsworthy scholarship to New College, where he starred in his first film, produced by the Oxford University Film Foundation.
He graduated with 2:1 honours. Actress Anna Chancellor, who met Grant while she was still at university, has recalled, "I first met Hugh at a party at Oxford. There was something magical about him, he was a star then, without having done anything."He received an offer from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London to pursue a PhD in the history of art, but decided not to take the offer because he failed to secure a grant. Viewing acting as nothing more than a creative outlet, he joined the Oxford University Dramatic Society and starred in a successful touring production of Twelfth Night. After making his debut in the Oxford-financed film Privileged, Grant dabbled in a variety of jobs, such as working as an assistant groundsman at Fulham Football Club, writing comedy sketches for TV shows, working for Talkback Productions to write and produce radio commercials for products such as Mighty White bread and Red Stripe lager. At a screening of Privileged at BAFTA in London, he was approached by a talent agent off
Kristin Davis
Kristin Landen Davis is an American actress. She is known for playing Brooke Armstrong on the soap opera Melrose Place, Charlotte York Goldenblatt on HBO's Sex and the City, she received a 2004 Emmy Award nomination for her role as Charlotte, reprised the role in the films Sex and the City and Sex and the City 2. Davis made her Broadway debut playing Mabel Cantwell in the 2012 revival of The Best Man, her West End debut playing Beth Gallagher in the original 2014 stage production of Fatal Attraction. Davis was born in Colorado, she is an only child, her parents divorced when she was a baby. She was adopted by her stepfather, then-University of Colorado Boulder professor Keith Davis, after he married her mother, Dorothy, a university data analyst, in 1968, she has three sisters from her father's first marriage. Early in her childhood and her parents moved to Columbia, South Carolina, where her father served as provost and taught psychology at the University of South Carolina. Davis wanted to be an actress from the age of 9, when she was cast in the Workshop Theatre production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Davis lived in South Carolina until she graduated from A. C. Flora High School in 1983, she moved to New Jersey, where she attended Rutgers University. Davis graduated with a BFA degree in Acting from Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts in 1987. After graduation in 1987, Davis moved to New York and waited tables before opening a yoga studio with a friend. In 1991, she acted in a couple of episodes of the daytime drama General Hospital, her big break came in 1995 when she landed the role of villainess Brooke Armstrong Campbell on the nighttime drama Melrose Place. She left the show after one year. Davis had roles in other television series including Friends and Grace and Seinfeld. In 1998, Davis was cast as Charlotte York in Sex and the City and remained an integral cast member until the series ended in 2004. In 1999, along with the rest of the cast, she was awarded the Women in Film Lucy Award in recognition of her excellence and innovation in her creative works that have enhanced the perception of women through the medium of television.
She received an Emmy nomination for her role as Charlotte in the final season. Davis hosted. In 2005, she starred in a television pilot entitled Soccer Moms in which she and Gina Torres star as suburban mothers who moonlight as private detectives, she starred as Miss Spider in the animated television special Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Kids and its spin-off series Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends and was a guest judge on the Lifetime program Project Runway. Davis's films include The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3D, opposite David Arquette and George Lopez, she performed in ABC Family channel's Christmas movie Three Days in 2001, in a commercial for Head & Shoulders shampoo. Davis appeared in 2008's Sex and the City feature film, under the direction of executive producer Michael Patrick King. In 2009, Davis co-starred in Couples Retreat, a comedy chronicling four couples who partake in therapy sessions at a tropical island resort. Jon Favreau, who co-wrote the script, played her husband.
Davis made her Broadway debut in July 2012, when she replaced Kerry Butler in the revival of Gore Vidal's The Best Man at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. She made her West End debut playing Beth Gallagher in Fatal Attraction at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, in March 2014. Shortly after the wide release of the Sex and the City feature film, in June 2008, the nation's largest owned department store chain, announced a partnership with Davis; the arrangement includes a ladies' apparel and accessories line that debuted in 2008 in 125 store locations and online, with eventual plans for expanding availability to other store locations. In Belk's press release about the product line launch, Davis cited her upbringing in South Carolina as part of her inspiration for working with the chain. In late 2009 Belk cancelled the arrangement, citing the difficult economic conditions prevailing, while Davis said she hoped to take the line elsewhere. Davis is a Global Ambassador for Oxfam, has campaigned in support of their work since 2004, travelling to locations including Haiti and South Africa.
