Because it is Saturday I decided to do a list I have been wanting to do for a very long time. This is a list of movie trailers that have been recut by amateurs to change their genre. For example, a horror movie might be recut to make it a romantic comedy. I can spend all day watching these so I hope that all the listverse readers will enjoy this list as much as I enjoyed the hours picking out the entries.

This one has a slightly offputting voice-over, but I have included it because one slightly NSFW moment made me laugh out loud. See if you can work out which scene it is.

Here we see Willy Wonka in quite a different light from the books and films. Just when you thought Gene Wilder couldn’t be more sinister in the role, you are proven wrong.

This is a film all geeks love. Here we see the a comedy turned into a psychological thriller.

This is actually the second recut by the same person – the first one is also excellent but it doesn’t allow embedding. If you want to view that too, you can find it here. Both are recut to be horror movies.

This brilliant recut shows how a skilled editor can totally transform a film with virtually no changes except the music.

No need to close your eyes in terror during this one – this is a very well done recut of the Ring to make it appear to be a tearjerker.

This is another straight movie turned gay. It is hilarious and extremely well done. If you like this one, you should also check out Brokeback to the Future, Meet Joe Brokeback, and The Empire Brokeback. We could do nearly an entire list based on brokeback recuts.

Frankly, it doesn’t take a lot of recutting to make Top Gun appear to be a gay movie, but here we have it anyway – from a military film to a gay romance.

Here is our favorite horror movie recut as a romantic comedy. It just goes to show how clever film editors can be and why we so often see a film trailer we love for a film we hate. In this recut they even manage to include the bathroom scene with the dead lady!

This is the recut that got the whole thing going. It is quite well known (for reasons that are obvious when you see how good it is). Enjoy.

Broadmoor Hospital is a high-security psychiatric hospital at Crowthorne in the Borough of Bracknell Forest in Berkshire, England. It is the best known of the three high-security psychiatric hospitals in England, the other two being Ashworth and Rampton. The hospital was built in 1863 to a design by Sir Joshua Jebb, and covers 210,000 square metres (53 acres) within its secure perimeter. After the escape of John Straffen (see below) in 1952, who murdered a local child, the hospital set up an alarm system. The hospital has seen some prolific inmates since its inception, and this list describes 10 of its most famous tenants.

Robert Clive Napper is a convicted British murderer and rapist who was remanded in Broadmoor Hospital indefinitely on 18 December 2008 for the manslaughter of Rachel Nickell. He is a paranoid schizophrenic who has also been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. The marriage of Napper’s parents was violent; Napper witnessed violent attacks on his mother which ended in divorce when he was 10. Napper and his siblings (two brothers and a sister) were placed in foster care and underwent psychiatric treatment.

Meanwhile, Napper underwent a personality change after a family friend assaulted him on a camping holiday when he was 12. The offender was jailed, but Napper became introverted, obsessively tidy and reclusive according to his mother. He also bullied his siblings and spied on his sister while she undressed.

Napper’s convictions include an offense with an air-gun, stabbing a young mother forty-nine times in front of her two year-old son, killing then sexually assaulting a woman and smothering her four-year-old daughter, and admitted to two rapes, but it is believed he is the ‘Green Chain Rapist’ who carried out at least 70 savage attacks across south-east London over a four-year period ending in 1994

Graham Frederick Young is notable for his obsession with the use of poison, and for having been imprisoned for murder in his teens, only to kill again after his release. Born in Neasden, north London, he was fascinated from a young age by poisons and their effects. In 1961 at 14 he started to test poisons on his family, enough to make them violently ill. He amassed large quantities of antimony and digitalis by repeatedly buying small amounts, lying about his age and claiming they were for science experiments at school.

In 1962 Young’s stepmother Molly died from poison. He had been poisoning his father, sister, and a school friend. Young’s aunt Winnie, who knew of his fascination with chemistry and poisons, became suspicious. He might have escaped suspicion as he suffered the same nausea and sicknesses as his family, however he sometimes forgot which foods he had laced. He was sent to a psychiatrist, who recommended contacting the police. Young was arrested on May 23, 1962. He confessed to the attempted murders of his father, sister, and friend. The remains of his stepmother could not be analyzed because she had been cremated.

Young was sentenced to 15 years in Broadmoor but was released after nine years, having been deemed “fully recovered”. After release from hospital in 1971, he began work as a storekeeper at John Hadland Laboratories, which manufactured thallium bromide-iodide infrared lenses used in military equipment. Soon after he began work, his foreman, Bob Egle, grew ill and died. Young had been making tea laced with poisons for his colleagues. A sickness swept through his workplace and, mistaken for a virus, was nicknamed the Bovingdon Bug. These cases of nausea and illness, sometimes severe enough to require hospitalization, were later attributed to Young and his tea. Young poisoned about 70 people during the next few months, although none fatally. Young is the subject of an extremely good film called The Young Poisoner’s Handbook

Kenneth Erskine is an English serial killer who became known as the Stockwell Strangler. During 1986, Erskine murdered seven elderly people, breaking into their homes and strangling them; most often they were sexually assaulted. The crimes took place in London. A homeless drifter and solvent abuser, Erskine was 24 years old when he committed the crimes, but had the mental age of a 12-year-old. Police suspected Erskine of four others murders but Erskine has never been charged with any of these murders. Erskine was sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommended minimum term of 40 years, but has since been found to be suffering from mental disorder within the meaning of the Mental Health Act 1983, and is therefore now held at Broadmoor. He is unlikely to be freed until at least 2028 and the age of 66. Some 20 years later, the trial judge’s recommendation is still one of the heaviest ever handed out in British legal history.

In February 1996, Erskine was again in the news, this time for preventing the possible murder of Peter Sutcliffe (see below), by raising the alarm as a fellow inmate, Paul Wilson, attempted to strangle Sutcliffe with the flex from a pair of stereo headphones.

David John Copeland is a former member of the British National Party and the National Socialist Movement, who became known as the “London Nail Bomber,” after a 13-day bombing campaign in April 1999 aimed at London’s black, Bangladeshi and gay communities. The bombs killed three, including a pregnant woman, and injured 129, four of whom lost limbs. No warnings were given.

After his arrest, he told psychiatrists that he had started having sadistic dreams when he was about 12, including dreams or fantasies that he had been reincarnated as an SS officer with access to women as slaves. Copeland wrote to BBC correspondent Graeme McLagan, denying that he had schizophrenia, and telling McLagan that the “ZOG,” or Zionist Occupation Government, was pumping him full of drugs in order to sweep him under the carpet. He wrote, “I bomb the blacks, Pakis, degenerates. I would have bombed the Jews as well if I’d got a chance”. When asked by police why he had targeted ethnic minorities, he replied: “Because I don’t like them, I want them out of this country, I believe in the master race.

Although Copeland was diagnosed by five psychiatrists as having paranoid schizophrenia, and a consultant concluded he had a personality disorder, his plea of diminished responsibility was not accepted by the prosecution, which was under pressure not to concede to his pleas of guilty to manslaughter. He was convicted of murder on June 30, 2000, and given six concurrent life sentences.

Peter William Sutcliffe is an English serial killer who was dubbed The Yorkshire Ripper. Sutcliffe was convicted in 1981 of murdering 13 women and attacking several others. He is currently serving life imprisonment in Broadmoor. Reportedly a loner at school, he left at the age of 15 and took a series of menial jobs, including two stints as a grave digger during the 1960s. He frequented prostitutes as a young man and it has been speculated that a bad experience with one (during which he was allegedly conned out of money) helped fuel his violent hatred against women.

