Cotton

Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of cotton plants of the genus Gossypium in the family of Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure cellulose. Under natural conditions, the cotton bolls will tend to increase the dispersal of the seeds.

The plant is a shrub native to tropical and subtropical regions around the world, including the Americas, Africa, and India. The greatest diversity of wild cotton species is found in Mexico, followed by Australia and Africa. Cotton was independently domesticated in the Old and New Worlds.

The fiber is most often spun into yarn or thread and used to make a soft, breathable textile. The use of cotton for fabric is known to date to prehistoric times; fragments of cotton fabric dated from 5000 BC have been excavated in Mexico and the Indus Valley Civilization in Ancient India (modern-day Pakistan and some parts of India). Although cultivated since antiquity, it was the invention of the cotton gin that lowered the cost of production that led to its widespread use, and it is the most widely used natural fiber cloth in clothing today.

Van and Schenck

Van and Schenck were popular United States entertainers in the 1910s and 1920s: Gus Van (born August Von Glahn, August 12, 1886 – March 12, 1968), baritone and Joe Schenck (pronounced "shaŋk"; born Joseph Thuma Schenck, c. 1891 – June 28, 1930), tenor. They were vaudeville stars and made appearances in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1918, 1919, 1920 and 1921. They made numerous phonograph records for the Emerson, Victor, and Columbia record companies.

History

With Schenck on piano, the duo sang and performed comedy routines. Van was especially adept at dialect humor, and could imitate any number of regional and continental accents. One of the team's typical novelty hits was Pastafazoola, in praise of Italian food and sung in the appropriate style. Van's hearty baritone and Schenck's high tenor harmonized well, and the team became known as "the pennant-winning battery of songland." They performed on radio shows and appeared in early talking motion pictures, including several musical shorts—in both Vitaphone and MGM Movietone—and one feature, the MGM film They Learned About Women (1930).

Gus Van Sant

Gus Green Van Sant, Jr. (born July 24, 1952) is an American film director, screenwriter, painter, photographer, musician and author who has earned acclaim as both an independent and more mainstream filmmaker. His films typically deal with themes of marginalized subcultures, in particular homosexuality; as such, Van Sant is considered one of the most prominent auteurs of the New Queer Cinema movement.

Van Sant's early career was devoted to directing television commercials in the Pacific Northwest. He made his feature-length cinematic directorial debut with Mala Noche (1985). His second feature Drugstore Cowboy (1989) was highly acclaimed - earning a perfect 100% rating approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes - and earned Van Sant screenwriting awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and New York Film Critics Circle and Best Director from the National Society of Film Critics. His following film My Own Private Idaho (1991) was similarly praised, as was the black comedy To Die For (1995), the drama Good Will Hunting (1997) and the biopic Milk (2008); for the latter two, Van Sant was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and both films received Best Picture nominations. In 2003, Elephant - Van Sant's roman à clef of the Columbine High School massacre - won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and Van Sant also received the festival's Best Director Award, making him one of only two filmmakers - the other being Joel Coen - to win both accolades in the same year. Though most of Van Sant's other films received favourable reviews, such as Finding Forrester (2000) and Paranoid Park (2007), some of his efforts such as the art house production Last Days (2005) and the environmental drama Promised Land have received more mixed reviews from critics, whilst his adaptation of Tom Robbins's Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1994) and his 1998 remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho were critical and commercial failures.

Henry Hopper

Henry Lee Hopper (born September 11, 1990) is an American actor. He is the son of actor and director Dennis Hopper and actress Katherine LaNasa.

Family and personal life

Hopper was born as Henry Lee Hopper on September 11, 1990, in Los Angeles, California. His mother, Katherine LaNasa, was the fourth wife of his late father Dennis Hopper (May 17, 1936 – May 29, 2010). Hopper has three half sisters: Marin Hopper (born 1962), the daughter of Dennis Hopper and Brooke Hayward; Ruthanna Hopper (born circa 1974), the daughter of Dennis Hopper and Daria Halprin; and Galen Grier Hopper (born 2003), the daughter of Dennis Hopper and Victoria Duffy. His mother Katherine LaNasa married comedic actor French Stewart on May 19, 1998. They divorced in December 2009, without children. Hopper is also the uncle to Marin Hopper's daughter Violet Goldstone and Ruthanna Hopper's daughter Ella Brill.

Aged fourteen, Hopper started taking weekend acting classes at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute. He later studied painting and sculpture at the California Institute of the Arts, but dropped it at the age of eighteen and went to Berlin, Germany, where he was living in an artist's collective. Hopper currently resides in Venice, California.

Mia Wasikowska

Mia Wasikowska (/ˌvɑːʃiˈkɒfskə/ VAH-shee-KOF-skə;Polish: [vaɕiˈkɔfska]; born October 14, 1989) is an Australian actress and director. She made her screen debut on the Australian television drama All Saints in 2004, followed by her feature film debut in Suburban Mayhem (2006). She first became known to a wider audience following her critically acclaimed work on the HBO television series In Treatment and she received a nomination for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female for That Evening Sun (2009). She gained worldwide prominence in 2010 after starring as Alice in Tim Burton's $1 billion-grossing Alice in Wonderland and appearing in the comedy-drama film The Kids Are All Right, a role for which she received the Hollywood Awards Breakthrough Actress Award.

In 2011, Wasikowska portrayed the title character in Cary Fukunaga's adaptation of Jane Eyre, and starred in Gus Van Sant's drama Restless and Rodrigo Garcia's drama Albert Nobbs. She also starred in John Hillcoat's crime drama Lawless (2012), Park Chan-wook's psychological thriller Stoker (2013), Richard Ayoade's critically acclaimed black comedy thriller The Double (2013), David Cronenberg's satirical drama Maps to the Stars (2014),and Guillermo del Toro's dark fantasy Crimson Peak (2015). She has received British Independent Film Award nominations for her performances in Jane Eyre and The Double, as well as a Saturn Award nomination for Stoker and a Gotham Independent Film Award nomination for her leading performance in Tracks (2013). As a director, she received a nomination for AACTA Award for Best Direction for her work on the 2013 anthology film The Turning. Wasikowska will revisit her role as Alice Kingsleigh in Alice in Wonderland's sequel, Alice Through the Looking Glass, set to be released on 27 May 2016.