Portal:Film/Selected article
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Selected articles list
Articles 1-20
Portal:Film/Selected article/1
Taare Zameen Par is a 2007 Bollywood drama film directed by Aamir Khan, written by Amole Gupte, and produced by Aamir Khan Productions. Gupte initially developed the idea with his wife Deepa Bhatia, who served as the film's editor. Visual effects were created by Tata Elxsi's Visual Computing Labs, and the title animation—the first use of claymation in a Bollywood film—was created by Dhimant Vyas. Shankar–Ehsaan–Loy composed the film's score, and Prasoon Joshi wrote the lyrics for many of the songs. Principal photography took place in Mumbai and in Panchgani's New Era High School, some of the school's students make appearances. The film explores the life and imagination of eight-year-old Ishaan (Darsheel Safary). Although he excels in the arts, his poor academic performance leads his parents to send him to a boarding school. Ishaan's new art teacher (Aamir Khan) suspects that he is dyslexic, and helps him to overcome his disability. The film made its theatrical debut in India on 21 December 2007, and UTV Home Entertainment released a DVD for Indian audiences in 2008. Taare Zameen Par has received several awards, including the Filmfare Best Film Award for 2008 and the 2008 National Film Award for Best Film on Family Welfare. It was India's official entry for the 2009 Academy Awards Best Foreign Film, and the film's failure to progress to the nominations short list sparked a debate about why no Indian film has ever won an Oscar.
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Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (often shortened to Borat) is a 2006 mockumentary comedy film directed by Larry Charles. It stars the British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen in the title role of a fictitious Kazakh journalist, traveling through the United States recording real-life interactions with Americans. It is the second film built around one of Cohen's characters from Da Ali G Show, following Ali G Indahouse, which also featured a cameo by Borat. It was a critical and commercial success, despite an initially limited release in the United States. Cohen won the 2007 Golden Globe award for Best Actor: Musical or Comedy as Borat while the film was nominated for Best Motion Picture in the same category. Borat was also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 79th Academy Awards but lost to The Departed. Controversy surrounded the film even before its release. It has been criticised for having a protagonist who is sexist and anti-Semitic (Cohen is Jewish himself), and some who have appeared in the film have criticised and even sued its creators. All Arab countries other than Lebanon banned it, and the Russian government successfully discouraged cinemas there from showing it. It was released on DVD March 5, 2007 (a day later in Region 1 countries).
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300 is a 2007 American action film adapted from a graphic novel of the same name by Frank Miller, a fictionalized retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae. The film was directed by Zack Snyder, while Miller served as executive producer and consultant. It was filmed mostly with a super-imposition chroma key technique, to help replicate the imagery of the original comic book. King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) leads 300 Spartans into battle against Persian "god-King" Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) and his army of more than one million soldiers. As the battle rages, Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) attempts to rally support in Sparta for her husband. The story is framed by a voice-over narrative by the Spartan soldier Dilios (David Wenham). Through this narrative technique, various fantastical creatures are introduced, placing 300 within the genre of historical fantasy. 300 was released in both conventional and IMAX theaters in the United States on March 9, 2007, and on DVD, Blu-ray, and HD DVD on July 31, 2007. The film's opening was the 24th largest in box office history, although critics were divided over its look and style. Some acclaimed it as an original achievement, while others criticized it for favoring visuals over characterization and its controversial depiction of the ancient Persians.
