Michael Bolton

Michael Bolton (born February 26, 1953) is an American singer-songwriter and a former hard rock singer. He is best known for his soft rock ballads and tenor vocals.

His achievements include selling many albums, eight top ten albums, two number one singles on the Billboard charts, and awards from both the American Music Awards and Grammy Awards.

Mainstream success

Bolton at the 1990 Grammy Awards

Bolton's hard rock band, Blackjack, once toured with heavy metal singer Ozzy Osbourne. He began recording as Michael Bolotin in 1975. He gained his first major hit as a songwriter, co-writing "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You" for Laura Branigan, previously best-known for singing the disco-pop classic "Gloria". Narrowly missing the Top 10 on the U.S. pop chart, Branigan took the song to number one on the Adult Contemporary chart for three weeks in 1983. The two sought to work with each other again, and their next collaboration was when Bolton co-wrote "I Found Someone" for Branigan in 1985. Her version was only a minor hit, but two years later, Cher resurrected the song, and with it her own singing career. Bolton co-wrote several other songs for both singers.

Bolton would achieve his greatest success in the late eighties and early nineties as a singer in the adult contemporary/easy listening genre. One of his first major hits was his 1987 interpretation of the Otis Redding classic, "(Sittin' On) the Dock of the Bay". Always interested in soul and Motown classics, Bolton's success with that song encouraged him to tackle the standard "Georgia On My Mind," with which he had another hit. In 1991, Bolton released the album "Time, Love & Tenderness", which featured his Grammy award winning cover of "When a Man Loves a Woman".

Most of Bolton's recordings are original material; however, he has also written songs for such artists as Conway Twitty, Barbra Streisand, Kiss, Kenny Rogers, Kenny G, Peabo Bryson and Patti LaBelle.[citation needed] Bolton's early songwriting collaborators included Doug James and Mark Mangold, and as his fame grew he began to cowrite with higher-profile writers such as BabyFace, Diane Warren, and Bob Dylan.[citation needed]

As a singer, he has performed with Plácido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, José Carreras, Tony Cetinski, Lucia Aliberti, Renée Fleming, Zucchero, Patti LaBelle, Céline Dion, Ray Charles, Percy Sledge, Wynonna Judd, and BB King.[citation needed]

Bolton's last Top 40 single in the US was the 1997 hit "Go the Distance" (featured in the Walt Disney motion picture Hercules), which peaked at #1 on the U.S. adult contemporary chart. He hired conductor Larry Baird (orchestral musical director/conductor/arranger for The Moody Blues, Three Dog Night, Al Jarreau, etc.) for his 2001 tour.

In 2006 Bolton and then fiancee Nicollette Sheridan sang a duet, "The Second Time Around", for the album Bolton Swings Sinatra. In March 2007, Bolton toured South Africa for the first time. He was the headline act at Jacaranda 94.2 FM's two day concert.

Bolton recorded the song "New York, New York" (also on his Bolton Swings Sinatra album), for an album which was recorded in five days, Over the Rainbow. This was for an episode of the TV series, Challenge Anneka. The proceeds from the album went to children's hospices across the U.K.

Bolton performed a duet entitled "Il Mio Amico" with the Italian singer Anna Tatangelo at the Sanremo Music Festival 2008. The song was originally sung by Tatangelo alone, but the duet version contained English lyrics as well. It is a song about the difficulties of being gay in Italy, written by Tatangelo's partner, Gigi D'Alessio.[citation needed]

Bolton's album Only A Woman Like You was released in 2002. The title song was co-written by Shania Twain and with background vocals by Skyler Jett. Bolton released an album in the UK on September 21, 2009 entitled One World One Love. The first single entitled 'Just One Love', was released on September 14, 2009.

Appearances in other media

Bolton appeared as an extra in the theatrical release of Frank Herbert's Dune featuring Sting and Kyle MacLachlan. In their final fight scene, he plays a "spice-eyed" drummer.

Legal troubles

This section does not cite any references or sources.

Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2010)

On May 9, 2000, a U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed a jury's 1994 decision that Bolton's 1991 pop hit, "Love Is a Wonderful Thing", infringed on the copyright of the 1964 Isley Brothers song of the same name, and let stand the jury's award of $5.4 million against the singer, his co-author, Andrew Goldmark, and their record company, Sony Music Entertainment. See Three Boys Music Corp. v. Bolton, 212 F.3d 477 (9th Cir. 2000). This was the biggest payout in musical copyright infringement to date.

Personal life

Michael Bolton was born to a Jewish family in New Haven, Connecticut. He is the father of three children.

Bolton became engaged to actress Nicollette Sheridan in March 2006; however, it was confirmed in August 2008 that they had broken off their engagement.[citation needed]

Charity work

In 1993, he established the Michael Bolton Foundation (now the Michael Bolton Charities) to assist women and children at risk from the effects of poverty, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. The foundation has provided over $3.7 million in funding to local and national charities.

Bolton also serves as the honorary chairman of Prevent Child Abuse America, the national chairman for This Close for Cancer Research, and a board member for the National Mentoring Partnership and the Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital.

In March 2003, Bolton joined with Lifetime Television, Verizon Wireless, and many others to lobby on behalf of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, urging legislation to provide more assistance for victims of domestic violence, such as affordable housing options.

Bolton has received the Lewis Hine Award from the National Child Labor Committee, the Martin Luther King Award from the Congress of Racial Equality, and the Ellis Island Medal of Honor from the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce also recognized Bolton with a star on the "Hollywood Walk of Fame" for his musical and charitable contributions.

Discography

 Michael Bolton discography

Filmography

Dune (1984) (uncredited)

Meet Wally Sparks (1997)

The Onion Movie (2008)

As executive producer

Offside (short) (2001)

Good Advice (feature) (2001)

Terror at Home: Domestic Violence in America (TV) (2005)

The Other Side of the Tracks (feature) (2008)

(source:wikipedia)

Men in Black III

Men in Black II, is a 2002 science fiction film starring Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith. The film also stars Lara Flynn Boyle, Johnny Knoxville, Rosario Dawson and Rip Torn. The film is a sequel to the 1997 film Men in Black, both of which are based on the Malibu comic book series The Men in Black by Lowell Cunningham.

Plot

Five years after the events of the earlier film, Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) has assumed civilian life as a small town's postmaster while Agent J (Will Smith) continues to work for the Men in Black, the self-funded New York City-based agency that secretly monitors and regulates extraterrestrials' activity on Earth. J is largely without a partner, his former partner Agent L having returned to her former task as a deputy medical examiner and her successors having been expelled from the agency by J himself due to their unsuitability. While investigating a seemingly routine crime, J uncovers a diabolical plot by Serleena, a shapeshifting Kylothian queen who disguises herself as a model (Lara Flynn Boyle), but resembles a Lernean hydra in her own form. To stop her, J must convince K— who has no memory of his time spent with the agency, but is the only person alive who knows what is needed to defeat Serleena— to reunite with the MIB before Earth is destroyed.

A large part of the plot centers on Agent J's relationship with a woman called Laura Vasquez (Rosario Dawson), a waitress at a SoHo pizzeria who witnesses Serleena's killing of the pizzeria's owner. Rather than erase her memory according to MIB rules, J allows her to retain it. As Laura becomes increasingly involved in the battle between Serleena and the MIB, she comes to view Agent J as her protector, while he simultaneously falls in love with her. While J tries to deneuralyze K, Serleena breaks into MIB resulting in a lockdown; J and K escape after being flushed from the building. J then takes K to Jack Jeebs (Tony Shalhoub), who built an unofficial deneuralyzer. Although K eventually regains his memory, he reveals that he still has no recollection of the "Light of Zartha" but left himself a series of clues in case he needed to remember.

