Random Citizen

Million Dollar Baby is a 2004 American sports drama film directed, co-produced, scored by, and starring Clint Eastwood. It is based on stories from the 2000 collection Rope Burns: Stories from the Corner by F.X. Toole. The film garnered seven nominations at the 77th Academy Awards and won four: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (for Swank), and Best Supporting Actor (for Freeman). Maggie soon develops bedsores and undergoes an amputation for an infected leg.

She asks Frankie to help her die, declaring that she got everything she wanted out of life. Frankie refuses, so Maggie later bites off her own tongue in an attempt to bleed to death. Knowing the fatherly affection Frankie has developed for Maggie, Frankie’s priest warns him that he would never find himself again if he were to comply with her request. Just before administering a fatal injection of adrenaline, he tells Maggie the meaning of “mo chuisle”: “my darling, and my blood”. Scrap’s narration is revealed to be a letter to Frankie’s daughter, informing her of her father’s actual true character.

Million Dollar Baby was written and directed by Clint Eastwood for a $30 million budget by Paul Haggis. The film was stuck in development hell for years before it was shot. Several studios rejected the project even when Eastwood signed on as actor and director. To prepare for her role, Swank underwent extensive training in the ring and weight room, gaining 19 pounds of muscle, aided by professional trainer Grant L Roberts.

Million Dollar Baby has been hailed as a masterpiece by Roger Ebert, who called it the best film of 2004. In early 2005, the film sparked controversy when some disability rights activists protested the ending. The Chicago Tribune reported that protests against the film by disability activists occurred in Chicago, Berkeley, and other cities. Clint Eastwood had lobbied for weakening provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Clint Eastwood’s film Million Dollar Baby received widespread criticism for its story and characters, with Roger Ebert calling it “classical” and saying it had an “enormous emotional impact”.

The film won the Best Picture award in 2004 at the 77th Academy Awards. The film was released on VHS and DVD on July 12, 2005. It was the first Best Picture winner released on either high-definition optical disc format in the U.S. The film is also available online through video on demand and most major streaming platforms. Rope Burns was named the third “Best Film of the 21st Century So Far” in 2017 by The New York Times.

Stuff You Should Know is one of the most popular podcasts in the world, being downloaded millions of times each month. It was founded by Josh Clark and Charles W. “Chuck” Bryant, who first met while working as senior editors at HowStuffWorks.com. A number of other types of media, including TV shows and books, have been spun off by the podcast. Born March 15, 1971, Josh grew up in Georgia and studied history and anthropology at the University of Georgia.

As a child, he was an avid reader of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader, as mentioned in many podcasts. He is also a fan of The Simpsons, Firefly, Dollywood, Quentin Tarantino, and Pavement. Bryant grew up in DeKalb County, Georgia but his family lived in “rural Mississippi since the dawn of time,”[42] as well as Tennessee. He is the author of six screenplays and once appeared on the cover of Guideposts magazine. As a self-described “crazy animal person,” he has multiple pets and plays the guitar in an “old man band,” called “El Cheapo”.

The podcast was launched on April 17, 2008, with Clark as the solo host. Bryant made his debut a month later on May 13, 2008. On October 26, 2017, Stuff You Should Know released its 1000th episode. Their 420th episode was on medical marijuana, although this was reportedly a coincidence. The End of the World with Josh Clark and Ryan Bryant is a 10-episode series that discusses what dangers lie in humanity’s future.

The podcast has been described as the “heart and soul of the operation” with the “well researched” episodes covering a variety of topics from “science, history, urban legends, and pop culture, with the occasional conspiracy theory thrown in for good measure”. There is one episode on animal detectives that they hope will never be published. Listener mail debuted on November 25, 2008, in the episode “How Albert Einstein’s Brain Worked”. The first time it was known as “Listener Mail” was on January 8, 2009, in an episode inspired by a listener’s email. During the Listener Mail portion of the podcast on April 11, 2013, a new jingle for the show was introduced. It was written and recorded by Rusty Matyas of Winnipeg, Manitoba in Canada, a musician and fan.

Stuff You Should Know also has a YouTube channel, but stopped updating it regularly in 2017. In 2009, Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant began a “short-lived” webcast. A full-length podcast and TV show premiered on January 19, 2013, on the Science Channel. The shows were directed by L.C. Crowley with a theme song composed by The Henry Clay People.

