Hoffman was born in Los Angeles, California. He is the younger son of Lillian, a jazz pianist, and Harry Hoffman, who worked as a prop supervisor/set decorator at Columbia Pictures before becoming a furniture salesman. His brother, Ronald, is a lawyer and economist. Hoffman's family was Jewish, although he was not brought up religious. He graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1955.
Hoffman starred in "The Graduate", "Midnight Cowboy", "Marathon Man", "All the President's Men", "Kramer vs. Kramer", "Tootsie", "Stranger than Fiction", "Meet the Fockers" and "Rain Man".
In 2013, Hoffman had successful treatment for cancer.
Chopper Read
Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read (November 17, 1954 - October 9, 2013) was an Australian mobster who was born in Melbourne, Victoria. During his criminal career in the Melbourne mafia scene, he was convicted of many crimes, including armed robbery, assault, attempted murder, arson, impersonating a police officer and kidnapping. Read retired from a life of crime and wrote a series of fiction books based on his life as a criminal.
Read started his criminal career as a child; robbing drug dealers as a teenager. During this time he was the leader of a gang. While in prison as an adult, Read made another prisoner cut off his ears so he could leave prison where a gang wanted to have him killed. Read claims that he killed 19 people during his time as a criminal. His first book was written in 1991 while he was in prison. In 2000, a movie called Chopper was made about Read's life and based on his books, it stars Eric Bana as Read.
Read has stated that he had attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, hepatitis C, cirrhosis and liver cancer. He died of liver cancer in Melbourne.
Elle McFeast
Elle McFeast was a fictional character played by Australian comedienne Libbi Gorr, who started off on a show with Andrew Denton about sport in Australia called "Live and Sweaty". Gorr made up her character's name to make fun of Australian model Elle Macpherson. "McFeast" was the name of a hamburger from McDonald's.
McFeast had her own show for many years in Australia. She talked about many scary things, like jails and criminals, and made fun of them. One day she interviewed Chopper Read on her show. He was so scary that she had to stop her show.
Elle Macpherson
Elle Macpherson (born Eleanor Nancy Gow on 29 March 1964, in Killara, New South Wales, Australia) is an Australian supermodel and actress. She first became famous because of her advertisements for Coca-Cola where she wore a string bikini. She became a supermodel and became very famous. She is part owner of a cafe in America. She has been in a movie called "Sirens". Macpherson is nicknamed "the body" because some people say she has a perfect body.
In 2010, she became the host and executive producer of "Britain & Ireland's Next Top Model". She is currently the host and an executive producer NBC's "Fashion Star".
Macpherson met Gilles Bensimon in 1984 on a photo-session for "Elle" magazine. They were married in May 1986, and divorced in 1989.
Macpherson has two sons, Arpad Flynn Alexander Busson (born 14 February 1998), and Aurelius Cy Andrea Busson (born 4 February 2003). The father is her former partner, French financier Arpad Busson.
Macpherson lives most of the time in Britain along with her two sons. She speaks fluent French and conversational Italian and Spanish.
From 2010 to early 2012, Macpherson was in a relationship with property developer Jeff Soffer.
Andrew Denton
Andrew Christopher Denton is an Australian comedian and television presenter who likes to make fun of politics. Andrew Denton used to have a television programme about sports in Australia called "Live and Sweaty". He now has a programme called "Enough Rope" where he interviews people about politics. Denton is a very smart man. The Australian media use him in many news stories. One of Denton's interviews was with Rene Rivkin, who police said had cheated in the stock market to make money. Rivkin was very sad, and after the interview he went to jail. Rivkin killed himself in jail. Denton says that he feels very sorry for interviewing Rivkin. Denton says that he does not want to interview someone like that again.
Rene Rivkin
Rene Rivkin (June 6, 1944 – May 1, 2005) was an Australian man, born in Shanghai, who made much money by buying stocks and shares on the Australian stockmarket. Rivkin had his own television show and magazine to help people to make money. Rivkin had cheated to make money from the stock market. Rivkin became depressed. Rivkin was put in jail. He was released, and killed himself in Sydney. Before killing himself, Rivkin said on a television show called "Enough Rope" with Andrew Denton that if he went to jail he would kill himself. Andrew Denton has said that he is very sad about this.
Eric Bana
Eric Bana (born Eric Banadinović on 9 August 1968) is an Australian actor. He was a comedian for a long time, and he was in a show called "The Comedy Company". He then became a serious actor in the movie "Chopper" which is a biopic of criminal Chopper Read. Bana also acted in the movies "Troy" and "Hulk".
African-American Vernacular English
African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is a name for the way that some African-American people talk. Linguists named AAVE, which is used by some non-black people. Some of the dialect's pronunciations and grammar are similar to how people talk in West Africa.
AAVE first came about in the 16th and the 17th centuries. It became famous in 1996, when some educators in Oakland, California, said they wanted to use AAVE to help teach black kids. They called it Ebonics, but the term often has a negative connotation.
There are many rules that govern how the sounds of AAVE are different from Standard English. Some have to do with pronunciation and vocabulary (or lexicon), but most have to do with grammar, including verb tenses and sentence structure.
Hip hop music has made AAVE more famous since the 1980s. Some people think it is cool and try to speak or learn it even if they are not really familiar with it. Some non-black people speak it well.
Many features set AAVE apart from other forms of American English (particularly, General American). McWhorter argues that what truly unites all AAVE accents is a uniquely wide-ranging intonation pattern or "melody", which characterizes even the most "neutral" or light African-American accent.
Many multisyllabic words in AAVE differ from General American in their stress placement. For example, police", guitar", and "Detroit" are pronounced with initial stress instead of stress on the last syllable or neutral stress.
60s BC
Joe Vialls
Joe Vialls (1944 – 2005) was an Australian Internet journalist and conspiracy theorist. He was once a policeman and detective, but became a private investigator. He is most famous for writing many stories on the Internet about famous things that have happened around the world.
On April 17, 1984, a police woman called Yvonne Fletcher was killed while she was in London. Joe Vialls told people that he knew why she was really killed. Because of Joe Vialls, police in London spent a long time trying to find out what really happened. In the end, police agreed with Joe Vialls, and they said that they had found out what really happened because of Joe Vialls.
In April 1996, Joe Vialls said that he knew who had really killed people in the Port Arthur massacre, and that it was not Martin Bryant, who police said had killed people. Joe Vialls talked to Wendy Scurr who was there, and Stewart Beattie who was a gun expert, and he also talked to Martin Bryant's mother, to find out what really happened. Joe Vialls wrote a book and had many articles talking about what he thinks really happened. You can see 9 articles that Joe Vialls wrote here . Joe Vialls says that the Australian government killed people so that they could take guns away from people. This is the same story that the Australian National Rifle Association says.