BRIT Awards 2015

Over the years The BRIT awards has produced many cringe inducing moments of embarrassment and unintentional comedy, consequently there are those who don’t take it seriously. Anyway this years event, is presented by Ant McPartlin and Declen Donelly and takes place Wednesday 25th February 2015, and looks set to be just as kitch and ridiculous. This year Madonna had a bit of an unfortunate incident whilst performing her new song.

Madonna closing performance at the BRIT Awards 2015 http://youtu.be/h3f-bHdxC6I

here are theNominations

BRITISH MALE SOLO ARTIST

• Damon Albarn Parlophone, Warner Music
• Ed Sheeran Asylum, Warner Music
• George Ezra Columbia, Sony Music
• Paolo Nutini Atlantic, Warner Music
• Sam Smith Capitol, Universal Music

BRITISH FEMALE SOLO ARTIST

Ella Henderson Syco Music, Sony Music

FKA Twigs Young Turks Recordings, XL Beggars

Jessie Ware Island/PMR, Universal Music

Lily Allen Parlophone, Warner Music

Paloma Faith RCA, Sony Music (WINNER)

BRITISH GROUP Alt-J Infectious Music, BMG Rights Clean Bandit Atlantic, Warner Music Coldplay Parlophone, Warner Music One Direction Syco Music, Sony Music Royal Blood Warner Bros, Warner Music

BRITISH BREAKTHROUGH ACT

ChVRCHES

FKA Twigs

Young Turks Recordings, XL Beggars

George Ezra Columbia, Sony Music

Royal Blood Warner Bros, Warner Music

Sam Smith

CRITICS’ CHOICE Identified by a panel made up of media critics. James Bay (Winner) Virgin EMI, Universal Music George the Poet Island, Universal Music Years & Years Polydor, Universal Music

BEST BRITISH SINGLE

• Calvin Harris Summer Columbia, Sony Music
• Clean Bandit ft Jess Glynne Rather Be Atlantic, Warner Music
• Duke Dumont ft Jax Jones I Got U Blasé Boys Club/Virgin EMI, Universal Music
• Ed Sheeran Thinking Out Loud Asylum, Warner Music
• Ella Henderson Ghost Syco Music, Sony Music
• George Ezra Budapest Columbia, Sony Music
• Mark Ronson ft Bruno Mars Uptown Funk Columbia, Sony Music
• Route 94 ft Jess Glynne My Love Rinse Recordings/Virgin EMI, Universal Music
• Sam Smith Stay With Me Capitol, Universal Music
• Sigma Nobody to Love 3 Beat/AATW, Universal Music

INTERNATIONAL GROUP

5 Seconds of Summer Capitol, Universal Music

The Black Keys Nonesuch, Warner Music

First Aid Kit Columbia, Sony Music

Foo Fighters Columbia, Sony Music

The War On Drugs Secretly Canadian, Secretly Group

MASTERCARD BRITISH ALBUM OF THE YEAR.

Alt-J This Is All this is yours

Ed Sheeran X

George Ezra Wanted On Voyage

Royal Blood Royal Blood

Sam Smith In The Lonely Hour

BRITISH PRODUCER OF THE YEAR In association with The MPG Awards. Identified by a panel overseen by MPG. Alison Goldfrapp & Will Gregory Flood Jake Gosling Paul Epworth

BRITISH ARTIST VIDEO OF THE YEAR

• Calvin Harris Summer Columbia, Sony Music
• Charli XCX Boom Clap Asylum, Warner Music
• Duke Dumont ft Jax Jones I Got U Blasé Boys Club/Virgin EMI, Universal Music
• Ed Sheeran Thinking Out Loud Asylum, Warner Music
• Mark Ronson ft Bruno Mars Uptown Funk Columbia, Sony Music
• One Direction You and I Syco Music, Sony Music
• Rita Ora I Will Never Let You Down Columbia, Sony Music
• Route 94 ft Jess Glynne My Love Rinse Recordings/Virgin EMI, Universal Music
• Sam Smith Stay With Me Capitol, Universal Music
• Sigma Nobody to Love 3 Beat/AATW, Universal Music

INTERNATIONAL MALE SOLO ARTIST Beck Virgin EMI, Universal Music Hozier Island, Universal Music Jack White XL Recordings, XL Beggars John Legend Columbia, Sony Music Pharrell Williams RCA, Sony Music

INTERNATIONAL FEMALE SOLO ARTIST

Beyoncé RCA, Sony Music

Lana Del Rey Polydor, Universal Music

Sia Monkey Puzzle/RCA, Sony Music

St Vincent Caroline, Universal Music

Taylor Swift Virgin EMI, Universal Music

George Harrison (The Beatles)

