Jean is off to see the Broncos

My niece won playoff tickets! she off to see the Bronco tomorrow!! Way to go Jean!!

Miles Broncos Mascot ‏@5280Miles

And the winner of the tickets is... Jean Goheen! Here's just one of the pics that caught my eye! Congratulations!

Alan Rickman

Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman (21 February 1946 – 14 January 2016)
was an English actor and director, known for playing a
 variety of roles on stage and screen, often as a complex
antagonist. Rickman was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company,
 performing in modern and classical theatre productions. His first
 big television part came in 1982, but his big break was as the
Vicomte de Valmont in the stage production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses
in 1985, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award. Rickman gained
 wider notice for his film performances as Hans Gruber in Die Hard
and Severus Snape in the Harry Potter film series.

Rickman's other film roles included the Sheriff of Nottingham in
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Jamie in Truly, Madly, Deeply,
Colonel Brandon in Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility, Harry in Love
Actually, P. L. O'Hara in An Awfully Big Adventure, Alexander Dane
in Galaxy Quest, and Judge Turpin in the film adaptation of Stephen
Sondheim's musical of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

In 1995, Rickman earned a Golden Globe Award, an Emmy Award and a
Screen Actors Guild Award for his portrayal of the title character
in Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny. He won a BAFTA Award for his
role in Robin Hood.

Rickman died of cancer on 14 January 2016 at the age of 69.
 His final film, Alice Through the Looking Glass, will be released
in the United States in May 2016.


Rickman's career was filled with a wide variety of roles. He
played romantic leads like Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility
 (1995) and Jamie in Truly, Madly, Deeply (1991); numerous villains
in Hollywood big-budget films, like German terrorist Hans Gruber in
 Die Hard (1988) and the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince
of Thieves (1991); and the occasional television role such as the
"mad monk" Rasputin in the HBO biopic Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny
(1996), for which he won a Golden Globe and an Emmy.
 He was the "master of ceremonies" on Mike Oldfield's
album Tubular Bells II (1992), on which he read a
list of instruments on the album.

His role in Die Hard earned him a spot on the AFI's 100
Years...100 Heroes & Villains list as the 46th best villain
 in film history, though he revealed he almost did not take
 the role as he did not think Die Hard was the kind of film
 he wanted to make.His performance as the Sheriff of
Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves also earned him
praise as one of the best actors to portray a villain in films.


Rickman took issue with being typecast as a "villain actor",
citing the fact that he had not portrayed a stock villain
character since the Sheriff of Nottingham in 1991.[citation needed]
 His portrayal of Severus Snape, the potions master in the Harry Potter
series (2001–11), was dark, but the character's motivations were not
clear early on.[21] During his career Rickman played comedic roles,
 sending up classically trained British actors[according to whom?]
who take on "lesser roles" as the character Sir Alexander Dane/Dr.
Lazarus in the science fiction parody Galaxy Quest (1999),
portraying the angel Metatron, the voice of God, in Dogma
(also 1999), appearing as Emma Thompson's foolish husband
Harry in Love Actually (2003), providing the voice of Marvin
 the Paranoid Android in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
(2005), and the egotistical, Nobel Prize-winning father in Nobel Son (2007).


Rickman was nominated for an Emmy for his work as Dr. Alfred
Blalock in HBO's Something the Lord Made (2004). He also starred
in the independent film Snow Cake (2006) with Sigourney Weaver and
Carrie-Anne Moss, which had its debut at the Berlin International
Film Festival, and Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (also 2006),
directed by Tom Tykwer. Rickman appeared as the evil Judge Turpin
in the critically acclaimed Tim Burton film Sweeney Todd: The Demon
Barber of Fleet Street (2007) alongside Harry Potter co-stars Helena
Bonham Carter and Timothy Spall. Rickman provided the voice of Absolem
the Caterpillar in Burton's film Alice in Wonderland (2010).


