JONATHAN RHYS-MEYERS ~ FRIDAY EYE CANDY

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Currently appearing as King Henry VIII in the television series The Tudors, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers looks not at all like the former king who, at a young age was unusually tall, well proportioned (particularly proud of his calves, as it happens), athletic, good-looking, blessed by a head of red-gold hair, a seemingly perfect physical embodiment of the Renaissance man that, in many respects, he was unlike the bloated tyrant of later years.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers looks very little like that. He is dark-haired, blue-eyed, much shorter than the king he is meant to be playing, his face that of a fallen angel, a Caravaggio fantasy, a mask of unsettling, compelling sensuality.

In his youth, his energy and his magnetism, in the intelligence he conveys, and the sense of power that envelops him, Rhys Meyers is Henry, right down to the way that those eyes of his never cease to hint at the horrors to come.



Bearing the sort of sensual, androgynous looks that would have landed him in Calvin Klein ads if he hadn't gone into acting, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers has been making a name for himself in roles that call for a certain kind of alluringly deviant behavior. Since 1996, Rhys-Meyers has given trouble a good name in such films as Velvet Goldmine and The Governess.

In 2006, Rhys Meyers received a Golden Globe Award for "Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or Movie" for his portrayal of the young Elvis Presley in the television miniseries "Elvis." In addition to this honor, he received an Emmy® nomination. The flawless portrayal of "The King" by a young Irish actor floored critics and audiences alike.

LE CIRQUE D' IZIS

The marriage of poetry, photography and art:
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"Il suffit d'une toute petite pierre pour faire sur l'eau les plus beaux ricochets et, sur la plus pauvre place du plus pauvre des villages, il y aura toujours, ou longtemps encore - ce qui revient au meme - le plus pauvre des petits cirques, enlumine de mille diamants: les eclats de rire des enfants."

D'apres Le Cirque D'Izis, de Jacques Prevert

"All it takes is a very small stone to make the most beautiful rebounds on the water, in the poorest of places of the poorest villages, there will always be, for a very long time - that which remains the same - the poorest of the small circuses, illuminated like diamonds, the bursts of laughter of the children."

Jacques Prevert

Izis (Israel Bidermanas) was born in Lithuania. From an early age he was fascinated by painting, and he left his Hebrew language school at 13 to be apprenticed to a photographer. Once trained, he spent three years wandering the country and photographing. He arrived in Paris, drawn by it being the city of the Impressionists in 1931, penniless and without any passport or other papers, and not speaking a single word of French.

Izis was a great dreamer and a wanderer both of the streets and in his mind. He believed in photographs that seemed simple, but were in fact full of ambience, a 'poetic realism' that was much in vogue. His vision was gentle and warm without being sentimental. He photographed lovers, children at play, the circus, all seen with a freshness and playfulness.

He became very close to the painter Marc Chagall, and they spent many hours walking round Paris together. Jacques Prévert also became a good friend and again they often walked around the city together. Prévert wrote the text for several of his books of photographs.

Jacques Prévert was a French poet and screenwriter who was born on February 4, 1900 in Neuilly-sur-Seine and died on April 11, 1977 in Omonville-la-Petite.

Prévert grew up in Paris where he participated actively in the surrealist movement.
His poems are often about life in Paris and life after the Second World War. They are widely taught in schools in France and frequently appear in French language textbooks throughout the world.

Some of Prévert's poems such as Les Feuilles mortes (Autumn Leaves) were set to music by Joseph Kosma, Germaine Tailleferre of Les Six, Christiane Verger and Hanns Eisler and were sung by prominent 20th century French vocalists including Yves Montand and Édith Piaf as well as by the American singer Joan Baez.

Prévert wrote a number of classic screenplays for the film director Marcel Carné. Among them, Les enfants du Paradis (The Children of Paradise, 1945) is considered one of the greatest films of all time.