English musician, singer and songwriter George Harrison, was born 25 February 1943. He chieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles. Although John Lennon and Paul McCartney were the band’s primary songwriters, most of their albums included at least one Harrison composition, including “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, “Here Comes the Sun” and “Something”, which became the Beatles’ second-most-covered song. Harrison’s earliest musical influences included Big Bill Broonzy, George Formby and Django Reinhardt; Chet Atkins, Chuck Berry and Ry Cooder were significant later influences. By 1965 he had begun to lead the Beatles into folk rock through his interest in the Byrds andBob Dylan, and towards Indian classical music through his use of the sitar on “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)”. He developed an interest in the Hare Krishna movement and became an admirer of Indian culture and mysticism, introducing them to the other members of the Beatles and their Western audience by incorporating Indian instrumentation in their music. After the band’s break-up in 1970, Harrison released the triple album All Things Must Pass, from which two hit singles originated. He also organized the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh with Ravi Shankar, a precursor for later benefit concerts such as Live Aid.

Harrison was a music and film producer as well as a musician; he founded Dark Horse Records in 1974 and co-founded HandMade Films in 1978. If you watch carefully he has got a cameo in a few Monty Python films and his property was also used during the Doctor Who episodes Pyramids of Mars and Seeds of Death Harrison released several best-selling singles and albums as a solo performer, and in 1988 co-founded the platinum-selling supergroup the Traveling Wilburys. A prolific recording artist, he was featured as a guest guitarist on tracks by Badfinger, Ronnie Wood and Billy Preston, and collaborated on songs and music with Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton and Tom Petty, among others. Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 11 in their list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”. Harrison’s first marriage, to Pattie Boyd, ended in divorce in 1977. The following year he married Olivia Trinidad Arias, with whom he had one son, Dhani. Harrison died on 29 November 2001, aged 58, from lung cancer. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered in the Ganges and Yamuna rivers in India, in a private ceremony according to Hindu tradition. He left almost £100 million in his will.

http://youtu.be/OiuDrVvu-MU GEORGE HARRISON – BEST OF DARK HORSE

Invisible by James Patterson and David Ellis

I would like to read The thriller “Invisible” by James Patterson and David Ellis, which features FBI Research Analyst Emma Dockery who becomes obsessed with finding the link between hundreds of unsolved cases. She is also troubled by the death of Her sister, Marta, who died alone in a house fire eight months earlier, and refuses to believe it was accidental and becomes obsessed with home fires associated with a single fatality and she keeps having nightly recurring nightmares of an all-consuming fire.

At first Not even Emmy’s ex-boyfriend, field agent Harrison “Books” Bookman, will believe her that hundreds of kidnappings, rapes, and murders are all connected. However after analysing all 53 cases a pattern emerges and Emmy finds a piece of evidence he can’t afford to ignore -The victim is always found at the point of origin of the fire, always a bedroom, where any evidence will be destroyed and deaths appear accidental, hence no autopsy. More murders are reported by the day–and they’re all inexplicable. No motives, no murder weapons, no suspects. Could one person really be responsible for these unthinkable crimes?

So Emma Dockery and Books, begin A formal investigation to provide the FBI with substance to back her theory that an ingenious, meticulous, cold-blooded murderer is roaming freely in the states of America. The task is to capture him before the death toll climbs.

Anthony Burgess (Clockwork Orange)