The podcast was canceled after the first season “due to poor ratings”,[86] although each episode is made available for purchase on iTunes and Google Play. A Stuff You Should Know team had raised $150,000 by the middle of 2010 and more than $2.75 million by November 2014. In 2009 they challenged Stephen Colbert to see whose team could raise $100,000 first. On July 7, 2021, Hasbro released a special edition of Trivial Pursuit: The Stuff You Should Know Edition. The game is based on episodes from the podcast and contains categories of History, Pop Culture, Myths, Legends, & Conspiracies, Science & Tech, Humans, and SYSK Selects.

The first player gaining each one of the 6 category tokens wins. The podcast won the 2016 Webby Award for “People’s Voice” and was an Honoree for “Best Host” at the 2017 Webby Awards. After two months, their Facebook page had over 10,000 likes, and as of September 2015, it had more than 750,000. One reviewer said of it: “It is not fun to listen to”.

The Huberman Lab Podcast was started in January 2021 by Dr. Andrew Huberman, a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. The podcast discusses neuroscience: how our brain and its connections with organs of our body control our perceptions, our behaviors, and our health. New episodes are released every Monday.

12 Years a Slave is based on the memoir by Solomon Northup, an African-American who was kidnapped in Washington, D.C. by two conmen in 1841 and sold into slavery. Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano, Garret Dillahunt, Paul Giamatti, Scoot McNairy, Lupita Nyong’o, Sarah Paulson, Brad Pitt, Michael Kenneth Williams, and Alfre Woodard feature in supporting roles. Principal photography took place in New Orleans, Louisiana, from June 27 to August 13, 2012. The film received widespread critical acclaim and was named the best film of 2013.

A slave trader gives Northup the identity of “Platt”, a runaway slave from Georgia, and sells him to plantation owner William Ford. Ford takes a liking to Northup and gives him a violin. Northup gains the favor of the plantation’s owner, Judge Turner, who allows him to play the fiddle at an anniversary celebration. Ford saves Northup’s life by buying him from Epps, who is ruthless and sadistic. The film’s epilogue titles recount: Northup’s unsuccessful suits against Brown, Hamilton, and Birch.

Northup returns to reconnect with his wife with their fully grown son, daughter, and his daughter’s husband. He is presented with his grandson and namesake, Solomon Northup Staunton. As they embrace, an enraged Epps furiously protests and tries to prevent Northup from leaving only to be rebuffed.

Historian Emily West said she had “never seen a film represent slavery so accurately”. Film unveiled the sights and sounds of enslavement – from slaves picking cotton as they sang in the fields, to the crack of the lash down people’s backs. Masters such as William Ford and Edwin Epps used an interpretation of Christianity to justify their ownership of slaves. They believed the Bible-sanctioned slavery and that it was their ‘Christian duty’ to preach the scriptures to their slaves. Critics argue that the film “frequently undermines” the character of William Ford, the author’s one-time master. McQueen also attempts to update the story for the 21st century, updating its ethical lessons for our own time.

Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave is about Solomon Northup, a free African-American who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the Deep South. Brad Pitt’s production company Plan B Entertainment backed the project, which helped get financing from various other film studios. To capture the language and dialects of the era and regions in which the film takes place, dialect coach Michael Buster assisted the cast in altering their speech. 12 Years a Slave was shot on 35 mm film with a 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio using both an Arricam LT and ST. Principal photography for the film began on June 27, 2012, in New Orleans, Louisiana, and concluded on August 13, 2012. Filming also took place at four historic antebellum plantations in Felicity, Bocage, Destrehan, and Magnolia for scenes set in Washington D.C. As a way to keep down costs, a bulk of the filming took place around the greater New Orleans area – mostly south of the Red River country in the north of the state, where the historic Northup was enslaved.

Costume designer Patricia Norris created nearly 1,000 costumes for the film. The filmmakers conducted extensive research that included studying artwork from the era. A soundtrack album was released digitally on November 5 and received a physical format release on November 11, 2013. It features music inspired by the film by artists such as John Legend, Alicia Keys, Chris Cornell, and Alabama Shakes.

12 Years a Slave premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on August 30, 2013. It was commercially released on October 18, 2013, in the United States for a limited release of 19 theaters, with a wide release in subsequent weeks. The film was initially scheduled to be released in December 2013, but “exuberant test screenings” led to the decision to move up the release date. 12 Years a Slave was released on Blu-ray discs and DVD in the United States on March 4, 2014. A widescreen hi-definition version of the film was also released on the same day.

During its limited release, the film debuted with a weekend total of $923,715 on 19 screens for a $48,617 per-screen average. The film entered the top ten after expanding to 123 theatres and grossing an additional $2.1 million. It was the 10th most illegally downloaded movie, with 23.653 million such downloads, according to Variety.

