Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Robert De Niro to Star in New Martin Scorsese Netflix Film


The recipient of a bachelor's degree in psychology and sociology from Slippery Rock State College, Patrick Stoup serves as the Chief Executive Officer of SAI, a professional and technical services consulting corporation. When he isn't working, Patrick Stoup enjoys watching films. He counts Robert De Niro as his favorite actor.

Beginning in August, De Niro and his longtime collaborator Martin Scorsese will work on their 10th film together. De Niro is slated to play Frank Sheeran in Scorsese's latest film, The Irishman, which is scheduled for a 2019 release on Netflix. The actor-director pair first worked together on Mean Streets in 1973 and have since produced memorable films such as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Goodfellas. 

The Irishman will detail the life of Sheeran, a former labor union official who confessed to killing Jimmy Hoffa prior to his death in 2003. Because the majority of the film's plot occurs in the 1970s and includes flashbacks to when Sheeran was a younger man, De Niro, who is 73 years old, will be subjected to digital de-aging technology using reference materials from throughout his 50-year career in film. In addition to De Niro, the film features Al Pacino, Bobby Cannavale, Harvey Keitel, and Joe Pesci.

Wednesday, February 22, 2017

The Development of the Popular Crossword Puzzle


Patrick Stoup graduated with a BA in psychology/sociology from Slippery Rock State College in 1972. He has been the CEO of SAI in Gaithersburg, Maryland, since 2014. In his spare time, Patrick Stoup enjoys solving the Washington Post’s Sunday crossword puzzles.

Considered by many the most popular word game in the world, crossword puzzles are a relatively recent invention. They first appeared in 19th-century English children's books in the form of square groupings of words that could be read both horizontally or vertically. They didn't become popular with adults until introduced to the United States.

The first-known crossword puzzle appeared in a Sunday edition of the New York World in December of 1913. Created by an English journalist, Arthur Wynne, the puzzle was shaped like a diamond, with no black spaces in the interior. By the early 1920s, other newspapers were producing their own puzzles. Within a decade, almost all newspapers offered them.

The February edition of Pearson's Magazine in 1922 was the first British publication to have a crossword puzzle. British crosswords quickly developed a reputation for being more difficult than American versions, with some even calling them cryptic.