Marc Chagall was born July 7, 1887, Vitebsk, Belorussia, Russian Empire (now in Belarus) and died March 28, 1985, Saint-Paul, Alpes-Maritimes, France.

The young Chagall attended the heder (Jewish elementary school) and later went to the local public school, where instruction was in Russian.

After learning the elements of drawing at school, he studied painting in the studio of a local realist, Jehuda Pen, and in 1907 went to St. Petersburg, where he studied intermittently for three years, eventually under the stage designer Léon Bakst.

In 1910, with a living allowance provided by a St. Petersburg patron, Chagall went to Paris. After a year and a half in Montparnasse, he moved into a studio on the edge of town in the ramshackle settlement for bohemian artists that was known as La Ruche ("the Beehive"). There, he met the avant-garde poets Jacques Prévert, Blaise Cendrars, Max Jacob, and Guillaume Apollinaire, as well as a number of young painters destined to become famous: the Expressionist Chaim Soutine, the abstract colourist Robert Delaunay, and the Cubists Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Fernand Léger, André Lhote and photographer Izis (Israel Bidermanas.

In such company nearly every sort of pictorial audacity was encouraged, and Chagall responded to the stimulus by rapidly developing the poetic and seemingly irrational tendencies he had begun to display in Russia. At the same time, under the influence of the Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Fauvist pictures he saw in Paris museums and commercial galleries, he gave up the usually sombre palette he had employed at home.

He composed his images based on emotional and poetic associations, rather than on rules of pictorial logic. Predating Surrealism, his early works were among the first expressions of psychic reality in modern art. His works in various media include sets for plays and ballets, etchings illustrating the Bible, and stained-glass windows.

STOP THE ABUSE

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We as a nation have to be concerned with the Michael Vick case involving the abuse of animals; not only because of the deplorable acts committed in the name of sport, but because the abuse of animals has historically led to the murder and/or abuse of humans.

Jeffrey Dahmer, Son of Sam, Ted Bundy, The boys who gunned down their classmates at school, The shooter of U.S. Capitol security guards; These men and boys had something in common beyond their acts of terrifying violence: All had abused animals long before they went on to destroy the lives of other people.

Several studies have linked animal abuse to interpersonal violence. Following are results of a very limited number of states with abuse statistics in relation to the abuse of humans......

In North Carolina, for example, researchers compared police reports with animal cruelty reports and found almost equal numbers of each at the same addresses. The calls to the police were for disturbances (32 percent), domestic violence (31 percent) and assault (16 percent). In a follow-up study, the majority of police calls to the animal abusing homes were for sexual assault (62 percent), and mental health (35 percent).

In New Jersey, a study found that a stunning 88 percent of the families who had physically abused their children also had records for animal abuse.

In a Wisconsin study of battered women, four out of five victims reported that their partners had been violent toward their pets or livestock as well as to them.

In addition to the studies already cited, research on convicted sex offenders found that 48 percent of the rapists and 30 percent of the child molesters admitted to acts of animal cruelty in their childhood or adolescence. Other research done on incarcerated sexual homicide perpetrators found similar statistics: 36 percent had committed animal cruelty in their childhoods, and 46 percent in their adolescence.

THE COST OF WAR

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Iraq is costing the U.S. dearly in blood and treasure. The blood costs are tragic, and the treasure is exorbitant.

The war in Iraq could ultimately cost well over a trillion dollars — at least double what has already been spent — including the long-term costs of replacing damaged equipment, caring for wounded troops, and aiding the Iraqi government, according to a new government analysis.

The United States has already allocated more than $500 billion on the day-to-day combat operations of what are now 190,000 troops and a variety of reconstruction efforts.

In a report to lawmakers yesterday, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that even under the rosiest scenario — an immediate and substantial reduction of troops — American taxpayers will feel the financial consequences of the war for at least a decade.

Remember in 2002, when administration officials boasted about how this war could be fought on the cheap, and how Iraq would quickly finance itself?