Critics have praised the film for its “unflinchingly brutal look at American slavery”. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 95% of critics gave the film a positive rating, based on 374 reviews, with an average score of 8.90/10. It is currently one of the site’s highest-rated films, as well as the best-reviewed film of 2013. CinemaScore has also given the film an “A” grade. Reviewer Owen Gleiberman called it a “movie of such humanity and grace that at every moment, you feel you’re seeing something essential”.

Chiwetel Ejiofor and Lupita Nyong’o’s performances were also highly praised. David Simon, the creator of the TV series The Wire, said it is the first time in history that the entertainment industry has managed to stare directly at slavery and maintain that gaze. Critics have praised 12 Years a Slave, with one critic calling it “a picture that stays more than a few safe steps away from anything so dangerous as raw feeling”. Another critic called the film “essentially tone-deaf when it comes to performance, and skirts by on casting”. The film “lacks a necessary emotional continuity”, according to Ignatiy Vishnevetsky of The A.V. Club.

Some critics have identified 12 Years a Slave as an example of the white savior narrative in film. A Black writer Michael Arceneaux wrote a rebuttal essay We Don’t Need To Get Over Slavery. Or Movies About Slavery, which were criticized for being ignorant and having an apathetic attitude towards black Americans and slavery. He argued that these films are created for a white, liberal film audience to engender white guilt and make them feel bad about themselves.

12 Years a Slave has received numerous awards and nominations. The film won three Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actress. It also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama. The motion picture has been named one of the best films of 2013 by various ongoing critics.

The podcast launched on December 24, 2009, on YouTube by Rogan and comedian Brian Redban. By 2015, it was one of the world’s most popular podcasts, regularly receiving millions of views per episode. The podcast has been described as a “boundary-free arena,” a platform for the intellectual dark web, and has featured a diverse ideological mixture of political guests. The podcast originally began in early 2003 when Rogan hired Brian Redban to film, produce, and edit videos for his website. After several years, Redban noticed that fans were demanding an increasing amount of content from Rogan.

This prompted the two to seek new ways of quickening what was a lengthy editing process. The show developed with Rogan having friends as guests and having lengthy conversations with them regarding various subjects. Ari Shaffir was the first guest, who appeared on episode No. 674 in 2015. It was originally recorded at Rogan’s home before moving to a Los Angeles studio in 2012. The 1,000th episode aired on August 18, 2017, and featured comedians Joey Diaz and Tom Segura as guests. In April 2020, Rogan recorded the podcast during the COVID-19 pandemic.

On May 19, 2020, Rogan announced that from September 2020, The Joe Rogan Experience would be available on Spotify in an exclusive licensing deal worth an estimated $100 million. Under the terms of the agreement, uploads of full episodes to YouTube continued until December 2020, when the podcast became exclusive to Spotify. The first new episode released on Spotify was no. 1,530 with comedian Duncan Trussell, which lasted for over five hours. Joe Rogan’s podcast was listened to by more than 11 million people in January 2015. By October 2015, it had grown to acquire 16 million downloads a month.

In April 2019, Rogan said that the podcast had 190 million downloads each month. The New York Times disclosed that Spotify had actually paid over $200 million for his podcast, much higher than previously estimated figures. The podcast became an “unlikely political influencer” in the 2020 U.S. presidential election after presidential candidates Andrew Yang and Tulsi Gabbard saw surges in popularity and fundraising after guest appearances on the show. Research has credited Yang’s appearance with having had a considerable impact on the prominence of Universal Basic Income (UBI) in public debates. In 2019, The Joe Rogan Experience ranked the highest in the “unaided awareness” category, double that of any other podcast.

The show has engaged with a wide variety of controversial topics. One episode was cited as the inspiration for the planned Facebook event and Internet meme known as “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us”, created one week later. In another episode, guest Robert W. Malone compared the U.S. reaction to the pandemic to the rise of Nazi Germany. Neil Young threatened to pull his music from Spotify if the company did not drop Rogan, saying Rogan was disseminating COVID-19 vaccine misinformation. The podcast has been described as “an important node of the intellectual dark web”,[5] and has featured a diverse ideological mixture of political guests, including Democratic presidential candidates and conservative figures.

In August 2010, nine months after its launch, The Joe Rogan Experience entered the list of Top 100 podcasts on iTunes. In February 2014, the podcast won a Stitcher Award for Best Overall Show of 2013. In January 2019, it won Best Comedy Podcast at the iHeartRadio Podcast Awards.