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Blade Runner is a 1982 American science fiction film, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, and Sean Young. The screenplay, written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, is based loosely on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. The film depicts a dystopian Los Angeles in November 2019 in which genetically engineered organic robots called replicants—visually indistinguishable from adult humans—are manufactured by the all-powerful Tyrell Corporation as well as other mega manufacturers around the world. Their use on Earth is banned, and replicants are exclusively used for dangerous, menial or leisure work on Earth's off-world colonies. Replicants who defy the ban and return to Earth are hunted down and "retired" by police special operatives known as "blade runners". The plot focuses on a brutal and cunning group of recently escaped replicants hiding in Los Angeles and the burnt out expert blade runner, Rick Deckard, who reluctantly agrees to take on one more assignment to hunt them down. Blade Runner initially polarized critics: some were displeased with the pacing, while others enjoyed its thematic complexity. Despite the box office failure of the film, it has since become a cult classic, and is now widely regarded as one of the best films ever made. Blade Runner has been hailed for its production design, depicting a "retrofitted" future, and it remains a leading example of the neo-noir genre. Ridley Scott regards Blade Runner as "probably" his most complete and personal film. In 1993, Blade Runner was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
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Witchfinder General is a 1968 British horror film directed by Michael Reeves and starring Vincent Price, Ian Ogilvy, and Hilary Dwyer. The screenplay was by Reeves and Tom Baker based on Ronald Bassett's novel of the same name. Made on a low budget of under £100,000, the movie was coproduced by Tigon British Film Productions and American International Pictures. The story details the heavily fictionalized murderous witch-hunting exploits of Matthew Hopkins, a 17th century English lawyer who claimed to have been appointed as a "Witch-finder Generall" by Parliament during the English Civil War to root out sorcery and witchcraft. The film was retitled The Conqueror Worm in the United States in an attempt to link it with Roger Corman's earlier series of Edgar Allan Poe-related films starring Price—although this movie has little to do with Poe and only briefly alludes to his poem. Director Reeves featured many scenes of intense onscreen torture and violence that were considered unusually sadistic at the time. Upon its theatrical release throughout the spring and summer of 1968, the movie’s gruesome content was met with disgust by several film critics in the UK, despite having been extensively censored by the British Board of Film Censors. In the U.S., the film was shown virtually intact and was a box office success, but it was almost completely ignored by reviewers. The film has gradually developed a large cult following, partially attributable to Reeves’s 1969 death from a drug overdose at the age of 25, only nine months after Witchfinder’s release. Over the years, several prominent critics have championed the film, including J. Hoberman, Danny Peary, and Derek Malcolm. In 2005, the magazine Total Film named Witchfinder General the 15th greatest horror film of all time.
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Tenebrae is a 1982 Italian horror thriller film written and directed by Dario Argento. The film stars Anthony Franciosa, John Saxon, and Daria Nicolodi. After having experimented with two exercises in pure supernatural horror, Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980), Tenebrae represented Argento's return to the giallo form, a subgenre he had helped popularize in the 1970s. The story concerns an American writer promoting his latest murder-mystery novel in Rome, only to get embroiled in the search for a serial-killer who has apparently been inspired to kill by the novel. The film was released in Italy and throughout most of Europe without experiencing any reported censorship problems, but was classified, prosecuted, and banned as a Video Nasty in the United Kingdom. Its theatrical distribution in the United States was delayed until 1984, when it was released in a heavily censored version under the title Unsane. In its cut form, Tenebrae received a mostly negative critical reception, but in recent years the original, fully restored version has become widely available for reappraisal. The film has been described as "Argento’s last real masterpiece".
Portal:Film/Selected article/7
Meerkat Manor: The Story Begins is a 2008 television film created by Discovery Films and Oxford Scientific Films as a prequel to the Animal Planet series Meerkat Manor. A scripted documentary narrated by Whoopi Goldberg, the film details the life of a meerkat named Flower from birth to her becoming the leader of a meerkat group called the Whiskers. The film is based on the research notes of the Kalahari Meerkat Project and primarily uses wild meerkat "actors" to represent those in the story. Shot over two years at the Kuruman River Reserve in Northern Cape, South Africa, the film employed a much larger crew than the series. Some scenes were shot at a wildlife park in the United Kingdom, while others were created using camera tricks and trained film animals. The 75-minute film premiered at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival before its television premiere on Animal Planet on May 25, 2008. While it was praised for its cinematography, for maintaining the depth of coverage of the television series, and for its accessibility to newcomers to the series, it was criticized for not offering anything new to fans. The Kalahari Meerkat Project noted that the film was not completely accurate but praised it overall and recommended against analyzing it. Several reviewers praised Goldberg's narration, but the script was criticized as being too simplistic for adult viewers.
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Not One Less is a 1999 drama film by Chinese director Zhang Yimou, adapted from Shi Xiangsheng's 1997 story "A Sun in the Sky". It was released by China Film Group Corporation in mainland China, and by Sony Pictures Classics and Columbia TriStar internationally. Set in the People's Republic of China during the 1990s, the film centers on a 13-year-old substitute teacher, Wei Minzhi, in the Chinese countryside. Called in to substitute for a village teacher for one month, Wei is told not to lose any students. When one of the boys takes off in search of work in the big city, she goes looking for him. The film addresses education reform in China, the economic gap between urban and rural populations, and the prevalence of bureaucracy and authority figures in everyday life. It is filmed in a neorealist/documentary style with a troupe of non-professional actors who play characters with the same names and occupations as the actors have in real life, blurring the boundaries between drama and reality. Internationally, the film was generally well-received, but it also attracted criticism for its ostensibly political message; foreign critics are divided on whether the film should be read as praising or criticizing the Chinese government. The film went on to win the Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion and several other awards, and Zhang won the award for best director at the Golden Rooster Awards.