The cosmetics company Maybelline named Davis as a celebrity spokeswoman in 2004. During her 2009 visit to Africa, Davis, a lifelong lover of elephants, discovered an abandoned baby elephant and arranged for it to be taken to a wildlife rehabilitation center. In recognition of the attention she has brought to the plight of orphaned African elephants, Davis won the Humane Society's 2010 Wyler Award, bestowed on a celebrity or public figure who has made news on behalf of animals, she is a patron of the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust which works to protect elephants and other wildlife in Kenya. Davis has worked with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and is included on their list of "High Profile Supporters". In 2015 she visited the Democratic Republic of Uganda. Davis filmed a fund-raising appeal supporting the UNHCR, in 2016 visited Australia to promote the UNHCR's work, focussing on the plight of women victims of sexual violence in Congo. Davis adopted. In 2011, she adopted Gemma Rose Davis.
In 2018, she adopted a boy. They reside in California, she is a recovering alcoholic and says she was introduced to alcohol early as part of her Southern upb
Julianne Moore
Julianne Moore is an American actress and children's author. Prolific in film since the early 1990s, she is known for her portrayals of troubled women in both independent and Hollywood films, has received many accolades, including the Academy Award for Best Actress. After studying theatre at Boston University, Moore began her career with a series of television roles. From 1985 to 1988, she was a regular in the soap opera As the World Turns, earning a Daytime Emmy Award for her performance, her film debut was in Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, she continued to play small roles for the next four years, including in the thriller The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. Moore first received critical attention with Robert Altman's Short Cuts, successive performances in Vanya on 42nd Street and Safe continued this acclaim. Starring roles in the blockbusters Nine Months and The Lost World: Jurassic Park established her as a leading lady in Hollywood. Moore received considerable recognition in the late 1990s and early 2000s, earning Oscar nominations for Boogie Nights, The End of the Affair, Far from Heaven and The Hours.
In the first of these, she played a 1970s pornographic actress, while the other three featured her as an unhappy, mid-20th century housewife. She had success with the films The Big Lebowski, Hannibal, Children of Men, A Single Man, The Kids Are All Right, Crazy, Stupid and won several awards for her portrayal of Sarah Palin in the television film Game Change. Moore went on to give an Academy Award-winning performance as an Alzheimer's patient in Still Alice and was named Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival for Maps to the Stars, she appeared in the final two films of The Hunger Games series and starred in the spy film Kingsman: The Golden Circle. In addition to acting, Moore has written a series of children's books about a character named "Freckleface Strawberry", she is married to director Bart Freundlich. Moore was born Julie Anne Smith on December 3, 1960, at the Fort Bragg army installation in North Carolina, the oldest of 3 siblings, her father, Peter Moore Smith, a paratrooper in the United States Army during the Vietnam War, attained the rank of colonel and became a military judge.
Her Scottish mother, was a psychologist and social worker from Greenock, who emigrated to the United States in 1951 with her family. Moore has a younger sister, Valerie Smith, a younger brother, the novelist Peter Moore Smith; as Moore is half-Scottish, she claimed British citizenship in 2011 to honor her deceased mother. Moore moved around the United States as a child, due to her father's occupation, she was close to her family as a result, but has said she never had the feeling of coming from one particular place. The family lived in multiple locations, including Alabama, Texas, Nebraska, New York, Virginia, Moore attended nine different schools; the constant relocating made her an insecure child, she struggled to establish friendships. Despite these difficulties, Moore remarked that an itinerant lifestyle was beneficial to her future career: "When you move around a lot, you learn that behavior is mutable. I would change, depending on where I was... It teaches you to watch, to reinvent, that character can change."When Moore was 16, the family moved from Falls Church, where Moore had been attending J.
