The National Hellenic Society (NHS) has announced that Cliffs of Freedom, a historical drama film set during Greece’s War of Independence, will be available to stream on major platforms starting September 13, 2021. The late legendary actor Christopher Plummer plays Thanasi and gives an outstanding performance. The film also features many prominent Greek actors, including: Costas Mandylor, Billy Zane, and Simon Kassianides. Plummer has played a Greek in other movies like Oedipus the King, which was filmed in Greece, and Aristotle in the Oliver Stone directed Alexander. Cliffs of Freedom is situated in Valtetsi, a small town in Arcadia in the Peloponnese region of Greece. It is based on and inspired…

RIP Michael Constantine! Greek American actor, Michael Constantine, who played Gus Portokalos, the lovable and funny father of Nia Vardalos’ Toula Portokalos in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” the highest-grossing romantic comedy of all time, has died at 94. Constantine won an Emmy for his role in the TV series “Room 222” and played many characters over the years before becoming Gus Portokalos in My Big Fat Greek Wedding 30 years later.  His agent, Julia Buchwald, stated that his death was from natural causes. Mr. Constantine, who began his career on Broadway, was blessed with a babel of foreign accents, fierce eyebrows, and a personal warmth that belied his perpetual…

Mikis Theodorakis was born on the Greek island of Chios on July 29, 1925 and died on September 2, 2021 due to cardiac arrest. The legendary Greek musical composer is credited with over 1,000 works. He composed the soundtracks for the legendary classic 3 time Academy Award winning Zorba the Greek (Best Actress, Cinematography, Art Direction) (1964), Z (1969), and Serpico (1970). He wrote the “Mauthausen Trilogy,” also known as “The Ballad of Mauthausen,” which has been dubbed “the most beautiful musical piece ever created about the Holocaust” and is considered to be among his best work.  He grew up in Greek cities like Mytilene, Kefalonia, Patra, Pyrgo, and Tripoli. Mikis…

Meet Stelios Papadopoulos! The Greek (born in Thessaloniki, Greece) behind a new FDA approved wonder drug that may finally give hope to an estimated 44 million people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease worldwide. Stelios stated that the new drug will be for those in the early on set stages of Alzheimers and to those who’s PET scan showed they had the amyloid plaque in their brain. The drug will not be intended for those in the late stage of the debilitating disease. The drug will not stop or accelerate the progress of Alzheimers,  but will slow the progress of the disease, says Papadopoulos in the video interview. Stelios is CEO of Biogen. The…

Happy National Cheesecake Day! Yes, June 30th is cheesecake day. No, cheesecake was not invented in New York. Did you know that the Greeks invented cheesecake too? You can probably hear “Ha! There you go!” with a Gus Portokalos voice from the ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’ movie. It’s true! The first “cheese cake” was invented on the Greek island of Samos. Cheese moulds dating from around 2,000 B.C. were discovered there by physical anthropologists. Cheese and cheese products had most certainly existed for thousands of years before this, however, anything earlier falls under prehistory (the period of human history prior to the creation of writing), so we’ll never know…

The Tokyo Olympics 2020 finally kicked off today with tons of controversy and protests against the games being held right outside the stadium during the opening ceremony. After being postponed a year due to the pandemic the Opening Ceremony seemed very simple and somber. The ceremonies lacked the glamour and excitement of other years. However, most athletes and sports fans are glad they are finally happening. Greek Gold Medalists, Anna Korakaki and Eleftherios Petrounias, of Greece, carried the Greece flag and entered first in the parade of nations as always since the Olympics were created in Greece in 776 BC. During the opening ceremony in the Olympic Stadium at the…

The “Greek Freak” Giannis Antetokounmpo is the new King of Basketball! He went from selling things on the streets of Sepolia, Athens, Greece to NBA Champion and NBA Finals MVP! Along with the Milwaukee Bucks, he scored 50 points in Game 6 and wowed the over 70,000 fans outside with at least 30,000 inside the arena. Giannis and the Bucks came back from being down 0-2 in the series and won the NBA Championship in Game 6 for the first time in 50 years of Milwaukee franchise history. The 2 time MVP in Regular Season, 5 time All Star, won the NBA Finals MVP. The NBA star has come a…

The Olympics belong back in Greece. Hosting the games in a different country every four years invites chaos, corruption, and redundant infrastructure. The Salzburg Music Festival or the Rose Bowl would not be held in Akron or Burkina Faso. Why would you host the Olympics someplace other than the birthplace of the games? As the kids say, doing anything else is cultural appropriation. (Set aside the fact that Ancient Greece is already responsible for three-quarters of Western civilization.) The Olympics were invented in Greece and express Greek ideals about the beauty and grace of strong physical skills. These ideals are universally acknowledged, which is why countries from all over the…