Patternizing Primes (or, Re-defining Random)
Mathematicians Discover Prime Conspiracy
A previously unnoticed property of prime numbers seems to violate a longstanding assumption about how they behave.
Zim + Teemo for Quanta Magazine
Two mathematicians have uncovered a simple, previously unnoticed property of prime numbers — those numbers that are divisible only by 1 and themselves. Prime numbers, it seems, have decided preferences about the final digits of the primes that immediately follow them.
Among the first billion prime numbers, for instance, a prime ending in 9 is almost 65 percent more likely to be followed by a prime ending in 1 than another prime ending in 9. In a paper posted online today, Kannan Soundararajan and Robert Lemke Oliver of Stanford University present both numerical and theoretical evidence that prime numbers repel other would-be primes that end in the same digit, and have varied predilections for being followed by primes ending in the other possible final digits.
“We’ve been studying primes for a long time, and no one spotted this before,” said Andrew Granville, a number theorist at the University of Montreal and University College London. “It’s crazy.”
The discovery is the exact opposite of what most mathematicians would have predicted, said Ken Ono, a number theorist at Emory University in Atlanta. When he first heard the news, he said, “I was floored. I thought, ‘For sure, your program’s not working.’”
This conspiracy among prime numbers seems, at first glance, to violate a longstanding assumption in number theory: that prime numbers behave much like random numbers. Most mathematicians would have assumed, Granville and Ono agreed, that a prime should have an equal chance of being followed by a prime ending in 1, 3, 7 or 9 (the four possible endings for all prime numbers except 2 and 5).
“I can’t believe anyone in the world would have guessed this,” Granville said. Even after having seen Lemke Oliver and Soundararajan’s analysis of their phenomenon, he said, “it still seems like a strange thing.”
Yet the pair’s work doesn’t upend the notion that primes behave randomly so much as point to how subtle their particular mix of randomness and order is. “Can we redefine what ‘random’ means in this context so that once again, [this phenomenon] looks like it might be random?” Soundararajan said. “That’s what we think we’ve done.”
Adult Coloring Book Craze Killing Billions and Billions of Trees
Colouring-in craze causes pencil shortages
The craze for adult colouring-in has pencil factories working overtime to meet demand
By Senay Boztas and Colin Freeman
Different colours of pencil Photo: Alamy
A Scottish illustrator has been credited with boosting the fortunes of the global pencil industry after the surprise success of her “colouring-in” books for grown ups.
Johanna Basford’s books of elaborately-crafted fill-in drawings have tapped into a huge demand from those seeking to switch off from I-pads, laptops and computer games.
Now, having already topped the Amazon best-seller lists, her tomes are also giving a massive boost in global sales for high-quality pencils, as colouring-in fans compete to make masterpieces of their work.
Far from being a casualty themselves of the digital age, pencil manufacturers are now struggling to cope with demand, with Faber Castell, the world’s largest wood pencil manufacturer, revealing last week that it was now having to run extra shifts at its factories.
Don’t Piss Off The Pachyderm
Coach Ken Reeves Gone
Actor Ken Howard Dies at 71
Ken Howard, best known for his groundbreaking CBS drama The White Shadow, is dead at 71.
The Tony and Emmy Award winner also starred as Thomas Jefferson in the 1972 film 1776, was featured in the 1995 Sandra Bullock thriller The Net, and guest-starred as Kabletown CEO Hank Hooper on 30 Rock. Just last year, he appeared in Kevin Hart‘s The Wedding Ringer and the Jennifer Lawrence hit Joy.
Howard was elected president of the Screen Actor’s Guild in 2009 and was a guiding force in the union’s 2012 merger with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. He was elected co-president upon the merger. In 2013, became the first elected president of SAG-AFTRA and was reelected in 2015.
The Chickening
Eat, Brains, Love Movie!!
Movie Version of ‘Eat, Brains, Love’ Zombie Novel in Works at Van Toffler’s Gunpowder & Sky
by TODD SPANGLER / NY Digital Editor
Startup studio pacts with Tony DiSanto’s DIGA, James Frey’s Full Fathom Five on project
Gunpowder & Sky, the youth-focused studio launched by ex-Viacom exec Van Toffler in January, has signed an exclusive deal for a film adaptation of “Eat, Brains, Love,” a comedic zombie road-trip novel by Jeff Hart.
