The Sundance Film Festival is an American movie festival that takes place every year in Utah. It is one of the largest independent movie festivals in the United States.
The festival is held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden, and at the Sundance Resort. It is an event for new work from American and international independent movie makers. The festival has competition for American and international drama and documentary movies, feature films and short films.
The 2015 Sundance Film Festival took place January 22 to February 1, 2015. "What Happened, Miss Simone?", a documentary about American singer Nina Simone, opened the festival. A comedy-drama movie, "Grandma", was the closing night movie. It stars Lily Tomlin.
Many notable independent movie makers first got noticed at Sundance, including Kevin Smith, Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino, Todd Field, David O. Russell, Steve James, Steven Soderbergh, Darren Aronofsky, James Wan, Edward Burns, and Jim Jarmusch.
The festival has also given more attention and a larger audience to such movies as "Saw", "Super Troopers", "The Blair Witch Project", "Spanking the Monkey", "Reservoir Dogs", "Primer", "Little Miss Sunshine", "Clerks", "Sex, Lies, and Videotape", "The Brothers McMullen", "Afternoon Delight", "Napoleon Dynamite", and "Whiplash".
Turner Field
Turner Field is a baseball ballpark in Atlanta, Georgia, home to the Atlanta Braves. The park first opened in 1996 to host the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, when it was known as Centennial Olympic Stadium. After the Olympics, the park was changed to allow baseball to be played, and opened for the 1997 braves season., The stadium replaces Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, which was built in 1966.
On November 11, 2013, it was announced that the Braves would leave Turner Field for a new stadium in Cobb County. The lease which allowed the Braves to play in Turner Field was set to end in 2016, and the team stated that many fans had problems getting to the stadium on game days. At the new stadium's groundbreaking on September 16, 2014, that venue's name was revealed as SunTrust Park.
Stevie Nicks
Stephanie Lynn "Stevie" Nicks (born May 26, 1948, in Phoenix, Arizona) is an American singer-songwriter. She is best known for her work with Fleetwood Mac. Within the band and as a solo singer, she has over forty Top 50 hits and has sold over 140 million albums.
Nicks was named "The Reigning Queen of Rock and Roll" and one of the "100 Greatest Singers of All Time" by "Rolling Stone". As a member of Fleetwood Mac, she was selected to be included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. She was included again in 2019 for her solo career.
With Fleetwood Mac, Nicks has been nominated for nine Grammy Awards. They won the 1978 Grammy Award for Album of the Year for "Rumours". They also won the 2003 Grammy Hall of Fame Award.
Baloristan
Baloristan (Gilgit-Chitral) is the name of a region of Northern Areas of Pakistan. It borders Pakistan's North-West Frontier to the west, Afghanistan and China to the north, Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir to the east, leading to the frozen wastes of the Third Pole.
The central administrative unit of Baloristan, Gilgit Agency.
Michael Waltrip
Michael Curtis Waltrip (born April 30, 1963 in Owensboro, Kentucky) is an American race car driver and owner of his team called Michael Waltrip Racing. Michael Waltrip is the younger brother of three time Sprint cup champion, Darrell Waltrip.
Jean Simmons
Jean Simmons (January 31, 1929 - January 22, 2010) was an Anglo-American actress. She was active in movies, television and theatre.
Jean Simmons was born in London, England. She began her acting career very young, and appeared in films like David Lean's "Great Expectations" (1946) and Laurence Olivier's "Hamlet" (1948) while still a teenager.
As a very promising young actress, she came to Hollywood in 1950, where she appeared in such films as "The Robe" (1953), "Young Bess" (1953), "Désirée" (1954), "The Egyptian" (1954), "The Big Country" (1958), "Spartacus" (1960), "Elmer Gantry" (1960), "Life at the Top" (1965), "A Rough Night in Jericho" (1967), etc.
In the 1970s, she gradually turned to television work, notably in the highly successful miniseries "The Thorn Birds" (1983), for which she won an Emmy Award for best supporting actress, and "North and South " (1985).
Simmons was married twice. Her first was to actor Stewart Granger from 1950 to 1960, with whom she had a daughter, Tracy (born 1956). Simmons and Granger became American citizens in 1956. The second was to film director Richard Brooks from 1960 to 1977, with whom she had a second daughter, Kate (born 1961). Both marriages ended in divorce.
Simmons died aged 80 of lung cancer in Santa Monica, California.
Ernie Coombs
Ernest "Ernie" Coombs, CM (November 26, 1927 – September 18, 2001) who was most famous for being the host of the popular Canadian television TV show called "Mr. Dressup". 'Mr. Dressup was on TV for a very long time.
He was born in Lewiston, Maine in 1927. After he finished school at the North Yarmouth Academy he decided to find work entertaining children. He first started learning how to do this when he moved to Canada in 1963 and started working for Fred Rogers on an early version of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood". This show was on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation TV channel. After Rogers moved back to the United States in 1964 Coombs stayed in Canada. His next work was on a TV show called "Butternut Square" which was on TV from 1964 to 1967.
After ""Butternut Square"" ended Coombs started the ""Mr. Dressup"" TV show. It would become one of Canada's longest-running children's TV shows. As Mr. Dressup he would do art, sing songs, tell stories and play children's games. In each show Mr. Dressup would dress up in costumes that he would find in a box he called his ""Tickle Trunk"".
Coombs became a Canadian citizen in 1994.
His TV show did not stop until February 1996. The same year, he was named a Member of the Order of Canada .
Repeats of his TV show were shown on CBC Television until 2006.
After he retired from TV Coombs continued to work entertaining children and did a lot of work to raise money for many children's charities.
Coombs had a stroke on September 10, 2001. He died on September 18, 2001 in Toronto, Ontario. He was 73 years old when he died.
Pleiotropism
Pleiotropism is a central term in developmental genetics. In pleiotropism, a single gene affects a number of phenotypic traits in the same organism.
These pleiotropic effects often seem to be unrelated to each other. The usual underlying mechanism is that the same gene is activated in several different tissues, producing apparently different effects. It follows that the phenomenon must be extremely common, since most genes will have effects in more than one tissue.
The term may be contrasted with pleiomorphism, in which a genetically uniform group of organisms shows variable phenotypes.
Pleiotropy has significance for the theory of evolution. It has often been claimed that some heritable features of animals are not the product of adaptation by natural selection. Much of this may be explained by pleiotropism. Strong selection for one or two aspects of gene function will automatically bring along some other pleiotropic traits. These other traits, though inherited, may be neutral or even slightly deleterious in terms of selection.
"Antagonistic pleiotropy" refers to the expression of a gene resulting in multiple competing effects, some beneficial but others detrimental to the organism. Three circumstances are possible:
1. Simultaneously, a gene may cause deleterious traits which are outbalanced by the survival value of positive traits.
2. A gene may increase fitness in the younger, fertile organism, yet contribute to decreased fitness later in life. The reproductive contribution at the younger stages of life will ensure the spread of such a gene.