Maggio 17, 2014

Hans Rudolf “Ruedi” Giger (/ˈɡiːɡər/; 5 February 1940 – 12 May 2014) was a Swiss surrealist painter, sculptor and set designer. He was part of the special effects team that won an Academy Award for Best Achievement in Visual Effects for their design work on the film Alien.He was named to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2013.

Giger was born in 1940 in Chur, capital city of Graubünden, the largest and easternmost Swiss canton. His father, a chemist, viewed art as a “breadless profession” and strongly encouraged him to enter pharmaceutics, Giger recalls. Yet he moved in 1962 to Zürich, where he studied Architecture and industrial design at the School of Applied Arts until 1970. Giger had a relationship with Swiss actress Li Tobler until she committed suicide in 1975. He married Mia Bonzanigo in 1979; they separated a year and a half later.^{[citation needed]}

Giger’s style and thematic execution were influential. His design for the Alien was inspired by his painting Necronom IV and earned him an Oscar in 1980. His books of paintings, particularly Necronomicon and Necronomicon II (1985) and the frequent appearance of his art in Omni magazine continued his rise to international prominence.Giger is also well known for artwork on several music recording albums.

In 1998 Giger acquired the Château St. Germain in Gruyères, Switzerland, and it now houses the H. R. Giger Museum, a permanent repository of his work. The artist lived and worked in Zürich with his wife, Carmen Maria Scheifele Giger, who is the Director of the H.R. Giger Museum.

On 12 May 2014, Giger died in a hospital in Zürich after having suffered injuries in a fall.

In a New York Times obituary for Giger, Timothy Leary was quoted as having praised the artist by saying, “Giger’s work disturbs us, spooks us, because of its enormous evolutionary time span. It shows us, all too clearly, where we come from and where we are going.”

Maggio 9, 2014

Santiago (“Yago”) Lamela Tobío (July 24, 1977 – May 8, 2014) was a Spanish athlete competing in the long jump.

is greatest year was 1999, when he jumped 8.56 during the indoor season to win the silver medal at the 1999 World Indoor Championships. Later that year he set a new outdoors personal best with 8.56, and won another silver medal at the World Championships. His 8.56 m jump stayed as European indoor long jump record for ten years.

Maggio 1, 2014

Robert William “Bob” Hoskins, Jr.(26 October 1942 – 29 April 2014) was an English actor known for playing Cockneys and gangsters. He appeared in films such as The Long Good Friday (1980), Mona Lisa (1986), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Mermaids (1990), Hook (1991), Nixon (1995), A Christmas Carol (2009), Neverland (2011) and in his final role in Snow White and the Huntsman (2012).

Hoskins’ father was a communist and brought up Hoskins to be an atheist.^[12] In 1967, aged 25, Hoskins spent a short period of time volunteering in kibbutz Zikim in Israel,^[13][14] and also herded camels in Syria.^[15] In an interview, when asked what he owed his parents, he said, “Confidence. My mum used to say to me, ‘If somebody doesn’t like you, fuck ‘em, they’ve got bad taste.'”^[16] When asked which living person he most despised, Hoskins named Tony Blair and claimed that “he’s done even more damage than Thatcher”.He made light of his similarities with film actor Danny DeVito, who he joked would play him in a film about his life.^[16]On 8 August 2012, Hoskins announced his retirement from acting due to Parkinson’s disease.With his first wife Jane Livesey, Hoskins had two children, Alex (born 1968) and Sarah (born 1972). With his second wife Linda Banwell, he had two more children, Rosa (born 1983) and Jack (born 1986).

Aprile 30, 2014

Jacques Le Goff (1 January 1924 – 1 April 2014) was a French historian and prolific author specializing in the Middle Ages, particularly the 12th and 13th centuries.
Le Goff championed the Annales School movement, which emphasizes long-term trends over the topics of politics, diplomacy, and war that dominated 19th century historical research. From 1972 to 1977, he was the head of the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS). He was a leading figure of New History, related to cultural history. Le Goff argued that the Middle Ages formed a civilization of its own, distinct from both the Greco-Roman antiquity and the modern world.

A prolific medievalist of international renown, Le Goff was sometimes considered the principal heir and continuator of the movement known as Annales School (École des Annales), founded by his intellectual mentor Marc Bloch. Le Goff succeeded Fernand Braudel in 1972 at the head of the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) and was succeeded by François Furet in 1977. Along with Pierre Nora, he was one of the leading figures of New History (Nouvelle histoire) in the 1970s.

Since then, he dedicated himself to studies on the historical anthropology of Western Europe during medieval times. He was well known for contesting the very name of “Middle Ages” and its chronology, highlighting achievements of this period and variations inside it, in particular by attracting attention to the Renaissance of the 12th century.

In his 1984 book The Birth of Purgatory, he argued that the conception of purgatory as a physical place, rather than merely as a state, dates to the 12th century, the heyday of medieval otherworld-journey narratives such as the Irish Visio Tnugdali, and of pilgrims’ tales about St Patrick’s Purgatory, a cavelike entrance to purgatory on a remote island in Ireland.[2]
An agnostic, Le Goff presented an equidistant position between the detractors and the apologists of the Middle Ages. His opinion was that the Middle Ages formed a civilization of its own, distinct of both the Greco-Roman antiquity and the modern world.
Among his numerous works were two widely accepted biographies, a genre his school did not usually favor: the life of Louis IX, the only King of France to be canonized, and the life of Saint Francis of Assisi, the Italian mendicant friar.
In October 2000 he received an Honorary Doctor of Philosophy degree from University of Pavia.
In 2004 Le Goff received the Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for History from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Aprile 19, 2014

Peaches Honeyblossom Geldof (13 March 1989 – 7 April 2014) was an English journalist, television presenter and model.

Geldof was born in London on 13 March 1989, the second daughter of famed singer and Live Aid founder Bob Geldof and Paula Yates and a granddaughter of Hughie Green. She had two sisters, Pixie Geldof , Fifi Trixibelle Geldof and one half-sister, Tiger Lily Hutchence.

She grew up in Chelsea, London, and Faversham, Kent, and was educated at Queen’s College, London. After moving out of her father’s house at the age of eighteen, she rented a flat in Islington, North London. She completed her A-Levels and was offered a place to read English at Queen Mary & Westfield College, University of London, but deferred it to move to New York with then-husband, Max Drummey.

Geldof wrote a magazine column for the UK edition of Elle Girl, starting with its April 2004 issue and continuing until the magazine folded in October 2005. From ages 14 to 17, she wrote a weekly socio-political column forThe Daily Telegraph, and wrote numerous articles for The Guardian.

She wrote and presented her own documentary TV programme, Peaches Geldof: Teenage Mind in 2005, which was followed up with Peaches Geldof: Teen America, which aired on Sky One in the UK on 1 March 2006. In 2006, Geldof was placed at number seven in the Tatler’s list of Top Ten Fashion Icons for the year, the youngest person on the list.

In September 2007, Geldof made her catwalk début modelling for PPQ at London Fashion Week. She was also announced as the face of the Australian fashion line Dotti.Premiering on 19 October 2008 wasPeaches: Disappear Here, a MTV One reality show in which she founds a new youth-oriented magazine.

In 2009, Geldof was signed to a six-figure modelling deal to become the face of the Miss Ultimo collection. In 2010 she was dropped from the Ultimo (brand) after nude pictures and allegations of drug use were posted on the Internet and published in the media. Geldof denied the claims and said, “I am disappointed that Ultimo has decided not to extend my contract based on a wildly exaggerated account of a night in Los Angeles five months ago.” Michelle Mone, the head of Ultimo underwear said that “as a brand that targets young women, we feel it is impossible for Peaches to continue.”

In 2011, Geldof presented a six-part series on ITV2 called OMG! with Peaches Geldof, a magazine-format chat and guest show with audience participation.

Aprile 18, 2014

Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez (American Spanish: [ɡaˈβɾjel ɣarˈsi.a ˈmarkes]  6 March 1927 – 17 April 2014) was a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America. Considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century, he was awarded the 1972 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 1982Nobel Prize in Literature. He pursued a self-directed education that resulted in his leaving law school for a career in journalism. From early on, he showed no inhibitions in his criticism of Colombian and foreign politics. In 1958, he married Mercedes Barcha; they had two sons,Rodrigo and Gonzalo.

Since García Márquez was eighteen, he had wanted to write a novel based on his grandparents’ house where he grew up. However, he struggled with finding an appropriate tone and put off the idea until one day the answer hit him while driving his family to Acapulco. He turned the car around and the family returned home so he could begin writing. He sold his car so his family would have money to live on while he wrote, but writing the novel took far longer than he expected, and he wrote every day for eighteen months. His wife had to ask for food on credit from their butcher and their baker as well as nine months of rent on credit from their landlord.  Fortunately, when the book was finally published in 1967 it became his most commercially successful novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, which sold more than 30 million copies. (Cien años de soledad) (1967; English translation by Gregory Rabassa 1970). The story chronicles several generations of the Buendía family from the time they founded the fictional South American village of Macondo, through their trials and tribulations, instances of incest, births and deaths. The history of Macondo is often generalized by critics to represent rural towns throughout Latin America or at least near García Márquez’s nativeAracataca.

This novel was widely popular and led to García Márquez’s Nobel Prize as well as the Rómulo Gallegos Prize in 1972. William Kennedy has called it “the first piece of literature since theBook of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race,”^[51] and hundreds of articles and books of literary critique have been published in response to it. Despite the many accolades the book received, García Márquez tended to downplay its success. He once remarked: “Most critics don’t realize that a novel like One Hundred Years of Solitude is a bit of a joke, full of signals to close friends; and so, with some pre-ordained right to pontificate they take on the responsibility of decoding the book and risk making terrible fools of themselves.”