G&S, backed by AT&T and Chernin Group’s Otter Media, is working on the project with DIGA, an independent production studio founded by former MTV executive Tony DiSanto, and author James Frey’s Full Fathom Five media and production firm.
The project reunites Toffler and DiSanto, whose productions at MTV included “Jersey Shore,” “Scream,” “Teen Wolf” and “My Super Psycho Sweet 16.” The companies said they are in talks with potential screenwriters for “Eat, Brains, Love.”
“Eat, Brains, Love” — the title is a play on Elizabeth Gilbert’s best-selling novel “Eat, Pray, Love” — is the story of a pair of high-school sweethearts who contract a mysterious zombie virus and devour the brains of half their senior class. They set off on a cross-country journey to discover a cure, while being pursued by a teen psychic sent by the government’s top-secret Necrotic Control Division to track them down.
WME negotiated the deal on behalf of Full Fathom Five. DiSanto and Full Fathom Five’s Todd Cohen brought the project to G&S.
Man With First Bionic Penis and Push-button Testicle Loses Virginity To Normal Old Vagina-for-hire
Man fitted with bionic penis after childhood accident loses virginity at 44 with sex worker
BY EMMA PIETRAS
Credit: Mirrorpix
A man who lost his penis in a childhood accident has finally lost his virginity – at the age of 44.
Mohammed Abad has a £70,000 “bionic penis” and tested it for the first time with sex worker Charlotte Rose.
The security guard from Edinburgh said: “It was great. I’ve been waiting for this day since I was 18. But now a big burden is off my back and I’m so happy.”
Mohammed, known as Mo, was lucky to survive after he was run over and dragged 600 yards when he fell into the road during a snowball fight aged six.
After the accident, doctors attached a makeshift fleshy tube, but it wasn’t until 2012 that the NHS was able to fit him with an 8in state-of-the art bionic penis.
It took surgeons at University College London three years to mould Mohammed’s new penis using skin taken from his arm. It has two tubes which inflate to give him an erection when he presses a button on his testicle.
Comet To Nearly Smash Into Earth – Shelter-in-place Now and Until Further Notice
One comet to swerve closer to Earth than any other comet in centuries
Traci Watson, Special to USA TODAY
(Photo: Justin Tilbrook, NASA / Astronomical Society of South Australia)
An emerald-green comet will brush the Earth Monday, followed one day later by a kissing cousin that will swerve closer to the planet than any other comet in nearly 250 years.
The first and bigger of the two comets will be visible Monday to the naked eye in the southern hemisphere, as long as city lights are far away. Stargazers in the United States will probably need only binoculars to see the bigger comet in late March. Scientists, however, are bringing out the big guns. The Hubble Space Telescope, the powerful ground-based Gemini telescopes and others will be trained on the celestial visitors, which will provide an extraordinary close-up of objects usually glimpsed only at a distance.
“This is one for the record books,” says Michael Kelley of the University of Maryland, who’s never heard of two comets approaching close to Earth a day apart. “It’s a fantastic opportunity for professionals to learn more about comets, and if you have a chance to try to find them … it’s a fantastic chance to see part of history as it happens.”
The first member of the pair, known as comet 252P/LINEAR, is a bright green color from the carbon gas it’s puffing out, says the University of Maryland’s Matthew Knight. 252P will slide past Earth at a distance of roughly 3 million miles. That’s well beyond the moon but near enough to put 252P in the top 10 of closest-approaching comets.
RELATIONSHIP STATUS Accepted for Tribeca Fest Woo-hoo!!
Tribeca Film Festival Unveils Digital-Content Marketplace Event
By Todd Spangler / NY Digital Editor
from Facebook
New York festival also adds special screenings of projects from YouTube Red, Fullscreen, StyleHaul, Disney’s Maker Studios
Tribeca Film Festival is zeroing in on digital creative talent and studios with the launch next month of the inaugural Tribeca Digital Creators Market.
The daylong event, scheduled for April 21 in New York City, is designed to connect digital influencers and talent with industry buyers, producers and agents, as well as showcase premium digital entertainment content.