In 1981, Sutcliffe was stopped by the police with a 24 year old prostitute. A police check revealed the car was fitted with false number plates and Sutcliffe was arrested for this offence and transferred to Dewsbury Police Station, West Yorkshire. At Dewsbury he was questioned in relation to the Yorkshire Ripper case as he matched so many of the physical characteristics known. The next day police returned to the scene of the arrest and discovered a knife, hammer and rope he discarded when he briefly slipped away from police during the arrest. After two days of intensive questioning, on the afternoon of 4 January 1981 Sutcliffe suddenly declared he was the Ripper. Over the next day, Sutcliffe calmly described his many attacks. Weeks later he claimed God told him to murder the women. He displayed emotion only when telling of the murder of his youngest victim, Jayne MacDonald.

At his trial, Sutcliffe pleaded not guilty to 13 counts of murder, but guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. The basis of this defence was his claim that he was the tool of God’s will. Sutcliffe first claimed to have heard voices while working as a gravedigger, that ultimately ordered him to kill prostitutes. He claimed that the voices originated from a headstone of a deceased Polish man, Bronislaw Zapolski, and that the voices were that of God.

In the years of Sutcliffe’s incarceration, there have been numerous attempts on his life from other inmates. The first was during his stay at HMP Parkhurst when James Costello, a 35-year-old career criminal from Glasgow plunged a broken coffee jar twice into the left side of Sutcliffe’s face. Whilst at Broadmoor he was subject to an attempted strangulation (thwarted by Kenneth Erskine, above) and lost the vision in his left eye after being attacked with a pen.

John Thomas Straffen was a British serial killer who was the longest-serving prisoner in British legal history. Straffen killed two young girls in the summer of 1951. He was found to be unfit to plead and committed to Broadmoor; during a brief escape in 1952 he killed again. This time he was convicted of murder. Respited due to his mental state, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and he remained in prison until his death more than 50 years later.

Aged 8, Straffen was referred to a Child Guidance Clinic for stealing and truancy. In 1939 he first came before a Juvenile Court for stealing a purse from a girl, and was given two years’ probation. His probation officer found that Straffen did not understand the difference between right and wrong, or the meaning of probation. The family was living in crowded lodgings at the time and Straffen’s mother had no time to help, so the probation officer took the boy to a psychiatrist. As a result, Straffen was certified as a mental defective under the Mental Deficiency Act 1927. A report was compiled on him in 1940 which gave his Intelligence Quotient as 58 and placed his mental age at six. When Straffen was 14, he was strongly suspected of being responsible for strangling two prize geese owned by one of the officers of his school; however, no proof was found and it was not noted on his records. At the age of 16 the school authorities undertook a review which found his I.Q. was 64 and his mental age 9 years 6 months and recommended his discharge.

In 1951, Straffen killed two young girls for which he was sent to Broadmoor. In 1952 whilst cleaning some outbuildings, he escaped over a perimeter wall, and within 2 hours had killed another young girl. It was this escape and subsequent murder that urged the government to install an alarm system. To this day, the alarm is tested every Monday morning at 10am for two minutes, and then sounded again to give the ‘all clear’. With hooters located in several locations round Surrey and Berkshire, the alarm can be heard for up to 15 miles in each direction from Broadmoor.

Charles “Charlie” Bronson (born Michael Gordon Peterson) is an English criminal often referred to in the British press as the “most violent prisoner in Britain”. Born in Luton, England, Michael often found his way into fights before he began a bare-knuckle boxing career in the East End of London. His promoter was not happy with his name and suggested he change it to Charles Bronson.

In 1974 he was imprisoned for a robbery and sentenced to seven years. While in prison he began making a name for himself as a loose cannon often fighting convicts and prison guards. These fights added years onto his sentence. Regarded as a problem prisoner, he was moved 120 times throughout Her Majesty’s Prison Service and spent all but 4 years of his imprisoned life in solitary confinement. What was originally a seven year term stretched out to fourteen year sentence that resulted in his first wife Irene, with whom he had a son, leaving him. He was released on October 30, 1988 but only spent 69 days free before he was arrested again. Bronson has spent a total of just four months and nine days out of custody since 1974. Known as one of the hardest criminals in England, Bronson has written many books about his experiences and famous prisoners he has met throughout his internment.

Bronson has been involved in over a dozen hostage incidents, one of which includes taking hostages and staging a 47-hour rooftop protest at Broadmoor in 1983, causing £750,000 (nearly $1.5m) worth of damage. Bronson has spent time at all three of England’s high-security psychiatric hospitals.

Richard Dadd was an English painter of the Victorian era, noted for his depictions of fairies and other supernatural subjects, Orientalist scenes, and enigmatic genre scenes, rendered with obsessively minuscule detail. Most of the works for which he is best known were created while he was incarcerated in Broadmoor hospital.

In 1842, Sir Thomas Phillips, the former mayor of Newport, chose Dadd to accompany him as his draftsman on an expedition through Europe to Greece, Turkey, Palestine and finally Egypt. In November of that year they spent a grueling two weeks in Palestine, passing from Jerusalem to Jordan and returning across the Engaddi wilderness. Toward the end of December, while traveling up the Nile by boat, Dadd underwent a dramatic personality change, becoming delusional and increasingly violent, and believing himself to be under the influence of the Egyptian god Osiris. His condition was initially thought to be sunstroke. On his return in the spring of 1843, he was diagnosed to be of unsound mind and was taken by his family to recuperate in the countryside village of Cobham, Kent. In August of that year, having become convinced that his father was the Devil in disguise, Dadd killed him with a knife and fled for France. En route to Paris Dadd attempted to kill another tourist with a razor, but was overpowered and was arrested by the police. Dadd confessed to the killing of his father and was returned to England, where he was committed to the criminal department of Bethlem psychiatric hospital (also known as Bedlam). Here and subsequently at the newly created Broadmoor, Dadd was cared for and encouraged to continue painting.

Dadd probably suffered from a form of paranoid schizophrenia. He appears to have been genetically predisposed to mental illness; two of his siblings were similarly afflicted, while a third had “a private attendant” for unknown reasons.

Daniel M’Naghten (pronounced, and sometimes spelled, McNaughton) was a Scottish woodturner who assassinated English civil servant Edward Drummond while suffering from paranoid delusions. Through his trial and its aftermath, he has given his name to the legal test of criminal insanity in England and other common law jurisdictions known as the M’Naghten Rules.

In 1840 M’Naghten sold his wood turning business and spent two years in London and Glasgow. Whilst in Glasgow in 1841 he complained to various people, including his father, the Glasgow commissioner of police, and an MP, that he was being persecuted by the Tories and followed by their spies. No-one took him seriously, believing him to be deluded. In January 1843, M’Naghten was noticed acting suspiciously around Whitehall in London. On the afternoon of 20 January the Prime Minister’s private secretary, civil servant Edward Drummond, was walking towards Downing Street from Charing Cross when M’Naghten approached him from behind, drew a pistol and fired at point-blank range into his back. M’Naghten was overpowered by a police constable before he could fire a second pistol.

