Donnie Yen Ji-dan, the Hong Kong action star who is set to play the lead in the sequel to the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, recently joined the big five-0 club. Putting most husbands to shame, Yen, one of the highest paid actors in Asia, said he did not need any gifts to celebrate his milestone birthday as his wife, model Cecilia "Cissy" Wang, was present enough. Yen is in negotiations to star alongside George Clooney and Zhang Ziyi in the remake of Seven Samurai, the epic Japanese ronin drama directed by influential filmmaker Akira Kurosawa …
The Russian novelist and philosopher spent four years in exile, his hands and feet shackled, at a Siberian prison camp after his execution by firing squad was reprieved at the last moment by Tsar Nicholas I. In a letter to the woman who had sent him a copy of the New Testament, the only book he was permitted to read in detention, he wrote that he was a "child of unbelief and doubt up to this moment, and I am certain that I shall remain so to the grave". The self-described "philosophical deist", however, was once defined as a "great religious writer" who explores "the miracle of spiritual existence", by quantum theorist Albert Einstein …