Creators currently slated to attend the event include YouTube star Ingrid Nilsen (pictured above), the Gregory Brothers, Matt Bellassai, Joe Penna (MysteryGuitarMan), Mikey Murphy and BlackBoxTV creator Tony Valenzuela.
The Tribeca Digital Creators program also will feature screenings, starting April 20, of new projects from YouTube Red, Fine Brothers Entertainment, StyleHaul, Fullscreen, Indigenous Media, New Form Digital and Disney’s Maker Studios. Tribeca developed the concept for the market with CAA.
Tribeca is touting the confab as the first event aimed at bringing together digital creators and traditional media partners, compared with fan-focused events like VidCon.
Dude Builds Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Car
Sgt. Pepper Builds a Real-Life Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on Long Island
Tony Garofalo at home on Long Island with his Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He built it as a tribute to his mother, with whom he saw the film premiere in 1968. Credit: Heather Walsh for The New York Times
It is a well-known story: A quirky tinkerer rolls a rusted old car into his workshop, casts around for some parts, and emerges — honk, honk! — with a magical motorcar.
Yes, that’s the famous plot of “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” but it is also the story of Tony Garofalo, 51, a retired New York City Police Department sergeant who has made his own version of the famous car whipped up by Caractacus Potts, the quirky inventor played by Dick Van Dyke in the popular 1968 British movie.
While Mr. Potts put his fine, four-fendered contraption together in no time in a shop in rural England, Mr. Garofalo tinkered inside the small garage at his Long Island home for five years and spent more than $100,000 set aside for his retirement, he said.
“In the movie, he came out in a few days with a shiny new car,” Mr. Garofalo said. “Well, I found out quickly that that was only a movie. For me, it took a lot of hours, a lot of money and a lot of dreaming.”
Last summer he finally finished transforming a 1914 coupe he found in a New Jersey junkyard into a spit and image of the beloved film car — registered, insured and legal to drive on the street, with seatbelts and valid license plates from 1914.
On Friday, the car will take its most public stage at the entrance of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center as part of the 2016 New York International Auto Show.
Summer Premiere Date Set for AMERICAN GOTHIC
CBS Announces Summer Premiere Dates for BRAINDEAD, ZOO & More!
by TV News Desk
CBS today announced its summer schedule with original series across five nights of the week, including the new event series BRAINDEAD and AMERICAN GOTHIC, the sophomore season of ZOO, based on James Patterson’s #1 bestselling novel, and the return of the summer reality hit BIG BROTHER.
The suspenseful new murder mystery AMERICAN GOTHIC premieres Wednesday, June 22 (10:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT). The series, from Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television, is about a prominent Boston family reeling in the wake of the chilling discovery that someone in their midst is linked to an infamous string of murders. As shocking secrets from the past and present are revealed, their mounting SUSPICION and paranoia that one of them is a killer threatens to tear THE FAMILY apart.
About AMERICAN GOTHIC
AMERICAN GOTHIC stars Juliet Rylance, Antony Starr, Virginia Madsen, Justin Chatwin, Megan Ketch, Elliot Knight, Stephanie Leonidas and Gabriel Bateman. Corinne Brinkerhoff, Justin Falvey, Darryl Frank, James Frey and Todd Cohen are executive producers for CBS Television Studios in association with Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television.
Hot Illuminati Robot With Half A Metal Head Wants to Suck Out Our Brains
2016 AICP Show Curators
Curatorial Committee Set For AICP Show
Jules Daly, president of RSA Films and the 2016 chairperson of the AICP Show
Matt Miller, president and CEO of the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP), and Jules Daly, president of RSA Films and the 2016 chairperson of the AICP Show: The Art & Technique of the American Commercial, announced the composition of the Show’s Curatorial Committee.
“We are delighted to once again have such a high caliber group of curators, each of whom will bring their own perspective to the 2016 installment of the AICP Show,” noted Miller. “The Committee’s expertise and insights helps us to create a showcase worthy of inclusion in the film archives of The Museum of Modern Art.”
Under the direction of Daly and Miller, the Curatorial Committee is comprised of a diverse array of industry leaders, working in all disciplines that contribute to creating marketing in the motion image. The Curatorial Committee is part of a bifurcated judging system, which begins with a series of judging panels from across the country, with experts in various fields judging work across the 22 categories in the Show. The Curatorial Committee is the final arbiter in the disposition of the Show, confirming eligibility and appropriateness to category.
