Maleficent (2014)

Maleficent is a 2014 American-British fantasy film directed by Robert Stromberg from a screenplay by Linda Woolverton. Starring Angelina Jolie as the eponymous Disney villainess character, the film is a live-action re-imagining of Walt Disney's 1959 animated film Sleeping Beauty, and portrays the story from the perspective of the antagonist, Maleficent.


Principal photography took place between June and October 2012. The film premiered at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood on May 28, 2014, and was released in the United Kingdom that same day. It was released by Walt Disney Pictures in the U.S. on May 30, 2014 in the Disney Digital 3D, RealD 3D, and IMAX 3D formats, as well as in conventional theaters. The film was met with mixed reviews from critics, but was a commercial success grossing $521 million worldwide.


An elderly narrator tells the story of Maleficent, a very strong and powerful faerie living in the Moors, a magical realm bordering a human kingdom. As a young girl, she falls in love with a human peasant boy named Stefan, but his mutual affection for Maleficent is overshadowed by his ambition to become king. As they grew older, Stefan stops seeing Maleficent. After Maleficent defeats the current king in battle when he attempts to invade the Moors, he offers to name whoever kills her as his successor. Stefan overhears this, goes to see Maleficent and deceives her into thinking that he has come to warn her of the king's plot. He then drugs her and attempts to kill her but cannot bring himself to do so. Instead, he burns her wings off with iron, a lethal substance to fairies, and presents them to the king as proof of her death. Maleficent rescues a raven named Diaval to serve as her informant and he reports to her that Stefan has been crowned king. The realization that Stefan betrayed her to gain the throne devastates Maleficent and in retaliation, she declares herself queen of the Moors, forming a dark oppressive kingdom with Diaval as her one companion and confidant.


Some time later, Diaval informs Maleficent that King Stefan is hosting a christening for his newborn daughter, Aurora. Bent on revenge, Maleficent arrives uninvited and curses the newborn princess: on her sixteenth birthday, she will prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel, which will cause her to fall into a death-like sleep. After Stefan is forced by Maleficent to beg for his daughter, she offers a caveat: the curse can be broken by true love's kiss. Terrified of Maleficent's vengeance, Stefan sends Aurora to live with three pixies until the day after her sixteenth birthday. He sends out his armies to find and kill Maleficent, but she surrounds her kingdom with an impenetrable shield of thorns.


Despite her initial dislike for Princess Aurora, Maleficent begins to care about the girl when the neglectful pixies fail to do so. After a brief meeting with the young Aurora, Maleficent watches over her from afar. When Aurora is 15, she sees Maleficent for the first time since then and calls her "faerie godmother", as she recalled being watched over by her all her life. Realizing she has grown fond of the princess, Maleficent attempts to revoke the curse, but cannot as she herself had declared nothing could stop it. Aurora later falls in love with Prince Philip. On the day before Aurora's 16th birthday, Maleficent, hoping the avoid the curse, allows the girl to live in the Moors, far away from any spindles. The pixies, however, inadvertently tell Aurora of her parentage and of Maleficent's true identity, and a furious Aurora runs away to her father.


After a quick dismissive reunion on his part, Stefan locks Aurora away for safekeeping. She begins to fall under the curse's eternal sleeping trance. She is drawn to the dungeon, where the curse assembles a spinning wheel. Aurora pricks her finger and falls asleep. Intent on saving her, Maleficent abducts Phillip and infiltrates Stefan's castle to have him kiss Aurora and break the curse. However, Phillip's romantic kiss has no effect. Maleficent apologizes to the princess and swears no harm will come to her, kissing Aurora's forehead. This causes Aurora to awaken. Maleficent's curse has been broken as her motherly concern for Aurora constitutes "true love". Aurora forgives her and they attempt to flee the castle, but Maleficent is trapped in an iron net and attacked by Stefan and his guards. Maleficent transforms Diaval into a dragon and he lifts the net off her, but is driven back by the soldiers. Stefan beats Maleficent and taunts her, but before he can kill her, her wings, freed from his chamber by Aurora, fly back to her and reattach themselves. Stefan attempts once more to kill her, but plummets to his death. Aurora is crowned queen of the human and faerie realms by Maleficent, unifying the two kingdoms with Phillip at her side. The narrator then reveals her identity as "the one they called the Sleeping Beauty".