He performed onstage in Noël Coward's romantic comedy Private Lives,
which transferred to Broadway after its successful run in London
at the Albery Theatre and ended in September 2002; he reunited
 with his Les Liaisons Dangereuses co-star Lindsay Duncan and
director Howard Davies in the Tony Award-winning production.
His previous stage performance was in Antony and Cleopatra in
1998 as Mark Antony with Dame Helen Mirren as Cleopatra, in
the Royal National Theatre's production at the Olivier Theatre
 in London, which ran from 20 October to 3 December 1998.
Rickman appeared in Victoria Wood with All The Trimmings (2000),
a Christmas special with Victoria Wood, playing an aged colonel
in the battle of Waterloo who is forced to break off his engagement
to Honeysuckle Weeks' character.


Rickman also directed The Winter Guest at London's Almeida
Theatre in 1995 and the film version of the same play,
released in 1997, starring Emma Thompson and her real-life
 mother Phyllida Law.[citation needed] With Katharine Viner
he compiled the play My Name Is Rachel Corrie, and directed
the premiere production at the Royal Court Theatre, which
opened in April 2005. He won the Theatre Goers' Choice
Awards for Best Director. Rickman befriended the Corrie
family and earned their trust, and the show was warmly
received in London in 2005. But the next year, its original
 New York production was "postponed" over the possibility
of boycotts and protests from those who saw it as "anti-Israeli
agit-prop". Rickman denounced "censorship born out of fear".
Tony Kushner, Harold Pinter and Vanessa Redgrave, among others,
criticised the decision to indefinitely delay the show. The
one-woman play was put on later that year at another theater
 to mixed reviews, and has since been staged at venues around the world.


In 2009, Rickman was awarded the James Joyce Award by
University College Dublin's Literary and Historical Society.


In October and November 2010, Rickman starred in the eponymous
role in Henrik Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman at the Abbey Theatre,
 Dublin alongside Lindsay Duncan and Fiona Shaw.
The Irish Independent called Rickman's performance breathtaking.
This production subsequently travelled to the Brooklyn Academy
of Music for performances in January and February 2011.[citation needed]
Rickman and Kate Winslet at the 2014 Toronto International Film
Festival.

In 2011, Rickman again appeared as Severus Snape in
 the final instalment in the Harry Potter series,
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2.
Throughout the series, his portrayal of Snape
garnered widespread critical acclaim.[
Kenneth Turan of The Los Angeles Times said Rickman
 "as always, makes the most lasting impression,"
 while Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called Rickman
"sublime at giving us a glimpse at last into the secret
 nurturing heart that ... Snape masks with a sneer."


Media coverage characterised Rickman's performance as worthy of
nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
 His first award nominations for his role as Snape came at
 the 2011 Alliance of Women Film Journalists Awards, 2011
Saturn Awards, 2011 Scream Awards and 2011 St. Louis Gateway
 Film Critics Association Awards in the Best Supporting Actor category.


On 21 November 2011, Rickman opened in Seminar, a new play by
Theresa Rebeck, at the John Golden Theatre on Broadway.
 Rickman, who left the production on 1 April, won the
Broadway.com Audience Choice Award for Favorite Actor in a Play
 and was nominated for a Drama League Award.

Rickman starred with Colin Firth and Cameron Diaz in a remake of 1966's
Gambit by Michael Hoffman.
 In 2013, he played Hilly Kristal, the
founder of the famous East Village punk-rock club CBGB, in the CBGB
film with Rupert Grint

In the media
Rickman posing for a fan after a performance of John Gabriel Borkman in 2011

Rickman was chosen by Empire as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in
film history (No. 34) in 1995 and ranked No. 59 in Empire's "The
Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list in October 1997. In 2009
and 2010 Rickman ranked once again as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars
 by Empire, both times placing No. 8 out of the 50 actors chosen.
 Rickman was elected to the Council of the Royal Academy of Dramatic
 Art (RADA) in 1993; he was subsequently RADA's Vice-Chairman and a
member of its Artistic Advisory and Training committees and Development
 Board.
He was voted No. 19 in Empire magazine's Greatest Living Movie
Stars over the age of 50 and was twice nominated for Broadway's
Tony Award as Best Actor (Play): in 1987 for Les Liaisons Dangereuses,
 and in 2002 for a revival of Noël Coward's Private Lives. The Guardian
named Rickman as an "honourable mention" in a list of the best actors
never to have received an Academy Award nomination.