The 2016 Curatorial Committees
A separate panel judges the AICP Next Awards, under the aegis of judging chair Jeff Kling, chief creative officer of Fallon Worldwide. The jury presidents of the eleven AICP Next Awards categories are: Susan Credle, global chief creative officer, FCB Worldwide (Integrated Campaign); James Frey, author & founder, Full Fathom Five (Branded Content); Kirk Souder, co-founder, enso (Cause Marketing); Anthony Sperduti, co-founder, Partners & Spade (Experiential Architecture); Franklin Tipton, co-founder, Odysseus Arms (Experiential); Nick Law, global chief creative officer, R/GA (Innovation); Erica Hoholick, president, TBWA|Media Arts Lab (Mobile); Jaime Robinson (Social); Colleen DeCourcy, global co-executive creative director, Wieden+Kennedy (Viral/Web Film); Chris Milk, director, Vrse.works (Virtual Reality); and Winston Binch, chief digital officer, Deutsch North America (Website).
Area 6
from The Las Vegas Review-Journal
You know Area 51, but just what in the world is Area 6?
By KEITH ROGERS
The Area 6 runway stretches for about 5,000 feet in a remote location of the Nevada National Security Site in this Google Maps image.
The asphalt runway stretches for a mile on Yucca Flat, deep in the Nevada National Security Site about 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Built in 2005, the runway covers a dirt landing strip from the 1950s, when the wide, flat valley was used for atomic bomb test shots. A small complex of buildings dominated by a large hangar with unusual clamshell doors dominates the southern end of the asphalt strip.
The complex has no official name. Not many people even know it’s there.
As secret airbases go, the single runway in the test site’s Area 6 is easily overshadowed by the world’s most famous secret military base, Area 51, a dozen miles northeast. Area 51’s existence was only recently acknowledged, even after decades of speculation by UFO enthusiasts that the aircraft development and test facility also houses space aliens and extraterrestrial technology.
Unlike Area 51, which is protected by shoot-to-kill security and shielded from outside view by mountain ranges, Area 6 has only fences and visitor checkpoints. It can be seen at a distance from tour buses on the highway to historic bomb craters at the northern end of Yucca Flat.
But exactly what goes on at the much smaller and much newer Area 6 is still top-secret defense research-and-development work. It’s so hush-hush that the security site’s spokesman can say little about it.
Darwin Morgan, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, said the low-key Area 6 facilities have been used by the Defense and Homeland Security departments.
“They come here to test their own sensors,” he recently said after spending months fending off questions about the Area 6 runway from the Review-Journal.
Danielle Paige’s YELLOW BRICK WAR – Next Installment in the DOROTHY MUST DIE Series
Danielle Paige discusses writing the way home in ‘Yellow Brick War’ (plus exclusive teaser!)
Danielle Paige shares her thoughts on Wicked developments and new challenges in Yellow Brick War, and we have an exclusive teaser for Dorothy’s return.
The Dorothy Must Die series follows the Kansas-born Amy Gumm through an Oz subsumed under by Dorothy Gale’s reign of terror. The third installment, Yellow Brick War, takes the battle back to the cornfields, where Amy must not only battle the enemies of her old life, but find a way to save Kansas from Dorothy’s nefarious plans.
General Butt Naked
The Greater the Sinner
A Liberian warlord’s unlikely path to forgiveness.
BY DAMON TABOR
Blahyi’s public contrition satisfied a deep need, a reporter said. “It was only Joshua who said, ‘I am sorry, please forgive me.’ ”CREDIT PHOTOGRAPH BY DOMINIC NAHR FOR THE NEW YORKER
On a recent Sunday morning in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, a few dozen people gathered in a tin-roofed church to hear a former warlord preach. His name is Joshua Milton Blahyi, but most Liberians still know him by his nom de guerre from the nineteen-nineties: General Butt Naked. A burly forty-five-year-old with a head shaped like a cannon shell, Blahyi took the stage wearing black dress pants and a cream-colored shirt. He has delivered sermons across West Africa about the power of forgiveness and the perfidy of Liberian politicians, but one of his favorite topics is himself. “In South Africa I was privileged to preach to parliament,” he told his congregation. “Hallelujah! It can happen to you!” A slip of paper fell from his Bible, and a worshipper hurried to pick it up. “Keep it as a souvenir,” Blahyi said.