English Writer and Composer John Anthony Burgess Wilson, FRSL (Anthony Burgess) was Born 25 February 1917 in Harpurhey, Manchester. Burgess was predominantly seen as a comic writer, and although this was how his works were read, he claimed that his works weren’t intended to be humorous. The dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange is Burgess’s most famous novel, though he dismissed it as one of his lesser works, and it is in many ways an atypical Burgess work. It was adapted into a highly controversial 1971 film by Stanley Kubrick, which Burgess said was chiefly responsible for the popularity of the book.A Clockwork Orange is a 1962 dystopian satire portraying a future and dystopian Western society with—based on contemporary trends—a culture of extreme youth rebellion and violence: it explores the violent nature of humans, human free will to choose between good or evil, and the desolation of free will as a solution to evil. Burgess experiments with language, writing in a Russian-influenced argot called “Nadsat” used by the younger characters and the anti-hero in his first-person narration. According to Burgess, the novel was a jeu d’esprit written in just three weeks. He bemoaned the fact that the book had been taken as the source material for a 1971 film that was perceived to glorify sex and violence. In 2005, A Clockwork Orange was included on Time magazine’s list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923, and it was named by Modern Library and its readers as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. The original transcipt of the book is at McMaster University. Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Clockwork Orange is the story of Alex, a teenager living in near-future England, who leads his gang on nightly orgies of opportunistic, random “ultra-violence”. Alex’s friends (“droogs” in the novel’s Anglo-Russian slang, Nadsat) are: Dim, a slow-witted bruiser who is the gang’s muscle; Georgie, an ambitious second-in-command; and Pete, who mostly plays along as the droogs indulge their taste for ultra-violence. Characterised as a sociopath and a hardened juvenile delinquent, Alex is also intelligent and quick-witted, with sophisticated taste in music, being particularly fond of Beethoven.The novel begins with the droogs sitting in their favorite hangout before indulging in a night’s mayhem. They assault a scholar walking home from the public library, rob a store leaving the owner and his wife bloodied and unconscious, stomp a panhandling derelict, then scuffle with a rival gang. Joyriding through the countryside in a stolen car, they break into an isolated cottage and maul the young couple living there, beating the husband and raping his wife. Georgie later challenges Alex for leadership of the gang, demanding that they pull a “man-sized” job.so Alex insists on following through on Georgie’s idea to burgle the home of a wealthy old woman. however this ends in tragedy, as Alex kills the elderly woman. He is prevented from escaping by Dim, who leaves him incapacitated on the front step as the police arrive and arrest him for murder.

Sentenced to prison for murder, Alex gets a job at the Wing chapel playing religious music, and he agrees to undergo an controversial experimental behaviour-modification treatment called the Ludovico Technique, which is a form of aversion therapy in which Alex receives an injection that makes him feel sick while watching graphically violent films, eventually conditioning him to suffer crippling bouts of nausea at the mere thought of violence. Although the prison chaplain accuses the state of stripping Alex of free will, the government officials on the scene are pleased with the results and Alex is released into society.

Burgess produced numerous other novels, including the Enderby quartet, and Earthly Powers, regarded by most critics as his greatest novel.Burgess was also an accomplished musician and linguist. He composed over 250 musical works, including a first symphony around age 18, wrote a number of libretti, and translated, among other works, Cyrano de Bergerac, Oedipus the King and Carmen And 2was a well known literary critic. sadly though Burgess passed away 22 November 1993 St John’s Wood, London, England at the age of 76.2008. However The Times newspaper placed Burgess at number 17 on their list of the top 50 greatest British writers along side William Shakespeare, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence and Ernest Hemingway

Peter Benenson (Amnesty International)

British lawyer and the founder of human rights group Amnesty International Peter Benenson passed away 25 February 2005, at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, aged 83 Born 31st July 1921 in London. Benenson was tutored privately by W. H. Auden before going to Eton. At the age of sixteen he helped to establish a relief fund with other schoolboys for children orphaned by the Spanish Civil War. He took his mother’s maiden name of Benenson as a tribute to his grandfather, the Russian gold tycoon Grigori Benenson, following his grandfather’s death.He enrolled for study at Balliol College, Oxford but World War II interrupted his education. From 1941 to 1945, Benenson worked at Bletchley Park, the British codebreaking centre, in the “Testery”, a section tasked with breaking German teleprinter ciphers.It was at this time when he met his first wife, Margaret Anderson. After demobilisation in 1946,

Benenson began practising as a barrister before joining the Labour Party and standing unsuccessfully for election. He was one of a group of British lawyers who founded JUSTICE in 1957, the UK-based human rights and law reform organisation. In 1958 he fell ill and moved to Italy in order to convalesce. In the same year he converted to the Roman Catholic Church.In 1961 Benenson was shocked and angered by a newspaper report of two Portuguese students from Coimbra sentenced to seven years in prison for raising their glasses in a toast to freedom during the autocratic regime of António de Oliveira Salazar – the Estado Novo. In 1961, Portugal ruled by the authoritarian Estado Novo regime, and anti-regime conspiracies were vigorously repressed by the Portuguese state police and deemed anti-Portuguese. He wrote to David Astor, editor of The Observer. On 28 May, Benenson’s article, entitled “The Forgotten Prisoners”, was published. The letter asked readers to write letters showing support for the students.