Ultimately, Laura's true identity is revealed as an extraterrestrial princess and power-source styled the "Light of Zartha". This revelation requires her to return to Zartha, her ancestral homeworld. Serleena, who has been seeking all along to find and possess the Light of Zartha, is killed just as Laura is transported away. Agent K is implied to have had a romantic attachment to Laura's mother Lauranna, after whom she is named, who was killed by Serleena twenty-five years before the film's story began. It is left unknown whether K is Laura's father. When Laura has gone, K and Agent Zed (the head of MIB) attempt to console J for his loss, only to have him answer that he needs no consolation, having accepted her departure without much sorrow. Since people all over New York City have witnessed these events, an emergency neuralyzer built into the Statue of Liberty is used to erase everyone's memory.

Two other plot threads relate the interaction of J with Frank the Pug (an extraterrestrial refugee posing as a pug dog, who becomes J's partner early in the film) and the revelation that K keeps a race of minuscule extraterrestrials inside a storage locker at Grand Central Terminal, the locker encasing their whole world. At the end of the film, K kicks open a forbidden door to reveal that a much larger locker located in an enormous alien version of Grand Central Terminal contains the human world.

Cast

Tommy Lee Jones as Kevin Brown/Agent K: A decommissioned senior MIB agent and the only person who knows (or knew) how to stop the latest threat to Earth's safety. He is revealed to be the father of the power source sought by Serleena, although he didn't say out loud.

Will Smith as James Darrell Edwards III/Agent J: Still on active duty with the MIB, he is not satisfied with the partners assigned to him and keeps neuralyzing them.

Rip Torn as Chief Zed: The head of the MIB.

Lara Flynn Boyle as Serleena: A shape-shifting alien who has come to Earth to find a vital power source used by her race's enemies. She serves as the main villain of the film.

Johnny Knoxville as Scrad & Charlie: A humanoid alien (Scrad), with a second small head (Charlie) on a stalk protruding from his neck, who does Serleena's dirty work.

Rosario Dawson as Laura Vasquez: A young woman who turns out to be the power source sought by Serleena. She is also revealed to be the daughter of Zarthan Queen Laurana and Agent K.

Tony Shalhoub as Jack Jeebs: An alien pawn shop owner who uses a home-built machine to "deneuralyze" K and restore his memory.

Patrick Warburton as Agent T: Partnered with J, who neuralyzes him and throws him out of the MIB.

Jack Kehler as Ben

David Cross as Newton

Biz Markie as Beatboxing Alien

Michael Jackson as himself (tries to persuade Chief Zed to make him Agent M)

Tim Blaney as the voice of Frank the Pug

Production

Despite some initial involvement from David Koepp (who left to work on Spider-Man), the script was written by Robert Gordon and later revised by Barry Fanaro (who added pop culture references, something which Gordon had deliberately avoided).Sonnenfeld took issue with the producers' focus on the love story between Will Smith's and Rosario Dawson's characters, saying that "I learned on Wild Wild West that audiences didn't want to see Will as the straight man. And until Tommy comes back into the movie, by definition Will's the straight man." Fanaro condensed the first part of the film and brought Agent K in earlier. The climax of the film was originally to have taken place at New York City's World Trade Center. However, this had to be changed following the destruction of the buildings in the September 11 attacks.The day after September 11, a spokesperson for the studio said that the ending would be refilmed.

Supervising sound editor Skip Lievsay used a Synclavier to recreate and improve the original recording of the neuralyzer sound effect from the first film (which was the sound of a strobe flash as it recycles) by removing some distortion.For some of the scenes with the Serleena creature, the sound crew "took tree branches, put them inside a rubber membrane and pushed that around and added some water."For the special effects scene where the subway train is attacked by Jeff the Worm, a specially designed vice was used to crush a subway car and make it look as if it had been bitten in half.