Amazon’s Fire Phone


Amazon Fire Phone Amazon’s Fire Phone innovates with its four-camera configuration. It innovates with its object-identifying Firefly feature. And it innovates with its Mayday feature that provides face-to-tracked-face assistance on the go.

But one way in which it doesn’t innovate may be the way that most people were hoping it would: price. Available for $199 on a two-year AT&T contract or $649 unlocked, the Fire Phone is similar to other premium phones such as the iPhone 5S and Samsung Galaxy S5.

The Fire Phone’s failure to disrupt has led many to question whether it is keeping the Amazon flame. Indeed, the cellular options available to Fire Phone buyers are less creative than the limited free data option Amazon offered with AT&T at the release of the Kindle Fire HD.

The Fire Phone features a 2.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 CPU with an Adreno 330 GPU and 2GB of RAM, comparable to the Galaxy S5's 2.5Ghz quad-core CPU. Its 2,400mAh battery is slightly smaller than the Galaxy S5's 2,800mAh battery, though Amazon claims it can provide up to 22 hours of talk time, 65 hours of audio playback, or 11 hours of video playback.

Amazon Fire Phone
There's also a 13-megapixel camera, an f/2.0 lens, and optical image stabilization. Bezos compared the Fire Phone to the iPhone 5S and the Samsung Galaxy S5, saying that no matter the situation the Fire Phone will take better shots. There's a quick-access shutter button on the side, and unlimited cloud storage for your photos. That's where Amazon has an advantage, really, its ability to do cloud storage cheaply and well.

It runs Amazon's Android-based Fire OS 3.5, with a couple of new tweaks. The carousel of recent items is still foremost on the device, but there are "active widgets" underneath showing recent activity in those apps as you swipe through them. Everywhere else, there's a three-paneled design: one for navigation, one for your primary content, one for what Bezos called "a delighter," things like song lyrics in the music app.

Amazon Fire Phone
Gorilla Glass 3 is slathered on the front and back, the buttons are made of aluminum and stainless steel details and a rubberized polyurethane grip make for a chic profile.

Taking advantage of Amazon's digital content library, the Fire provides "instant access" to over 33 million songs, apps, games, movies, TV shows, books, audiobooks and magazines. Prime members will get unlimited streaming access to movies and TV episodes at no extra chard. The same sort of deal applies to Kindle Owners' Lending Library and Prime Music members.

Amazon also unveiled something called Firefly. By pressing and holding a dedicated button, the Fire Phone can recognize printed phone numbers, email and web addresses, business cards and much more. Firefly even works at a distance, so you can capture a phone number on a sign from across the street, for example.

Amazon Fire Phone
The idea is to be able to send an email, make a call, save a contact or go to a website without having to type it all into your phone.

And that leaves us with the question of carrier. Taking a page from the first iPhone launch, you can get the Fire on any carrier you like -- as long as it's AT&T. In an age when the iPhone and Android phones are available on pretty much any carrier, being locked into AT&T could be a non-starter for many folks.

The Fire has some exciting and innovative features. In many ways, it's the phone Apple fans were hoping the 5s would be last fall. But those innovative features walk a fine line between cool and gimmicky. Perhaps Amazon is banking on its general goodwill being the secret sauce that sways consumers to the Fire.

More details on Amazon Fire Phone

Maya Angelou - a global renaissance woman

Dr. Maya Angelou is one of the most renowned and influential voices of our time. Hailed as a global renaissance woman, Dr. Angelou is a celebrated poet, memoirist, novelist, educator, dramatist, producer, actress, historian, filmmaker, and civil rights activist.