In 1980, Samuel Doe seized the Presidency of Liberia in a coup. Blahyi claims that he later became Doe’s spiritual adviser, and that he used witchcraft to help Doe win a second term. (Doe also used more mundane methods, such as burning his opponents’ ballots.) On Christmas Eve, 1989, Charles Taylor, a former Liberian government official, invaded from Ivory Coast with a hundred soldiers, and the country plunged into civil war. There was a ceasefire in 1996, and Taylor was elected the next year. Then, in 1999, another rebel group invaded from Guinea, sparking a second conflict, which lasted until Taylor was ousted, in 2003.
An Oldie But Always A Goodie
25 Years Since REN & STIMPY Weird.
Almost 25 years later, a look back atRen & Stimpy in all its gross splendor
Jumping into the wayback machine to 1991, there was a time when children’s programming bordered on the avant garde and surreal with one simple and insanely popular cartoon. Ren & Stimpy, as created by John Kricfalusi, seemed simple and sweet enough on paper: the adventures of a dog and cat who are friends and the various shenanigans the duo get into on a weekly basis. However, in practice, that simplistic premise would undergo a hideous transformation into a treatise on the absurd, a fascination with bodily fluids and functions, and a painstaking focus on the details of the animation.
As Evan Puschak, a.k.a. The Nerdwriter, points out in his latest video, Kricfalusi rejected the morality lessons of most cartoons and the formulaic plotting that had become way too common in animation at the time. Perhaps this was due to Kricfalusi’s apprenticeship under Ralph Bakshi, another animator who rejected the standards of his time.
Go Alex Go! Her best goal ever.
Real Men Will Admit It
Hulk Hogan is asked the question every man fears
By Julia Marsh and Bruce Golding
Hulk Hogan cut himself down to size on Tuesday — testifying that his real-life manhood doesn’t measure up to the boasts of his larger-than-life character.
Day Two of Hogan’s $100 million invasion-of-privacy trial against the website Gawkersaw the pro wrestling legend admit that while his professional persona claims to have a 10-inch penis, he is really more modestly endowed.
During cross-examination in a Florida courtroom, Hogan was confronted with a 2006 interview about his genitalia.
The back-and-forth between Hogan and shock-jock Bubba the Love Sponge Clem featured Hogan’s former best friend claiming, “I’ve seen it before” and saying, “hard, you’re probably 7 or 8 inches.”
“Dude, I’ve got size 15 (shoes), I wear a size 15 ring … Figure it out,” answers Hogan, who says a man’s penis is “two-thirds the size of your feet and hands.”
“So, Hogan, you’re claiming, you’re claiming to maybe have a 10-inch c–k?” Bubba asked.
“I’m not claiming. Those are the facts, Jack,” Hogan replied.
A lawyer for Gawker — which posted hidden-camera video of Hogan having sex with Bubba’s then-wife, Heather Clem, in 2007 — then asked if Hogan had “any doubt … that you were discussing the length of your penis?”
“Well, it’s not mine, because mine isn’t that size, but we were discussing the length of Hulk Hogan’s,” the former wrestler, whose real name is Terry Bollea, replied.
“Seriously?” Gawker lawyer Michael Sullivan asked.
“No, seriously, I do not have a 10-inch penis. No, I do not. Seriously. Believe that. Seriously,” Hogan said.
Sullivan then asked if Hogan was “discussing Hulk Hogan’s penis.”
“Yeah, because Terry Bollea’s penis is not 10 inches, like you’re trying to say,” Hogan responded.
Who Needs Bob Barker, anyway?
It’s here? TX68
THREE DAYS LEFT: Freak supermoon, eclipse and asteroid on SAME DAY ‘signal end of world’
CONSPIRACY theorists are stocking up on food supplies amid fears the world could end in just THREE days when a total eclipse of the sun, super full moon and staggeringly close asteroid pass of earth are set to happen within 24 hours.
By JON AUSTIN
GETTY
Some conspiracy theorists claim the three events in the same day are a warning
On March 8 asteroid TX 68, a 30-metre long lump of space rock, is due to whistle past Earth as close as 19,000 miles away.
But doom mongers are not convinced it will miss us with fears we won’t be able to see it because it will be obscured by the sun.
