Latest news with #1958
Time of India
2 hours ago
- Politics
- Time of India
Plea seeks to curb excessive ticket pricing by multiplexes
Kochi: High court has sought the state govt's stand in a public interest litigation (PIL) seeking judicial intervention to regulate alleged profiteering by multiplex operators through excessive ticket pricing. A bench of Chief Justice Nitin Jamdar and Justice Basant Balaji directed the state govt to file a counter affidavit and adjourned the matter to July 1. The petition was filed by G Manu Nair, a resident of Thiruvarppu in Kottayam. In the petition, Nair alleged that cinema chains routinely inflate ticket prices based on demand, time slot and release status, resulting in exorbitant rates, particularly during the initial week of screening. He contended that such price fluctuations occur without any public approval or oversight by licensing authorities under the Kerala Cinemas (Regulation) Act, 1958 and its Rules. The petitioner further pointed out that several Indian states have introduced legal mechanisms to cap cinema ticket rates and ensure affordability. Andhra Pradesh, for instance, imposed upper limits for various theatre classes and mandated a quota of affordable seats. Telangana introduced price caps across seating categories, and Karnataka directed a ceiling of Rs 200 for multiplex tickets. Tamil Nadu has not only instituted a price control regime but also ensured judicial oversight through directions issued by the Madras high court for strict enforcement against overcharging, he added.
Motor Trend
5 days ago
- Automotive
- Motor Trend
Reliving "Googie" Nights In a 1958 Edsel Ranger
[This story first appeared in the premier issue of MotorTrend Classic in 2005] Elvis still weighted under 200 pounds. "The Bridge on the River Kwai" was on its way to becoming the year's top-grossing film, without a single Major Warden or Colonel Nicholson Happy Meal action figurine having been sold. Running around naked in the backyard carried a new risk-Sputnik might be peeking. And the Ford Motor Company, apparently jealous of all the press the Hindenburg had received, was finally selling its all-new Edsel, a car that for two years it had hyped so breathlessly ('More YOU Ideas!'), the public no doubt expected a flying carpet that ran on plutonium. No American city in 1958 was a more fitting backdrop for a gleaming new example of four-wheeled, Fabulous-O-Rama technology than Los Angeles. The goofy, Tomorrowland optimism of Walt Disney's nearby theme park had spilled right over the monorail and onto the sprawling, auto-worshipping streets of L.A. itself. Want a quick breakfast? Just drive to the store shaped like a giant donut Hoping to start your singing career? Head to the office building resembling a stack of records. Wife needs a new bra? Better find something that looks like a big Bloomingdale's. The rocket-age City of Angels was having a blast, and no savvy business owner could resist taking a big, living-color bite of kitsch. Drive-through carwashes looked like flying saucers, gas stations became space stations, the average roadside motel blazed with more tiki torches than the entire island of Tahiti-even coffee shops caught the fever. Soon after pioneering architect John Lautner designed a flamboyant, glass-walled, neon-splashed diner called Googies, its roof angling toward the stars from the pop-culture epicenter of L.A. on the Sunset Strip, seemingly every budget eatery in town and across America-was launching meteors from its signs and slapping rocket fins onto its deep fryers. 'Googie' architecture was born. Very soon, of course, the whiz-bang Edsel went the way of, well, the Edsel. Gushed an ad in 1958: "The Edsel look is here to stay!" -which was true only if you counted very, very slowly. Just one year after the car's debut, Ford revised the dramatic "horse collar" grille, largely because most people thought it looked if you want us to say what it resembles out loud you'll have to pick up a copy of Motor Trend Hefner. By 1960, Ford had shrunk the pseudo-collar thing into oblivion. Then, just three years after its Geraldo Rivera-grade entrance, the Edsel itself disappeared. Within the next decade, Googie followed. The Kennedy assassinations, Vietnam, Susan Sontag novels-America wasn't in such a good mood any more. Across the country, the meteors cratered, the tiki torches flamed out. Undoubtedly due to its iconic status, the original Googies coffee shop managed to survive until 1989, when it was finally bulldozed to make room for a very important Virgin Megastore. By then, though, the Googie life was long dead. Of course, nobody loves a great second act more than Hollywood. For the fan of Fifties culture, Los Angeles is one of the country's prime public time machines. Thanks to the work of vocal preservationists-and the fact that L.A. remains a leading purveyor of quirkiness-devotees can still find plenty of midcentury lore here: famous 1950s landmarks, period houses, kitsch classics, globules of Googie. We dusted off a 1958 two-door Ford Edsel Ranger from the Motor Trend vehicle humidor (okay, we rented it from