E. B. Stuart High School, to Frankfurt, where she attended Frankfurt American High School, she was clever and studious, a self-proclaimed "good girl", she planned to become a doctor. She had never considered performing, or attended the theatre, but she was an avid reader and it was this hobby that led her to begin acting at the school, she appeared in several plays, including Tartuffe and Medea, with the encouragement of her English teacher, she chose to pursue a theatrical career. Moore's parents supported her decision, but asked that she train at university to provide the added security of a college degree, she was accepted to Boston University and graduated with a BFA in Theatre in 1983. Moore moved to New York City after graduating, worked as a waitress. After registering her stage name with Actors' Equity, she began her career in 1985 with off-Broadway theatre, her first screen role came in an episode of the soap opera The Edge of Night. Her break came the following year. Playing the dual roles of half-sisters Frannie and Sabrina Hughes, she found this intensive work to be an important learning experience, she said of it fondly: "I gained confidence and learned to take responsibility."
Moore performed on the show until 1988, when she won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Ingenue in a Drama Series. Before leaving As the World Turns, she had a role in the 1987 CBS miniseries I'll Take Manhattan. Once she had finished the soap opera, she turned to the stage to play Ophelia in a Guthrie Theater production of Hamlet opposite Željko Ivanek; the actress returned intermittently to television over the next three years, appearing in the TV movies Money, Murder, The Last to Go, Cast a Deadly Spell. In 1990, Moore began working with stage director Andre Gregory on a workshop theatre production of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. Described by Moore as "one of the most fundamentally important acting experiences I had", the group spent four years exploring the text and giving intimate performances to friends. In 1990, Moore made her cinematic debut as a mummy's victim in Tales from the Darksid
Van Morrison
Sir George Ivan Morrison OBE, better known as Van Morrison, is a Northern Irish singer-songwriter and record producer. His professional career began as a teenager in the late 1950s playing a variety of instruments including guitar, harmonica and saxophone for various Irish showbands, covering the popular hits of that time. Van Morrison rose to prominence in the mid-1960s as the lead singer of the Northern Irish R&B band Them, with whom he recorded the garage band classic "Gloria", his solo career began under the pop-hit oriented guidance of Bert Berns with the release of the hit single "Brown Eyed Girl" in 1967. After Berns's death, Warner Bros. Records bought out his contract and allowed him three sessions to record Astral Weeks. Though this album garnered high praise, it was a poor seller. Moondance established Morrison as a major artist, he built on his reputation throughout the 1970s with a series of acclaimed albums and live performances, he continues to record and tour, producing albums and live performances that sell well and are warmly received, sometimes collaborating with other artists, such as Georgie Fame and The Chieftains.
Much of Morrison's music is structured around the conventions of soul music and R&B, such as the popular singles "Brown Eyed Girl", "Jackie Wilson Said", "Domino" and "Wild Night". An equal part of his catalogue consists of lengthy, loosely connected, spiritually inspired musical journeys that show the influence of Celtic tradition and stream-of-consciousness narrative, such as the album Astral Weeks and the lesser known Veedon Fleece and Common One; the two strains together are sometimes referred to as "Celtic soul". He has received two Grammy Awards, the 1994 Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music, the 2017 Americana Music Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting and has been inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2016, he was knighted for services to tourism in Northern Ireland, he is known by the nickname Van the Man to his fans. George Ivan "Van" Morrison was born on 31 August 1945, at 125 Hyndford Street, Belfast, Northern Ireland, as the only child of George Morrison, a shipyard electrician, Violet Stitt Morrison, a singer and tap dancer in her youth.