The looming event has sent online doomsday predictors into a frenzy, particularly as NASA admits it is uncertain of the orbital path and has given estimates as close as 19,000 miles away to as far as 11 million miles.
The US space agency has also changed the DAY of the pass with the initial date being given as TODAY, March 5.
Now NASA says it will be on Tuesday, March 8.
The uncertainty over the pass coupled with the fact some online doom mongers were predicting an asteroid would smash into earth in March 2016 several months ago, has fuelled the latest fears.
Some self-styled internet prophets released videos several months ago warning an asteroid, or even a mythological rogue planet called Nibiru or Planet X, would strike Earth in March 2016, and could spell the end of the word.
Express.co.uk found several YouTube videos released six months or more ago, before there was any widespread talk of asteroid TX68’s cosmic close shave.
Bud Collins Gone
Legendary tennis commentator Bud Collins dies at 86
By Kelyn Soong
Tennis commentator Bud Collins, seen here in 1993, has died at age 86. (AP photo/Gill Allen)
Bud Collins, a passionate advocate for tennis whose relationship with the sport began more than a half-century ago, died Friday in his home in Brookline, Mass., according to the Boston Globe. Collins was 86.
Collins was an influential tennis writer and historian and revolutionized sports journalism when he began to offer commentary on camera in the early 1960s. Despite his failing health, Collins traveled last September to New York for the U.S. Open, where the media center was dedicated and named in his honor.
Born Arthur Worth Collins, he was simply known as “Bud” to those in the tennis community and his TV audience. A native of Berea, Ohio, Collins’s first love was baseball and the newspaper business. He didn’t know much about tennis growing up, but began covering the sport for the Boston Herald in the late 1950s, starting at the Massachusetts Women’s Championship at Longwood Cricket Club. It was then that Collins acquired a true appreciation for the sport.
Thanks, Ricki Hall
World Book Day: What are the stars reading?
Ricki Hall recommended James Frey’s novel
From a biography of a Second World War hero to a literary thriller about a man born out of wedlock to a feminist leader – the favourite reads of Black Country stars are revealed as World Book Day is celebrated around the globe.
Today is the 19th year of World Book Day, a celebration of authors, illustrators and books, which aims to inspire youngsters to explore the pleasures of reading by providing them with the chance to own a book of their very own.
Wolverhampton mechanic turned model Ricki Hall, aged 28, said A Million Little Pieces by James Frey was his favourite book.
Originally sold as a memoir and later marketed as a semi-fictional novel following accusations of literary forgery, it tells how a 23-year-old alcoholic and drug abuser copes with rehabilitation in a twelve steps-orientated treatment centre.
He said: “Hope you’ve read the sequel, My Friend Leonard!”
Mini-Vanimus Prime
Fast Radio Bursts
from International Business Times
FRBs: Mystery repeating radio signals discovered emanating from unknown cosmic source
Arecibo telescope / Danielle Futselaar
Repeating radio signals coming from a mystery source far beyond the Milky Way have been discovered by scientists. While one-off fast radio bursts (FRBs) have been detected in the past, this is the first time multiple signals have been detected coming from the same place in space.
FRBs are radio signals from deep space that last for just a few milliseconds. Since their discovery over a decade ago, scientists have been searching for more to try to understand their origin. At present, there are several theories as to what they could be, with most involving some cataclysmic event like a supernova or a neutron star collapsing into a black hole.
All of the events seen so far appear to have been one-offs, with subsequent observations failing to find follow-up bursts coming from the same position as the original. However, an international team of researchers has now discovered an additional 10 bursts coming from the same direction as FRB 121102, using the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico.
Publishing their findings in the journal Nature, the researchers report the subsequent bursts have the same dispersion measures and sky positions as the original FRB. This, they say, means the source must have survived whatever event caused the FRB to be produced in the first place – i.e. it cannot have been a cataclysmic one-off event. They also found the bursts differed in brightness from other FRBs, suggesting a different source.
Morricone Finally Scores
Italy Cheers Ennio Morricone’s Oscar Win for ‘The Hateful Eight’ Score
A.M.P.A.S./REX SHUTTERSTOCK
ROME – Italy on Monday cheered Ennio Morricone’s Oscar victory for composing the original score for Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight,” which marks the first competitive Oscar won by the 87-year old maestro with more than 500 movie credits to this name.