Born on April 4th, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri, Dr. Angelou was raised in St. Louis and Stamps, Arkansas. In Stamps, Dr. Angelou experienced the brutality of racial discrimination, but she also absorbed the unshakable faith and values of traditional African-American family, community, and culture.

As a teenager, Dr. Angelou’s love for the arts won her a scholarship to study dance and drama at San Francisco’s Labor School. At 14, she dropped out to become San Francisco’s first African-American female cable car conductor. She later finished high school, giving birth to her son, Guy, a few weeks after graduation. As a young single mother, she supported her son by working as a waitress and cook, however her passion for music, dance, performance, and poetry would soon take center stage.

In 1954 and 1955, Dr. Angelou toured Europe with a production of the opera Porgy and Bess. She studied modern dance with Martha Graham, danced with Alvin Ailey on television variety shows and, in 1957, recorded her first album, Calypso Lady. In 1958, she moved to New York, where she joined the Harlem Writers Guild, acted in the historic Off-Broadway production of Jean Genet's The Blacks and wrote and performed Cabaret for Freedom.

In 1960, Dr. Angelou moved to Cairo, Egypt where she served as editor of the English language weekly The Arab Observer. The next year, she moved to Ghana where she taught at the University of Ghana's School of Music and Drama, worked as feature editor for The African Review and wrote for The Ghanaian Times.

During her years abroad, Dr. Angelou read and studied voraciously, mastering French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic and the West African language Fanti. While in Ghana, she met with Malcolm X and, in 1964, returned to America to help him build his new Organization of African American Unity.

Shortly after her arrival in the United States, Malcolm X was assassinated, and the organization dissolved. Soon after X's assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. asked Dr. Angelou to serve as Northern Coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. King's assassination, falling on her birthday in 1968, left her devastated.

With the guidance of her friend, the novelist James Baldwin, she began work on the book that would become I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Published in 1970, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was published to international acclaim and enormous popular success. The list of her published verse, non-fiction, and fiction now includes more than 30 bestselling titles.

A trailblazer in film and television, Dr. Angelou wrote the screenplay and composed the score for the 1972 film Georgia, Georgia. Her script, the first by an African American woman ever to be filmed, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

She continues to appear on television and in films including the landmark television adaptation of Alex Haley's Roots (1977) and John Singleton's Poetic Justice (1993). In 1996, she directed her first feature film, Down in the Delta. In 2008, she composed poetry for and narrated the award-winning documentary The Black Candle, directed by M.K. Asante.

Dr. Angelou has served on two presidential committees, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Arts in 2000, the Lincoln Medal in 2008, and has received 3 Grammy Awards. President Clinton requested that she compose a poem to read at his inauguration in 1993. Dr. Angelou's reading of her poem "On the Pulse of the Morning" was broadcast live around the world.

Dr. Angelou has received over 50 honorary degrees and is Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University.

Dr. Maya Angelou passed quietly in her home before 8:00 a.m. EST. Her family is extremely grateful that her ascension was not belabored by a loss of acuity or comprehension. She lived a life as a teacher, activist, artist and human being. She was a warrior for equality, tolerance and peace. The family is extremely appreciative of the time we had with her and we know that she is looking down upon us with love.

Dr. Angelou’s words and actions continue to stir our souls, energize our bodies, liberate our minds, and heal our hearts.

Check Maya Angelou's books on Amazon.com

Rihanna - a completely see-through dress

Rihanna showed off her entire body in a sheer, sequin dress at the awards, but she covered up one thing — her head!

Rihanna was honored with the 2014 Fashion Icon Award, and she definitely proved she isn’t afraid to take risks. Rihanna goes fully topless for Lui Magazine and gets in trouble for exposing her nipples in Instagram. This after her topless shoot for...

rihanna-at-cfda-fashion-awards


Rihanna likes to fill her Instagram and Twitter with sexy topless selfies. We have compiled Rihanna's sexiest topless moments of all time. She showed up in a completely see-through dress!