Two researchers, a linguist and a sound engineer, found
"the perfect [male] voice" to be a combination of Rickman's
and Jeremy Irons's voices based on a sample of 50 voices.


Rickman featured in several musical works, including a song
composed by Adam Leonard entitled "Not Alan Rickman".
 The actor played a "Master of Ceremonies" part,
announcing the various instruments in Mike Oldfield's
Tubular Bells II on the track The Bell.
 Rickman was one of the many artists
who recited Shakespearian sonnets on the 2002
album When Love Speaks, and is also featured
prominently in a music video by Texas entitled
"In Demand",
 which premiered on Europe MTV in August 2000.
Personal life

In 1965, at the age of 19, Rickman met 18-year-old
Rima Horton, who became his first girlfriend and would
later be a Labour Party councillor on the Kensington and
Chelsea London Borough Council (1986–2006) and an economics
lecturer at the nearby Kingston University.
They lived
together from 1977 until his death. In 2015,
 Rickman confirmed that they had married in a private
 ceremony in New York City in 2012.


He was an active patron of the research foundation Saving Faces;
 and honorary president of the International Performers'
 Aid Trust, a charity that works to fight poverty amongst
performing artists all over the world.
When discussing politics, Rickman said he "was born
a card-carrying member of the Labour Party".


Rickman was the godfather of fellow actor Tom Burke.

On 14 January 2016, Rickman died of cancer in London.
 Soon after, his fans created a memorial underneath the
"Platform 9¾" sign at London King's Cross railway station.

   

David Bowie dies of cancer aged 69

David Bowie, the infinitely changeable, fiercely forward-looking songwriter who taught generations of musicians about the power of drama, images and personas, died on Sunday, two days after his 69th birthday.

His death was confirmed by his publicist, Steve Martin, on Monday morning. No other details were provided.

Mr. Bowie had been treated for cancer for the last 18 months, according to a statement on his social-media accounts. “David Bowie died peacefully today surrounded by his family,” a post on his Facebook page read.

His last album, “Blackstar,” a collaboration with a jazz quartet that was typically enigmatic and exploratory, was released on Friday — his birthday. He is to be honored with a concert at Carnegie Hall on March 31 featuring the Roots, Cyndi Lauper and the Mountain Goats.

He had also collaborated on an Off Broadway musical, “Lazarus,” which was a surreal sequel to the 1976 film that featured his definitive screen role, “The Man Who Fell to Earth.”

Mr. Bowie wrote songs, above all, about being an outsider: an alien, a misfit, a sexual adventurer, a faraway astronaut. His music was always a mutable blend — rock, cabaret, jazz and what he called “plastic soul” — but it was suffused with genuine soul. He also captured the drama and longing of everyday life, enough to give him No. 1 pop hits like “Let’s Dance.”

In concerts and videos, Mr. Bowie’s costumes and imagery traversed styles, eras and continents, from German Expressionism to commedia dell’arte to Japanese kimonos to spacesuits. He set an example, and a challenge, for every arena spectacle in his wake.

If he had an anthem, it was “Changes,” from his 1971 album “Hunky Dory,” which proclaimed:

Turn and face the strange,

Ch-ch-changes,

Oh look out now you rock and rollers,

Pretty soon now you’re gonna get older.

Mr. Bowie earned admiration and emulation across the musical spectrum — from rockers, balladeers, punks, hip-hop acts, creators of pop spectacles and even classical composers like Philip Glass, who based two symphonies on Mr. Bowie’s albums “Low” and “Heroes.”

Samples of David Bowie’s Hits

His music, always a mutable blend suffused with genuine soul, was in many ways about being an outsider.

Mr. Bowie’s constantly morphing persona was a touchstone for performers like Madonna and Lady Gaga; his determination to stay contemporary introduced his fans to Philadelphia funk, Japanese fashion, German electronica and drum-and-bass dance music.

Nirvana chose to sing “The Man Who Sold the World,” the title song of Mr. Bowie’s 1970 album, in its brief set for “MTV Unplugged in New York” in 1993. “Under Pressure,” a collaboration with the glam-rock group Queen, supplied a bass line for the 1990 Vanilla Ice hit “Ice Ice Baby.”

