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.

Dirty Wars

Dirty Wars is a 2013 American documentary film, which accompanies the book Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield by Jeremy Scahill. The film is directed by Richard Rowley, and written by Scahill and David Riker.

Production

Production for the film began in 2010 when Scahill who worked as a reporter for The Nation magazine traveled to Afghanistan with director Richard Rowley, with only a vague idea for what the film would be about; they only decided upon the subject matter after investigating a series of night raids carried out by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). The film had no budget, and at the outset Scahill and Rowley traveled to Afghanistan using money from a grant Scahill had received to support his reporting.

Initially the film was not intended to have Scahill as a narrator or protagonist, instead acting as a "tour guide" as the film traveled between the sites of covert U.S. military action. David Riker was brought on board to assist with writing after an initial four-hour rough cut of the film was put together, and he convinced Scahill and Rowley to make the film more personal.

Jeremy Scahill

Jeremy Scahill (born October 18, 1974) is a founding editor of the online news publication The Intercept and author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, which won the George Polk Book Award. His book Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield was published by Nation Books on April 23, 2013. On June 8, 2013, the documentary film of the same name, produced, narrated and co-written by Scahill, was released. It premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.

Scahill is a Fellow at The Nation Institute. Scahill learned the journalism trade and got his start as a journalist on the independently syndicated daily news show Democracy Now!. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Early life

Scahill was born in Chicago, Illinois, and was raised in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee, by "social activist" parents, Lisa and Michael Scahill, both nurses. He graduated from Wauwatosa East High School in 1992.

Jeremy attended a few University of Wisconsin regional campuses and a local technical college before deciding that his "time would be better spent by entering the struggle for justice in this country." After dropping out of college, Scahill spent several years on the East Coast working in homeless shelters. He started his career as an unpaid intern at the nonprofit news program Democracy Now! of the Pacifica Radio network. While he was at Democracy Now!, Scahill learned the technical side of radio, and learned "journalism as a trade, rather than an academic study".

Boyce Avenue

Boyce Avenue is an American rock band formed in Sarasota, Florida, by Alejandro Luis Manzano and his brothers Daniel Enrique Manzano, Fabian Rafael Manzano. The band is named after a combination of two streets the brothers lived on as children. As of August 9, 2011, they are no longer signed to Universal Republic and have started their own independent record label called 3 Peace Records. Boyce Avenue releases original music as well as covers of contemporary and classic songs on YouTube. Boyce Avenue has also collaborated with other YouTube artists such as Hannah Trigwell, Kina Grannis, Tiffany Alvord, Megan Nicole, Alex Goot, Megan & Liz, David Choi, Tyler Ward, Savannah Outen, Cobus Potgieter and DeStorm Power as well as The X Factor season two finalists Fifth Harmony, Beatrice Miller, Diamond White and Carly Rose Sonenclar.

Boyce Avenue frequently tours in the United States, Canada, the European Union, Australia, and Southeast Asia.

Biography

Daniel was born on October 4, 1980. Fabian was born on July 1, 1984. Alejandro was born on October 4, 1986. The three attended Pine View High School. Fabian and Daniel played basketball through it while Alejandro sang in the choir and was named Mr. Pine View.

Beneath Your Beautiful

"Beneath Your Beautiful" is a song by British musicians Labrinth and Emeli Sandé. Written by Labrinth, Mike Posner and Sandé, it was released as the sixth single from Labrinth's debut album, Electronic Earth, on 18 October 2012. The track peaked at number one on the UK Singles Chart, selling 108,000 copies off the back of a particularly well-revered performance on The X Factor, becoming Labrinth's first number one single as a solo artist. Additionally, it became his first Top 40 hit on the US Billboard Hot 100, where it peaked at number 34.

The song was nominated for 'Best British Single' at the 2013 BRIT Awards, and was ranked the twelfth Best Selling Single of 2012 in the UK.

Background and release

"Beneath Your Beautiful" is an R&B ballad written by Labrinth, Mike Posner and Emeli Sandé. It was recorded as a duet between Labrinth and Sandé for Labrinth's debut studio album Electronic Earth. The title of the song attracted attention from fans, some of whom questioned Labrinth about the spelling of the word "Your" within the song's title, believing that was a grammatical error and should have been spelt "You're". Upon reaching number one, fans asked Labrinth via social networking website Twitter about the spelling. He replied "Can I make something clear! this is twitter! Not an English GCSE haha I’ll spell as BADLY as I wish awritemayte!... Oh is this about #Beneath”YOUR”Beautiful I love how crazy this has sent people…. It was to annoy English teachers and grammar Nazis." [sic] The song was nominated for the Brit Award for Best British Single at the 2013 BRIT Awards.