The new Venice, Calif.-based ad shop that Rupert Samuel, former director of integrated production at Crispin Porter+Bogusky, is partnered in (with fellow CP+B alumni Tom Adams, Paul Keister, Bob Cianfrone and Brian Rekasis) is called Goodness Manufacturing. And the Goodness moniker is most apropos in describing another Samuel endeavor, this one slated for Sunday, Oct. 7, when he, his brother Rowley Samuel, director of creative integration at DDB Chicago, and friend Andy Kenny will be running in the 30th annual Chicago Marathon to help raise not only awareness of congenital toxoplasmosis but also money for The Toxoplasmosis Center in Chicago.
The cause hits close to home for Rupert and Rowley Samuel in that the latter’s son, Fin, was born this past January with congenital toxoplasmosis and has consequently been challenged with a brain injury, affecting his development and resulting in seizures. Fin also has visual impairment, Hydrocephalus (water on the brain) and in his first six months has undergone two operations performed by a neurosurgeon.
Still Fin manages to shine through this adversity–and now there’s a way to help many of those stricken with this illness.
In that the disease is rare, funding is hard to come by. Government resources, for example, are most often targeted at more common illnesses such as heart disease and cancer. The Toxoplasmosis Center has thus found it difficult to gain necessary funding and has looked to other avenues to support its pioneering research into preventing and treating this disease that is triggered by a parasite infection during pregnancy.
To continue the good work of The Toxoplasmosis Center, your help is needed. To sponsor the aforementioned trio of marathon runners, log onto www.active.com/donate/toxoplasmosis.
The Toxoplasmosis Center provides care and treatment to patients from all over the world. It is one of the only centers that offers comprehensive, lifelong care to people of all ages stricken with congenital toxoplasmosis and other Toxoplasma gondii parasite infections. The Toxoplasmosis Center has been working with some of the same patients for more than 25 years.
All donations based on sponsorship of the Chicago Marathon runners will be paid into the Finley John Gubbins Samuel Special Needs Trust Fund from which all money raised will be given to The Toxoplasmosis Center.
While coping with the illness is an ordeal for patients and their families, an e-mail from Rowley Samuel to help drum up Marathon run sponsors reminds us that human triumph is still possible under the most trying circumstances.
The opening sentences of the e-mail, in which Rowley Samuel refers to his wife Gemma, sum up the family’s strength, its state of mind, heart and spirit. It reads, “I said to Gemma the other day that the last year has been by far the hardest year in my entire life but at the same time the most amazing one. Hard because of all the troubles we have had to see little Fin deal with, amazing because of how he has dealt with them and what we now have as a family.”
Netflix Series “The Leopard” Spots Classic Italian Novel, Remakes It As A Sumptuous Period Drama
"The Leopard," a new Netflix series, takes the classic Italian novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and transforms it into a sumptuous period piece showing the struggles of the aristocracy in 19th-century Sicily, during tumultuous social upheavals as their way of life is crumbling around them.
Tom Shankland, who directs four of the eight episodes, had the courage to attempt his own version of what is one of the most popular films in Italian history. The 1963 movie "The Leopard," directed by Luchino Visconti, starring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale, won the Palme d'Or in Cannes.
One Italian critic said that it would be the equivalent of a director in the United States taking "Gone with the Wind" and turning it into a series, but Shankland wasn't the least bit intimidated.
He said that he didn't think of anything other than his own passion for the project, which grew out of his love of the book. His father was a university professor of Italian literature in England, and as a child, he loved the book and traveling to Sicily with his family.
The book tells the story of Don Fabrizio Corbera, the Prince of Salina, a tall, handsome, wealthy aristocrat who owns palaces and land across Sicily.
His comfortable world is shaken with the invasion of Sicily in 1860 by Giuseppe Garibaldi, who was to overthrow the Bourbon king in Naples and bring about the Unification of Italy.
The prince's family leads an opulent life in their magnificent palaces with servants and peasants kowtowing to their every need. They spend their time at opulent banquets and lavish balls with their fellow aristocrats.
Shankland has made the series into a visual feast with tables heaped with food, elaborate gardens and sensuous costumes.... Read More