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Night of the Living Dead is a 1968 black-and-white independent horror film directed by George A. Romero. Early drafts of the script were titled Monster Flick, but it was known as Night of Anubis and Night of the Flesh Eaters during production. The film stars Duane Jones as Ben and Judith O'Dea as Barbra. The plot revolves around the mysterious reanimation of the dead and the efforts of Ben, Barbra, and five others to survive the night while trapped in a rural Pennsylvania farmhouse. Romero produced the film on the low budget of $114,000, but after a decade of theatrical re-releases it had grossed an estimated $12 million in the United States and $30 million internationally. Reviewers criticized the graphic contents, but three decades later the Library of Congress placed Night of the Living Dead on the United States National Film Registry with other films deemed "historically, culturally or aesthetically important". The culture of Vietnam-era America had a tremendous impact on the film. It is so thoroughly riven with critiques of late 1960s American society that one historian described the film as "subversive on many levels." While not the first zombie film made, Night of the Living Dead influenced subsequent films in the subgenre. The film is the first in a tetralogy directed by Romero and spawned four unofficial sequels. It has been remade twice.
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Sunset Boulevard is a 1950 film noir containing elements of drama, horror, and black comedy. Directed and cowritten by Billy Wilder, it was named for the famous boulevard that runs through Los Angeles and Beverly Hills. William Holden plays down-on-his-luck screenwriter Joe Gillis and Gloria Swanson is Norma Desmond, a faded movie star who entraps the unsuspecting Gillis into her fantasy world in which she dreams of making a triumphant return to the screen. Director Cecil B. DeMille and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper portray themselves, and the film includes cameo appearances by leading silent film figures Buster Keaton, H. B. Warner and Anna Q. Nilsson. Praised by many critics when first released, Sunset Boulevard was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and won three. It is widely accepted as a classic, often cited as one of the most noteworthy films of American cinema. Deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress in 1989, Sunset Boulevard was included in the first group of films selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
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The term B movie originally referred to a motion picture made on a low or modest budget and intended for distribution as the less-publicized, bottom half of a double feature during the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood. Although the U.S. production of movies intended as second features largely ceased by the end of the 1950s, the term B movie continues to be used in a broader sense, referring to any low-budget, commercial motion picture meant neither as an arthouse film nor as pornography. In its post–Golden Age usage, there is ambiguity on both sides: on the one hand, many B movies display a high degree of craft and aesthetic ingenuity; on the other, the primary interest of many inexpensive exploitation films is prurient. In some cases, both are true. In either usage, most B movies represent a particular genre. Early B movies were often part of series in which the star repeatedly played the same character. Almost always shorter than the top-billed films they were paired with, many had running times of 70 minutes or less. The term connoted a general perception that B movies were inferior to the more handsomely budgeted headliners; individual B films were often ignored by critics. Latter-day B movies still sometimes inspire multiple sequels, but series are less common. As the average running time of top-of-the-line films increased, so did that of B pictures.
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Star Trek III: The Search for Spock is a 1984 motion picture released by Paramount Pictures. The film is the third feature based on the Star Trek science fiction franchise. After the death of Spock (Leonard Nimoy) during the events of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the crew of the USS Enterprise returns to Earth. When James T. Kirk (William Shatner) learns that Spock's spirit, or katra, is held in the mind of Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley), Kirk and company steal the Enterprise to return Spock's body to his home planet. The crew must also contend with hostile Klingons, led by Kruge (Christopher Lloyd), bent on stealing the secrets of a powerful terraforming device. Nimoy directed, the first Star Trek cast member to do so. Producer Harve Bennett wrote the script starting from the end and working back, and intended the destruction of the Enterprise to be a shocking development. Aside from a single day of location shooting, all of the film's scenes were shot on Paramount and ILM soundstages. Composer James Horner returned to expand his themes from the previous film. The Search for Spock opened June 1, 1984. In its first week of release, the film broke Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom's gross records, making $16 million from almost 2,000 theaters across the United States. Critical reaction to The Search for Spock was mixed. Reviewers generally praised the cast and characters, while criticism tended to focus on the plot; the special effects were conflictingly received. Roger Ebert called the film a compromise between the tones of the first and second Star Trek films.