Yet throughout Mr. Bowie’s metamorphoses, he was always recognizable. His voice was widely imitated but always his own; his message was that there was always empathy beyond difference.

Angst and apocalypse, media and paranoia, distance and yearning were among Mr. Bowie’s lifelong themes. So was a penchant for transgression coupled with a determination to push cult tastes toward the mainstream.

    David Bowie Allowed His Art to Deliver a Final MessageJan. 12, 2016
    Celebrating David Bowie, a Star Who Burned Bright to the LastJan. 12, 2016
    David Bowie in the MoviesJan. 11, 2016
    Fans Pay Tribute to David BowieJan. 11, 2016
    Share Your Memories of David BowieJan. 11, 2016
    Deep Affection in the Place Where It All StartedJan. 12, 2016
    Around the World, Tributes and MemoriesJan. 11, 2016
    Review: ‘Blackstar,’ David Bowie’s Emotive and Cryptic New AlbumJan. 07, 2016


Mr. Bowie produced albums and wrote songs for some of his idols — Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Mott the Hoople — that gave them pop hits without causing them to abandon their individuality. And he collaborated with musicians like Brian Eno during the late-1970s period that would become known as his Berlin years and, in his final recordings, with the jazz musicians Maria Schneider and Donny McCaslin, introducing them to many new listeners.

Mr. Bowie was a person of relentless reinvention. He emerged in the late 1960s with the voice of a rock belter but with the sensibility of a cabaret singer, steeped in the dynamics of stage musicals.

He was Major Tom, the lost astronaut in his career-making 1969 hit “Space Oddity.” He was Ziggy Stardust, the otherworldly pop star at the center of his 1972 album, “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.”

He was the self-destructive Thin White Duke and the minimalist but heartfelt voice of the three albums he recorded in Berlin in the ’70s.
Continue reading the main story
Bowie, From Past Pages of The Times
Source: The New York Times

By CLAIRE BARTHELEMY

The arrival of MTV in the 1980s was the perfect complement to Mr. Bowie’s sense of theatricality and fashion. “Ashes to Ashes,” the “Space Oddity” sequel that revealed, “We know Major Tom’s a junkie,” and “Let’s Dance,” which offered, “Put on your red shoes and dance the blues,” gave him worldwide popularity.

Mr. Bowie was his generation’s standard-bearer for rock as theater: something constructed and inflated yet sincere in its artifice, saying more than naturalism could. With a voice that dipped down to baritone and leapt into falsetto, he was complexly androgynous, an explorer of human impulses that could not be quantified.

He also pushed the limits of “Fashion” and “Fame,” writing songs with those titles and also thinking deeply about the possibilities and strictures of pop renown.

Mr. Bowie was married for more than 20 years to the international model Iman, with whom he had a daughter, Alexandria Zahra Jones. They survive him, as does his son from his marriage to the former Mary Angela Barnett, Duncan Jones, a director best known for the 2009 film “Moon.”

David Bowie’s Career Milestones

    Jan. 8, 1947David Bowie is born in London.
    1969The breakthrough single “Space Oddity,” is released.
    1972Plays his first New York show.
    1976Stars in the movie “The Man Who Fell To Earth.”
    1981Collaborates with the band Queen on the single “Under Pressure.”
    1985Covers “Dancing in the Street” with Mick Jagger to raise money for the famine-relief charity Live Aid.
    1989His newly formed band, Tin Machine, releases its first album.
    2000Performs a headliner act at the Glastonbury Festival.
    2006Gives his final public concert, a three-song set at a charity fund-raiser in New York.
    2015“Lazarus,” a musical featuring new music by Mr. Bowie, opens off Broadway at the New York Theater Workshop
    2016“Blackstar,” his final album, is released days before his death.

In a post on Twitter, Mr. Jones said: “Very sorry and sad to say it’s true. I’ll be offline for a while. Love to all.”

