John Lafia
John Lafia (April 2, 1957 – April 29, 2020) was an American film director and screenwriter. He was best known for co-writing the slasher film '' Child's Play'' (1988) with Don Mancini and Tom Holland. Career Lafia's first feature film was '' The Blue Iguana'', which he wrote and directed as well as producing the soundtrack. It was selected to screen at a special midnight showing in the Palais des Festivals at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival. Lafia co-wrote the screenplay for '' Child's Play'' (1988). As a credited screenwriter, he was responsible for coining the name " Chucky" and contributing trademark dialog such as "Hi, I'm Chucky, wanna play?" Upon its release, ''Child's Play'' was number one at the North American box office. The film won a Saturn Award for Best Horror Film, as well as a nomination for best writing. The film was also an Official Selection at the Festival International du Film Fantastique d'Avoriaz. Lafia went on to direct '' Child's Play 2'' (1990). The film ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
University Of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the California State Normal School which later evolved into San Jose State University, San José State University. The branch was transferred to the University of California to become the Southern Branch of the University of California in 1919, making it the second-oldest of the ten-campus University of California system after the University of California, Berkeley. UCLA offers 337 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a range of disciplines, enrolling about 31,600 undergraduate and 14,300 graduate and professional students annually. It received 174,914 undergraduate applications for Fall 2022, including transfers, the most of any Higher education in the United States, university in the United Stat ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Walter Hill (director)
Walter Hill (born January 10, 1942) is an American film director, screenwriter and producer known for his action films and revival of the Western (genre), Western genre. He has directed such films as ''The Driver'', ''The Warriors (film), The Warriors'', ''Southern Comfort (1981 film), Southern Comfort'', ''48 Hrs.'' and its sequel ''Another 48 Hrs.'', ''Streets of Fire'' and ''Red Heat (1988 film), Red Heat'', and wrote the screenplay for the crime drama ''The Getaway (1972 film), The Getaway''. He has also directed several episodes of television series such as ''Tales from the Crypt (TV series), Tales from the Crypt'' and ''Deadwood (TV series), Deadwood'' and produced films in the Alien (franchise), ''Alien'' franchise. He founded Brandywine Productions with David Giler and Gordon Carroll. Hill said in an interview that "every film I've done has been a Western", and elaborated in another that "the Western is ultimately a stripped down moral universe that is, whatever the dra ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Exene Cervenka
Exene Cervenka (born Christene Lee Cervenka; February 1, 1956) is an American singer, artist, and poet. She is best known for her work as a singer in the California punk rock band X. Music career The 21-year-old Cervenka met 23-year-old musician John Doe at a poetry workshop at the Beyond Baroque Foundation in Venice, California. Cervenka started working there. Billy Zoom (guitar) and John Doe (bass and vocals) founded X in 1977, with D.J. Bonebrake coming aboard as drummer. Doe asked Cervenka to join soon after as a co-lead vocalist, and the duo were also the band's primary songwriters. They released their debut album, ''Los Angeles'', in 1980 and, over the next six years, five more albums. She learned to play guitar from Dave Alvin of The Blasters. Collaborations In 1982, Cervenka published ''Adulterers Anonymous'', her first in a series of four books in collaboration with artist Lydia Lunch. She and Lunch also released a spoken word album, ''Rude Hieroglyphic ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Wanda Coleman
Wanda Coleman (November 13, 1946 – November 22, 2013) was an American poet. She was known as "the L.A. Blueswoman" and "the unofficial poet laureate of Los Angeles". Biography Wanda Evans was born in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, where she grew up during the 1950s and 1960s. She is the eldest of four children. Her parents were George and Lewana (Scott) Evans, who were introduced to one another at church by his aunt. In 1931, her father had relocated to Los Angeles from Little Rock, Arkansas, after the lynching of a young man who was hung from a church steeple. He was an ex-boxer and long-time friend and sparring partner of Light Heavyweight Champion Archie Moore. In Los Angeles, he ran a sign shop during the day and worked the graveyard shift as a janitor at RCA Victor Records. Her mother worked as a seamstress and as a housekeeper for Ronald Reagan, among other celebrities. According to the Poetry Foundation, Coleman wrote her first poems at age 5 and had her first o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Charles Bukowski
Henry Charles Bukowski ( ; born Heinrich Karl Bukowski, ; August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was a German Americans, German-American poet, novelist, and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambience of his adopted home city of Los Angeles. Bukowski's work addresses the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women, and the drudgery of work. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI kept a file on him as a result of his column ''Notes of a Dirty Old Man'' in the LA underground newspaper ''Open City (newspaper), Open City''. Bukowski published extensively in small literary magazines and with small presses beginning in the early 1940s and continuing on through the early 1990s. He wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories and six novels, eventually publishing over sixty books during the course of his career. Some of these works include his ''Poems Written Before Jumping Out of an 8 Sto ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Lane Smith (illustrator)
Lane Smith (born August 25, 1959) is an American illustrator and writer of children's books. He is the Kate Greenaway medalist (2017) known for his eclectic visuals and subject matter, both humorous and earnest, such as the contemplative '' Grandpa Green'', which received a Caldecott Honor in 2012, and the outlandish '' Stinky Cheese Man'', which received a Caldecott Honor in 1992. Background Smith was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but moved to Corona, California at a young age. He spent summers in Tulsa and cites experiences traveling there via Route 66 as inspirations for his work, which combines highbrow and lowbrow elements. He studied at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, at the encouragement of his high-school art teacher, Dan Baughman, helping to pay for it by working as a janitor at Disneyland. While still a student, he illustrated for alternative newspapers, '' L.A. Weekly'', '' L.A. Reader'' and for the punk magazine ''No Mag''. He also illustrated al ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Cassette Tape
