Sir Ian Murray McKellen is an English actor. His career spans seven decades, having performed in genres ranging from Shakespearean and modern theatre to popular fantasy and science fiction. Over his career he has received numerous awards including seven Laurence Olivier Awards, a Tony Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. He has also received nominations for two Academy Awards, five Primetime Emmy Awards, and four BAFTAs. He achieved worldwide fame for his film roles, including the titular King in Richard III (1995), James Whale in Gods and Monsters (1998), Magneto in the X-Men films, and Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies.
Sandra Annette Bullock is an American actress and producer. The recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award, she was the world's highest-paid actress in both 2010 and 2014. In 2010, she was named one of Time's 100 most influential people in the world.
Shakespeare in Love is a 1998 romantic period comedy-drama film directed by John Madden, written by Marc Norman and playwright Tom Stoppard, and produced by Harvey Weinstein. It stars Gwyneth Paltrow, Joseph Fiennes, Geoffrey Rush, Colin Firth, Ben Affleck and Judi Dench.
Grease is a musical by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey. Named after the 1950s United States working-class youth subculture known as greasers, the musical is set in 1959 at fictional Rydell High School and follows ten working-class teenagers as they navigate the complexities of peer pressure, politics, personal core values, and love. The score borrows heavily from the sounds of early rock and roll. In its original production in Chicago, Grease was a raunchy, raw, aggressive, vulgar show. Subsequent productions sanitized it and toned it down. The show mentions social issues such as teenage pregnancy, peer pressure and gang violence; its themes include love, friendship, teenage rebellion, sexual exploration during adolescence, and, to some extent, class consciousness and class conflict. Jacobs described the show's basic plot as a subversion of common tropes of 1950s cinema, since the female lead, who in many 1950s films transformed the alpha male into a more sensitive and sympathetic character, is instead drawn into the man's influence and transforms into his wild, roguish fantasy.
Lionel Bart was a British writer and composer of pop music and musicals. He wrote Tommy Steele's "Rock with the Caveman" and was the sole creator of the musical Oliver! (1960). With Oliver! and his work alongside theatre director Joan Littlewood at Theatre Royal, Stratford East, he played an instrumental role in the 1960s birth of the British musical theatre scene after an era when American musicals had dominated the West End.
Alice Maud Krige is a South African actress and producer. Her first feature film role was in Chariots of Fire (1981) as the Gilbert and Sullivan singer Sybil Gordon. She played the dual role of Eva Galli/Alma Mobley in Ghost Story (1981) and the Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact (1996).
Duncan Sheik is an American singer-songwriter and composer. Sheik is known for his 1996 debut single "Barely Breathing", which earned him a Grammy Award nomination for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. He has composed music for motion pictures and Broadway musicals, winning the 2006 Tony Awards for Best Original Score and Best Orchestrations for his work on the musical Spring Awakening.
Alma Angela Cohen Cogan was a Russian/Romanian singer of traditional pop in the 1950s and early 1960s. Dubbed the "Girl with the Giggle in Her Voice", she was the highest paid British female entertainer of her era.
Monty Norman was a British film composer and singer. A contributor to West End musicals in the 1950s and 1960s, he is best known for composing the "James Bond Theme".
Last Night is a 1998 Canadian apocalyptic black comedy-drama film directed by Don McKellar and starring McKellar, Sandra Oh and Callum Keith Rennie. It was produced as part of the French film project 2000, Seen By.... McKellar wrote the screenplay about how ordinary people would react to an unstated imminent global catastrophic event. Set in Toronto, Ontario, the film was made and released when many were concerned about the Year 2000 problem.
"Whatever Lola Wants" is a popular song, sometimes rendered as "Whatever Lola Wants, Lola Gets". The music and words were written by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross for the 1955 musical play Damn Yankees. The song is sung to Joe Hardy by Lola, the Devil's assistant, a part originated by Gwen Verdon, who reprised the role in the film. The saying was inspired by Lola Montez, an Irish-born "Spanish dancer" and mistress of King Ludwig I of Bavaria, who later became a San Francisco Gold Rush vamp.
Billie Anthony was a Scottish female singer. She is best known for her Top 10 hit version of "This Ole House", which despite chart competition from other versions of the same song, reached No. 4 in the UK chart.
Cromer Pier is a Grade II listed seaside pier in the civil parish of Cromer on the north coast of the English county of Norfolk, 25 miles (40 km) due north of the city of Norwich in the United Kingdom. The pier is the home of the Cromer Lifeboat Station and the Pavilion Theatre.
The Birds and the Bees is a 1956 screwball comedy film with songs, starring George Gobel, Mitzi Gaynor and David Niven. A remake of Preston Sturges' 1941 film The Lady Eve, which was based on a story by Monckton Hoffe, the film was directed by Norman Taurog and written by Sidney Sheldon. The costumes for the film were designed by Edith Head.
Alma Cogan (ISBN 978-0-571-22284-1) is a 1991 novel by Gordon Burn, reprinted in 2004. It was Burn's first novel and won the Whitbread Book Award in 1991. In the UK it was published in 1991 with the title Alma Cogan. In the US, it was initially published as Alma.
"Falling in Love with Love" is a show tune from the Rodgers and Hart musical The Boys from Syracuse, where it was introduced by Muriel Angelus. The musical premiered on Broadway in 1938. The song is set to a waltz, but the lyrics "remind his [Hart's] listeners of the show's skeptical tone".
"If This Isn't Love" is a popular 1946 song composed by Burton Lane with lyrics written by E. Y. Harburg. The song was published in 1946 and introduced by Ella Logan and Donald Richards the following year in the Broadway musical Finian's Rainbow.
"I've Never Been in Love Before" is a song written by Frank Loesser, published in 1950.
Denis Andrew King is an English composer and singer. He is best remembered as a member of a family ensemble, The King Brothers.
ParaNorman is a 2012 American stop-motion animated dark fantasy comedy horror film directed by Sam Fell and Chris Butler, and written by Butler. Produced by Laika, the film stars the voices of Kodi Smit-McPhee, Jodelle Ferland, Bernard Hill, Tucker Albrizzi, Anna Kendrick, Casey Affleck, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Leslie Mann, Jeff Garlin, Elaine Stritch, Tempestt Bledsoe, Alex Borstein, and John Goodman. It is the first stop-motion film to use a 3D color printer to create character faces, and only the second to be shot in 3D. In the film, Norman, a young boy who can communicate with ghosts, is given the task of ending a 300-year-old witch's curse on his Massachusetts town.
