Alex North

Alex North (December 4, 1910 – September 8, 1991) was an American composer best known for his many film scores, including A Streetcar Named Desire (one of the first jazz-based film scores), Viva Zapata!, Spartacus, Cleopatra, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. He was the first composer to receive an Honorary Academy Award.

Early life

North was born Isadore Soifer in Chester, Pennsylvania to Russian Jewish parents.

Career

North managed to integrate his modernism into typical film music leitmotif structure, rich with themes. One of these became the famous song, "Unchained Melody". Nominated for fifteen Oscars but unsuccessful each time, North is one of only two film composers to receive the Lifetime Achievement Academy Award, the other being Ennio Morricone. North's frequent collaborator as orchestrator was the avant-garde composer Henry Brant. He won the 1968 Golden Globe award for his music to The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968).

His best-known film scores include A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, Viva Zapata!, The Rainmaker, Spartacus, The Misfits, Cleopatra, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Dragonslayer and Under the Volcano. His music for The Wonderful Country makes use of Mexican and American motifs.

Misfits

Misfits, or The Misfits, may refer to:

In film, television and theater

In literature

In music

Albums

Other

See also

Soundtrack

A soundtrack, also written sound track, can be recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, book, television program or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; or the physical area of a film that contains the synchronized recorded sound.

Origin of the term

In movie industry terminology usage, a sound track is an audio recording created or used in film production or post-production. Initially the dialogue, sound effects, and music in a film each has its own separate track (dialogue track, sound effects track, and music track), and these are mixed together to make what is called the composite track, which is heard in the film. A dubbing track is often later created when films are dubbed into another language. This is also known as a M & E track (music and effects) containing all sound elements minus dialogue which is then supplied by the foreign distributor in the native language of its territory.

No symbol

The no symbol (also known as a prohibition sign, no sign, circle-backslash symbol, nay, interdictory circle, or universal no) is a circle with a diagonal line through it (running from top left to bottom right), surrounding a pictogram used to indicate something is not permitted. The no symbol is generally colored red, but is sometimes another color, typically black.

The Unicode code point for the prohibition sign (also called the no symbol) is U+20E0;, Combining Enclosing Circle Backslash (   ⃠   ). It is a combining character, which means that it appears on top of the character before it, so putting d⃠ will show   d⃠.   (Note: This will appear only if the character exists in an available font.) It also appears in the Webdings and Wingdings 2 fonts.

There is also a prohibition sign emoji located at U+1F6AB NO ENTRY SIGN (🚫), which does not combine with anything.

According to the ISO standard (and also under a UK Statutory Instrument), the red area must take up at least 35% of the total area of the sign within the outer circumference of the "prohibition sign". So 35% of everything within the outer edge of the "no symbol" must be the symbol itself. Additionally, for printed signs under the UK rules, the width of a "no symbol" is set at 80% the height of the area it is printed to.

United Artists

United Artists (UA) is an American film and television entertainment studio. The studio was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks, with the intention of controlling their own interests rather than depending upon the powerful commercial studios.

An incarnation of United Artists formed in November 2006 under a partnership between producer/actor Tom Cruise and his production partner, Paula Wagner, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Paula Wagner left the studio on August 14, 2008. Cruise owned a small stake in the studio until late 2011. In 2014, MGM acquired controlling interest in Mark Burnett and Roma Downey's entertainment companies One Three Media and Lightworkers Media, resulting in another relaunch of United Artists.

History

The early years

UA was incorporated as a joint venture on February 5, 1919, by four of the leading figures in early Hollywood: Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith. Each held a 20% stake, with the remaining 20% held by lawyer William Gibbs McAdoo. The idea for the venture originated with Fairbanks, Chaplin, Pickford, and cowboy star William S. Hart a year earlier as they were traveling around the U.S. selling Liberty bonds to help the World War I effort. Already veterans of Hollywood, the four film stars began to talk of forming their own company to better control their own work as well as their futures.