--Tropic Thunder (2008)--

A commercial depicts rapper Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson) promoting his two brands: the "Booty Sweat" energy drink and "Bust-A-Nut" candy bar, while performing his hit song, "I Love Tha' Pussy". The first trailer shows action star Tugg Speedman's (Ben Stiller) latest film, 'Scorcher VI: Global Meltdown', a film so repetitive of it's five predecessors that even the trailer narrator sounds shaky about it.
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Another trailer features funnyman Jeff "Fatty" Portnoy (Jack Black), playing the entirety of "America's favorite obese family" in the highly flautlent 'The Fatties: Fart 2'. The final trailer, entitled 'Satan's Alley', features Australian "five-time Oscar winner" Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.) and Tobey Maguire (as himself) as two monks who begin an empassioned affair.
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Cast
Ben Stiller -- Tugg Speedman
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Jack Black -- Jeff Portnoy
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Robert Downey Jr. -- Kirk Lazarus
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~http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0942385/

--I Am Legend (2007)--

Robert Neville is a scientist who was unable to stop the spread of the terrible virus that was incurable and man-made. Immune, Neville is now the last human survivor in what is left of New York City and perhaps the world. For three years, Neville has faithfully sent out daily radio messages, desperate to find any other survivors who might be out there. But he is not alone. Mutant victims of the plague -- The Infected -- lurk in the shadows... watching Neville's every move... waiting for him to make a fatal mistake. Perhaps mankind's last, best hope, Neville is driven by only one remaining mission: to find a way to reverse the effects of the virus using his own immune blood. But he knows he is outnumbered... and quickly running out of time.
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Cast
Will Smith -- Robert Neville
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Alice Braga -- Anna
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Willow Smith -- Marley
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~http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480249/

--Sunflowers 1888--

Sunflowers (original title, in French, Tournesols) are the subject of a series of still life paintings executed in oil on canvas by the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh. Among the Sunflowers paintings are three similar paintings with fifteen sunflowers in a vase, and two similar paintings with twelve sunflowers in a vase. Van Gogh painted the first Vase with Twelve Sunflowers, which is now in the Neue Pinakothek Museum in Munich, Germany, and the first Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers, which is now in National Gallery, London, England, in August 1888 when he was living in Arles southern France. The later similar paintings were painted in January the following year. The paintings are all painted on about 93 × 72 cm (37" × 28") canvases. An earlier series of four still life using sunflowers were painted in Paris in 1887.
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Van Gogh began painting in late summer 1888 and continued into the following year. One went to decorate his friend Paul Gauguin's bedroom. The paintings show sunflowers in all stages of life, from fully in bloom to withering. The paintings were innovative for their use of the yellow spectrum, partly because newly invented pigments made new colours possible. In a letter to his brother Theo, van Gogh wrote: the sunflower is mine in a way.
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On March 31, 1987, even those without interest in art were made aware of van Gogh's Sunflowers series when Japanese insurance magnate Yasuo Goto paid the equivalent of USD $39,921,750 for Van Gogh's Still Life: Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers at auction at Christie's London, at the time a record-setting amount for a work of art.[1] The price was over four times the previous record of about $12 million paid for Andrea Mantegna's Adoration of the Magi in 1985. The record was broken a few months later with the purchase of another Van Gogh, Irises by Alan Bond for $53.9 million at Sotheby's, New York on November 11, 1987.
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While it is uncertain whether Yaso Goto bought the painting himself or on behalf of his company, the Yasuda Fire and Marine Insurance Company of Japan, the painting currently resides at Seiji Togo Yasuda Memorial Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. After the purchase a controversy arose whether this is a genuine van Gogh or an Emile Schuffenecker forgery.
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~http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunflowers_%28series_of_paintings%29

--FIFA World Player of the year 2008--

The FIFA World Player of the Year is an Association football award given annually to the male and female player who are thought to be the best in the world, based on votes by coaches and captains of international teams. In a voting system based on positional voting, each coach gets three votes, worth five points, three points and one point, and the winners are ordered based on total number of points. The male award has been criticized for focusing mainly on players from the UEFA Champion's League and largely ignoring players from the South American Copa Libertadores, which has produced more world club champions than Europe. The international leagues of the remaining confederations are also completely ignored.