M’Naghten appeared at Bow Street magistrates’ court the morning after the assassination attempt. He made a brief statement in which he described how persecution by the Tories had driven him to act: “The Tories in my native city have compelled me to do this. They follow, persecute me wherever I go, and have entirely destroyed my peace of mind… It can be proved by evidence. That is all I have to say”

Ronald Kray along with his twin brother Reginald, were the foremost perpetrators of organized crime in London’s East End during the 1950s and 1960s. Ronald, commonly referred to as Ron or Ronnie, suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. The Krays were involved in armed robberies, arson, protection rackets, violent assaults including torture and the murders of Jack “The Hat” McVitie and George Cornell. As West End nightclub owners they mixed with prominent entertainers including Diana Dors, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland and politicians, which gave the Krays a veneer of respectability. In the 1960s they became celebrities in their own right, being photographed by David Bailey and interviewed on television.
The Kray twins became famous locally for their gang and the mayhem they caused. They narrowly avoided prison several times and in early 1952 they were called up for National Service. They deserted several times, each time being recaptured.

It was during this period that Ron started to show the first signs of mental illness. He would refuse to eat, shave only one side of his face and suffer wild mood swings, sitting still for hours before erupting into a violent frenzy. On one occasion, Ron climbed into the prison rafters and, according to one guard, refused to come down for some six hours in spite of brother Reggie’s pleas. It is not clear whether at this stage it was another prank to annoy their guards, or if Ron had become unbalanced. Guards at the Canterbury military holding prison were convinced he was dangerously psychotic.

They were arrested in May 1968 and convicted in 1969 by the efforts of a squad of detectives led by Detective Superintendent Leonard “Nipper” Read, and were both sentenced to life imprisonment. Ronnie was eventually certified insane and lived the remainder of his life in Broadmoor, dying on 17 March 1995 of a massive heart attack, aged 61. His funeral on 29 March 1995 was a huge event with people lining the streets. Reggie was released from prison on compassionate grounds in August 2000, a few weeks before his death from cancer.

A micronation is basically what it sounds like, a tiny country! A country that’s started under questionable circumstances, like a home-made nation. Some Micronations are started as school projects, or protests, some are just jokes. Other times they’re scams to avoid taxes or con money out of people. Sometimes, it’s really unclear why a micronation was formed, and it’s hard to tell if the one running the show really takes it seriously or if they’re just out of their minds. In no particular order, here are ten examples from the weird world of micronations.

When the Antarctic treaty was signed it split up the territory in Antarctica among several different countries, but there is an area in Western Antarctica named Marie Byrd Land, between the claims of Chile and New Zealand, that had no territorial claim attached to it. In 2001 Travis McHenry saw the area was unclaimed and declared it an independent nation with himself as the ruler. Sending declarations to all the signing nations of the Antarctic treaty; the letters were of course universally ignored, as there are no year-round residents of the area and no one who claims to part of the nations’ government has even been to the location thus far. Very little is known about the intentions of the founder, or the “Nobility” of the nation. The most that’s come out of country have been a few coins and stamps, and a free e-mail service for “Citizens”.

Of all these micronations, this one by far has the most interesting history. We’re all at least somewhat familiar with the Mutiny on the Bounty, where the evil Captain Bligh was overpowered by mutineers who wished to return to Tahiti instead of going back to England. What most don’t know is that many of the mutineers actually did eventually relocate to Tahiti, though some settled in a tiny Island called Pitcairn in the south Pacific where a few of their descendants still live today. Officially, the island is not considered a nation, but an unincorporated territory. It is legally a democracy with the town’s mayor considered the ruler, but isn’t considered a country. With a population of roughly 50 as of 2003 this island is officially the smallest democracy in the world.

Started by Kevin Baugh in 1977 as a school project, the Republic of Mallosia is a mock dictatorship in northern Nevada described as a “hobby” by it’s de facto ruler. Kevin Baugh calls Molossia an “Enclave Nation” being that it’s surrounded by the United States, and while the country has a constitution and a national assembly, Baugh claims martial law due to the “Ever present foreign threat” of the US. The micronation also has territorial claims in Pennsylvania and northern California, and has recently laid claim to the Neptune deep (The floor of the deepest trench in the pacific ocean) and the province of “Vesperia” located on the planet Venus. Baugh has also decreed national bans on firearms, incandescent light bulbs and smoking, along with more outlandish bans against onions, catfish, walruses, and anything from Texas. The property is mainly considered a tourist trap, with tourist getting a 45 minute guided tour of the country by Kevin Baugh himself who expects them to present their passports at the gate.

While not a traditional Micronation (if there is such a thing) Freetown Christiania certainly qualifies for this list as a a self-governing area with a small resident population. Freetown was established in 1971 in an abandoned military base in Copenhagen, Denmark by free-thinkers and hippies with ambitions of building a free society. Depending on who you talk to, Freetown Christiania is either “The world’s first fully functioning anarchistic society” or an area overrun with squatters and drug dealers. It’s either a “Safe, quiet town where one is free to be themselves” or a crime ridden slum, where people are often raped, mugged or murdered.

Since the area is indeed in a state of anarchy, no official numbers exist on crime rates so it’s hard to tell if the lofty vision of the founders actually lines up with reality. The “town” consists of an area less than a kilometer square, and it’s citizens still pay taxes and city utilities to Copenhagen, but the residents claim it has it’s own set of laws and public services. The local laws forbid firearms, cameras, “hardcore” drugs and cars, though it’s unclear how these laws are enforced since the town also boasts it has no police. The main attraction for visitors is “Pusher street” where people can buy marijuana and related paraphernalia in an open-air market. Despite the fact it’s illegal in the rest of Denmark and while it has something of a bad reputation, Freetown is still known for being the origin of many famous Danish writers

, artists and theater groups. It’s considered by some to be a shining example of how Anarchy is a plausible system of government.

If I were rating these nations by territory claimed, this Nation would be the hands-down winner. The so-called “Nation of Celestial Space” was establishedon January 1st, 1949 by James Thomas Mangan when he wrote his local board of of deeds and titles to lay claim to some previously unclaimed territory. What was this territory? The entire Universe, minus the Earth. While this bizarre claim was ignored by most, it didn’t stop Mangan from printing coins, bills, and postage stamps for his “nation”. When the US and Russia began flying high-altitude aircraft he wrote letters of complaint to their respective state departments claiming that these flights were infringing on his territorial claim without his permission. Strangely, Mangan wasn’t the only person to establish an extra-terrestrial micronation before the Outer Space Treaty was signed in 1967 forbidding territorial claims in outer space. Others included the “Other World Nation” claiming the other planets of the solar system and the “Celestial Solar Kingdom” claiming the surface of the sun.

In 1968 Italian architect and real-estate investor Giorgio Rosa constructed a 400 square meter platform in the Adriatic sea 7 Miles from the Italian town of Rimini. The platform was meant to be a tourist spot, sporting it’s own souvenir shop, fishing pier and radio station. Soon after it was opened Rosa declared sovereignty and renamed platform “The Republic of Rose Island” and started claiming he was going to begin printing his own currency. Worried that this was a ploy to avoid taxes, the Italian government evicted Rosa and his employees soon after and the Italian navy destroyed the platform with explosives. In a snarky retort, Rosa began printing postage stamps with an image of the platform’s destruction and issued them from his “Government In Exile”.

