Article of the Week - Marlee Matlin

Marlee Beth Matlin (born August 24, 1965) is an American actress. She is the only deaf performer to win the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, which she won for Children of a Lesser God. At the age of 21, she became the youngest woman in history to win that award. Her work in film and television has resulted in a Golden Globe award, with two additional nominations, and four Emmy nominations. Deaf since she was 18 months old, she is also a prominent member of the National Association of the Deaf.

Matlin was born in Morton Grove, Illinois, to Libby (née Hammer) and Donald Matlin, an automobile dealer. She has two older brothers, Eric and Marc. She lost all hearing in her right ear and 80% of the hearing in her left ear at the age of 18 months. In her autobiography, I'll Scream Later, she suggests that her hearing loss may have been due to a genetically malformed cochlea. She also indicated that she is the only member of her family who is deaf. Her family was Jewish, and of Russian descent. Matlin had a Bat Mitzvah, and managed to read her torah portion by learning Hebrew phonetically; she was later interviewed for the book Mazel Tov: Celebrities' Bar and Bat Mitzvah Memories. Matlin graduated from John Hersey High School in Arlington Heights and attended Harper College

Matlin made her stage debut at the age of seven, as Dorothy in a children's theatre (ICODA) version of The Wizard of Oz, and continued to appear with the ICODA children's theatre group throughout her childhood. Her discovery by Henry Winkler during one of her ICODA theater performances ultimately led to her film debut in Children of a Lesser God (1986). That film brought her a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Drama and an Academy Award for Best Actress.

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Article of the Week - Netflix

Netflix, Inc. is an American provider of on-demand Internet streaming media available to viewers in North and South America, the Caribbean, and parts of Europe (Denmark, Finland, Ireland, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom), and of flat rate DVD-by-mail in the United States, where mailed DVDs are sent via Permit Reply Mail. The company was established in 1997 and is headquartered in Los Gatos, California. It started its subscription-based digital distribution service in 1999; by 2009, Netflix was offering a collection of 100,000 titles on DVD and had surpassed 10 million subscribers. By the second quarter of 2014, there were more than 50 million subscribers.

Netflix was founded in 1997 in Scotts Valley, California by Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings, who previously had worked together at Pure Software. Randolph was a co-founder of MicroWarehouse, a computer mail order company; and was later employed by Borland International as vice president of marketing. Hastings, who once worked as a math teacher, had founded Pure Software, which he had recently sold for $700 million. Hastings invested $2.5 million in startup cash for Netflix.

The idea of Netflix came to Hastings when he was forced to pay $40 in overdue fines after returning Apollo 13 well past its due date. The Netflix website was launched on August 29, 1997 with only 30 employees and 925 works available for rent and brought a more traditional, online pay-per-rental model (50¢US per rental U.S. postage; late fees applied). Netflix introduced the monthly subscription concept in September 1999, and then dropped the single-rental model in early 2000. Since that time, the company has built its reputation on the business model of flat-fee unlimited rentals without due dates, late fees, shipping and handling fees, or per title rental fees.

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Article of the Week - The Last Emperor

The Last Emperor is a 1987 biopic about the life of Puyi, the last Emperor of China, whose autobiography was the basis for the screenplay written by Mark Peploe and Bernardo Bertolucci.

Independently produced by Jeremy Thomas, it was directed by Bertolucci and released in 1987 by Columbia Pictures. Puyi's life is depicted from his ascent to the throne as a small boy to his imprisonment and political rehabilitation by the Chinese Communists.

The film stars John Lone as Puyi, with Joan Chen, Peter O'Toole, Ruocheng Ying, Victor Wong, Dennis Dun, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Maggie Han, Ric Young, Vivian Wu, and Chen Kaige.

It was the first feature film for which the producers were authorized by the Chinese government to film in the Forbidden City in Beijing. It won nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.

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