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The award started in 1991 for men and 2001 for women. Since the award's inception, European-based Brazilian players have dominated the male awards, having won 8 out of 18 editions of the prize, far ahead of the top second country France, which has won it 3 times.

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The award's youngest winner, male or female, is Ronaldo, who won at the age of 20 in 1996. He won it again in 1997 and 2002. Birgit Prinz and Marta are the only players to win three times in a row, while Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, and Mia Hamm have won twice in a row. Ronaldo, Zinedine Zidane, Prinz, and Marta are the only three-time winners. The oldest winner is Fabio Cannavaro who won in 2006 at age 33. The oldest female winner is Hamm, who won in 2002 at age 30, and the youngest female winner is Marta, who won in 2006 at age 20 (but was seven months older than was Ronaldo in 1996).

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~http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA_World_Player_of_the_Year
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~http://www.fifa.com/classicfootball/awards/gala/index.html

--Congress officially declares Obama next president--

WASHINGTON (AP) - Barack Obama is officially the next president of the United States, Congress declared Thursday in fulfilling its centuries-old constitutional duty to certify and tally the electoral college vote from each state.

Republicans joined Democrats in a standing ovation as Vice President Dick Cheney, in his role as speaker of the Senate, announced from the podium that Obama had achieved a majority of votes and would be the 44th president on Jan. 20.

Speaking before a joint session of the House and Senate, Cheney confirmed the results of the Nov. 4 election, that Obama and next Vice President Joe Biden had received 365 electoral votes while the Republican ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin garnered 173 votes.

"Pursuant to the Constitution and laws of the United States, the Senate and House of Representatives are meeting in joint session to verify the certificates and count the votes of the electors of the several states," Cheney intoned in opening up the session.

Four "tellers," two members each from the House and Senate, then commenced reading off the votes from each state. Ironically, the first four states read in alphabetical order—Alabama, Alaska, Arizona and Arkansas—all gave their votes to McCain and Palin.

A cheer went up when the next state, California, gave its 55 votes to Obama and Biden.
Another note of levity in the otherwise formal and scripted ceremony came as teller Rep. Robert Brady, D-Pa., brought forth some laughs when he read out that the vote from Ohio, a focus of voter disputes in recent elections, "appears to be regular in form and authentic."

Cheney led a Senate delegation into the House chamber along with teenage pages carrying two mahogany boxes containing the certified vote totals of each state.

He sat on the podium next to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, carrying out what could be his last act as president of the Senate. He handed the certificates from each state's electors to the four tellers to be read off and tallied.

The reading took about 30 minutes.

At the conclusion of the state-by-state rundown, Cheney read the tally sheet and announced the results—that Obama has been elected president and Biden will succeed Cheney as vice president.

The 12th Amendment, ratified in 1804, directs the electors chosen by the states to meet and vote for president and vice president, conveying the results to the president of the Senate.
That was accomplished Dec. 15, when the electors, in a largely ceremonial rite preordained by Obama's Nov. 4 victory over McCain, gathered in state capitals to cast their votes. As on Thursday, the tally was 365 for Obama, 173 for McCain.

The electoral college is made up of 538 electors, with each state getting its equivalent in the 435-member House and the 100-member Senate. The District of Columbia gets the other three electors.

