Glimpse Of Horizon

Cancer survivors produce calendar for fundraising
A group of Cancer survivors are proudly counting not only their birthdays but every day of their lives and have produced a 2011 calendar as a Fundraising project. Those looking for that Christmas Present that has meaning and will last the recipient more than a few days may consider making a $5 donation to the survivor and caregiver team of the Relay for Life, sponsored by the American Cancer Society. "The front cover is all the survivors that attended the Relay for Life back in June and attended...

Boxing turns to silver screen for silver lining
The film about the hard-scrabble Boston-area boxer raked in more than $12 million its first full weekend, has been nominated for six Golden Globes and figures to be an Oscar darling when nominations are announced next month. Wahlberg and co-star Christian Bale even graced the cover of Sports Illustrated, which trumpeted the film as an instant classic. The sport itself only wishes it could get the same kind of publicity. While boxing remains one of the great storytelling backdrops, with its inher...

Jeff Bridges Almost Told Coen Brothers No On 'The Big Lebowski' (VIDEO)
The Dude almost did not abide. One of the most memorable characters of the last two decades of film almost never came to be. In the new PBS documentary 'Jeff Bridges: The Dude Abides,' the star talks about they hesitation and uncertainty he felt about accepting the role that spawned millions of cult followers. Meeting writers and directors the Coen brothers at a party, the pair told Bridges they had written a role for him. He was excited, but flabbergasted when he read the script. "I said, wha...

How about family movies for New Year's Eve?
WASHINGTON – Forget the party hats. Forget the bars. Forget the ball dropping in Times Square. Forget driving. Forget New Year's Rockin' Eve. How about some nice pleasant, relaxed family time with some good movies? That's what the WND Superstore video department has to offer you – with just a few days planning to make it happen. You just supply the Popcorn. Be sure to browse through the entire department – it's not just documentaries anymore. There's plenty of pure, upliftin...

Nebraska dressmaker gets a seam in her lungs
Felicia Radu doesn't think of herself as brave. "I say a prayer and go to the dentist," she says. But she's not exactly risk averse. Over the first half of this decade, the former Romanian clothing designer met her future husband by telephone, flew 5,000 miles to be with him in Lincoln and gave birth to a daughter. Still, pulmonary specialist Dr. William Johnson was challenged when it came to convincing Radu to undergo what he calls "as big a cardiopulmonary operation as there is," with a 1-in-2...

good guys (and gals), Part II
Last week we heard about a store manager who made an emergency house call for a Christmas shopper, a cleaning service that helped a Veteran for free and a bookstore employee who read some missing pages from a book to a customer over the phone. Today we have Part Two of The Fixer’s Good Guys (and Gals), our annual feature on happy consumer stories. (To see even more letters, check out the longer version of this column at suntimes.com.) Dear Fixer: Four years ago, as my father was dying of c...

WWII Vet a Jolly Santa After 24 Years
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) - For more than two decades, 86-year-old Bob Rogers has been one of Santa Claus' helpers in Wichita. What makes a good Santa? "Having love in your heart," Rogers said. And he shows it with plenty of enthusiasm. "I'm not one of those store Santas. They generally just say hi to kids," Rogers said. "They're good, but they're not animated. I'm animated." He certainly was during his Santa visit to the Dole VA Medical Center earlier this month. Besides handing out candy canes to sta...

Providence high school student finds his calling in the kitchen, serving faith, family and charity
PROVIDENCE — Jamaree Lopes is only a High School senior but he speaks with a wisdom born of a deep faith that all we have to do is get out of God’s way and God will provide. Lopes was in the principal’s office a week ago, not because he’d bunked school or gotten into a fight, but to talk about how he has logged 800 hours of Community Service cooking at a Soup Kitchen run by his church. Eight hundred hours. That’s the equivalent of two Summer Vacations and 20 weeks o...