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"She Shoulda Said 'No'!" (also known as Wild Weed; Marijuana, the Devil's Weed; The Story of Lila Leeds and Her Exposé of the Marijuana Racket; and The Devil's Weed) is a 1949 exploitation film in the spirit of morality tales such as Reefer Madness and Marihuana. Directed by Sherman Scott and starring Lila Leeds, it was originally produced to capitalize on the arrest of Leeds and Robert Mitchum on a charge of marijuana conspiracy. The film was issued under many titles; it struggled to find a distributor until film presenter Kroger Babb picked up the rights, reissuing it as The Story of Lila Leeds and Her Exposé of the Marijuana Racket. Its relative success came only after the promotional posters were redone and a story fabricated that the film was being presented in conjunction with the United States Treasury.
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American Beauty is a 1999 American drama film directed by Sam Mendes and written by Alan Ball. Kevin Spacey stars as Lester Burnham, a middle-aged office worker who has a midlife crisis when he becomes infatuated with his teenage daughter's best friend, Angela (Mena Suvari). Annette Bening co-stars as Lester's materialistic wife, Carolyn, and Thora Birch plays their insecure daughter, Jane; Wes Bentley, Chris Cooper and Allison Janney also feature. The film has been described by academics as a satire of American middle class notions of beauty and personal satisfaction; analysis has focused on the film's explorations of romantic and paternal love, sexuality, beauty, materialism, self-liberation and redemption. Principal photography took place between December 1998 and February 1999 on soundstages at the Warner Bros. backlot in Burbank, California and on location in Los Angeles. Released in North America on September 15, 1999, American Beauty was positively received by critics and audiences alike; it was the best-reviewed American film of the year and grossed over $350 million worldwide. Reviewers praised most aspects of the production, with particular emphasis on Mendes, Spacey and Ball; criticism tended to focus on the familiarity of the characters and setting. The film was nominated for and won many awards and honors, mainly for the direction, writing and acting.
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But I'm a Cheerleader is a 1999 satirical romantic comedy film directed by Jamie Babbit and written by Brian Wayne Peterson. Natasha Lyonne stars as Megan Bloomfield, an apparently happily heterosexual high school cheerleader. Her friends and family are convinced she's gay and arrange an intervention, sending her to a reparative therapy camp to cure her lesbianism. At camp, Megan soon realizes that she is indeed a lesbian and, despite the therapy, gradually comes to embrace this fact. The supporting cast features Clea DuVall, Cathy Moriarty, RuPaul, Mink Stole and Bud Cort. But I'm a Cheerleader was Babbit's first feature film. It was inspired by an article about conversion therapy and her childhood familiarity with rehabilitation programs. She used the story of a young woman finding her sexual identity to explore the social construction of gender roles and heteronormativity. The costume and set design of the film highlighted these themes using artificial textures in intense blues and pinks. When it was initially rated as NC-17 by the MPAA, Babbit made cuts to allow it to be re-rated as R. When interviewed in the documentary film This Film Is Not Yet Rated Babbit criticized the MPAA for discriminating against films with homosexual content. The film was not well received by critics who compared it unfavorably to the films of John Waters and criticized the colorful production design.
Portal:Film/Selected article/16
Branded to Kill is a 1967 Japanese yakuza film directed by Seijun Suzuki and starring Joe Shishido, Koji Nanbara, Annu Mari and Mariko Ogawa. It was a low budget, production line number for the Nikkatsu Company. The story follows Goro Hanada in his life as a contract killer. He falls in love with a woman named Misako, who recruits him for a seemingly impossible mission. When the mission fails he becomes hunted by the phantom Number One Killer, whose methods threaten his sanity as much as his life. After its release Suzuki was famously fired for making "movies that make no sense and no money". Suzuki was blacklisted and did not make another feature for 10 years but became a counterculture hero. The film drew a strong following which expanded overseas through the 1980s and 1990s and has established itself as a cult classic. Film critics and enthusiasts now regard it as an absurdist masterpiece. It has been cited as an influence by filmmakers such as Jim Jarmusch, John Woo, Chan-wook Park and Quentin Tarantino. Thirty-four years after Branded to Kill, Suzuki filmed Pistol Opera (2001) with Nikkatsu, a loose sequel to the former.