Febbraio 24, 2014

Lewis Allan “Lou” Reed (March 2, 1942 – October 27, 2013) was an American musician, singer and songwriter.^[1] After serving as guitarist, vocalist, and principal songwriter of the Velvet Underground, his solo career spanned several decades.

The Velvet Underground was a commercial failure in the late 1960s, but the group gained a considerable cult following in the years since its demise and has gone on to become one of the most widely cited and influential bands of the era – hence Brian Eno’s famous quote that while the Velvet Underground’s debut album only sold 30,000 copies, “everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band.”

After his departure from the group, Reed began a solo career in 1972. He had a hit the following year with “Walk on the Wild Side”, but subsequently lacked the mainstream commercial success its chart status seemed to indicate. Reed was known for his distinctive deadpan voice, poetic lyrics and for pioneering and coining the term ostrich guitar tuning.

In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time included two albums by Reed as a solo artist, Transformer andBerlin.

Febbraio 20, 2014

Christopher “Chris” Malcolm (19 August 1946 – 15 February 2014) was a Scottish television and film actor, director and producer. He first achieved notability for his role as Brad Majors in the original stage production of The Rocky Horror Show.

After university, he returned to the UK and began his professional career with the Royal Shakespeare Company (1966–68). He appeared in at least ten productions and worked with directors including Peter Hall, Trevor Nunn and John Barton. Throughout the 1970s, he worked continuously in theatre and film, appearing in many Royal Court productions including the award-winning musical, The Rocky Horror Show creating the role of Brad Majors. He appeared in films including Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, Reds, Ragtime, Labyrinthand Highlander.^{[citation needed]}

 

In 1990, Malcolm co-produced a new production of The Rocky Horror Show at the Piccadilly Theatre, in partnership with Howard Panter of the Ambassador Theatre Group. This Olivier nominated production went on to huge success throughout the UK, enjoying 4 nationwide tours over the next 10 years as well as many productions throughout the world. He oversaw these productions on behalf of The Rocky Horror Company Ltd, a company formed by the producers and the play’s author Richard O’Brien to look after this much loved musical. The show finally reached Broadway in 2000 in a Tony Award-nominated production co-produced with Jordan Roth Productions at the Circle in the Square theatre.

Dicembre 19, 2013

Ronald Arthur “Ronnie” Biggs (8 August 1929 – 18 December 2013) was an English thief, known for his role in the Great Train Robbery of 1963, for his escape from prison in 1965, for living as a fugitive for 36 years and for his various publicity stunts while in exile. In 2001, he returned to the United Kingdom and spent several years in prison, where his health rapidly declined. Biggs was released from prison oncompassionate grounds in August 2009 and died in a nursing home in December 2013.

In need of a loan to fund a deposit on a house purchase for his family, Biggs approached Reynolds, who offered him a place on the proposed train robbery. Biggs was tasked by Reynolds to find a suitable engine driver to move the train forwards to the unloading point, and he recommended Stan Agate, known on the gang as “Pop” due to his age.

Having told his wife that he was off logging with Reynolds in Wiltshire,^[4] on the night of the raid Biggs was a passenger in the stand-by getaway car, and only saw the haul once the gang returned to Leatherslade farm.^[2] Stopping the mail train from Glasgow to London in the early hours of 8 August 1963 (Biggs’s 34th birthday), engine driver Jack Mills was coshed with an iron bar in the course of the robbery. As Agate had never driven a diesel engine, the gang forced the injured and bleeding Mills to move the engine and mail carriages forward to the bridge chosen as the unloading point.

Having unloaded 120 of the 128 mailbags from the train within Reynolds’ alloted timetable, and returned to their hideout at Letherslade Farm, various sources show that the robbery yielded the participants £2.6 million; Biggs’s share was £147,000. With their timetable brought forward due to the enclosing police investigation, Biggs returned home on the following Friday with his stash in two canvas bags.^[2]

After an accomplice failed to burn down Leatherslade Farm as agreed to clean it for evidence, Biggs’s fingerprints were subsequently found by the Metropolitan Police investigation team on a ketchup bottle. Three weeks later, he was arrested along with 11 other members of the gang in South London.  In 1964, nine of the 15-strong gang including Biggs, were jailed for the crime; most received sentences of 30 years.

Dicembre 18, 2013

Peter James O’Toole (2 August 1932 – 14 December 2013) was a English-Irish stage and film actor. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and began working in the theatre, gaining recognition as a Shakespearean actor at the Bristol Old Vic and with the English Stage Company, before making his film debut in 1959.

He achieved international recognition playing T. E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) for which he received his first Academy Awardnomination. He received seven further Oscar nominations – for Becket (1964), The Lion in Winter (1968), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), The Ruling Class (1972), The Stunt Man (1980), My Favorite Year (1982) and Venus (2006) – and holds the record for the most Academy Award acting nominations without a win. He won four Golden Globes, a BAFTA and an Emmy, and was the recipient of an Honorary Academy Awardin 2003.