Providence high school student finds his calling
PROVIDENCE — Jamaree Lopes is only a High School senior but he speaks with a wisdom born of a deep faith that all we have to do is get out of God’s way and God will provide. Lopes was in the principal’s office a week ago, not because he’d bunked school or gotten into a fight, but to talk about how he has logged 800 hours of Community Service cooking at a Soup Kitchen run by his church. Eight hundred hours. That’s the equivalent of two Summer Vacations and 20 weeks o...

Monica Yant Kinney: How a savior and survivors finished 2010
Earlier this month, I fielded a "whatever happened to?" query from an economics teacher curious about an eminent-domain case I wrote about four years ago. I get requests like that all the time. News seems fleeting when it's flying by on Twitter, but if my in-box tells me anything, it's that great stories leave lasting impressions. So this Sunday and Wednesday, let's pause to catch up on people and issues in 2010 that grabbed - and, I hope, held - your attention. Surely you remember Gen...

Hats off to KSHB TV in Kansas City for music special
Christmas used to be a day, and a season, when television was flooded with choices of musical shows of lovely Christmas music. A sign of the times, and the absurdity of Political Correctness, has left viewers devoid of such treats in the 21st century. But not local TV station KSHB - Channel 41 which aired a special called "Sounds of the Holidays" on Christmas Day morning. This Christmas and holiday season special featured choirs from eleven local High Schools. The two hour special featured ...

Olympic filmmaker Bud Greenspan dies at 84 in NYC
NEW YORK (AP) — The trailblazing filmmaker who spent decades documenting the stories of Olympic athletes has died. Bud Greenspan was 84. Greenspan’s companion Nancy Beffa says he died Saturday from complications of Parkinson’s disease at his home in New York City. The award-winning filmmaker was known for documentaries chronicling athletes and their stories at both Winter and Summer Olympics. Beffa said his most recent work dealt with the rough cuts of films from the Vancouver ...

Olympic filmmaker Bud Greenspan dies at 84 in NYC
The trailblazing filmmaker who spent decades documenting the stories of Olympic athletes has died. Bud Greenspan was 84. Greenspan's companion Nancy Beffa says he died Saturday from complications of Parkinson's disease at his home in New York City. The award-winning filmmaker was known for documentaries chronicling athletes and their stories at both Winter and Summer Olympics. Beffa said his most recent work dealt with the rough cuts of films from the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games. A native New Yo...

David Wallechinsky: Bud Greenspan, Olympic Filmmaker
Olympic filmmaker Bud Greenspan died in New York City, at age 84, on December 25, 2010, with his partner and business associate, Nancy Beffa, by his side. As the vice-president of the International Society of Olympic Historians, I had the honor of presenting Bud, during the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, one of our awards, the Vikelas Plaque, for his contributions to Olympic History. As I said that day in Vancouver, it was I who felt honored to have the opportunity to express my appreciation ...

Olympic filmmaker Bud Greenspan dies at 84 in NYC
Bud Greenspan, the filmmaker whose documentaries often soared as triumphantly as the Olympic athletes he chronicled for more than six decades, died at his home in New York City. He was 84. He died Saturday from complications of Parkinson’s disease, companion Nancy Beffa said. Greenspan’s most recent work dealt with the rough cuts of films from the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games. The award-winning filmmaker unapologetically focused on both the large and small successes of the athletes i...

Capsule reviews: 'True Grit' and other films
"Little Fockers" — Meet the latest in Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller's comedy franchise. Grit your teeth through the fairly short though agonizing duration of its stay. Then wave goodbye in relief as its huge cast of characters departs like the annoying in-laws they are. "Meet the Parents" was a tolerable trifle and "Meet the Fockers" was a bloated bore. But this third installment is tasteless trash, filled with abysmally unfunny gags involving vomit, enemas, erectile dysfunction and the l...

Thailand bans film about transgender father
BANGKOK -- Thailand's film board has banned a movie about a Transgender father struggling to raise two Children, a move the director says highlights the conservative side of Thai society despite its freewheeling reputation. The National Film Board ruled earlier this week that the film, "Insects in the Backyard," cannot be shown in Thailand because it contains scenes that are immoral and pornographic. Authorities have not yet published a public explanation of the ban issued Wednesday, but cultur...

