The demons that drove Richard Pryor to make us laugh. 24 August 2013Last updated at 19:34 ET By Chris Summers BBC News It is eight years since comedian Richard Pryor died, aged 65. A new documentary sheds light on his life, his bizarre childhood and the demons that tormented him and may also be responsible for his genius. There are a handful of groundbreaking comedians who have changed the rules of the game. Lenny Bruce, Tony Hancock, Monty Python, Andy Kaufman perhaps. Richard Pryor was one of those comedy iconoclasts. He was not the first black stand-up comic. Bill Cosby, Redd Foxx and Dick Gregory came before him. But Pryor was a "game-changer" whose on-stage style would make him the most influential comedian of his generation, especially for black comics such as Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle.
The Emmy Award-winning Marina Zenovich, who made the Storyville documentary Richard Pryor: Omit The Logic, tells the BBC: "He broke the barriers about talking about race and sex. In 1979 Pryor visited Africa for the first time. Stop Me If You've Heard This One | 11 Suspiciously Sound-Alike Songs. Recently, two pop hits—Robin Thicke, T.I. and Pharrell’s “Blurred Lines” and One Direction’s “Best Song Ever”—made headlines for taking inspiration from classic songs. Irate One Direction fans started a frenzy on Twitter due to rumors that The Who was going to ask YouTube to take down One Direction’s “Best Song Ever” on the grounds that the track bore an uncanny resemblance to The Who’s classic “Baba O’Riley.” The Twitter tempest surrounding the hashtag #donttouchbestsongever eventually led The Who’s frontman Pete Townsend to issue a statement this week assuring Directioners’ that he had no intention of pursuing action against “Best Song Ever.” In fact, he said, he liked the song and, perhaps less believably, One Direction.
In the statement, Townsend admitted that he was flattered by the similarity, noting, “I’m happy to think they may have been influenced a little bit by the Who.” While Townsend was honored by the similarity, not everyone takes it as a compliment. Elysium: A politically charged 'popcorn sundae' 11 August 2013Last updated at 20:21 ET By Emma Jones Entertainment reporter, BBC News Elysium was largely shot in the world's second biggest garbage dump in Mexico. Matt Damon says it "was one of the most difficult shoots of my life". In 2009, Neill Blomkamp was hailed as a hero of "sci-fi socialism", when his film District 9 used a script about aliens to convey a strong message about human xenophobia and racial segregation.
Now the South African-born director has delivered his follow-up, Elysium, which "deals with the growing discrepancy between rich and poor in the world". "We set the story in the future, in the year 2154," says Blomkamp. "Earth has become a third-world planet, and all the rich people can escape to live on a space station called Elysium, where illness can be cured easily with access to the latest technology.
"There is no suffering for them, while the poor are literally imprisoned and suffer here. "It's not science fiction. Continue reading the main story “Start Quote. City of God, 10 years on. 5 August 2013Last updated at 19:03 ET By Donna Bowater Rio de Janeiro Leandro Firmino (3rd left) is still recognised for his portrayal of drug dealer Li'l Ze Ten years after a Rio de Janeiro slum called Cidade de Deus (City of God) burst into the world's consciousness with the hit film of the same name, very little has changed for the residents and the actors have enjoyed mixed fortunes, writes Donna Bowater. In one of the ubiquitous street-side bars in the west of Rio de Janeiro, Leandro Firmino sits sipping water dressed in the shirt of his beloved Flamengo football team.
In Cidade de Deus, the community where he grew up, he knows almost all who pass by and gives them a thumbs up or a wave. He could be any of the million who live in the city's favelas. A decade after playing the terrifying drug lord Li'l Ze in the unexpected box-office success, City of God, he shows few other signs of the fame he achieved back then. Sprawling poverty "It's gone pretty fast," says Firmino. Leandro Firmino. Werner Herzog film warns of dangers of texting and driving. 12 August 2013Last updated at 11:18 ET Herzog's huge creative output includes documentaries and films A new documentary by celebrated German director Werner Herzog is warning of the dangers of texting and driving.
The educational half-hour film, From One Second to the Next, was sponsored by US telephone network AT&T. It features families and victims of collisions caused by people texting while driving relate their stories to the Oscar-nominated director. According to the documentary, 100,000 accidents in the US every year are caused by drivers using mobile phones. The documentary is on YouTube and will be shown in more than 40,000 schools across North America. Herzog told the Canadian Press: "There's a completely new culture out there. Alongside victims, the documentary also features interviews with the perpetrators who have killed and injured people through careless driving. His feature films include Fitzcarraldo and The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans starring Nicolas Cage. Unseen Jerry Lewis film footage leaks online. 12 August 2013Last updated at 10:22 ET Lewis was in Cannes to promote Max Rose Film footage which US comic actor Jerry Lewis said would never see the light of day has appeared on YouTube.
Lewis withdrew his movie The Day The Clown Cried after it was completed in 1972. As recently as May, he told journalists in Cannes: "I thought the work was bad. I lost the magic. " The film told the story of a clown used to entertain children in a Nazi death camp during WWII. The footage shows Lewis in costume and giving behind the scenes direction. The production was plagued with problems including a shortage of money with Lewis reportedly ended up paying costs to finish the film. Speaking at the Cannes Film Festival in May, where he had a film showing for the first time in more than 20 years, Lewis told reporters: "No one will ever see it, because I'm embarrassed.