Morrison's family were working class Protestants descended from the Ulster Scots population that settled in Belfast. From 1950 to 1956, who began to be known as "Van" during this time, attended Elmgrove Primary School, his father had what was at the time one of the largest record collections in Ulster and the young Morrison grew up listening to artists such as Jelly Roll Morton, Ray Charles, Lead Belly, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and Solomon Burke. Those guys were the inspiration. If it wasn't for that kind of music, I couldn't do what I'm doing now."His father's record collection exposed him to various musical genres, such as the blues of Muddy Waters. When Lonnie Donegan had a hit with "Rock Island Line", written by Huddie Ledbetter, Morrison felt he was familiar with and able to connect with skiffle music as he had been hearing Lead Belly before that. Morrison's father bought him his first acoustic guitar when he was eleven, he learned to play rudimentary chords from the song book The Carter Family Style, edited by Alan Lomax.
In 1957, at the age of twelve, Morrison formed his first band, a skiffle group, "The Sputniks", named after the satellite, Sputnik 1, launched earlier that year by the Soviets. In 1958, the band played at some of the local cinemas, Morrison took the lead, contributing most of the singing and arranging. Other short-lived groups followed – at fourteen, he formed Midnight Special, another modified skiffle band and played at a school concert; when he heard Jimmy Giuffre playing saxophone on "The Train and The River", he talked his father into buying him a saxophone, took lessons in tenor sax and music reading. Now playing the saxophone, Morrison joined with various local bands, including one called Deanie Sands and the Javelins, with whom he played guitar and shared singing; the line-up of the band was lead vocalist Deanie Sands, guitarist George Jones, drummer and vocalist Roy Kane. The four main musicians of the Javelins, with the addition of Wesley Black as pianist, became known as the Monarchs.
Morrison attended Orangefield Boys Secondary School. As a member of a working-class community, it was expected he would get a regular full-time job, so after several short apprenticeship positions, he settled into a job as a window cleaner—later alluded to in his songs "Cleaning Windows" and "Saint Dominic's Preview". However, he had been developing his musical interests from an early age and continued playing with the Monarchs part-time. Young Morrison played with the Harry Mack Showband, the Great Eight, with his older workplace friend, Geordie Sproule, whom he named as one of his biggest influences. At age 17, Morrison toured Europe for the first time with the Monarchs, now calling themselves the International Monarchs; this Irish showband, with Morrison playing saxophone and harp, in addition to back-up duty on bass and drums, toured steamy clubs and US Army bases in Scotland and Germany, of
Under Siege 2: Dark Territory
Under Siege 2: Dark Territory is a 1995 American action thriller film set on board a train traveling through the Rocky Mountains from Denver to Los Angeles. Directed by Geoff Murphy, it stars Steven Seagal as the ex-Navy SEAL, Casey Ryback, is the sequel to the 1992 film Under Siege starring Seagal; the title refers to the railroading term that the subject train was travelling through dark territory, a section of railroad track that has no train signals and in which communications between train dispatchers and the railroad engineers were impossible. The film was produced by Seagal along with Steve Perry; the film's cast included Eric Bogosian, Everett McGill, Morris Chestnut, Peter Greene, Kurtwood Smith and Katherine Heigl. Nick Mancuso, Andy Romano, Dale Dye reprised their roles from the first film. Casey Ryback retires from the United States Navy and settles in Denver, Colorado and running a restaurant named Mile High Cafe, where he is an executive chef. Sometime after, his estranged brother, James Ryback, dies in a plane crash.
Casey meets James's daughter, whom he will accompany to Los Angeles to attend his funeral. The two board the Grand Continental, a train traveling from Denver to Los Angeles through the Rocky Mountains. Onboard, they befriend a porter named the train's chefs; as the train approaches the Rocky Mountains, it is hijacked by armed mercenaries, led by former U. S. government computer hacker Travis Dane and his right-hand man and mercenary leader Marcus Penn. Dane worked on Grazer One, a top-secret military satellite particle weapon designed to destroy underground targets; the military fired Dane due to his mental instability. The mercenaries take the train's passengers and staff hostage. Casey kills one mercenary slips away. Among the hostages are two former US Department of Defense colleagues who worked with Dane. Dane threatens them with torture. Despite giving up the codes, they are thrown from the train. During the course of events, Zachs becomes Casey's sidekick. Middle Eastern terrorists have offered Dane $1 billion to destroy the Eastern seaboard through using Grazer to target a nuclear reactor located underneath the Pentagon.