Jafar Panahi's reward for bringing cinematic glory to Iran? Jail | Hamid Dabashi
Jafar Panahi has been found Guilty of colluding in gathering and making Propaganda against the Iranian regime, sentenced to six years in Prison and banned from making films for 20 years. Photograph: Str/EPA A spectre is haunting the Islamic Republic of Iran - the spectre of freedom. All the powers of the old guard have entered a holy alliance to exorcise it: the ayatollahs and their warlords, Ahmadinejad and Khamenei, hanging judges and paramilitary vigilantes. To try to exorcise that ...

Kevin Smith to screen horror film
PARK CITY, Utah, Dec. 24 (UPI) -- Director Kevin Smith says he will screen his first-ever horror film at Utah's Sundance Film Festival in January. "Red State," Smith's departure from comedy and satire, stars Michael Parks, John Goodman and Melissa Leo as people who run afoul of religious zealots in the Midwest, the New York Daily News reported. Adding to the aura of Smith as provocateur, the movie references the Ku Klux Klan in its one-sheet, which shows a figure covered in a white sheet standin...

Great news: Turkish TV to air pro-'Palestinian' 'documentary'
Just a reminder that I'm in Boston (although this is being scheduled anyway). Turkish television is to air a six-part 'documentary' about the Children of 'Palestine' starting Sunday. The lives of the Children of Palestine, arguably one of the world’s worst regions of conflict for decades, will come under the spotlight on the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation’s TRT Arabic channel this weekend when it starts broadcasting a new documentary series titled “The Rage of the Angels.”

Retailers roll out sales as snow threatens East
ATLANTA — Shoppers hit the malls Sunday to spend Gift Cards on items Santa may have missed and pick over the clearance racks, though an East Coast snowstorm will crimp some plans. Washington, D.C., is expected to get 5 to 8 inches of snow. New York and New England could get even more Sunday and Monday. "The forecast will tend to keep them at home, it’s not the best day for shopping," said Scott A. Bernhardt, chief operating officer at weather research firm Planalytics. But because th...

Blizzard Forces States into Emergency as Airlines Ground Flights
WASHINGTON (AP) — A band of frigid weather snaking its way up the East Coast on Sunday threatened to bring blizzards and a foot of snow to New York City and New England, while several states to the South made emergency declarations as the storm caused crashes on slick roads. Airlines grounded hundreds of flights Sunday along the Northeast corridor in anticipation of the storm, affecting major airports including New York’s JFK and Newark. Airlines said more cancellations were likely...

Peter MacKay belts Elvis tune with troops
Published Sunday, Dec. 26, 2010 12:27PM EST Defence Minister Peter MacKay may have stolen the show when he joined a soldier in a rendition of Elvis Presley's "Suspicious Minds.'' MacKay, along with other dignitaries, was in Afghanistan for Christmas. Sunday, Dec. 26, 2010 12:27PM EST Defence Minister Peter MacKay may have stolen the show when he joined a soldier in a rendition of Elvis Presley's "Suspicious Minds.'' MacKay, along with other dignitaries, was in Afghanistan for Christmas...

QB Sanchez active for Jets
New York Jets Quarterback Mark Sanchez is active for Sunday's game against the Chicago Bears. Sanchez was limited in practice after injuring his Right Shoulder early in last week's 22-17 win at Pittsburgh. He played well in that game, going 19 of 29 for 170 yards while running for a touchdown and snapping an eight-game interception streak. Coach Rex Ryan at first said there was a 90 percent chance Sanchez would play, but downgraded the odds on Thursday after seeing little zip on his passes. A go...

Little Fockers tops holiday weekend box office
NEW YORK (AP) — “Little Fockers” was no. 1 at the Box Office on a weekend when Hollywood competed with Christmas gatherings and fierce snow storms in the Northeast and Southeast. According to studio estimates Sunday, the poorly reviewed third installment of the Ben Stiller series of in-law comedy was to earn $34 million over the three-day weekend, and $48.3 million since opening on Wednesday. The Coen brothers’ “True Grit” took in a better-than-expected $25.6 ...