Release

Critical reception

The film received mixed reviews, gaining a 40% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a Metacritic score of 50. A. O. Scott of The New York Times said that, "Within the trivial, ingratiating scope of its ambition, though, the sequel is pleasant enough," and, noting the huge array of aliens designed by Rick Baker, said that the film "really belongs to Mr. Baker."[8] A review in The Hindu called the film "worth viewing once."Another review from Digital Media FX magazine praised the spaceships as looking very realistic, but criticized many of the simpler visual effects such as the moving backgrounds composited behind the car windows using blue-screen (which it called a throwback to the special effects of earlier decades). In August 2002, Entertainment Weekly placed the Worm Guys among their list of the best CG characters, and said that the enlarged roles of both Frank the Pug and the Worm Guys in Men in Black II was beneficial for the "tiring franchise".

Box office

Men In Black II was a commercial success, although not to the extent of the original. Released theatrically on July 3, 2002, Men In Black II charted at number one in its opening weekend at the box office with the revenue of $52,148,751. The film held onto the number one two the following week the revenue of $24,410,311, a 53.2% decrease from its opening weekend. In the film's third week of release, it saw a 40.4% decrease with the revenue of $14,552,335, charting at number three. After one month the film remained in the box office chart, at fourth place, with the revenue of $8,477,202. Men In Black II fell out of the top-ten at the box office chart in its sixth week of release. After sixty two days of release in North America, Men In Black II grossed $190,418,803. 43.1% of the film's worldwide revenue of $441,818,803 came from North America. Internationally, Men in Black was commercially successful; the film to date has grossed an estimated $251,400,000, with 56.9% of the films overall revenue coming from foreign territories.

Sequel

Men in Black III will be the third iteration of the film's franchise. It will be released in 3D by Sony Pictures and directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, who directed the first two installments. The third was originally based on a script written by Tropic Thunder and Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa writer Etan Cohen. Sony confirmed that David Koepp would serve as an additional screenwriter, joining Cohan. Koepp is currently rewriting a new draft of the script, which takes place primarily in the year 1969. It was initially announced that Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith would reprise their roles as Agents Kay and Jay, respectively. Both had previously expressed interest in reprising their roles back in 2008.

While Smith has officially signed on to return as Agent Jay, Jones is in advanced negotiations to return as Agent Kay. Josh Brolin is also in talks to play the younger (1969) version of Kay. Others rumored to have parts in the film include Sacha Baron Cohen and Jemaine Clement. Production of the sequel is tentatively set to begin during the 2010 Fall season and will welcome back producers Walter F. Parkes and Laurie MacDonald. Steven Spielberg is also set to return as executive producer. Men in Black III will hit theaters May 25, 2012.

Source:wikipedia

Point Blank (film)

Point Blank is a 1967 crime film directed by John Boorman and starring Lee Marvin and Angie Dickinson, adapted from the classic pulp novel The Hunter by Donald E. Westlake, writing as Richard Stark. Boorman directed the film at Marvin's request and Marvin played a central role in the film's development and staging

