Don LaFontaine, voice of the movies, dies

Don LaFontaine, the world's most recognisable voiceover creative person, famous for voicing thousands of film trailers, has died.

LaFontaine, wHO was 68, died from complications arising from the treatment of an on-going illness.

Speaking to the Associated Press, fellow voiceover creative person Jim Tasker said: "He was the originator of the modern voiceover for movie trailers.

"He is the monetary standard for which all other voiceovers for movie trailers are measured. For the past 30 years, his voice has been the gauge for all of us in the industry."

The renowned baritone had a very typical gravelly voice and, thanks to his deft diction, went on to voice more than 5,000 trailers in a career that spanned 33 long time.

He worked until late, averaging seven-spot to 10 voiceover roger Sessions a day.

For many years, LaFontaine was chauffeured from session to session in a limousine - he insisted he could do more work if he did not take to hunting for a parking space.

While he worked behind the scenes, LaFontaine also appeared in a popular 2006 US TV ad in which he melodramatically retold a customer's mundane business relationship of dealing with her car indemnity company, spell standing inside her kitchen.

Paying tribute, fellow voiceover artist Tom Kane said: "The truth is there's only about 15 to 20 guys in the area who privy do this.

"They'll do their best to fill his shoes... To one degree or another; they're all doing their best Don LaFontaine impersonation."

LaFontaine is survived by his wife Nita Whitaker and three daughters.

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Mckenna Long & Aldridge Assists New York's Northern Metropolitan Hospital In A Groundbreaking Filing To Be A Patient Safety Organization

�New York's Northern Metropolitan (NorMet) Hospital
Association today became the first in the country to file to become a Patient Safety
Organization (PSO) with the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).


PSO's are private entities accepted by the Secretary to collect and analyze affected role safety events
reported by physicians and other health care providers. Aided by McKenna Long & Aldridge,
NorMet filed under the statutory provisions of the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act
of 2005.


NorMet could not wait for the Administration to military issue its guidelines on becoming listed as a PSO
so they filed under the statutory provisions. Said Peggy Binzer, attorney with McKenna Long &
Aldridge, who made the filing on NorMet's request. "NorMet is a leader in the healthcare field
and hopefully the Secretary testament list them in a timely fashion." Hospitals partnering with the
NorMet Hospital Association will be among the safest in the nation." A former Congressional
staffer, Binzer originally worked on the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act which
provides a framework recommended by the Institutes of Medicine allowing health care providers
to report data on affected role safety events (medical errors, near misses, adverse events and
other quality information) to the PSO's.


In February of this year, HHS issued proposed rules concerning aspects of the Patient Safety Act,
including the process for listing the PSO.


The NorMet PSO will be a nonprofit 501 (c) C organization. It's precedency will be to meliorate
safety and care for patients in hospitals passim a septenary county region north of New York
City.


By partnering with McKenna Long & Aldridge, an international natural law firm with experience in
health care, public policy, corporate and government personal business and former fields, NorMet was capable to
get the first association to file the request.

About McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP


McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP is an international law firm of attorneys and public policy
advisors. The firm provides business solutions in the areas of environmental regulation,
outside law, public policy and regulatory affairs, corporate law, government contracts,
intellectual prop and technology, complex litigation, real the three estates, energy and finance. To learn
more about the firm and its services, log on to www.mckennalong.com.


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Salo, or The Days of Sodom

Fashioning a defence for Salo is a bit like representing Manson at an appeals hearing, and many world Health Organization try ar hard-pressed to come up with explanations why this -- peradventure the most notorious bit of movie theatre ever produced -- is an important piece of work. The story, if you can call it that, is based on the Marquis de Sade's most celebrated work: 16 young boys and girls are rounded up in Nazi Italy and lED off to a palace in the country, where they ar subjected to orgies of infinite varieties, an extended series of experiements regarding human stool, and eventually, put to death en masse. Sure, it's easy to read this as an indictment of the Nazi government -- simply shit feeding is push things a bit. Rather, the more compelling argument is that Pasolini simply gives up: Humanity is lost, perverse, sick, and worthless.


Whether you agree or not, you'll have a very knotty time stomaching this motion-picture show (if you can find it at all). Pasolini's message isn't just unsavoury, it isn't delivered identical well either: The photographic film is harsh, the sound is erratic, the pace is jerky. In all honesty it's a fearsome, terrible experience -- but give the guy deferred payment: It's sure as shooting unique.


Aka Sal� o le 120 giornate di Sodoma.