Dane demonstrates Grazer to investors by destroying a Chinese chemical weapons plant. After one investor offers an additional $100 million, Dane destroys an airliner carrying the investor's ex-wife; the U. S. government has difficulty locating Grazer. When officials destroy what they think is Grazer, Dane explains the NSA's premier intelligence satellite was destroyed instead; as long as the train keeps moving, his location cannot be determined. However, Casey faxes a message to his assistant manager at the Mile High Cafe, who contacts Admiral Bates. Bates reluctantly approves a stealth bomber strike to destroy the train. Zachs discovers that they are on the wrong tracks and on a collision course with a Southern Pacific freight train hauling gasoline tank cars. Since the trains are in dark territory, it was impossible for the train dispatchers to communicate with the trains' engineers to stop the trains to avoid collision. Dane and Penn plan to abandon most of the mercenaries to certain death with the hostages by leaving via helicopter with some of their elite members.
Casey kills the mercenaries one by one and releases the hostages by uncoupling the last two cars, but Dane uses his computer skills to locate the stealth bombers and re-targets Grazer to knock them out before they can complete their mission. Meanwhile, Penn had captured Sarah and uses her as bait for Casey. Casey breaks his neck after a fight that spills into the kitchen. Casey finds Dane about to depart in a chopper hovering over the train; when Dane informs Casey that there is no way to stop Grazer from destroying Washington, Casey shoots him. The bullet destroys Dane's computer and injures Dane. Pentagon control of the satellite is restored and it is destroyed by remote control one second before it would have fired on the Pentagon; the Grand Continental and freight train collide on a trestle. Casey grabs a rope ladder dangling from the chopper. Dane, who has survived Casey's bullet, catches on to the ladder, he attempts to climb into the helicopter but falls to his death when Casey shuts the helicopter door on his hands.
The explosion causes the helicopter to spin out of control. The only survivors of the incident are Casey, his niece Sarah, the porter Zachs, the mercenary helicopter pilot. Casey, having detached the last two cars from the rest of the train, informs the Pentagon that the passengers are safe. Sarah and Casey pay their last respects at James's grave. Steven Seagal as Chief Petty Officer Casey Ryback, a former Navy SEAL who now heads and manages a restaurant in Denver Eric Bogosian as Travis Dane, a crazed computer genius-turned-cyberterrorist leader who designed the Grazer One satellite weapon for the US government before being fired for his mental instability Everett McGill as Marcus Penn, the mercenary commander & Dane’s second-in-command who leads a team of terrorists to hijack the Grand Continental train to set up the satellite equipment Katherine Heigl as Sarah Ryback, Ryback's niece who accompanies him on the train to go to her father's funeral Morris Chestnut as Bobby Zachs, an eager porter of the train who reluctantly helps Ryback with the hijacked train Nick Mancuso as Tom Breaker, the shady CIA director who assists ATAC on Grazer One Brenda Bakke as Captain Linda Gilder, a member of ATAC and one of Dane's former colleagues Peter Greene as Mercenary #1, Penn’s lieutenant, once i
Let's Get It On
Let's Get It On is the thirteenth studio album by American singer and producer Marvin Gaye. It was released on August 1973, by the Motown Records subsidiary label Tamla. Recording sessions for the album took place during June 1970 to July 1973 at Hitsville U. S. A. and Golden World Studio in Detroit, at Hitsville West in Los Angeles. Serving as Gaye's first venture into the funk genre and romance-themed music, Let's Get It On incorporates smooth soul, doo-wop, quiet storm, it has been noted by critics for its sexually suggestive lyrics, was cited by one writer as "one of the most sexually charged albums recorded". Following the breakthrough success of his conscious album What's Going On, Let's Get It On helped establish Gaye as a sex icon and furthered his mainstream appeal, it produced three singles—the title track, "Come Get to This", "You Sure Love to Ball"—that attained Billboard chart success. Let's Get It On became the most commercially successful album of Gaye's recording career, it further expanded his creative control during his tenure with Motown.