Even so, we love her daring style and amazing confidence!

rihanna-at-cfda-fashion-awards


Rihanna of course had to make the biggest splash while attending the 2014 CFDA Fashion Awards held at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center on Monday (June 2) in New York City as she was honoured with the Fashion Icon Award, much to the bewilderment of most.

Sporting a sparkly, see-through dress, the "Stay" crooner bared her breasts and butt at the annual Council of Fashion Designers of America award. The 26-year-old, who was being honored the 2014 Fashion Icon award at the event, capped off her look with a matching head wrap, gloves and -- presumably for censors -- a strategically-placed fur stole and nude-colored underwear to cover up her ladyparts.

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On collecting the award, the seemingly supremely confident star told the audience that fashion had always been her defence mechanism: ‘I can compensate for all my weaknesses with my fashion,” she said, adding: ‘There are rules, but rules are meant to be broken.’

The singer, who’s never been shy of showing off her areolas, wore a custom Adam Selman fishnet dress styled with a matching headscarf and gloves, which are all accented with over 200,000 Swarovski crystals.

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Her dazzling look was also styled with a pink fur shrug, plus additional jewels courtesy of Jacob and Co.

I have to say I kinda loved it until I got to the back. Areolas are one thing, but bare butt cheeks? Really Ri Ri? What’s next – total nakedness?

Rihanna has been donning a short pink wig for the last couple of weeks but ditched the crazy ‘do and showed up to Hot 97′s Summer Jam on June 1 with long, black curls.

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At the CFDA Awards, she hid her hair under a sequin head scarf. It really brought the attention to her beautiful face.

She rocked a super sexy smokey eye and long, dramatic lashes.

Her skin was clear and glowing with a bronzer accentuating her cheekbones.

She kept her lips nude this time around, ditching the bold red she rocked at Summer Jam.

rihanna-at-cfda-fashion-awards

The Paris Boat Show bestows its first ever motor boat design award

Created in partnership with Moteur Boat and Neptune, the Nautic Motor Boat Design Award is the first motor boat design award to be given at the Paris Boat Show. Five finalists were chosen by popular vote on Facebook during the month of September: the Monte Carlo MC 5, the Jeanneau NC 14, the Prestige 450, the Sunseeker Portofino 40 and the Four Winns Horizon 290. The public was also part of the final decision, in parallel with a panel of judges, which was announced on December 13th.

And the winner of the 2013 Nautic Motor Boat Design Award is…the Jeanneau NC 14!




The Jeanneau NC 14 is “an apartment on the water with a terrace and a sea view.” Designed for real life and use as a day or weekend boat, the 14-meter NC 14 adds a new standard of luxury to the Jeanneau NC-series. Available with twin Volvo IPS 400 D4-300 Hp diesel engines or two Volvo IPS 500 D6 with 370 Hp, she is not lacking in get-up-and-go, easily reaching speeds of over 20 knots.


Jeanneau NC 14

New Concept? The success of the new NC line has made an impact in the world of Jeanneau.

The original driving spirit behind the concept, “an apartment on the water, with a terrace and a sea view,» has been perfectly distilled into the NC 9 and NC 11, resulting in real enthusiasm for these “new” boats.
On the heels of this success, Jeanneau is bringing the concept to the new NC 14, aboard which luxurious elegance and comfort are matched by innovation.

Jeanneau NC 14


Technical specifications:
Length overall    13.73 m / 45'
Hull length    11.96 m / 39'2"
Hull beam    4.1 m / 13'5"
Light displacement    10500 kg / 23149 lbs
Standard keel draught    1.07 m / 3'6"
Fuel capacity    900 L / 238 GAL
Water capacity    412 L / 109 GAL
Cabins    2
Motor    2 x Volvo IPS 400 D4-300 Hp
CE Category    B-12 / C-14