Plot

Walker (Lee Marvin) – originally named "Parker" in Stark's novel – works together with his friend Mal Reese (John Vernon in his first major role) to steal a large amount of cash from a courier transporting funds for a major gambling operation, with the deserted Alcatraz island as a drop point.
Reese then double-crosses Walker by shooting him multiple times, leaving him for dead. Reese also makes off with Walker's wife Lynne (Sharon Acker).
Walker recovers from the shooting. With assistance from the mysterious Yost (Keenan Wynn), who seems to know everything about everybody, Walker sets out to find Reese, take his revenge and recover the $93,000 he is owed. Reese used all of the money from the job to pay back a debt to a crime syndicate called "The Organization" and get back in its good graces.
With memories of happy times together, Walker goes to Los Angeles to pay back his wife and his best friend for their treachery. He bursts in on Lynne and riddles her bed with bullets, just in case Reese is in it. A distraught Lynne tells him she no longer wants to live, then takes an overdose of pills.
Walker is told that a car dealer named Stegman (Michael Strong) might know where Reese can be found. He takes Stegman for a wild ride in one of his new cars, smashing the car and terrorizing him until Stegman reveals where Reese is living. He is told that Reese has now taken up with Walker's sister-in-law, Chris.
Breaking in on Chris (Angie Dickinson), he learns that she actually despises Reese and had considered Walker the best thing ever to happen to her sister. Willing to help in any way, Chris agrees to a sexual tryst with Reese inside his heavily guarded penthouse apartment just so she can gain access and unbolt a door for Walker.
Walker ties up some men in an apartment across from the penthouse and has them call the police to report a robbery to create a diversion enabling him to slip into the penthouse unnoticed.
With a gun to Reese's head, Walker persuades him to give up the names of his Organization superiors – Carter, Brewster (Carroll O'Connor) and Fairfax – so that he can make somebody pay back his $93,000. He then forces a naked Reese off the balcony and watches him plunge to his death.
After next confronting Carter (Lloyd Bochner) for his money, Walker is set up. A hit man (James B. Sikking) with a high-powered rifle is assigned to kill him at a planned money drop point in a storm drain river run off, but instead Walker sees to it that Carter and Stegman are the ones who get shot.
Yost takes him to Brewster's home where Walker stays to wait for Brewster. Chris makes love with Walker but is repulsed by how cold he has become. "You did die at Alcatraz that day," she says. The following morning Walker ambushes and points a gun at Brewster, demanding his money. Brewster insists that no one will pay, but Walker says if Brewster won't, he will kill him and try Fairfax next.
They return to Alcatraz, which is still being used as a drop. Brewster brings a case that he claims contains the money. Walker doesn't trust him and refuses to show himself. The hit man is also in the darkness with his rifle. Brewster is shot. It is Yost who emerges from the shadows, whereupon Brewster calls out to Walker: "This is him. This is Fairfax!"
Walker is encouraged to come claim his money, but he stays in the shadows instead.


Production

This was the first film ever to shoot at Alcatraz, the infamous prison which had been shut down since 1963, only three years before the production.


Cast

Lee Marvin as Walker
Angie Dickinson as Chris
Keenan Wynn as Yost
Carroll O'Connor as Brewster
Lloyd Bochner as Frederick Carter
Michael Strong as Stegman
John Vernon as Mal Reese
Sharon Acker as Lynne
James B. Sikking as Hired Gun


Style

Set primarily in and around Los Angeles, Point Blank combines elements of film noir with stylistic touches of the European nouvelle vague, sun-drenched scenery, psychological themes, sudden violence, complex flashbacks, rapid rhythm changes, and sound effects.


Reception

In her 1967 New Yorker review of Bonnie and Clyde, Pauline Kael wrote: "A brutal new melodrama is called Point Blank, and it is."Roger Ebert writing in his review of the film, said "as suspense thrillers go Point Blank is pretty good."David Thomson praises the film: "Point Blank is a masterpiece... iconographic... urban thriller... a crucial film in the development of cinema's portrait of... organized crime."[citation needed]. Kael later call Point Blank "intermittently dazzling".
Slant Magazine reviewer Nick Schager notes in a 2003 review: "What makes Point Blank so extraordinary, however, is not its departures from genre conventions, but Boorman's virtuoso use of such unconventional avant-garde stylistics to saturate the proceedings with a classical noir mood of existential torpor and romanticized fatalism."

Influence

On March 29, 1968, Point Blank was screened at Cinelândia movie theaters in order to protest the murder of 18-year-old high school student Edson Luís de Lima Souto by the Military Police of Rio de Janeiro. Souto was shot at point-blank range. Phrases such as "Does bullets kill hunger?", "Old people in power, young people in coffin", and "They killed a student... what if it was your son?" were written by protesters in the movie posters. The aftermath of Souto's death was one of the first major public protests against the Brazilian military dictatorship.
Point Blank was loosely remade as the Hong Kong action film Full Contact (1992). It was remade again in Hollywood as Payback (1999). Outside the United States, Payback was distributed by Warner Bros., which acquired the rights to Point Blank through its 1996 merger with Turner Entertainment, which owns the pre-1986 MGM library.

Source:wikipedia