a company that supplies cars to movie studios) and hit the streets in search of that heady, spacey land that restraint forgot. Kids didn't walk to school in the 1950s because America was a safer place. They walked because damned if Mom was going to wrestle with two tons of Atomic Age steel lacking both power brakes and power steering any more than was absolutely necessary. Our Edsel has neither (they were options on the entry-level Ranger), so performing three-point turns amid the palm trees of Beverly Hills is like trying to drag a five-year-old out of a showing of 'Madagascar.' After a workout like this, you need a hot dog. That's right: Just look for the gigantic tube steak. Tail O' the Pup is to L.A. what the Eiffel Tower is to Paris, and not just because both are full of weenies. Built just after World War II, the Pup is quintessential kitsch and a true Los Angeles landmark-which accounts for its presence in countless movies (among them, "L.A. Story" and "Body Double"). Orson Welles loved to fill up on the Pup's dogs, yet that hasn't scared the customers away. Order a Baseball Special (mustard, relish, onions), then get back in line and order another. In our first Edsel Ranger road test in October 1957, we measured a 0-to-60-mph time of 10.2 seconds. That feels about right-a modern V-6 Camry would blow the 361-cubic-inch V-8 Edsel into the weeds. The old girl bolts smartly away from stoplights, though, thanks in part to 400 pound-feet of torque. Our Ranger also has the optional Tele-touch automatic transmission, which allows the selection of drive, reverse, etc., via pushbuttons on the steering-wheel hub. Very George Jetson especially considering that it was nearly half a century before Michael Schumacher finally got rid of his shift lever. Another Edsel innovation is its horizontal, "rolling dome" speedometer, which looks like a giant compass ("Come right to a heading of 45 miles per hour, Arthur"). Believe it or not, there's actually some debate as to whether the Capitol Records building was intentionally designed to look like a stack of records. Why sure, and it's pure coincidence that a guy looking very much like Abraham Lincoln ended up inside the Lincoln Memorial. Anyway, Capitol's 13-story headquarters, built in 1954 and just north of the famed intersection of Hollywood and Vine, lays claim to being the world's first circular office building. Don't be surprised if the company's next HQ accidentally gets shaped like an iPod. "She looks just like Lana Turner." "She is Lana Turner." "What?" "She is Lana Turner."" In 1997, director Curtis Hanson shot one of the most memorable scenes of his brilliant 1950s film-noir homage "L.A. Confidential" in the Formosa Café. Built in 1925, by the 1950s the Formosa had become an A List celebrity hangout-as the countless star headshots on the walls attest. The real Lana Turner and her gangster boyfriend Johnny Stompanato were indeed Formosa regulars-at least until the star's teenage daughter had a hissy fit and stabbed Stompanato to death at their home in 1958. Drop into the Formosa for a drink today, and there's a good chance you'll spot a modern-day celeb-no surprise, given that right across the street is the former Goldwyn Studio (now known as The Lot), filming site for such 1950s classics as "Some Like It Hot" and "West Side Story." You're hungry again. Barney's Beanery, a funky, memorabilia-filled bar and billiard parlor with a menu as thick as a newspaper, has been in its current location since 1927Ðwhen John "Barney" Anthony served beans to drivers passing via old Route 66 (many of them, arriving in California to start new lives, nailed their old license plates to the wall, where they remain today). By the Fifties, Barney's had become a beatnik hangout. Among them were James Dean and a still unknown Janis Joplin. Some of the patrons at the bar look like they've been there since then, too. Though it wasn't built until 1965, Jack Colker's Union 76 station in Beverly Hills is one of SoCal's finest existing examples of 1950s-style space-age architecture. The Edsel seems to belong under the station's sweeping canopy roof-at least until that price sign comes into view: $3.11 for a gallon of premium? Surely an extra digit got tacked on there by mistake. What, no free road map? Don't you know what time-space continuum we're from? It's been a long day of sightseeing and dodging annoying sightseers. The old Edsel has been a peach, though, always starting right up, complex electro-shift transmission working fine, never overheating when idling in the sun. It seems unfair that a car this basically solid and likable has become a synonym for ' But, hey, the Edsel sure does look swell pulling up under the winking neon of Norm's Coffee Shop on La Cienega. Designed in 1957 by John Lautner contemporaries Louis Armet and Eldon Davis, Norm's is a bona-fide Googie masterpiece: soaring, jet-wing roof; aquarium-like walls of glass; enough combined candlepower to illuminate the Super Bowl. The hipsters come here now for late-night coffee and pancakes. 