The session this year was drama-free, unlike in 2001, when then-Vice President Al Gore presided over the session that declared George W. Bush the winner over Gore in a disputed election. Gore disallowed objections from fellow Democrats who asserted that Bush had unfairly won Florida and tried to block Florida's electoral votes from being counted.
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~http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D95J515G0&show_article=1

--Eason Chan Yik-Shun~陳奕迅--

Eason Chan Yik-Shun is a prominent male singer in Hong Kong's music industry. Inarguably the most dominant male singer in the post-1997 era of Hong Kong music industry, Eason Chan has been praised by Time magazine as a front runner in the next generation of Cantopop.
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Chan is the son of Chan Kau-tai, a former civil servant. Chan was sent to United Kingdom to study at the age of 12. He attended Dauntsey's School in Wiltshire, England and later Kingston University majoring in architecture. Chan returned to Hong Kong before finishing his degree to participate in the 1995 New Talent Singing Competition and subsequently won first place. Immediately after his win, Capital Artists signed him ending his future career as an architect, while launching his music career.
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In 2003, Chan's father, who was the Housing Department's chief building services engineer, came under investigation of the Independent Commission Against Corruption for taking bribes. In early 2004, was found guilty and sentenced to seven years jail and fined HK$2.6 million for accepting more than HK$3 million in bribes.
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Chan married longtime girlfriend Hilary Tsui in 2006. He has a daughter Constance Chan born on October 4, 2004. Constance Chan's name was given by Eason's good friend, also a famous songwriter Wyman Wong. Chan gave up smoking after the birth of his baby girl. He was reported to have done it for Constance and also to protect his voice. However, in 2007, he admitted in his concert to have resumed smoking due to stress from his ongoing world tours.
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~http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eason_Chan

--300 (2006)--

It is spring 480 BC, Persian King Xerxes, continuing his father Darius' master plan to conquer the Hellenic city-states, arrives in Hellas. The previous Persian invasion and diplomatic attempts have already turned most northern Hellas tribes and states to the Persian side. But the people of Athens and Sparta, the largest Hellenic powers at the time, feel quite insulted by the Persian emissaries' request to surrender to Xerxes, and so slay them. In Sparta, King Leonidas consults the local oracle, who gives two options: Either a spartan king will have to be sacrificed, or Sparta will be burned to the ground. A year earlier (481, BC) a Panhellenic consortium of all southern city-states had already recognized the superiority of the Spartan army (the best organized and trained army at the time) and had declared King Leonidas as supreme commander of the combined Hellenic army. It is then decided that a small force should block Xerxes' way to southern Hellas in the Thermopylae passage. This passage was, at that time, 12 meters wide. The great historian Herodotus, possibly exaggerating, states that there were 1,700,000 Persians (their true number could have been anywhere from 100,000 to 1,000,000) against 7,000 Hellenic hoplites and slaves, including the 300 men of the Spartan King elite guard. King Xerxes waited four days for the Hellenes to be frightened and eventually surrender and was quite astonished by his opponents' complete apathy. Xerxes tried to convince Leonidas to drop weapons, give up his position, kneel before him and live on as a local governor under Xerxes. King Leonidas replied "molon lave," which means "Come and get them." The three-day battle began, with the 300 Spartans and 700 Thespians (the other Hellenes where sent by Leonidas to protect passages to their flanks) slaying thousands of Persians with minimal losses. The whole Persian campaign would have failed if it hadn't been for Efialtes, who showed Xerxes a secret passage to the Hellenic flanks. After a final battle led by King Xerxes himself, the Hellenic force was slain and their heroism and glory was written forever in history. From the beginning of the battle, the Hellenes buried their dead in the spot where they fell. Then battle signs where made for the dead of each Hellenic faction. For the Pelloponisians, (including the 300 Spartans) the sign generally read (free translation) "In this place 4,000 Pelloponisians fought 30 millions)." For the 300 Spartans (Lakaedaemonians), the sign reads (free translation) "Oh foreigner, tell the Lakaedaemonians that we are buried here obeying their laws," meaning that they never hesitated and never retreated from the enemy. The impact of the battle was enormous for both sides. The Persians' morale dropped to zero, and the Hellenes lost their fear for the Persian conqueror and organized their defense. After several successful battles, the Hellenes ultimately defeated the Persian army and repelled their invasion in the Battle of Plataea in 479 BC.
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~http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416449/