To co-ordinate such letter-writing campaigns, Amnesty International was founded in London in July 1961 at a meeting of Benenson and six other men, which included a Tory, a Liberal and a Labour MP.The response was so overwhelming that within a year groups of letter-writers had formed in more than a dozen countries.Initially appointed general secretary of AI, Benenson stood down in 1964 owing to ill health. By 1966, the Amnesty International faced an internal crisis and Benenson alleged that the organization he founded was being infiltrated by British intelligence. The advisory position of president of the International Executive was then created for him. In 1966, he began to make allegations of improper conduct against other members of the executive. An inquiry was set up which reported at Elsinore in Denmark in 1967. The allegations were rejected and Benenson resigned from AI.While never again active in the organization, Benenson was later personally reconciled with other executives, including Seán MacBride and also received the Pride of Britain Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2001.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

French impressionist artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born 25 February 1841.  Pierre-Auguste was the father of actor Pierre Renoir (1885–1952), filmmaker Jean Renoir (1894–1979) and ceramic artist Claude Renoir (1901–69). He was the grandfather of the filmmaker Claude Renoir (1913–1993), son of Pierre. born in Limoges, Haute-Vienne, France. As a boy, he worked in a porcelain factory where his drawing talents led to his being chosen to paint designs on fine china Before he enrolled in art school, he also painted hangings for overseas missionaries and decorations on fans and often visited the Louvre to study the French master painters.

In 1862, he began studying art under Charles Gleyre in Paris. There he met Alfred Sisley, Frédéric Bazille, and Claude Monet. At times, during the 1860s, he did not have enough money to buy paint. Although Renoir first started exhibiting paintings at the Paris Salon in 1864, recognition did not come for another ten years, due, in part, to the turmoil of the Franco-Prussian War. During the Paris Commune in 1871, while Renoir painted on the banks of the Seine River, some Communards thought he was a spy and were about to throw him into the river when a leader of the Commune, Raoul Rigault, recognized Renoir as the man who had protected him on an earlier occasion.In 1874, a ten-year friendship with Jules Le Cœur and his family ended, and Renoir lost not only the valuable support gained by the association, but also a generous welcome to stay on their property near Fontainebleau and its scenic forest. This loss of a favorite painting location resulted in a distinct change of subjects.

six of Renoir’s paintings were hung in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874 and two of his works were also shown with Durand-Ruel in London. In 1881, he traveled to Algeria, a country he associated with Eugène Delacroix, then to Madrid, to see the work of Diego Velázquez. Following that, he traveled to Italy to see Titian’s masterpieces in Florence and the paintings of Raphael in Rome. On 15 January 1882 Renoir met the composer Richard Wagner at his home in Palermo, Sicily. Renoir painted Wagner’s portrait in just thirty-five minutes. Sadly Renoir contracted pneumonia which permanently damaged his respiratory system, And convalesced in Algeria. In 1883, Renoir spent the summer in Guernsey, creating fifteen paintings in little over a month. Most of these feature Moulin Huet, a bay in Saint Martin’s, Guernsey. These paintings were the subject of a set of commemorative postage stamps issued by the Bailiwick of Guernsey in 1983.

While living and working in Montmartre, Renoir employed Suzanne Valadon as a model, who eventually became a leading painter herself and In 1887, during Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, Renoir donated several paintings to the “French Impressionist Paintings” catalog as a token of his loyalty. In 1890, he married Aline Victorine Charigot, who, had already served as a model for Le Déjeuner des canotiers (Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881), and with whom he had already had a child, Pierre, in 1885. Renoir painted many scenes of his wife and daily family life including their children and their nurse, Aline’s cousin Gabrielle Renard. The Renoirs had three sons, Jean Renoir became a filmmaker and Pierre Renoir, became a stage and film actor.

Around 1892, Renoir developed rheumatoid arthritis. So In 1907, he moved to the warmer climate of “Les Collettes,” a farm at Cagnes-sur-Mer, close to the Mediterranean coast. Renoir painted during the last twenty years of his life even when he was wheelchair-bound and arthritis severely limited his movement. He developed progressive deformities in his hands and ankylosis of his right shoulder, requiring him to change his painting technique. Renoir remained able to grasp a brush, although he required an assistant to place it in his hand.The wrapping of his hands with bandages, apparent in late photographs of the artist, served to prevent skin irritation. During this period, he created sculptures by cooperating with a young artist, Richard Guino, who worked the clay. Due to his limited joint mobility, Renoir also used a moving canvas, or picture roll, to facilitate painting large works. Renoir’s portrait of Austrian actress Tilla Durieux (1914) contains playful flecks of vibrant color on her shawl that offset the classical pose of the actress and highlight Renoir’s skill just 5 years before his death.In 1919, Renoir visited the Louvre to see his paintings hanging with those of the old masters. He died in the village of Cagnes-sur-Mer, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, on 3 December 1919