An example of a micronation founded in the name of both protest and comedy, the Conch Republic was established on April 23 1982 to protest the building of a US border checkpoint between the Florida keys and the mainland. The checkpoint was meant to curb an influx of illegal immigration and smuggling from Cuba and other Caribbean islands, but inadvertently caused gridlock on the only highway bridge that lead to the Keys, inhibiting tourism and shipping. Mayor of Key west Denis Wardlow declared himself prime minister of the republic and during the secession ceremony declared war on the United States by breaking a stale loaf of Cuban bread over a nearby naval officer. He then quickly surrendered and applied for one billion dollars in foreign aid from the United States.

While the secession was never serious, the keys are still jokingly referred to as the Conch Republic and the protest did succeed in persuading the Border Patrol to remove the checkpoint. The people of the Conch Republic also banded together in 1994 to re-open a national park that was closed due to the federal government closure. During the closure the Prime minister declared “The US government is closed, but the Conch republic can still issuing passports.” Indeed, passports and other souvenirs are available on the country’s website. Their national Motto is “We Seceded Where Others Failed”.

Wishing to create a libertarian utopia with no taxes, subsidies or welfare, real-estate millionaire Michael Oliver started a project to create an island and declare it an independent nation. In 1971 he succeeded. In the Minerva reef, between Tonga and New Zealand, tons of sand was poured into the shallow reefs to bring it above sea level and create a small island. The citizens of this tiny island had high hopes, thinking they could attract tourists, fisherman, even industry after adding more sand to the island, which at the time was barely stable enough to hoist a flag on. The group elected a president, Morris C. Davis, and wrote up a declaration of independence and send it to nearby nations. Suspicious of the groups intentions, nearby Tonga issued a proclamation that the island was inside their territorial waters and used soldiers to forcibly evict the residents and lower the flag. This action was supported by the South Pacific Forum, so there wasn’t much Oliver could do but fire the “President” of his nation and cut his losses. Years later former president Davis returned with an expedition of American settlers, intending to reoccupy the reef, but was again kicked out by Tongan troops. A more recent expedition has found that the artificial island has been “More or less reclaimed by the sea”.

Sealand started it’s life as an offshore anti-aircraft platform called “HM Fort Roughs” placed in a British shipping lane during World War II to fend off German mine laying aircraft. During the war the platform housed 107 UK sailors on its 550 square meter deck and observation towers. In 1967 Pirate Radio broadcaster Paddy Roy Bates occupied the platform and set it up as a base for his pirate station “Radio Essex”. A year later Bate’s son fired a rifle at a work crew that was repairing an automated buoy near the platform, and was arrested for firearms violations since Bates and his family were still considered British Citizens. Bates was acquitted, due to the platform being three miles outside of the UK’s oceanic claim and in international waters. Seeing an opportunity Bates declared the platform the “Principality of Sealand” giving his tiny nation the motto E Mare Libertas (From the Sea, Freedom), wrote a national anthem, and started issuing stamps and currency. He stated that the court ruling gavbe him the right to declare the open-sea platform as a sovereign nation.

Since Sealand exists in international waters, there was little the British government could do about the pirate broadcasts (and the Bates family’s habit of shooting at passing boats while “Defending their waters”) though to this day no one has officially recognized the sovereignty of the platform.

Likely the most well known micronation on this list, the Principality of Hutt River was founded by Leonard George Casley in 1970. It consists of about 75 square Kilometers of farmland near the town of Northampton in western Australia. It came into being due to a wheat quota law Casley called “Draconian”. The government imposed quotas that only allowed him to sell 99 acres of wheat when he had just grown 9900 acres. He initially fought the unfair quotas in court, even appealing to the British royal family. When all else failed, Casley resorted to an obscure tort law that allowed British colonies to secede in similar circumstances. Leonard George Casley dubbed himself “His Royal Highness Prince Leonard” and declared his independence.

Despite nearly forty years of calling itself a sovereign state, the Principality of Hutt River hasn’t been recognized by the Commonwealth of Australia, nor any international entity. However, the principality has issued stamps, passports, and coins (one bearing the profile of American ex-president Bill Clinton) and claims approximately 18000 citizens “Living Abroad” as you can apply for citizenship for a small fee on the country’s website. It has a standing military (mostly consisting of Casley’s children and grandchildren) and even though it’s landlocked, they claim they have a navy. The Australian government, while not honoring Hutt River as a real country, regards it as simply an eccentric old man selling souvenirs to tourists. Many Australian wildernesses tours include a stop at Hutt River, billing it as “The second biggest Nation on the Continent”.

Christianity has been around for two thousand years and, for the most part, it has preached a good message by which to live. But unfortunately, as with all organized bodies, many people claiming to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ have shown themselves to behave quite opposite to the message it espouses. This list looks at 10 of the worst.

He is the founder of the Unification Church, which has become worldwide since its origin in 1954. Moon was born in 1920, and has set himself up at the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. A lot of people go around saying, “I’m Jesus,” but they are usually dismissed as insane or seeking attention.

Moon has convinced anywhere from several hundred thousand to one million people to join his church and consider him “Jesus reincarnated.” Moon is vehemently opposed to homosexuality, and yet he makes the common mistake of hating them, spewing rage at them, instead of trying of forgiving and trying to convert them from the sin. Such hateful opposition does nothing but galvanize the offended party to continue as it is. Christians must be in the business of saving souls, not assisting their damnation.

He is extremely anti-Semitic, and his entire church with him, championing the Holocaust as divine vengeance against the Jews, because they did not support Jesus, and this brought about his murder by the Roman government.

And none of that mentions Moon’s extraordinarily lavish lifestyle. Modern church founders typically make a lot of money founding churches. Jesus didn’t make one cent. Moon has been known to spend $2,000 a day, and give his children as much as $50,000 monthly allowances. His “True Family’s” home is a huge mansion on 18 acres in Irvington, NY, with 12 bedrooms, a dining room replete with pond and waterfall, 7 bathrooms, a bowling alley, and that’s not counting the mansions in Korea, England, Scotland, Germany, thoroughbred horses for the kids, private tutors, Ferraris, motorcycles, and blank checks to take on their vacations, first-class of course.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

The funniest part is that he was convicted of tax fraud and served 18 months in prison. Remember the fish Jesus told Peter to catch? It had two coins in its mouth, one for each of them, to pay the tax? “Render therefore unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and unto God what is God’s.” Even Jesus paid taxes.

Vernon Wayne Howell was a handsome, charismatic Texan, considered so poor a student in elementary and middle school that he was enrolled in special ed classes. He memorized the New Testament by 11, and impregnated a 15 year old when he was 19. He must have forgotten a few verses.

By 1983, after being kicked out of a 7th Day Adventist Church for fooling around with the pastor’s daughter, he began calling himself a prophet. He was able to recruit followers because of his good looks and magnetic personality, eventually proclaiming himself Jesus Christ, “the Son of God, the Lamb who could open the seven seals.” He taught that monogamy was the only proper relationship, but that polygamy was perfectly fine for him, and him alone, and quickly had sex with Karen Doyle, called her his second wife, after his first died, and proceeded to have sex with as many as 140 different women.

Karen Doyle did not get pregnant, probably because she was 14 years old, so he slept with Michele Jones, 12 years old. By proclaiming this God’s will, he was able to have sex with any woman or girl whenever he liked. He tried to gun down George Roden, who was also a high ranking member of Koresh’s sect, and escaped conviction by mistrial.