"I believed in the work and the way it should have been, and it wasn't. " The footage apparently first surfaced on a Flemish website last year. The great big Pixar conspiracy | Film. Anyone can swan up to the Back to the Future trilogy and point out, after a single watch, that the grand finale is flawed: Doc and Marty would be better off extracting petrol from the buried DeLorean. No doubt it took a bit longer to formulate the ticklish notion that Edward Norton's nameless schizophrenic in Fight Club is a grown-up Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes.
I love that a blunt single sentence can debunk Disney's Aladdin. But the very best fan theories – the fan theories you can waste weeks picking over – take a broader view. They're ambitious. Maybe they find unexamined joins in a directors' oeuvre. (That heightened pop-culture awareness shared by characters in Tarantino films – could it all be due to a key choice of location in Inglourious Basterds?)
Maybe they take in decades' worth of material. Step forward Jon Negroni, a blogger who, inspired by a video on Cracked.com, wrote up a vast hypothesis that links every Pixar film from Toy Story to Monsters University. Hong Kong celebrates Bruce Lee's life and legacy. 19 July 2013Last updated at 21:10 ET By Juliana Liu BBC News, Hong Kong Shannon Lee was only four when her father, Bruce Lee, died The world knows him as Bruce Lee, the cool and cocksure Chinese-American martial artist who unexpectedly burst into global cinematic consciousness in the early 1970s.
He starred in only five feature films as an adult, and only three of them were released before his early death in Hong Kong at the age of 32. But fascination with his life, philosophy and legacy remains, crossing the barriers of age and nationality. Starting on Saturday, Hong Kong will mark the 40th anniversary of Lee's death by opening a five-year exhibition at the Heritage Museum celebrating the achievements of the city's biggest star.
"I think that actually the reason we are still taking about Bruce Lee today, and not in a nostalgic way but in a relevant way, is because of the depth of his experience and his philosophy and the authenticity of his life," said Shannon Lee, his only daughter. Detroit: The musical legacy of the Motor City. 19 July 2013Last updated at 13:17 ET By Ellie Davis BBC News entertainment reporter From Motown to Eminem, Detroit has a rich musical heritage Detroit has spawned more than five generations of musical heritage from the legendary sounds of Motown to the godfather of punk, Iggy Pop. The sounds of the city, which has now filed for bankruptcy with debts of £12bn, are synonymous with its industry. Filmmaker Julien Temple, who visited Detroit in 2009 to film a documentary about the Motor City, said: "I think the music is still a lifeline for people.
" "The music wouldn't have arrived without the cars and the industry couldn't have existed without the cheap labour from the south, " he told the BBC News website. "There is a real sense of survival there and it's incredible people have survived so long. I'm not without hope. " Motown played an important role in the racial integration of popular music "Motown made their music in response to working on the assembly line. The Sound of Music cast reunite on Oprah Winfrey show. 29 October 2010Last updated at 11:52 The 1965 musical won five Oscars including best picture The cast of The Sound of Music have reunited for the first time in 45 years on Oprah Winfrey's US chat show.
Dame Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer - Maria and Captain Von Trapp in the classic musical film - were joined by the actors who played his seven on-screen children. The story of a singing Austrian family trying to escape the Nazis prior to World War II won five Oscars in 1966. Plummer jokingly referred to the film as "The Sound of Mucus" on the show. He revealed the nickname for the film came about "because there needed to be a cynic of some kind around to stop it from getting too saccharine. " While other cast members have reunited in the past, Plummer had previously distanced himself from his most famous role. 'Huge crush' Actress Charmain Carr, who played Plummer's eldest daughter Liesl, revealed she had been captivated by the Canadian actor during nine months spent filming in Austria. 7 billion people and you: What's your number?
Sources: All population data are based on estimates by the UN Population Division and all calculations provided by the UN Population Fund. The remaining data are from other sections of the UN, the Global Footprint Network and the International Telecommunications Union. Want to find out more? Visit the UN Population Fund's detailed population calculator, 7 billion and me. Notes on the data: Only birth dates after 1910 can be accommodated and only countries with populations of more than 100,000 people are included. Where available, the UN's medium variant and average figures from 2005-2010 have been used.
Three country groupings - developed, developing and least developed - featured in the conclusions are those referenced by the UN for assessing the Millennium Development Goals. Read the answers to frequently asked questions here. How Scientology changed the internet. 17 July 2013Last updated at 00:09 GMT By Dave Lee Technology reporter, BBC News The Church of Scientology has made several moves to have its secret scriptures removed from the internet What do Wikipedia, Wikileaks, Anonymous and copyright law have in common? The answer is they have all been influenced by the Church of Scientology International (CSI), as it took on ex-members and critics who took their protests on to the internet. As the Church successfully removes another website, just how big an influence has Scientology had on the internet we all use?
Last month digital rights activists at the influential Electronic Frontiers Foundation (EFF) placed the Church of Scientology into their hall of shame over what it says were repeated acts against internet freedoms. It was just the latest twist in the Church's long-running feud with "negative" Scientology content online, one that has lasted almost two decades.
Continue reading the main story “Start Quote "It will be quite simple, actually. "