Posts Tagged ‘film’

Akira Kurosawa Trivia Facts

Sunday, September 13th, 2009

Akira Kurosawa is someone that few people know very much about. That means that brushing up on your Akira Kurosawa trivia can aid you in stumping your friends and family the next time you have a game night. There are a few interesting facts that you can use as trivia questions to quiz your friends on and ensure that you win the game. For instance do you know that Akira Kurosawa was the youngest of seven children or that he made his debut as a director with Sugata Sanshiro in the year 1943?

Taking an Akira Kurosawa quiz can show you how much you know about Akira. What might come up when taking a quiz about Akira Kurosawa? There are several questions that could come up, let’s see what they might be. Questions such as, what was the first job that Akira held in the film industry? The answer is that he was an assistant to the director Kajiro Yamamoto in 1936 for his first job in the film industry. What year did the Los Angeles Film Critics Association give Akira Kurosawa a Career Achievement Award? The answer to this bit of trivia is 1985.

The fact that Akira Kurosawa was nominated for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures by the Directors Guild of America for Rashomon in 1953 is something that could appear in Akira Kurosawa trivia. What were award did he receive from the Directors Guild of America during 1986? The answer to this bit of trivia is the Golden Jubilee Award. What else happened in 1986?

There are a few trivia questions about Akira Kurosawa that could revolve around the year 1986. For example, in 1986 at the San Francisco International Film Festival what award was Akira Kurosawa given? The answer would be the “The Akira Kurosawa Award.” What film did he win the Norwegian Amanda Award for Best Foreign Feature Film during 1986? The answer to this bit of trivia is Ran.

Another trivia question about Akira Kurosawa might be which year he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Directors Guild of America. The answer to this question would be 1992.

What else could come up with Akira Kurosawa trivia? What year did he receive a Lifetime Achievement Award in at the Japanese Academy Awards? The answer would be 1999. Want to stump your friends ask them how tall Akira Kurosawa was. The answer is six feet, and chances are your friends won’t know that.

Taking an Akira Kurosawa quiz will help you to find interesting facts to amaze your friends with.

Legendary rapper Ice Cube Turns 40

Monday, August 10th, 2009

O’Shea Jackson (born June 15, 1969), better known by his stage name Ice Cube is an African-American rapper, actor, screenwriter, and producer. He began his career as a member of the rap group N.W.A along with group leader Eazy-E, and later launched a successful solo career in music and cinema.
In 1992, he married Kimberly Woodruff, with whom he has four children, and converted to Islam. From the mid-1990s onwards, Cube focused on acting, and his musical output has slowed down considerably. He remains one of the most visible West Coast rappers, having helped originate gangsta rap.

Ice Cube was born O’Shea Jackson in South Central Los Angeles, California, where he was raised, the son of Doris (née Benjamin), a hospital clerk and custodian, and Andrew Jackson, who worked as a groundskeeper at California State University. His cousin is Teren Delvon Jones, also known as Del
tha Funkee Homosapien, of Deltron 3030, Gorillaz and Hieroglyphics. At age sixteen, Ice Cube developed an interest in hip hop music, and began writing raps in Taft High School’s keyboarding class. He attended the Phoenix Institute of Technology in the fall of 1987, and studied Architectural Drafting. With friend
Sir Jinx, Cube formed the C.I.A., and they performed at parties hosted by Dr. Dre. In an interview with well-known British broadsheet newspaper, The Guardian, Ice Cube stated he is a Muslim, having converted sometime in the 1990s.

In 1987 Cube and Dr. Dre released the EP My Posse, under the alias CIA and the county police. After the collaboration, Cube showed Eazy-E the lyrics to “Boyz-n-the-Hood”. Eazy-E, although initially rejecting the lyrics, eventually recorded the song for N.W.A. and the Posse, the debut album for the group N.W.A (short for Niggaz With Attitude) that included him, Cube, Dre, and other rappers MC Ren and DJ Yella.

Recent years: In 2004, his hit singles “Check Yo Self”, “It Was a Good Day” and affiliated song “Guerrillas in tha Mist” with Da Lench Mob appeared on popular video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas playing on fictional radio stations.

In late 2005, Ice Cube and Emmy Award winning film maker R. J. Cutler, teamed up to create the six-part documentary series titled Black. White., which was broadcast on cable network FX. In May 2006 Ice Cube accused Oprah Winfrey of not welcoming rappers on her show, and specifically, for not inviting him to the show when the rest of the cast of films that he participated in were invited. Cube’s other movie projects include Teacher of the Year, released in 2007, and “The Extractors”, released in 2008. Cube has also completed Are We Done Yet?, the sequel to 2005’s successful “Are We There Yet”?

There is obviously much more to Ice Cube’s life and career.  You can learn more by playing Ice Cube trivia, Why We Thugs Ice Cube or music Ice Cube at MastersOfTrivia.com.

Happy Birthday, Judy Garland!

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

It is former superstar singer and actress Judy Garland’s birthday today!

Through a career that spanned 45 of her 47 years, Garland attained international stardom as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist and on the concert stage. Respected for her versatility, she received a Juvenile Academy Award, won a Golden Globe Award, received the Cecil B. DeMille Award for her work in films, as well as Grammy Awards and a Tony Award. She had a contralto singing range.

Judy Garland (born Frances Ethel Gumm, June 10, 1922 – June 22, 1969) was a truly amazing talent.  But Despite her professional triumphs, Garland battled personal problems throughout her life. Insecure about her appearance, her
feelings were compounded by film executives who told her she was unattractive and overweight. Plied with drugs to control her weight and increase her productivity, Garland endured a decades-long struggle with addiction. Garland
was plagued by financial instability, often owing hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes, and her first four of five marriages ended in divorce. She attempted suicide on a number of occasions. Garland died of an accidental drug overdose at the age of forty-seven, leaving children Liza Minnelli, Lorna Luft, and Joey Luft.

In 1997, Garland was posthumously awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and several of her recordings have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 1999, the American Film Institute placed her among the ten greatest female stars in the history of American cinema.

Garland landed the lead role of Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz (1939) at the age of sixteen, in which she introduced the song with which she would forever be identified, “Over the Rainbow”. Although producers Arthur Freed and Mervyn LeRoy had wanted Garland from the start, studio chief Mayer tried first to borrow Shirley Temple from 20th Century Fox. Temple’s services were denied and Garland was cast.

Judy Garland’s legacy as a performer and a personality has endured long after her death. The American Film Institute named Garland eighth among the Greatest Female Stars of All Time.

Of particular note is Garland’s status as a gay icon. She always had a large base of fans in the gay community. Reasons often given for her standing, especially  amongst gay men, are admiration of her ability as a performer, the
way her personal struggles supposedly mirrored those of gay men in America during the height of her fame and her value as a camp figure.

To find out more about Judy Garland, Judy Garland songs or Judy Garland movies, visit MastersOfTrivia.com.

Actor Mark Wahlberg Turns 38

Friday, July 10th, 2009

Controversial actor Mark Robert Michael Wahlberg turns 38 years old on June 5, 2009.  The actor also known as “Marky Mark” or “Monk D” was born in Boston, Massachusetts and became famous in his 1991 debut as a rap musician with the band Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch.

Born in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, he is the youngest of nine children, with siblings Arthur, Jim, Paul, Robert, Tracey, Michelle, Debbie (died in 2003 at age 44), and Donnie.  His mother, Alma Elaine (née McPeck), was a bank clerk and nurse’s aide, and his father, Donald E.
Wahlberg, was a Teamster who worked as a delivery driver; the two divorced in 1982.  Wahlberg had a Catholic upbringing and attended Copley Square High School (but never graduated) on Newbury Street in Copley Square in Boston. The campus now houses Muriel Snowden International School.

As a teenager, Wahlberg was implicated in several acts of violence and vandalism. At fifteen, he was amongst a group who threw rocks at a group of African American school children on a field trip while shouting racial epithets; the rocks hit their targets and caused several injuries. The following year,
Wahlberg robbed a pharmacy while he was under the influence of PCP. During the commission of the crime, he again used racial epithets. He knocked one middle aged Vietnamese man unconscious and permanently blinded another in one eye before he was arrested by the police.

But Mark Wahlberg’s life is that of a turnaround story.  Nowadays, mark is actively involved in charity and established the “Mark Wahlberg Youth Foundation” in May 2001 for the purpose of raising and distributing funds to youth service and enrichment programs.  Wahlberg is a also a practicing Roman
Catholic.

Happy Birthday, Marky Mark!  Thousands more trivia quizzes and games can be found at MastersOfTrivia.com where you can find out just how much you DON’T know…

June 4, 2009: Angelina Jolie Turns 34 Years Old

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

Who is this super-woman?  A beauty, an actress, a mother of six children (inluding three adopted), a Goddess in the eyes of many, a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency, a three-time Golden Globe Winner, two-time Screen Actors Guild Awards Winner, Academy Award Winner?  All of the above!  And all this at the still tender age of just thirty four.

Born in Los Angeles, California on June 4, 1975, Angelina Jolie has become more than an icon.  The “Queen of All Media” tops 2009’s “Celebrity Top 100″ list published by Forbes Magazine every year.

Today, Jolie is one of the best known celebrities around the world. According to the Q Score, in 2000, subsequent to her Oscar win, 31% of respondents in the United States said Jolie was familiar to them, by 2006 she was familiar to 81% of Americans. In a 2006 global industry survey by ACNielsen in 42 international markets Jolie, together with Brad Pitt, was found to be the favorite celebrity
endorser for brands and products worldwide. Jolie was among the Time 100, a list of the 100 most influential people in the world, in 2006 and 2008.  She was described as the world’s most beautiful woman in the 2006 “100 Most Beautiful” issue of People, and she was voted the greatest sex symbol of all time in the British Channel 4 television show The 100 Greatest Sex Symbols in 2007.

Starting in 2005, her relationship with Brad Pitt became one of the most reported celebrity stories worldwide. After Jolie confirmed her pregnancy in early 2006, the unprecedented media hype surrounding them “reached the point of insanity” as Reuters described it in their story “The Brangelina fever”. Trying to avoid the media attention, the couple went to Namibia for the birth of Shiloh, “the most anticipated baby since Jesus Christ”, as it had been described. Two years later, Jolie’s second pregnancy again fueled a media frenzy. For the two weeks she spent in a seaside hospital in Nice, reporters and photographers camped outside on the promenade to report on the birth.

There have been recent rumors of a break up between Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, but the couple has consistently denied those rumors.

You can test your Angelina Jolie IQ by playing the Official Angelina Jolie Trivia Quiz at Masters of Trivia.