By the time of the Waco Siege, he had, by his own admission, fathered at least 12 children, some by girls as young as 12. And the followers just kept coming. To be honest, the FBI seriously botched the siege, and used unnecessary force, but Koresh was the primary culprit of his followers’ deaths, 82 of them, by fire. Which side started the fire is hotly disputed and will never be known, but Koresh told his followers, “Don’t move until you see God.”

They didn’t see God before they burned alive, Koresh with them.

He’s worse than the previous two because he doesn’t even know how to lie convincingly. He swears that “the spirit of God comes mightily upon [him]” and enables him to leg press 2,000 pounds, though he is 79 years old. This claim has been thoroughly debunked by weightlifting experts, and yet he persists in claiming and not proving it.

He has claimed to be able to deflect hurricanes by praying to God, and stated that Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment for abortion throughout America (not for Mardi Gras, which would be a little more understandable), thus showing that he did not pray for Katrina’s deflection. He believes that 9/11 and Katrina might be divinely connected.

Most recently, he denounced Haiti after the January 12, 2010 earthquake, stating that Haiti deserved what it was getting because it swore a pact with the Devil back in 1791, in order to drive out the French. Whether that pact was sworn or not, his comments were obviously intended to inflame and hurt, and they did so. How Christian of him. He was roundly denounced by most Christian denominations, and still refuses to retract what he said.

He predicted Doomsday in 1982. Ronald Reagan came close, I guess. He predicted a Pacific Northwestern tsunami in 2006, then a terrorist attack on American soil sometime in 2007. He defended this last failure by stating, “All I can think is that somehow the people of God prayed and God, in his mercy, spared us.” He has made many other predictions, none of which has come true.

He has many times called for the destruction of Islam and all its followers, not for their conversion to Christianity. he calls Islam “satanic.” He calls Hinduism “demonic.” He even claims some Protestant Christian denominations as harboring the spirit of the Antichrist. He has made quite a few anti-Semitic remarks, notably about Ariel Sharon, the former PM of Israel, whose stroke and vegetative state Robertson calls “an act of God.”

Hale is currently serving 40 years in prison for attempting to solicit the murder of Judge Joan Lefkow. Not a very model preacher. But actually, he calls himself the Pontifex Maximus of the Creativity Movement, which is just another offshoot from the Ku Klux Klan. The church is for whites only, and it has its own bible, in which one finds passages such as, “You have no alibi, no other way out, white man! Fight or die!”

His church calls for a worldwide, racial holy war, to exterminate the Jews and all black people, in order to establish “a white world.” His reasoning: God is white; God created the Jews and black people to test the faith and resolve of white people; thus, killing a Jew or black person is not a sin. After one of his followers, Benjamin N. Smith, committed a deadly shooting spree, targeting only minorities, Hale “defended” his actions on TV by saying, “We do urge hatred. If you love something, you must hate that which threatens it.” He is on audio tape laughing about the shootings and imitating the sounds of gunfire.

Bray is not an ordained or college-educated minister, but he does preach a lot about abortion. He served 46 months of a 10 year sentence for conspiring to bomb 10 abortion clinics in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington D. C. He and his wife stand firmly on the Bible as the inerrant Word of God, and that because it preaches so firmly against homosexuality and adultery, then upon being convicted of either in a court of law, the guilty party should be put to death. Even though American courts of law have no problem with either. They might be sins, but they aren’t felonies.

Bray didn’t exactly help the Christian cause of conversion by allowing Richard Dawkins, the most famous atheist in the world, to interview him for a show called “The Root of All Evil.” Bray was thoroughly outmatched, of course, and made Christianity look like…well, the root of all evil.

He is now out of prison and living in Wilmington, Ohio, officially labeled as a terrorist.

Hill was a trained and ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church, but the church excommunicated him in 1993 for taking such a militant stand against abortion, and for becoming a member of the Army of God, a Christian terrorist, anti-abortion organization.

This ordained minister finally let his anger get the best of him when he traveled to Pensacola, Florida on July 29, 1994, to an abortion clinic, and murdered one of the doctors, and his bodyguard, point-blank with shotgun blasts. He wounded the bodyguard’s wife. Then he calmly put down the shotgun in the grass and sat and waited for the police.

He was executed. The law does not permit vigilante justice. And come to think of it, “Love thine enemies,” seems a fair argument against it also.

And if you thought the last several entries were weirdos, Applewhite has gone down in history as a true psychopath. Born May 17, 1931, he proclaimed himself a prophet in 1972, and then, as they all seem to do, proclaimed himself Jesus Christ reincarnated. He was not as handsome as #9, but he wasn’t exactly ugly, either, was married, and seemed for all the world to be “blameless and upright before God.”

Followers flocked to his forceful charisma, when he told them that UFOs were coming to take them away to Heaven. When the UFOs didn’t show, the followers left, but he kept preaching to various friends and their acquaintances, and by 1975 acquired a following of 93 men, women and children.

He eventually recruited people from all 50 states, and settled in Rancho Santa Fe, California. His wife died of cancer in 1985, and sometime between then and 1997, he had a nurse surgically castrate him, for purification. He called his church “Heaven’s Gate.” His congregation worshiped him fervently.

On March 19, 1997, as the comet Hale-Bopp was passing Earth, Applewhite recorded himself preaching to his congregation that suicide “was the only way to evacuate this earth.” His congregation did not believe in suicide, but was so enamored with him, that 39 members took his word for it, and on March 24, 25, and 26, they killed themselves with mixtures of phenobarbitol and applesauce, followed by vodka. They also put plastic bags over their heads to be sure of asphyxiating, in case the poison didn’t work.

Applewhite’s idea was to die so his spirit would ascend to the UFO following Hale-Bopp, which would then take him and his followers to another plane, both physical and spiritual.

But that’s nothing compared to the 909 people, 276 of them children, who became enamored with the handsome charismatic founder of the Peoples Temple. James Warren Jones started out Methodist, and seemed to have fine intentions, endeavoring to bring about civil right for blacks and integrate American society. Somewhere along the line, he went patently insane. He was an aggressive narcissist, just as entries 1, 4, 7, 8, 9, and 10. He never claimed to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, and the only reason he founded the Peoples Temple was for the money he could make via his congregation.

The strangest part is that his followers were not hopeless runaways or uneducated and uninformed. They were predominantly members of other Christian denominations, Methodism, Presbyterianism, Disciples of Christ, etc. They were taken in by his good looks and charm, and his ability to lead and convince.

n 1974, the Temple went to Guyana, with only 50 members. But Jones promised others back in the States a tropical paradise, and they flocked by the hundreds to “Jonestown.” Because he had always been an outspoken communist sympathizer, and intended Jonestown to be a socialist save haven, he drew the attention of the U. S. Government.

On November 17, 1978, investigating claims of abuse within the Temple, California congressman Leo Ryan went to Jonestown, and about 15 members wanted to leave with him. They attempted to depart via a nearby airstrip, and were fired upon by Temple security guards. Ryan was killed, along with four others, one a Temple member.

When the shooters returned to Jonestown, Jones and accomplices were preparing a mass suicide by poisoning: Flavor Aid loaded with cyanide, phenergan, Valium and chloral hydrate.

There are graphic pictures of the dead lying en masse outside the pavilion, 909 of them. The children were probably not told that the drink was poisoned.

Jones shot himself in the head.