The Compact Cassette, also commonly called a cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog audio, analog magnetic tape recording format for Sound recording and reproduction, audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Ottens and his team at the Netherlands, Dutch company Philips, the Compact Cassette was released in August 1963. Compact Cassettes come in two forms, either containing content as a prerecorded cassette (''Musicassette''), or as a fully recordable "blank" cassette. Both forms have two sides and are reversible by the user. Although List of magnetic tape cartridges and cassettes, other tape cassette formats have also existed—for example the Microcassette—the generic term ''cassette tape'' is normally used to refer to the Compact Cassette because of its ubiquity. From 1983 to 1991 the cassette tape was the most popular Timeline of audio formats, audio format for new Record sales, music sales in the United States. Compact Cassettes con ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Apocalypse
Apocalypse () is a literary genre originating in Judaism in the centuries following the Babylonian exile (597–587 BCE) but persisting in Christianity and Islam. In apocalypse, a supernatural being reveals cosmic mysteries or the future to a human intermediary. The means of mediation include dreams, visions and heavenly journeys, and they typically feature symbolic imagery drawn from the Jewish Bible, cosmological and (pessimistic) historical surveys, the division of time into periods, esoteric numerology, and claims of ecstasy and inspiration. Almost all are written under pseudonyms (false names), claiming as author a venerated hero from previous centuries, as with the Book of Daniel, composed during the 2nd century BCE but bearing the name of the legendary Daniel from the 6th century BCE. Eschatology (from Greek ''eschatos'', last) concerns expectations of the end of the present age. Thus, apocalyptic eschatology is the application of the apocalyptic world-view to the end o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Dark Angel
Dark Angel may refer to: Film * ''The Dark Angel'' (1925 film), an American silent film starring Ronald Colman and Vilma Banky * ''The Dark Angel'' (1935 film), an American film starring Fredric March and Merle Oberon * ''The Dark Angels'' (1937 film), a French film directed by Willy Rozier * ''Dark Angel'' (1990 film), or ''I Come in Peace'', a science fiction thriller featuring Dolph Lundgren *'' Dark Angel: The Ascent'', a 1994 film starring Angela Featherstone * ''Dark Angel'' (1996 film), a TV detective film starring Eric Roberts *'' Bettie Page: Dark Angel'', a 2004 biographical film Literature Comics * Dark Angel (DC Comics), a character in Wonder Woman comics * Dark Angel (Marvel Comics) or Shevaun Haldane, a fictional superheroine from the Marvel Comics imprint Marvel UK * Warren Worthington III or Dark Angel, a character in Marvel Comics' X-Men * Dark Angel or Kathisul Evin, a character and herald of Galactus in Marvel UK's '' Cyberspace 3000'' * ''Dark Angel'', a 1992–1 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
The Rats (2002 Film)
''The Rats'' (working title: ''The Colony'') is a 2002 American made-for-TV horror film written by Frank Deasy and directed by John Lafia, loosely based on the novel of the same name by James Herbert. The plot follows a clan of rats transformed, as part of a DNA research trial, into man-eating killers who take over a Manhattan department store and threaten to overrun New York City. Originally intended to air on September 17, 2001, its release was delayed after the September 11 attacks to remove shots of the World Trade Center towers. The film premiered on Fox on September 17, 2002. Plot In Manhattan, when a client is bitten by a rat in the dressing room of Garsons Department Store and contracts Weil's disease, the manager Susan Costello is assigned to hire and help the best exterminator in New York, Jack Carver. Jack and his assistant Ty find a colony of mutant rats in New York City and try to convince the health department administrator and former partner of Jack, Ray Jarre ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Babylon 5
''Babylon 5'' is an American space opera television series created by writer and producer J. Michael Straczynski, under the Babylonian Productions label, in association with Straczynski's Synthetic Worlds Ltd. and Warner Bros. Domestic Television. After the successful airing of a test pilot movie on February 22, 1993, '' Babylon 5: The Gathering'', Warner Bros. commissioned the series for production in May 1993 as part of its Prime Time Entertainment Network (PTEN). The show premiered in the United States on January 26, 1994, and ran for five 22-episode seasons. The series follows the human military staff and alien diplomats stationed on a space station, ''Babylon 5'', built in the aftermath of several major inter-species wars as a neutral ground for galactic diplomacy and trade. Major plotlines included intra-race intrigue and upheaval, inter-race wars and their aftermaths, and embroilment in a millennial cyclic conflict between ancient races. The human characters, in pa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Digital Pictures
Digital Pictures was an American video game developer founded in 1991 by Lode Coen, Mark Klein, Ken Melville, Anne Flaut-Reed, Kevin Welsh and Tom Zito. The company originated from an attempt to produce a game for the cancelled VHS-based NEMO game system. One of its first titles, '' Night Trap'', was originally produced as a title for the NEMO, before being converted for use with Sega's new Sega CD. The mature-themed content of ''Night Trap'' made it the source of some controversy. Nevertheless, the title was a bestseller. Digital Pictures went on to create other full motion video-based titles primarily for Sega hardware, and are regarded as a pioneer of the interactive movie genre. The company declined in the mid-1990s due to waning interest in full motion video games. Its final title, '' Maximum Surge'', went unreleased and was later repurposed into a film called ''Game Over''. Full motion video games The founders of Digital Pictures met in the late 1980s while working at ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |