1stAngel & Friends

Morgan Freeman in ‘good spirits’

Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman is in ‘good spirits’ after being injured in a serious car accident near his Mississippi home.

Mr Freeman’s spokeswoman says he has a broken arm, broken elbow and minor shoulder damage.

She said the 71-year-old Dark Knight star is expected to undergo surgery and to make a good recovery.

The accident happened shortly before midnight on Sunday outside Charleston in the Mississippi Delta.

Mr Freeman’s car ran off the side of the road and overturned several times, landing upright in a ditch.

Mr Freeman - who had been driving the car - and a female passenger were airlifted to Memphis’s Regional Medical Center, about 90 miles (145km) north of where the accident occurred in Tallahatchie County.

‘He is having a little bit of surgery this afternoon or tomorrow to help correct the damage," his spokeswoman Donna Lee said. "He says he’ll be OK and is looking forward to a full recovery’; she added.

Earlier a spokesman at the hospital said the actor was in a ’serious’ condition.

Neither Lee nor the hospital had information about the condition of the woman, Demaris Meter of Memphis.

Both passengers had been wearing seatbelts at the time of the accident, said Mississippi Highway Patrol Sergeant Ben Williams.

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Morgan Freeman in ‘good spirits’.

The secrets of a long-forgotten collection of recordings, correspondence and scores by the influential composer who created the original Doctor Who theme have been revealed to researchers at The University of Manchester.

A team from the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures has begun the long job of cataloguing and preserving fragile audio tapes made by Delia Derbyshire from 1962-1973, when she was based at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

Following Derbyshire’s death in 2001, the collection was entrusted to the composer and Radiophonic Workshop archivist Mark Ayres, who donated the 267 tapes - most of which have been unheard for over thirty years - to the University’s Dr David Butler to catalogue and preserve.

Among the jewels found in the collection is one of the earliest electronic "dance music" compositions, written by Delia for radio twenty years before the style was made fashionable by bands such as Orbital and 808 State.

Rare recordings feature Shakespearian actor Nicol Williamson’s 1969 performance in Hamlet at London’s Roundhouse Theatre, with Derbyshire providing haunting sound effects.

Other finds include a revealing recording of the way she created her celebrated piece ‘Blue Veils and Golden Sands’ using electronic manipulation to transform the sounds of her own voice.

Dr Butler said: ‘Many of the tapes have no labels so it’s a case of using detective work to find out what they are - we can’t even be certain Delia composed all of the music.

‘But it’s already proved to be an Aladdin’s cave and we’ve just started to scratch the surface.

‘The collection includes her freelance work and really does give us a better sense of her range as a composer.

‘It’s fitting that we’re doing this almost exactly 50 years after the BBC Radiophonic Workshop was launched in 1958′

He added: ‘Delia Derbyshire never really received the recognition she deserved as one of our most influential composers of the past 30 or so years.

‘And though brilliant, the Doctor Who theme is just one small example of her genius which was held in high esteem by figures across music, television, theatre and film, including Paul McCartney and the DJ John Peel.

‘But her association with ‘functional’ music for television and radio resulted in her contribution to the development of electronic music in Britain often going unacknowledged’

Delia used a combination of musique concrète techniques, tape manipulation and electronic gadgetry to create her sounds including the magnificently-named wobbulator.

But her favourite instrument was a green lampshade which she would strike and then transform the resulting sounds to create the desired effect.

‘The tragedy is after leaving the BBC in 1973, she withdrew from composition until 1996′, Dr Ricardo Climent from the University’s Novars Research Centre said.

‘That can be attributed to her struggle for acceptance but also the rise of the synthesizer in electronic music - she wasn’t comfortable with that as she felt the off the peg sounds removed the creativity of her compositional techniques. But at long last her pioneering sounds can be heard again.’

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Stars’ tributes to Ledger’s Joker

Heath Ledger’s co-stars have paid tribute to him at the world premiere of the new Batman film in New York.

Ledger’s performance as The Joker in The Dark Knight has prompted speculation that he may win a posthumous Oscar for the role.

“It’s the best performance of a villain I have seen,” said co-star Sir Michael Caine, who walked down a black carpet.

The movie is dedicated to the actor, who died aged 28 following an accidental drug overdose in January.

“My feeling is that he will get a nomination, I would be very surprised if he didn’t get the Oscar - he has my vote anyway,” said Sir Michael.

Grammy Award Winning songwriter/record producer turned author/screenplay writer, Gerald Isaac, introduces the hottest and newest form of reading entertainment, the “Scrook”. A “Scrook” is a script-book written with the riveting and breath taking flow of a novel in screenplay format.

Author and CEO, Gerald Isaac, calls it, “The Virtual Movie”, where mind and imagination become the screen as your senses and emotions embark on a heightened surround sound journey fueled by words. It’s literally like “reading in HD”.

SCROOK NOVELS celebrates the launch of its first two releases, PEDESTAL and BEAUTIFUL RAIN, through amazon.com and through the company’s website scrooknovels.com. Through grass roots guerrilla marketing, choice advertising and several awareness campaigns, the company is starting to gain ground, stirring up anticipation with a core audience of readers and story lovers across the country. (more…)

Music giant Universal Music Group has lost a court battle to stop an eBay trader from reselling promotional CDs he had bought from second hand stores.

Troy Augusto makes money by snapping up rare albums and selling them on the online auction site.

Universal accused him of copyright infringement, saying some of the items he offered were promotional copies and not authorised for sale to the public.

But a US judge ruled that Mr Augusto had the right to sell the CDs.