“After an almost 60-year-long career, and five nominations which had left him empty-handed, Ennio Morricone finally brings an Oscar for best score home,” trumpeted daily La Republica on its website.
“Superb Maestro, finally!” tweeted Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi at dawn, Italian time. Also on Twitter Italo Culture Czar Dario Franceschini enthused that “an all-time movie giant has triumphed.”
Morricone, who received an honorary Oscar in 2007, had been nominated five previous times, for “Days of Heaven,” “The Mission,” “The Untouchables,” “Bugsy” and “Malena.”
But international accolades for Morricone came after what is now considered his most groundbreaking work, on scores for Sergio Leone’s so-called “Dollars Trilogy” – “A Fistful of Dollars,” “For a Few Dollars More,” and “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” And also on Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in the West.” They revolutionized the way Westerns, and movies at large, are scored.
George Kennedy Gone
George Kennedy Dies: ‘Cool Hand Luke’ Oscar Winner Was 91
Warner Bros.
George Kennedy, a versatile actor whose long list of credits includes the Airport and Naked Gun films and an Oscar for his supporting role in Cool Hand Luke, has died in Middleton, ID. He was 91. Canyon County Coroner Vicki DeGeus-Morris told the Idaho Statesman Kennedy died at 4:35 AM Sunday. The cause of death isn’t known, but DeGeus-Morris says the actor had a history of heart problems.
The burly Kennedy would star alongside some of Hollywood’s biggest names — including Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood, Bette Davis, Burt Lancaster and Charlton Heston — and was equally adept at broad comedy and heavy drama. He began his career on The Phil Silvers Show in the mid-1950s and guested on numerous TV shows. Specializing in the Western and war genres, he racked up TV credits including Maverick, Gunsmoke, Route 66, The Untouchables and Rawhide. By the early 1960s, he started landing roles on the big screen in such films as Lonely Are the Brave, Charade and In Harm’s Way.
He cemented his Hollywood cred with a pair of film classics in the late ’60s: playing a mild-mannered Army major in the star-studded war drama The Dirty Dozen and chain-gang leader Dragline in Cool Hand Luke. The latter role won Kennedy an Oscar in his only nomination.
Cleveland Avengers
Russo brothers ignite rumors about next “Avengers” effort to film in CLE
by Tom Tenant
Didn’t Fresh Water just report on the benefits of the Ohio Motion Picture Tax Credit? Why, yes, we did. And then this pops into our feed from MoviePilot:
“They didn’t share any ‘Captain America: Civil War’ spoilers, but directors Joe and Anthony Russo told fans that ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ could land in Cleveland.
‘It’s on the list,’ said Anthony.
The reveal took place Saturday during a Wizard World Comic-Con Cleveland panel titled ‘Let’s Shut Down Some Streets: Bringing the Avengers, Captain America and the Russo Brothers to Cleveland.’
The Russos, who grew up in Cleveland and graduated from Case Western Reserve University, were joined by Ivan Schwarz, director of the Greater Cleveland Film Commission.
Big Wave Year
SURFERS GET ONCE-IN-A-LIFETIME 60 FOOT SWELLS OFF HAWAII
HALIEWA, Hawaii (AP) — There are two sayings that come along with the Eddie Aikau big-wave surfing invitational: “The bay calls the day” and “Eddie would go.”
For the first time in six years, the bay – and event organizers – gave the nod Thursday as a powerful and sustained swell produced huge surf on Oahu’s North Shore. Eddie, a famed lifeguard and big-wave surfer who once protected these shores, most certainly would have gone.
Before the sun came up over the horseshoe-shaped Waimea Bay, organizers huddled together to make the final call on the event, which has only run nine times in its 31-year history.
Eddie Aikua’s brother, Clyde, announced to a large crowd early Thursday morning that his brother’s namesake surfing contest was on.
“I’ve been riding Waimea Bay for over 40 years, and today has to be one of the best days I’ve ever seen,” Aikau said. “It is a go!” he added as the crowd came alive with whistles, cheers and applause.
They got what they hoped for as huge sets of monster waves crashed onto the outer reef of the bay, producing some waves that organizers estimate were 60 feet tall.