DJ Deval and Stalefish

   
Artist: DJ Deval and Stalefish

   Genre(s): 
Drum & Bass
   

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Discography:


   
 (Xpress04) Vinyl

   Year: 2005   
Tracks: 2

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CD: N*E*R*D, Seeing Sounds

If dogged persistence always equalled success, then Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic presidential candidate and N*E*R*D might well be the biggest band in the world. For the best part of a decade, production duo Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo have dutifully plugged away at creating a hybrid between rock music and the R& B and hip-hop with which they made their name. N*E*R*D's two albums to date have been modestly received, and yet you can see why they keep at it. If there's one thing that rock music could really do with, it's a shot of the blue-sky sonic thinking that Williams and Hugo have brought to records by Madonna, Justin Timberlake and Jay-Z. But if the theory behind N*E*R*D's sound is straightforward, the practice has proved troublesome. Their albums to date have strongly suggested that Williams and Hugo can't actually work out how to meld R&B and rock. They had two runs at their debut, In Search Of ... , withdrawing the original electronic version in favour of one featuring live instruments. The follow-up, Fly Or Die, ended up sounding like a nu-metal album, which is really never the right answer, regardless of the question.

Seeing Sounds suggests they're still having problems. They try distorted 70s rock riffs over pungent drum'n' bass and crunk shouting. They try straightforward new-wave pop on Happy. They try employing the Hives: while it's nice to see the Swedish garage rockers' latterday career as muses to the world's greatest urban producers continuing bafflingly apace (they also turned up on Timbaland's last album) their contributions to Windows seem oddly anaemic. Not all the ideas are unsuccessful: Kill Joey has a great 70s cop-show chase riff, Everybody Nose's attempt to transpose rock dynamics on to rattling breakbeats and acidic synth squelch is appealingly propulsive. But even the best tracks are marked by a sense of something lacking, usually a decent song. On the rare occasions when they fetch up with a memorable tune - amid the descending soft-rock chords and thick harmonies of Sooner Or Later, for example - they cling desperately to it for six and half minutes, smothering it with extended codas and widdly guitar solos.

Lyrically, Fly Or Die rather cravenly courted the angsty teenage market. It didn't really work - there's something deeply odd about hearing a 34-year-old multi-millionaire (taking time between squiring Jade Jagger and launching his own jewellery range for Louis Vuitton) trying to convince the globe's adolescent goths that he feels their misery. Seeing Sounds holds back on that kind of thing. Instead, the lyrics are largely about sex. Occasionally, this is diverting: "Nobody make me come like you," offers You Know What, a funny thing for a bloke to sing, implying as it does that she makes it shoot out of his ears or something. But it does get wearisome. The single Everybody Nose putatively tackles the issue of cocaine abuse, but it swiftly becomes apparent that Williams' objections to the drug have less to do with say, the trail of death and environmental devastation wrought by its production, than the fact that a girl with a nosefull is more likely to be interested in dancing or gabbling on than fulfilling her life's destiny, which should be having it away with Pharrell Williams. It has one of those odd introductions that rappers go in for, where they mutter their name a couple of times, say "yeah ... uh huh", then offer a pre-emptive summary of the track's nonpareil qualities: "It takes a lot of courage to say this." It's hard not to feel this is pitching it a bit high: under what circumstances does it take a lot of courage to say that people on cocaine are a pain in the arse? During a night in with the Primrose Hill set? At a meeting of the Norte del Valle Cartel?

You leave Seeing Sounds convinced that Williams and Hugo are no closer to their dream of inventing a successful R&B/rock hybrid. And if producers as talented as this can't do it, then who can? Certainly not their rival Timbaland, whose recent efforts in this direction have been equally underwhelming. It's a hugely appealing idea, but maybe it just can't be done. Perhaps it's time for N*E*R*D to take a leaf out of Mrs Clinton's book and finally concede defeat.


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Dub Tractor

   
Artist: Dub Tractor

   Genre(s): 
Acid Jazz
   Ambient
   

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Discography:


   
 Hideout

   Year: 2006   
Tracks: 9


   
 Delay

   Year: 2000   
Tracks: 10

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Kanye West, record labels sued over jazz samples

NEW YORK - Rappers Kanye West, Method Man, Redman, Common and their record companies are being sued by late US jazz musician Joe Farrell's daughter, who accused them of using her father's music without approval.The lawsuit, filed by Kathleen Firrantello in the US District Court in New York, names the rappers along with various labels owned by Universal Music Group.None of the record companies or representatives for the rappers were immediately available for comment.The lawsuit said all the rappers used portions of Farrell's 1974 musical composition Upon This Rock in three separate songs - West in "Gone," Common in "Chi-City" and Method Man and Redman in their song "Run 4 Cover."Firrantello is seeking punitive damages of at least $1 million and asked that no further copies of the songs be made, sold or performed, according to the lawsuit.- REUTERS/Nielsen