Its sexual balladry, multi-tracking of Gaye's vocals, seductive, funk sound influenced R&B artists and production. The album has been regarded by many music critics as a landmark recording in soul music, it furthered funk music's popularity during the 1970s, its smooth soul sound marked a change for his record label's previous success with the "Motown Sound" formula. Let's Get It On has been ranked on many critics and publications' lists of the best albums of all time. In 2001, it was reissued by Motown Records as a two-disc deluxe edition release. In the spring of 1972, Marvin Gaye was suffering from writer's block. Following the release of his most commercially successful album up to that point, What's Going On, the soundtrack album to the blaxploitation film Trouble Man, Gaye had struggled to come up with new material after Motown Records had renegotiated a new contract with him; the contract provided him with more creative control over his recordings. The deal was worth $1 million, making him the highest-earning soul artist, as well as the highest-earning black artist, at the time.
He was struggling with deciding whether or not to relocate to Los Angeles, following Motown-CEO Berry Gordy's move of the record label and replacement of the Detroit-based Hitsville U. S. A. recording studio with the Hitsville West studio in Los Angeles. Amid relocation and his lack of material, Gaye was struggling with his conscience, as well as dealing with expectations from his wife, Gordy's sister Anna. Gaye's separation from Gordy pressured him emotionally. During this time, he had been attempting to cope with past issues that had stemmed from his childhood. During his childhood, Gaye had been physically abused by his preacher father Marvin Gay, Sr. who disciplined his son under moralistic and fundamentalist Christian teachings. As a result, the meaning and practice of sex had become a disturbing question for Gaye; as an adult, he suffered with sexual impotence and became plagued by sadomasochistic fantasies, which haunted him in his dreams and provoked some guilt in his conscience. According to Gaye's biographer David Ritz, "his view of sex was unsettled, riddled with pain".
Gaye learned to cope with his personal issues with a newly found spirituality. He began incorporating his new outlook into his music, as expressed through the conscious album What's Going On, along with promotional photos of him wearing a kufi in honor of African traditional religions and his faith. By winning over record executives with the success of What's Going On, Gaye attained more creative control, which he would use, following his brief separation from wife Anna Gordy, to record an album, meant to surface themes beyond sex; as with What's Going On, Gaye wanted to have a deeper meaning than the general theme, used to portray it. In his book Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye, David Ritz wrote of Gaye and the musical inspiration behind Gaye's second landmark record: If the most profound soul songs are prayers in secular dress, Marvin's prayer is to reconcile the ecstasy of his early religious epiphany with a sexual epiphany; the hope for such a reconciliation, the search for sexual healing, is what drives his art...
The paradox is this: The sexiest of Marvin Gaye's work is his most spiritual. That's the paradox of Marvin himself. In his struggle to wed body and soul, in his exploration of sexual passion, he expresses the most human of hungers—the hunger for God. In those songs of loss and lament—the sense of separation is heartbreaking. On one level, the separation is between woman. On a deeper level, the separation is between God. In the album's liner notes, Gaye explained his views on the themes of sex and love, stating "I can't see anything wrong with sex between consenting anybodies. I think. After all, one's genitals are just one important part of the magnificent human body... I contend that SEX IS SEX and LOVE IS LOVE; when combined, they work well together. But they are two discrete needs and should be treated as such. Time and space will not permit me to expound further in the area of the psyche. I don't believe in overly moralistic philosophies. Have your sex, it can be exciting. I hope the music that I present here makes you lucky."
Gaye proceeded to record some more politically conscious material at the Golden World Records studio, known as Motown's Studio B, as well as the preliminary vocals and instrument