Father Charles Edward Coughlin was a priest who used the radio to acquire a large audience for his political and religious propaganda. He was born in 1891, and one of the first to use modern technology to mass communicate for such a purpose.

He started out innocently enough, using radio to decry the KKK for burning crosses on his church grounds, but ten years later, in 1936, he started praising and defending both Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini for their politics, and spewing some of the most despicable virulence against Jews to which the world had borne witness up to that point.

He blamed the Great Depression on “an international conspiracy of Jewish bankers,” then blamed Communism, the Russian 1917 Revolution, and Marxist atheism on “global Jewry, in its attempt to lead people astray from the perfection of Lord Jesus.”

He plagiarized a speech by Goebbels, then delivered it himself in a rally in the Bronx, September 13, 1935, giving the “Hitler salute.” And this is what he said. This is what Father Charles E. Coughlin, SJ. said, “When we get through with the Jews in America, they’ll think the treatment they received in Germany was nothing.”

He acquired thousands of followers, who chanted things like, “Wait until Hitler gets over here!” Coughlin was linked with a group that attempted to overthrow the U. S. Government, after which he was abandoned by most. He still refused to change his politics, and fought a series of radio duels with Unitarian Walton Cole, who wanted the Catholic Church to put an end to Coughlin’s vitriol.

F. D. Roosevelt himself was the man who shut Coughlin up for good, when the latter started railing against the New Deal. The courts ruled that the 1st Amendment did not apply to radio, and Coughlin’s license was revoked. This forced him to pay for his own air time, which he could not do for long.

On May 1, 1942, the Archbishop of Detroit, Most Rev. Edward Mooney, ordered Coughlin to stop his political activities and confine himself to his duties as a parish priest, warning that he would be defrocked if he refused. Coughlin complied and remained the pastor of the Shrine of the Little Flower until retiring in 1966. He died in 1979, at 88 years old, still publishing inflammatory articles against Judaism and Communism.

He has 13 children, 4 of whom have disowned him and their other 9 siblings. Those 4 children, two men and two women, have denounced the man himself as “a vitrolic, megalomaniacal sadistic psychopath.” I can’t phrase it better than that, and yet, it still does not fully capture the personality of this man. Ordinarily, the lister should remain aloof from the list, but in this case, except for his congregation, which officially numbers 71, 60 of whom are Phelps’s relatives, it is highly doubtful if anyone else on the planet agrees with, or even slightly supports, Phelps’s savage, barbaric perversion of Christianity and its founder. So I don’t feel quite so bad about being biased.

His “ministry” at the Westboro Baptist Church, which he founded, in Topeka, Kansas, is based almost entirely on anti-homosexuality, which is one of the easiest, if not the easiest, sin to denounce by means of quoting the Bible. God condemns homosexuality at least twice, in Leviticus, and from this principle, Phelps feels he can condemn the entire world, but especially the United States of America, the latter which he has described as a liberal hellhole that supports homosexuality. That’s a very, VERY cleaned-up paraphrase of his graphic, disgustingly profane diction.

Whereas, there are plenty of verses to quote against hatred, “Love thine enemies” just one of them, as quoted above. Phelps and his worshipers (since they certainly don’t worship Jesus) petulantly ignore these verses and enjoy themselves by hating others. It is a physical and emotional release, a pleasure just as sensual as that garnered by loving others.

He may never have begun a sentence with “God loves…” For him, sermons ought to begin with “God hates…” Most of the time that blank is filled in with homosexual slurs.

He extrapolates God’s hatred for gays to ridiculous lengths, denouncing the entire world as imminently doomed to Hell, except for…you guessed it: him and his precious few followers.

His two estranged sons have described him as “a malignant narcissist, with the same short, viciously intemperate disposition as a serial killer toward his victims.” The only reason he has not killed anyone is not because he views it as a sin, but because it would give the rest of the world more universal ground on which to stand against him. He prefers to set himself up as God on Earth, perfect and blamelessly instigatory.

His oldest daughter, Shirley Phelps-Roper, has defended their actions as righteous with every word, according to the Bible, and forcing “the sinful American nation to open its mouth and condemn itself.”

He and his congregation picket at least 6 churches and political establishments around their hometown everyday, with signs that read, “God Hates F_gs,” “Thank God for Dead American Soldiers,” “America is Going to Hell,” etc. They do this for the sole purpose of offending and causing wanton emotional distress. They picket the funerals of dead soldiers, screaming at the families, even while they grieve at the gravesides, that the soldier has gone to Hell and so will they. Then they laugh. They have been sued at least once, successfully, but they successfully appealed this suit and paid nothing.

Phelps is the man responsible for sending these brainwashed fools, who revel in their own malice, across the country. He has condemned every single President, from the time he was old enough to care, as the Antichrist. He has even called President Obama “a n____r” on several occasions.

With the Oscars right around the corner I thought it would be fun to put together an Academy Award list. Because there are so many Oscar lists out there I wanted to do a unique list in a hopefully fun and entertaining format. This bottom to top list (10 to 1 with a bonus of 0) will have the number representing the number of achievements and lists those achievements accordingly. So I guess you could say it’s a list within a list. All accomplishments on this list are prior to the results of the 82nd Academy Awards scheduled for March 7, 2010.

Achievement: Ten Oscar Winners that Have Appeared in 3 Oscar Winning Best Picture Films

1. Donald Crisp Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) , The Life of Emile Zola (1937) and How Green Was My Valley (1941)

2. Clark Gable, It Happened One Night (1934) , Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and Gone With the Wind (1939)

3. John Gielgud Around the World in 80 Days (1956) , Chariots of Fire (1981) and Gandhi (1982)

4. Hugh Griffith, Ben-Hur (1959) , Tom Jones (1963) and Oliver! (1968)

5. Dustin Hoffman, Midnight Cowboy (1969) , Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) and Rain Man (1988)

6. Diane Keaton The Godfather (1972) , The Godfather Part II (1974) and Annie Hall (1977)

7. Shirley MacLaine, Around the World in 80 Days (1956) , The Apartment (1960) and Terms of Endearment (1983)

8. Meryl Streep, The Deer Hunter (1978) , Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) and Out of Africa (1985)

9. Morgan Freeman, Driving Miss Daisy (1989) , Unforgiven (1992) , Million Dollar Baby (2004)

10. Jack Nicholson, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) , Terms of Endearment (1983) , The Departed

Interesting Fact: In the film Million Dollar Baby Morgan Freeman was originally approached to play the lead role of Frankie Dunn. But even before Clint Eastwood took on the directing and starring role he decided to take the part of Eddie “Scrap-Iron” Dupris.

Achievement: Nine Actors to Win a Tony Award and an Oscar for the Same Role

1. José Ferrer in Cyrano de Bergerac (1947/1950)

2. Shirley Booth in Come Back, Little Sheba (1950/1953)

3. Yul Brynner in The King and I (1952/1956)

4. Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady (1957/1964)

5. Anne Bancroft in The Miracle Worker (1960/1962)

6. Paul Scofield in A Man for All Seasons (1962/1966)

7. Jack Albertson in The Subject Was Roses (1965/1968)

8. Joel Grey in Cabaret (1967/1973)

9. Lila Kedrova, and did it the other way around. She won an Oscar for Zorba the Greek, in 1964 and 20 years later won a Tony for the same role in Zorba in 1984.

