Showing posts with label Hollywood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hollywood. Show all posts

Saturday, September 14, 2013

10 Facts About the Titanic That You Don't Know

You may already know that the Titanic hit an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. on the night of April 14, 1912 and sunk just over two-and-a-half hours later, but do you know the following ten facts about the Titanic?

1 Canceled Lifeboat Drill
Originally, a lifeboat drill was scheduled to take place on board the Titanic on April 14, 1912 - the day the Titanic hit the iceberg. However, for an unknown reason, Captain Smith canceled the drill. Many believe that had the drill taken place, more lives could have been saved.

2 Only Seconds
From the time the lookouts sounded the alert, the officers on the bridge had only 37 seconds to react before the Titanic hit the iceberg. In that time, First Officer Murdoch ordered "hard a-starboard" (which turned the ship to port -- left). He also ordered the engine room to put the engines in reverse. The Titanic did bank left, but it wasn't quite enough.

3 The Titanic's Newspaper
The Titanic seemed to have everything on board, including its own newspaper. The Atlantic Daily Bulletin was printed every day on board the Titanic. The newspaper included news, advertisements, stock prices, horse-racing results, society gossip, and the day's menu.

4 Lifeboats Not Full
Not only were there not enough lifeboats to save everyone on board, most of the lifeboats that were launched off the Titanic were not filled to capacity. For instance, the first lifeboat to launch, Lifeboat 7 from the starboard side) only carried 24 people, despite having a capacity of 65 (two additional people later transferred to Lifeboat 7 from Lifeboat 5). However, it was Lifeboat 1 that carried the fewest people - only seven crew and five passengers (a total of 12 people) despite having a capacity for 40.

5 Only Two Bathtubs
Although most passengers had to share bathrooms (only the two promenade suites in first class had private bathrooms), third class had it rough with only two bathtubs for more than 700 passengers.


6 Another Boat Was Closer for Rescue
When the Titanic began sending out distress signals, the Californian, rather than the Carpathia, was the closest ship; yet the Californian did not respond until it was much too late to help. At 12:45 a.m. on April 15, 1912, crew members on the Californian saw mysterious lights in the sky (the distress flares sent up from the Titanic) and woke up their captain to tell him about it. Unfortunately, the captain issued no orders. Since the ship's wireless operator had already gone to bed, the Californian was unaware of any distress signals from the Titanic until the morning, but by then the Carpathia had already picked up all the survivors. Many people believe that if the Californian had responded to the Titanic's pleas for help, many more lives could have been saved.


7 Two Dogs Rescued
With the order for women and children first into the lifeboats, plus the knowledge that there were not enough lifeboats for everyone on board the Titanic to be saved, it is a bit surprising that two dogs made it into the lifeboats. Of the nine dogs on board the Titanic, the two that were rescued were a Pomeranian and a Pekinese. 


8 The Fourth Funnel
In what is now an iconic image, the side view of the Titanic clearly shows four cream and black funnels. While three of these released the steam from the boilers, the fourth was just for show. The designers thought the ship would look more impressive with four funnels rather than three. 


9 A Royal Mail Ship
The R.M.S. Titanic was a Royal Mail Ship, a designation which meant the Titanic was officially responsible for delivering mail for the British postal service. On board the Titanic was a Sea Post Office with five mail clerks (two British and three American). These mail clerks were responsible for the 3,423 sacks of mail (seven million individual pieces of mail) on board the Titanic. Interestingly, although no mail has yet been recovered from the wreck of the Titanic, if it were, the U.S. Postal Service would still try to deliver it (the USPS because most of the mail was being sent to the U.S.).


10 Corpses Recovered
On April 17, 1912, the day before survivors of the Titanic disaster reached New York, the Mackay-Bennett was sent off from Halifax, Nova Scotia to search for bodies. On board the Mackay-Bennett were embalming supplies, 40 embalmers, tons of ice, and 100 coffins. Although the Mackay-Bennett found 306 bodies, 116 of these were too badly damaged to take all the way back to shore. Attempts were made to identify each body found. Additional ships were also sent out to look for bodies. In all, 328 bodies were found, but 119 of these were badly damaged and thus were buried at sea.


Courtesy: history1900s.about.com
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Friday, September 13, 2013

10 Top secrets about Bruce Lee!

 
1. Bruce Lee's Family Gave Him a Girl's Name: "Little Phoenix"
Bruce's family never called him "Bruce." They preferred to call him by his nickname "Sai Fon" or "Little Phoenix." It was a girl's name, deliberately chosen by his parents because they believed that evil spirits did not like boys in the family (their firstborn was a son who died in infancy). So, by giving Bruce a girl's name, they believed they could fool the demons into sparing his life!

Actually, "Bruce" was a name given by a nurse at the Jackson Street Hospital, San Francisco, where he was born (Bruce's father was traveling with an acting troupe at the time). The nurse thought that giving the baby an English name would help avoid any confusion with his American birth certificate (yes, Bruce was an American by birth - he never had any other citizenship).

2. Bruce Lee was Part German
Bruce wasn't pure Chinese - he was actually part German (his grandfather from his mother's side was half German).

