More as it comes in.
Friday, July 20, 2012
Monday, July 9, 2012
Ernest Borgnine, Actor, "McHale Navy's", "The Dirty Dozen", "The Wild Bunch". 1917-2012


Ernest Borgnine, who created a variety of memorable characters in both movies and television and won the best-actor Oscar for his role as a lovesick butcher in "Marty" in 1955, died Sunday. He was 95.
Borgnine's longtime spokesman, Harry Flynn, told The Associated Press that Borgnine died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles with his family by his side.
A prolific and talented character actor, Borgnine was known for gruff, villainous roles such as the heavy who beats up Frank Sinatra in "From Here to Eternity" and one of the bad guys who harasses Spencer Tracy in "Bad Day at Black Rock."
Borgnine, who earned a salary of $5,000 for playing his Academy-Award winning role Marty, once said "I would have done it for nothing."
orgnine, who was born Ermes Effron Borgnino on Jan. 24, 1917 in Hamden, Conn., began acting after serving in the Navy during World War II. He made his film debut in 1951's "Whistle at Eaton Falls" before winning an Academy Award four years later. He appeared in other notable films including "Jubal," "Flight of the Phoenix," "The Dirty Dozen,""The Wild Bunch," "The Poseidon Adventure," "Johnny Guitar," and "Escape from New York."
"No Stanislavsky. I don't chart out the life histories of the people I play," Borgnine told The New York Times in 1973 when asked about his acting methods. "If I did, I'd be in trouble. I work with my heart and my head, and naturally emotions follow."
Sometimes he prayed, he said, or just reflected on character-appropriate thoughts. "If none of that works," he added, "I think to myself of the money I'm making."
He was also known as the Navy officer in the television series "McHale's Navy," which aired from 1962-66. Younger audiences would know him as the voice of Mermaid Man in "Spongebob Squarepants."
Borgnine earned an Emmy Award nomination at age 92 for his work on the series "ER," and was honored with the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2011.
"The Oscar made me a star, and I'm grateful," AP reports that Borgnine told an interviewer in 1966. "But I feel had I not won the Oscar I wouldn't have gotten into the messes I did in my personal life."
The actor was married five times, including to singer Ethel Merman, who became his third wife in 1964. The marriage barely lasted a month.
He is survived by his fifth wife, Tova Traesnaes — whom he married in 1973 —his children Christofer, Nancee and Sharon Borgnine; a stepson, David Johnson; six grandchildren; and his sister, Evelyn Verlardi.
One of my favorite actors. May he rest in Peace. And Thank You for the memories!
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Ray Bradbury, Sci-Fi Author, "Fahrenheit 451", "The Martian Chronicles" 1920-2012


Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, and other beloved science fiction novels, died Tuesday night at the age of 91, according to the AP.
"His legacy lives on in his monumental body of books, film, television and theater, but more importantly, in the minds and hearts of anyone who read him, because to read him was to know him. He was the biggest kid I know," his grandson told the i09 science fiction blog.
Bradbury sold eight million copies of his books in 36 languages, according to The New York Times' obit.
He attributed his success as a writer to never having gone to college--instead, he read and wrote voraciously. "When I graduated from high school in 1938, I began going to the library three nights a week," he said in an interview with The Paris Review. "I did this every week for almost ten years and finally, in 1947, around the time I got married, I figured I was done. So I graduated from the library when I was twenty-seven. I discovered that the library is the real school."
"The universe is a little emptier right now," Texas A&M Commerce English Professor Robin Ann Reid told Yahoo News. She wrote a book about Bradbury's works and sits on the board of the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies. "There's less of that sense of joy and exultation that he was writing in his works all the way to the end."
Reid said Bradbury was the first writer to jump from pulp magazines to mainstream literary magazines, thus bringing science fiction writing into the mainstream. Bradbury also wrote fantasy and horror.
His best known book, Fahrenheit 451, was a dystopian tale set in the future about a society where books were banned and firefighters spent all day burning them. "Bradbury's novel anticipated iPods, interactive television, electronic surveillance and live, sensational media events, including televised police pursuits," the Associated Press writes.
Bradbury suffered a stroke in 1999, and lost his wife in 2003, but he continued to write.
Bradbury's biographer Jonathan Eller said in a statement that Bradbury "hated intolerance, and those who deny the existence of intolerance. He was not afraid to write about and condemn the evils of prejudice and racial inequality at a time when such stories were hard to publish in America." Eller also pointed to Bradbury's words to Caltech's graduating class of 2000, whom he urged "to witness, to celebrate, and to be part of this universe...you're here one time, you're not coming back. And you owe, don't you? You owe back for the gift of life."
Bradbury recently wrote a short essay responding to his favorite Snoopy comic strip about how much rejection he faced when he first began writing. "Starting when I was fifteen I began to send short stories to magazines like Esquire, and they, very promptly, sent them back two days before they got them! I have several walls in several rooms of my house covered with the snowstorm of rejections, but they didn't realize what a strong person I was; I persevered and wrote a thousand more dreadful short stories, which were rejected in turn," he wrote.
But he said later in The Paris Review interview that he did not feel responsible for his own writing success, saying he felt that God helped him write. "The best description of my career as a writer is 'at play in the fields of the Lord.' It's been wonderful fun and I'll be damned where any of it came from. I've been fortunate. Very fortunate," he said.
In a recent issue of the New Yorker, Bradbury wrote about discovering science fiction stories as a child growing up in Waukegan, Illinois, and his love for his grandfather. "I would go out to that lawn on summer nights and reach up to the red light of Mars and say, "Take me home!" I yearned to fly away and land there in the strange dusts that blew over dead-sea bottoms toward the ancient cities," he wrote.
Sunday, June 3, 2012
Richard Dawson, Actor, "Hogan's Heroes", host of "Family Feud" 1932-2012