Interesting Fact: In the film The King and I, three musical numbers were filmed and then deleted from the movie. They were: “My Lord and Master” (a ballad sung by Tuptim shortly after her arrival in the palace) – “Shall I Tell You What I Think of You?” (a soliloquy for Anna, in which she comically expresses her anger towards the King) – “I Have Dreamed” (another duet for Tuptim and Lun Tha) – It was felt that “My Lord and Master” and “I Have Dreamed” didn’t do much to advance the plot, and the number “Shall I Tell You What I Think of You?” would make Anna sound too whiny and nagging.

Achievement: Eight Times Actors Have Been Nominated Posthumously

1. Jeanne Eagels, The Letter (Nominated Best for Actress) 1928/9

2. James Dean, East of Eden (Nominated for Best Actor) 1955

3. James Dean, Giant (Nominated for Best Actor) 1956

4. Spencer Tracy, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (Nominated Best Actor) 1967

5. Peter Finch, Network (Won for Best Actor) 1976

6. Ralph Richardson, Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan (Nominated for Supporting Actor) 1984

7. Massimo Troisi, Il Postino (Nominated for Best Actor) 1995

8. Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight (Won for Supporting Actor) 2008

Interesting Fact: In preparation for his role as The Joker, Heath Ledger hid away in a hotel room for about six weeks. Ledger delved deep into the psychology of the character. Ledger’s interpretation of The Joker’s appearance was primarily based off of the look of punk rocker Sid Vicious combined with the psychotic mannerisms of Malcolm McDowell’s character, Alex De Large, from A Clockwork Orange.

Achievement: Seven Oscar Nominations for a Non-Speaking Role

1. Jane Wyman, Johnny Belinda (Won for Best Actress) (1948)

2. Patty Duke, The Miracle Worker (Won for Best Supporting Actress) (1962)

3. John Mills, Ryan’s Daughter (Won for Best Supporting Actor) (1970)

4. Marlee Matlin, Children of A Lesser God (Won for Best Actress) (1986)

5. Holly Hunter The Piano (Won for Best Actress) (1993)

6. Samantha Morton, Sweet and Lowdown (Nominated for Best Supporting Actress) (1999)

7. Rinko Kikuchi, Babel (Nominated for Best Supporting Actress) (2006)

Interesting Fact: In the film The Miracle Worker, for the dining room scene, Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke wore padding beneath their clothes to prevent serious bruising during the intense physical skirmish. The nine-minute sequence required three cameras and took five days to film. You can watch the scene here.

Achievement: Six Winning Oscars for Performing in a Spoken Language Other Than English

1. Sophia Loren, Two Women (Italian) 1960

2. Robert DeNiro, The Godfather Part II (Italian) 1974

3. Roberto Benigni, Life Is Beautiful (Italian) 1997

4. Benicio del Toro, Traffic, (Spanish) 2000

5. Marion Cotillard, La Vie en Rose (French) 2007

6. Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Spanish) 2008

Interesting Fact: With Penelope Cruz winning an Oscar for her role as Maria Elena in the film Vicky Cristina Barcelona it continues a trend of young actresses winning Best Supporting Actress Oscars in Woody Allen films. Previous winners were Mira Sorvino in Mighty Aphrodite (1995) and Dianne Wiest in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and Bullets Over Broadway (1994) .

Achievement: Five Actors Winning Back to Back Oscars

1. Luise Rainer: Best Actress for The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and Best Actress for The Good Earth (1937)

2. Spencer Tracy: Best Actor for Captains Courageous (1937) and Best Actor for Boys Town (1938)

3. Katharine Hepburn: Best Actress for Guess Who’s Coming for Dinner (1967) and Best Actress for A Lion in Winter (1968)

4. Jason Robards: Best Supporting Actor for All the President’s Men (1976) and Best Supporting Actor for Julia (1977)

5. Tom Hanks: Best Actor, Philadelphia (1993) and Best Actor for Forrest Gump (1994)

Interesting Fact: Not only is Luise Rainer (Pictured above) the first woman to win two Academy Awards and the first person to win them back to back she is also the oldest living Oscar winner. Rainer was born of Jewish parents in Dusseldorf, Germany and made three German movies. Because of the rise of the Nazis in her home country, she accepted a contract from M-G-M in 1935and departed with her parents to Hollywood. She now lives in London and on January 12, 2010 she celebrated her 100th birthday. You can watch a 100 year birthday tribute here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVCWkOh_KHY

Achievement: Four Woman Nominated for Best Director

I found this hard to believe because there have been so many talented woman directors over the years. No woman has won an Oscar for Best Director and only four have been nominated.

1. Lina Wertmuller for Seven Beauties (1976)

2. Jane Campion for The Piano (1993)

3. Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation (2003)

4. Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker (2008)

Note: The Hurt Locker was first released theatrically in Italy in 2008. It was then released in the United States in 2009 and will be eligible for the upcoming Academy Awards. So Kathryn Bigelow could be the first woman to win an Oscar for Directing.

Interesting Fact: Lina Wertmüller’s films are highly reflective of her own political commitments, with the main characters either dedicated anarchists, communists, feminists (or all) .

Achievement: Three films winning for Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Writing

In the Biz this is known as “The Big Five” or the “Oscar Grand Slam”.

1. It Happened One Night (1934) Director: Frank Capra Actor: Clark Gable Actress: Claudette Colbert Writing Adaptation: Robert Riskin

2. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) Director: Miloš Forman Actor: Jack Nicholson Actress: Louise Fletcher Writing Adapted Screenplay: Laurence Hauben and Bo Goldman

3. The Silence of the Lambs (1991) Director: Jonathan Demme, Actor: Anthony Hopkins Actress: Jodie Foster, Writing Adapted Screenplay: Ted Tally

Interesting Fact: Clark Gable gave his Oscar for It Happened One Night to a child who admired it, telling him it was the winning of the statue that had mattered, not owning it. The child returned the Oscar to the Gable family after Clark’s death in 1960.

Achievement: Two Directors that Directed Themselves to an Acting Oscar

1. Laurence Olivier, Director of and Best Actor for Hamlet (1948)

2. Roberto Benigni, Director of and Best Actor for Life Is Beautiful (1998)

Neither Olivier or Benigni were awarded the Oscar for Best Director

Interesting Fact: In the film Hamlet, Olivier played the voice of Hamlet’s father’s ghost himself by recording the dialog and playing it back at a reduced speed, giving it a macabre quality. You can hear the voice at 2 minutes and 49 second into this clip. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gu46pOY0itc

Achievement: One Actor Winning 4 Oscars

Katharine Hepburn holds the current record for the most acting Academy Awards won by an individual. The movies are: Morning Glory (1933) Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967) The Lion in Winter (1968) On Golden Pond (1981) All 4 Oscars are for best actress. You can see all four of her Oscars here.

Interesting Fact: Another one and only achievement is the only actor to win an Oscar for playing a real-life actor who has received an Oscar. Ironically it is Cate Blanchett for winning Best Supporting actress in the 2004 film The Aviator, in which she played Katharine Hepburn.

Achievement: Zero Science Fiction Films Winning Best Picture

Sci-fi movies have never been a big favorite for the Academy. District 9 and Avatar are both up for best Picture for this year’s academy awards and a win from one of the two would mark the first best picture Oscar for a science fiction film. There have only been a few nominated science-fiction films for best picture in the past, including A Clockwork Orange (1971) , Star Wars (1977) and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) .