3. Bruce Lee Never Lost a Fight


Well, actually he lost a fight only once in his life: when he was 13 years old. This loss actually prompted Bruce to learn martial arts from a Wing Chun master named Yip Man. After other students learned that Bruce wasn't pure Chinese, they refused to let him train in their class. Yip Man had to train him privately. (Image: Portland Kung Fu Club)

4. Bruce Lee was a Bad Student
Academics didn't interest Bruce in the least. After primary school, Bruce entered La Salle College, an English-speaking boys' secondary school in Kowloon, Hong Kong, where he often got into trouble. Bruce was expelled from La Salle for disruptive behavior.

Even after his parents moved him to a different school, Bruce kept on getting into street fights.

5. Bruce Lee was an Excellent Dancer and Boxer
Actually, Bruce studied dancing as hard as he studied martial arts: he was an excellent dancer who, at 18 years of age, won the 1958 Hong Kong Cha Cha Championship! Bruce was also a great boxer: he won the 1958 Boxing Championship - by knockout, of course.

6. Bruce Lee was a Philosophy Major
Bruce wasn't just all muscle and no brain. He attended the University of Washington, where he majored in philosophy with focus on the philosophical principles of martial art techniques. As you might imagine, Bruce supported himself in college by teaching martial arts. Later, Bruce dropped out of college to open his martial arts school.

7. Want to challenge Bruce Lee? Just tap your foot on the ground!
After he got famous, a lot of people thought they could beat Bruce - they would walk up to him, tap their foot on the ground (symbolizing a challenge) and then proceed to attack him! Well... maybe not that literal, but Bruce's popularity certainly attracted a lot nutcase trying to prove they're better than him.

One day, while filming Enter the Dragon, an extra taunted Bruce Lee and challenged him to fight. The whole thing went on like this:

"This kid was good. He was no punk. He was strong and fast, and he was really trying to punch Bruce's brains in. But Bruce just methodically took him apart."

"I mean Bruce kept moving so well, this kid couldn't touch him...Then all of a sudden, Bruce got him and rammed his ass into the wall and swept him, he proceeded to drop his knee into his opponent's chest, locked his arm out straight, and nailed him in the face repeatedly."

Typical of Bruce Lee, after the fight he didn't fire the extra - he actually gave his challenger lesson on how to improve!

8. Bruce Lee was Strong
In 1964, Bruce was invited to a karate championship in Long Beach, California. There he performed his famous "One Inch Punch," where he would deliver a devastating blow from only an inch away, sending his opponent flying back!


Bob Baker of Stockton, whom Bruce hit, said "I told Bruce not to do this type of demonstration again. When he punched me that last time, I had to stay home from work because the pain in my chest was unbearable."

... and Fast!
Most martial art films are sped up to make fighting scenes appear fast, but not Bruce Lee's. His moves were too fast to be captured on the regular 24 frames per second film - so they had to film him at 32 fps, and run the film slower so you can see his moves.

9. Bruce Lee vs. Chuck Norris, who would win?
Here's a clip of Bruce Lee fighting Chuck Norris in Return of the Dragon. You can see how fast Bruce Lee moved ... though it's obvious that Chuck Norris would be immune to the One Inch Punch as his one-inch chest hair would absorb the punch with ease!


And the most bizarre Bruce Lee fact is this:

10. Bruce Lee's Corpse Acted in his Final Movie!
Bruce Lee was filming Game of Death when he died unexpectedly. So what did the studio do? Well, they rewrote the script so Bruce's character faked his own death to escape the mafia. Then they took footage from Bruce's actual funeral - including close-ups shots of the open casket showing his embalmed face - and work that into the movie!

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Saturday, April 20, 2013

Is Jack back?

Jack the Giant Slayer – review

The fairytale reboot is one of Hollywood's newest and most unwelcome inventions: children's tales ramped up and complicated with added PG action and lite sexiness, and mostly with their charm and psychological insight stripped out. The recent Hansel and Gretel reimagining was about as pleasurable as adult chicken pox. But I have to admit that against the odds, this new version of the panto fave Jack and the Beanstalk is watchable in a ridiculous way, and director Bryan Singer supplies quite a bit of entertainment bang for your buck.
Nicholas Hoult is Jack, now a young-adult hottie rather than a mere lad, and what he has to sell is a horse, rather than an undignified cow. The five beans he gets create a beanstalk that leads to a mysterious land of giants. The sinister and treacherous Prince Roderick (Stanley Tucci) plans to get up there and subdue them with a magic ring, and use these colossal brutes as a private army to impose tyranny back in Olde Albion, and thus betray good King Brahmwell (Ian McShane), his trusty courtier Elmont (Ewan McGregor) and the lovely Princess Isabelle (Eleanor Tomlinson), with whom Jack naturally falls in love. It's very different from, say, Terry Gilliam's magic-beans riff in The Brothers Grimm (2005), which glanced at the darker subtext. Bryan Singer isn't interested in any psychological Bruno Bettelheim stuff; anyway, it's boisterously silly and enjoyable. Source:-http://www.guardian.co.uk
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