David Robert Jones was born in London on Jan. 8, 1947, where as a youth he soaked up rock ’n’ roll. He took up the saxophone in the 1960s and started leading bands as a teenager, singing the blues in a succession of unsuccessful groups and singles. He suffered a blow in a teenage brawl that caused his left pupil to be permanently dilated.

In the late 1960s, Lindsay Kemp, a dancer, actor and mime, became a lasting influence on Mr. Bowie, focusing his interest in movement and artifice. Mr. Bowie’s music turned toward folk-rock and psychedelia. The release of “Space Oddity,” shortly before the Apollo 11 mission put men on the moon in 1969, gained him a British pop audience and, when it was rereleased in 1973 in the United States, an American one.

By then, with the albums “Hunky Dory,” “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars” and “Aladdin Sane,” Mr. Bowie had become a pioneer of glam rock and a major star in Britain, playing up an androgynous image. But he also had difficulties separating his onstage personas from real life and succumbed to drug problems, particularly cocaine use. In 1973, he abruptly announced his retirement — though it was the retirement of Ziggy Stardust, not of Mr. Bowie.

He moved to the United States in 1974 and made “Diamond Dogs,” which included the hit “Rebel Rebel.” In 1975, he turned toward funk with the album “Young Americans,” recorded primarily in Philadelphia with collaborators, including a young Luther Vandross. John Lennon joined Mr. Bowie in writing and singing the hit “Fame.” Mr. Bowie’s 1976 album “Station to Station” yielded more hits, but drug problems were making Mr. Bowie increasingly unstable; in interviews, he made pro-fascist pronouncements that he would soon disown.

For a far-reaching change of environment, and to get away from drugs, Mr. Bowie moved in 1976 to Switzerland and then to West Berlin, part of a divided city with a sound that fascinated him: the Krautrock of Kraftwerk, Can, Neu! and other groups. Mr. Bowie shared a Berlin apartment with Iggy Pop, and he helped produce and write songs for two Iggy Pop albums, “The Idiot” and “Lust for Life.”

He also made what is usually called his Berlin trilogy — “Low,” “Heroes” and “Lodger” — working with Mr. Eno and Mr. Bowie’s collaborator over decades, the producer Tony Visconti. They used electronics and experimental methods, like having musicians play unfamiliar instruments, yet songs like “‘Heroes’” conveyed romance against the bleakest odds.

As the 1980s began, Mr. Bowie turned to live theater, performing in multiple cities (including a Broadway run) in the demanding title role of “The Elephant Man.” Yet he would also reach his peak as a mainstream pop musician in that decade — particularly with his 1983 album “Let’s Dance,” which he produced with Nile Rodgers of Chic; the Texas blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan also performed on the album. By 1989 Mr. Bowie was determined to change again; he recorded, without top billing, as a member of the rock band Tin Machine.

His experiments continued in the 1990s. In 1995, he reconnected with Mr. Eno on an album, “1. Outside,” — influenced by science fiction and film noir — that was intended to be the start of a trilogy. Mr. Bowie toured with Nine Inch Nails in an innovative concert that had his band and Nine Inch Nails merging partway through. Mr. Bowie’s 1997 album, “Earthling,” turned toward the era’s electronic dance music.

By the 21st century, Mr. Bowie was an elder statesman. He had been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. In 2001, he sang “Heroes” at the Concert for New York City after the Sept. 11 attacks.

His last tour, after the release of his album “Reality,” ended when he experienced heart problems in 2004. But he continued to lend his imprimatur to newer bands like Arcade Fire, joining them onstage, and TV on the Radio, adding backup vocals in the studio.

In 2006, he performed three songs in public for what would be the final time, at the Keep a Child Alive Black Ball fund-raiser at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York.

His final albums were a glance back and a new excursion. “The Next Day,” released in 2013, returned to something like the glam-rock sound of his 1970s guitar bands, for new songs suffused with bitter thoughts of mortality. And “Blackstar,” released two days before his death, had him backed by a volatile jazz-based quartet, in songs that contemplated fame, spirituality, lust, death and, as always, startling transformations.
Correction: January 11, 2016
An earlier version of this obituary referred incorrectly to the group Mr. Bowie collaborated with on “Blackstar.” It is a jazz quartet, not quintet.