Interesting Fact: There are several legends attributed to the “Oscar” nickname. Betty Davis claimed to have dubbed the statue with the name because its backside reminded her of Harmon Oscar Nelson, her husband. Another story claims the Academy’s first librarian, Margaret Herrick, named the award because it reminded her of her uncle Oscar. Columnist Sidney Skolsky lays claims to making a vaudeville reference when he coined the name in the press. The Academy began officially calling the award Oscar in 1939.

With no centralized Islamic religious authority like a Pope or Dalai Lama, pretty much any Muslim “scholar” can create a fatwa, a religious edict for modern life supposedly guided by the Koran or the (less authoritative) hadiths- stories from Muhammad’s life. In recent years, supply has far outstripped demand, and it’s getting laughable. Most fatwas are harmless and a little mundane, but lately, some Islamic jurists have gone straight crazy.

The Fatwa: Grand Mufti Sheikh Ibn Baaz: The Sun Revolves Around the Earth

In a 2000 Fatwa titled “The Transmitted and Sensory Proofs of the Rotation of the Sun and Stillness of the Earth”, Saudi Arabian Grand Mufti Sheikh Ibn Baaz asserted that the earth was flat and disk-like and that the sun revolved around it. He had insisted that satellite images to the contrary were nothing but a Western conspiracy against the Islamic world.

Source: Al-Ahram Weekly Issue 477, 13-19 April, 2000.

The Fatwa: Ayatollah Khomeini: Kill for A Book None of Us Can Should Read!

In 1988, publication of Salman Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses” led Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini to issue a fatwa against Rushdie, with a huge bounty for his death. This triggered several attacks on the novel’s translators, publishers and booksellers, including the murder of Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi. Millions of Muslims around the world who had never read a single line of the book, and who had never even met Rushdie before, wanted him dead. Interesting fact, 24% of Iranians at the time couldn’t even read.

Source: “The West Is Choked by Fear”, Der Speigel Jan 4, 2010, Henryk Broder

The Fatwa: Malaysian National Fatwa Council: Tomboy fatwa

A University of Massachusetts study recently reported that girls who play sports have higher self esteem, and are less likely to enter (or remain in) abusive relationships. Could this fact have threatened the he-men at the Malaysia National Fatwa Council? Maybe. Perhaps that’s why Kuala Lumpur had a near riot on their hands when the Sisters in Islam marched against a Malaysian fatwa banning tomboys, which branded any girls who act un-ladylike as violating Islamic tenets. Fortunately, the as-yet undefined punishment for Malaysian girls in t-shirts and jeans hasn’t been incorporated into Sharia law yet.

Source: The Malaysian Insider

The Fatwa: Muhammad Al-Munajid: Bring Me the Head of Mickey Mouse

That’s right, somebody put on hit on Mickey Mouse. Calling Mickey “one of Satan’s soldiers,” Sheikh Muhammad Al-Munajid decreed that household mice and their cartoon cousins must be “killed in all cases”, according to the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph.

And get this—the guy’s not your average nutjob, either—Munajid used to be a former diplomat at the Saudi embassy in Washington D.C. He made the remarks on Arab television network al-Majd TV after he was asked to give Islam’s teaching on mice.

But don’t worry, Mickey won’t be alone. Munajid also put a hit on Jerry from “Tom and Jerry”. Maybe they could rent a flat with Salman Rushdie (above).

Source: Report: Saudi Cleric Says Mickey Mouse ‘Must Die’.

The Fatwa: Multaqa Ahl al Hadeeth: Emoticon fatwa

I can almost get behind this one. Sure, they’re annoying, but evil? Really? Well, to a Muslim forum looking to make a name for itself—yes.

According to Muslim Internet Forum Multaqa Ahl al Hadeeth, “Emoticons are forbidden because of its imitation to Allah’s creatures whether it is original or mixture or even deformed one and since the picture is the face and the face is what makes the real picture then emoticons which represent faces that express emotions then all that add up to make them Haram.” Additionally, “A woman should not use these images when speaking to a man who is not her mahram, because these faces are used to express how she is feeling, so it is as if she is smiling, laughing, acting shy and so on, and a woman should not do that with a non-mahram man. It is only permissible for a woman to speak to men in cases of necessity, so long as that is in a public chat room and not in private correspondence.”

Source: Jihadwatch

The Fatwa: Football fatwa

No, not even the beautiful game is safe from stupid fatwas. As part of a government drive to eliminate frivolous fatwas, the Saudi newspaper Al Watan lampooned one very real edict setting out new rules for football. Ridiculous demands included “do not play with 11 people like the heretics, Jews, and Christians”, and “play in your pyjamas or regular clothes (because) colored shorts and numbered T-shirts are not Muslim clothing”. Especially ridiculous is the edict to “remove the crossbar in order not to imitate the heretics and in order to be entirely distinct from the soccer system’s despotic international rules.”

Source: “A Fatwa on Football”, The Guardian, Monday 31 October 2005.

The Fatwa: Infidel Vaccine

Polio is actually increasing in India, Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Why? Because an anti-polio fatwa by anti-Western clerics forbid Pakistani children from immunizations, because the clerics are saying the vaccine is a conspiracy to make Muslims sterile. Ironically, it’s the clerics’ plans that would produce this result, as dead/paralytic kids don’t breed all that much.

Source: “POLIO ERADICATION: Looking for a Little Luck”, Roberts Science 6 February 2009

The Fatwa: Rashad Hassan Khalil: No Nudity for Sex

In 2007, the former dean of Islamic law at al-Azhar University in Cairo issued a fatwa that nudity during sexual intercourse invalidates a marriage between husband and wife. Debate was immediate. Suad Saleh, head of the women’s department of Al-Azhar’s Islamic studies, pleaded for “anything that can bring spouses closer to each other” and Islamic scholar Abdel Muti concurred, saying “Nothing is prohibited during marital sex, except of course sodomy.”
For his part, Al-Azhar’s fatwa committee chairman Abdullah Megawar backpedaled and said that married couples could see each other naked but should really cover up with a blanket during sex.

Source: SimplyDumb

The Fatwa: Sheik Ali Gomaa: Urine Fatwa

According to Egypt’s Grand Mufti, Sheikh Ali Gomaa, drinking the urine of Muhammad is deemed a great blessing. What, they have a lot of this stuff lying around, going to waste or something? Remember, Muhammad never claimed that he himself was divine—so why does his piss have magic properties? Failing to pass the laugh test with Muslim scholars, Mufti later recanted, saying it was only his “personal opinion”.

Source: “A Fatwa Free-for-All in the Islamic World”, New York Times, Michael Slackman Published: Monday, June 11, 2007

The Fatwa: Ezzat Attiya: Adult Breastfeeding in the Workplace

In May 2007, Ezzat Attiya wondered how unrelated men and women could work together in the same office, when Islam forbids men and women who aren’t married or related to be alone together. His answer: let her suckle him FIVE TIMES. Yes, that’s right, an adult female breastfeeding an adult male coworker will defuse all sexual tension in the office. See, the female worker will now be the male worker’s foster mother, and they can be alone together anytime. Attiya’s ruling was intergalactically mocked, and quickly condemned on the homefront as well. He was later suspended from his job, pilloried in Arab newspapers, and issued a hasty retraction saying it was a “bad interpretation of a particular case.”

Source: “A Fatwa Free-for-All In the Islamic World”, New York Times, Michael Slackman, Monday, June 11, 2007.