'After-bar food' they call it. In the 1950s, it would've been 'Hangover-O-Matic.' What Really Killed Edsel? Forget the styling, the Eisenhower recession, the poor initial quality, and the untried dealer network: Edsel was dead before the first car was even sold. Edsel was key to an ambitious Ford plan to tackle GM's Buick, Oldsmobile, and Pontiac. The idea was to build three basic bodies small, medium, and large and spread the costs across five divisions: Ford, Edsel, Mercury, Lincoln, and Continental. The Fords and entry-level Edsels would share the small body; the upscale Edsels and standard Mercurys would share the medium body; and a new "super" Mercury would be built off the next-generation Lincoln body. The wheels began to fall off in 1956 when chief engineer Earle MacPherson ordered the 1958 Lincoln be switched to a unibody design to boost volume at the Wixom plant built to manufacture the unibody 1958 Thunderbird, effectively killing the "super" Mercury. Then, the day after the Edsel went on sale in 1957, Ford division chief Robert McNamara, who resented the power of the product planners responsible for the Edsel, was made a group vice-president. Sources insist that McNamara had let slip that the Edsel would be discontinued, and sure enough he began hacking away at the slow-selling Edsel's budget. Within months, he had reduced its future product plans to a different grille for 1960 Fords. In his book, °Disaster in Dearborn,° Thomas E. Bonsall blames the Edsel's demise on the byzantine politics played by warring management factions: "If Ford Motor Company management wasn't willing to invest several years of effort in the Edsel, they didn't deserve to "succeed."
Times
12-05-2025
- General
- Times
On the trail of my dad, the runaway MI6 agent
One summer day in 1958 John Bryan Wood announced to his wife, who was sitting in the garden with their new baby, that he was nipping out for a loaf of bread. But instead of walking into nearby Woking in search of supplies, Wood drove to Southampton and boarded the RMS Homeric, bound for Canada. With him he took his wife's passport (so she couldn't follow) and their three-year-old son, Jonathan. What was doubly odd was that, far from being a devoted dad, Wood spent most of his life disowning his many offspring, passing them off as nephews, nieces or step-children. In another way, though, this reckless behaviour was entirely typical of 'JBW', as he was always known. It wasn't just the string of wives
Forbes
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Buddy Holly Earns A New Posthumous Bestseller
Buddy Holly's The Very Best Of returns him to the U.K. charts decades after his passing, thanks to a ... More tribute-filled new book from Paul McCartney and members of The Who. NEW YORK - CIRCA 1958: Buddy Holly (Charles Hardin Holley) poses for a portrait circa 1958 in New York City, New York. (Photo by Michael) getty Buddy Holly has been gone for more than 60 years at this point. He died at just 22, when his career was only beginning to take off. He had already achieved commercial success in both the U.S. and the U.K. by that point, and his legacy has continued to grow in the six decades since his death in a plane crash. More than half a century later — far longer than he was alive to make music — Holly is still collecting new wins on the charts and being honored by major musicians. Holly returns to the U.K. music rankings this week with a beloved compilation. The Very Best Of , which credits both Holly and his band the Crickets, debuts on a pair of tallies as it finally becomes a bestseller. The Very Best Of launches at No. 54 on the Official Physical Albums chart. At the same time, it enters at No. 61 on the Official Albums Sales list, which also includes digital purchases. This frame marks just the third time Holly has scored a posthumous placement on the Official Albums Sales chart. He's only appeared on that list once as a solo act, with All Time Greats in 2021. A few years earlier, he collaborated with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on True Love Ways , which remains his only top 10 on that ranking, as it peaked at No. 8. Holly has fared better on the Official Physical Albums tally. With The Very Best Of , he's doubled his total number of career appearances on this roster, which focuses on CD, vinyl, and cassette sales, when compared to the Official Albums Sales ranking. In both instances, the new arrival marks a new low for the late star. Buddy Holly's Compilation is a Hit Thanks to a New Book It appears that The Very Best Of is the same compilation of that name originally released in August 1999. The set — and Holly's music in general — is back in the spotlight following the release of a book titled Buddy Holly: Words of Love . The 400-plus-page book features musicians paying tribute to Holly, describing how he influenced their work and expressing the hope that their attention can keep his music and name alive. The project, which was heralded by his widow Maria Elena Holly, includes contributions from Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend of The Who, Paul McCartney, and Ronnie Wood of The Rolling Stones, who painted the cover art.