LOS ANGELES (AP) — Richard Dawson, the wisecracking British entertainer who was among the schemers in the 1960s TV comedy "Hogan's Heroes" and a decade later began kissing thousands of female contestants as host of the game show "Family Feud" has died. He was 79.
Dawson, also known to TV fans as the Cockney prisoner-of-war Cpl. Peter Newkirk on "Hogan's Heroes," died Saturday night from complications related to esophageal cancer at Ronald Reagan Memorial Hospital, his son Gary said.
The game show, which initially ran from 1976 to 1985, pitted families who tried to guess the most popular answers to poll questions such as "What do people give up when they go on a diet?"
Dawson won a daytime Emmy Award in 1978 as best TV game show host. Tom Shales of The Washington Post called him "the fastest, brightest and most beguilingly caustic interlocutor since the late great Groucho bantered and parried on 'You Bet Your Life.'" The show was so popular it was released as both daytime and syndicated evening versions.
He was known for kissing each woman contestant, and at the time the show bowed out in 1985, executive producer Howard Felsher estimated that Dawson had kissed "somewhere in the vicinity of 20,000."
"I kissed them for luck and love, that's all," Dawson said at the time.
He reprised his game show character in a much darker mood in the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger film "The Running Man," playing the host of a deadly TV show set in a totalitarian future, where convicts try to escape as their executioners stalk them. "Saturday Night Live" mocked him in the 1970s, with Bill Murray portraying him as leering and nasty, even slapping one contestant (John Belushi) for getting too fresh.
The British-born actor already had gained fame as the fast-talking Newkirk in "Hogan's Heroes," the CBS comedy about prisoners in a Nazi POW camp who hoodwink their captors and run the place themselves.
Despite its unlikely premise, the show made the ratings top 10 in its first season, 1965-66, and ran until 1971.
Both "Hogan's Heroes" and "Family Feud" have had a second life in recent years, the former on DVD reissues and the latter on cable television's GSN, formerly known as the Game Show Network.
On Dawson's last "Family Feud" in 1985, the studio audience honored him with a standing ovation, and he responded: "Please sit down. I have to do at least 30 minutes of fun and laughter and you make me want to cry."
"I've had the most incredible luck in my career," he told viewers.
"I never dreamed I would have a job in which so many people could touch me and I could touch them," he said. That triggered an unexpected laugh.
Producers brought out "The New Family Feud," starring comedian Ray Combs, in 1988. Six years later, Dawson replaced Combs at the helm, but that lasted only one season.
According to the Internet Movie Database, Dawson was born Colin Lionel Emm in 1932 in Gosport, England. His first wife was actress Diana Dors, the blond bombshell who was Britain's answer to Marilyn Monroe.
"Survey Says! Rest In Peace."
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Donna Summer, singer, Disco diva. 1948-2012


Donna Summer, whom millions of fans revered as "the Queen of Disco," has died at the age of 63 in Florida after a battle with cancer, the Associated Press confirmed with the singer's family Thursday morning.
The news comes as a surprise to those who were not aware that she was ill. The legendary superstar was publicly active as recently as last June, when she appeared as a guest panelist on Bravo's music reality show Platinum Hit.
However, a report by TMZ, which initially broke the story, notes that those close to the singer--known for mega-hits including "Last Dance" and "Bad Girls"--revealed she had been trying to hide how sick she was. A source said that Summer did not seem to be in that bad of shape two weeks ago.
She is survived by her adult daughters Mimi (by her first husband, actor Helmuth Sommer), Brooklyn and Amanda (by second husband Bruce Sudano).
In addition to her status as a pioneer in the dance music genre, Summer was a five-time Grammy Award winner, the first artist ever to score three back-to-back No. 1 double albums, and was nominated--but not chosen--for induction into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame in 2010. She is credited with influencing stars ranging from Madonna and Michael Jackson, to Beyonce and Rihanna. Her last album, Crayons, was released in 2008.
Dim out the lights honey, She just danced her last dance.
May she rest in peace.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
The Turkish Star Trek!

Forget JJ Abrahms remake. This is the ultimate "Star Trek" film. Made in Turkey (It had to be Turkey), this one has all the cast, Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura, Sulu ect. In all fairness this version is a satire and a comedy film in which a character named 'Turist Omer' falls into all these movies. Please enjoy this responsibly!
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Man forced to 'Moonwalk" at gunpoint!

Not everybody can do the moonwalk, the dance move popularized by Michael Jackson in the 1980s. It usually takes a couple glasses of wine or a few beers before someone attempts to imitate the Gloved One on the dance floor.
But one Idaho man didn’t exactly have a choice when someone pointed a semiautomatic rifle at him and forced him to do the dance, the Daily Bee reports.
John Ernest Cross, 30, was arrested and charged with assault Monday after police were called by a victim who said that Cross was on drugs when he aimed a rifle at him and forced the moonwalk upon him.
Cross is accused of brandishing an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle during the incident, but he claims it was just a pellet gun.
Maybe things would have turned out differently if Cross had chosen a simpler move, like the robot or the running man.
Talk about a Michael Jackson fan!
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