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Cannibal Holocaust (1980) is a controversial exploitation film directed by Ruggero Deodato and is based on a screenplay written by Gianfranco Clerici and Giorgio Stegani. Filmed in the Amazon Rainforest, it focuses on a team of four documentarians who head deep into the jungle to make a documentary on the primitive native tribes that live there. After two months and no word from the team, a famous anthropologist is sent on a rescue mission in hopes of finding the team alive. The film stars Robert Kerman as the anthropologist Harold Monroe, Carl Gabriel Yorke as director Alan Yates, Francesca Ciardi as Alan's girlfriend Faye, Perry Pirkanen as the cameraman Jack Anders, and Luca Barbareschi as fellow cameraman Mark Tomaso. Cannibal Holocaust is one of the best known exploitation films due to the controversy it caused upon its release. After premiering in Italy, the film was seized by the local Magistrate and Deodato was arrested for obscenity. He was later accused of making a snuff film based on circulating rumors that the film's actors were slain for the camera. Though Deodato would be cleared of these charges, the film was banned in Italy, the UK, Australia, and several other countries for graphic gore, sexual violence, and for the genuine slayings of six animals featured in the film. While many nations have revoked the ban, it is still banned to this day in other countries around the world. Despite this notoriety, Cannibal Holocaust is seen by some critics as a social commentary on civilized society.
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Casablanca is an Oscar-winning 1942 romance film set in the Vichy-controlled Moroccan city of Casablanca. The film was directed by Michael Curtiz and stars Humphrey Bogart as Rick Blaine and Ingrid Bergman as Ilsa Lund. It focuses on Rick's conflict between, in the words of one character, love and virtue: he must choose between his love for Ilsa and doing the right thing, helping her and her Resistance leader husband escape from Casablanca to continue his fight against the Nazis. Although it was an A-list movie, with established stars and first-rate writers, nobody involved with its production expected Casablanca to be anything out of the ordinary; it was just one of dozens of pictures being churned out by Hollywood every year. The film was a solid, if unspectacular, success in its initial release, but has grown in popularity as time has gone by, consistently ranking near the top of lists of great films. Casablanca is now ranked among the greatest cinematic achievements of all time.
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Casino Royale (2006) is the 21st film in the James Bond series and the first to star Daniel Craig as MI6 agent James Bond. Based on the 1953 novel of the same name by Ian Fleming, it was adapted by screenwriters Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Paul Haggis and directed by Martin Campbell. It is the third screen adaptation of the Casino Royale novel, which was previously produced as a 1954 television episode and a 1967 satirical film. However, the 2006 film is the only EON Productions adaptation of Fleming's novel. It is a reboot of the Bond franchise, establishing a new timeline and narrative framework not meant to precede any previous film. This not only frees the Bond franchise from more than forty years of continuity, but allows the film to show a less experienced and more vulnerable Bond. The film is set at the beginning of James Bond's career as Agent 007, having earned his licence to kill. After preventing a terrorist attack at Miami Airport, Bond falls for Vesper Lynd, the treasury agent assigned to provide the money he needs to foil a high-stakes poker tournament organized by Le Chiffre.
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Coonskin is a 1975 film written and directed by Ralph Bakshi, about an African American rabbit, fox, and bear who rise to the top of the organized crime racket in Harlem, encountering corrupt law enforcement, con artists and the Mafia. The film, which combines live-action with animation, stars Philip Michael Thomas, Charles Gordone, Barry White and Scatman Crothers, all of whom appear in both live-action and animated sequences. Coonskin utilizes a number of references to various elements from African American culture, ranging from African folk tales to the work of cartoonist George Herriman, and satirizes racist and other stereotypes, as well as the blaxploitation genre, Song of the South, and The Godfather. Originally produced under the titles Harlem Nights and Coonskin No More..., and later re-released under the titles Bustin' Out and Street Fight, Coonskin encountered extreme controversy before its original theatrical release when the Congress of Racial Equality strongly criticized the content as being racist, although none of the group's members had seen the film. When the film was finally released, it was given limited distribution and initially received negative reviews. The film has since been reappraised, with many considering it to be one of Bakshi's finest works.
Articles 21-40
Portal:Film/Selected article/21
Dog Day Afternoon is a 1975 film directed by Sidney Lumet and written by Frank Pierson. The film stars Al Pacino, John Cazale, Chris Sarandon, James Broderick, and Charles Durning. Based on the events of a bank robbery that took place on August 22, 1972, Dog Day Afternoon tells the story of Sonny Wortzik, who with his partner Salvatore Naturile, holds hostage the employees of a Brooklyn, New York City bank. This film was inspired by P.F. Kluge's article "The Boys in the Bank", which tells a similar story of the robbery of a Brooklyn bank by John Wojtowicz and Salvatore Naturile. This article was published in Life in 1972. The film received generally positive reviews, some of which referred to its anti-establishment tone. Dog Day Afternoon was nominated for several Academy Awards and Golden Globe awards, and won one Academy Award.
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E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is a 1982 science fiction film co-produced and directed by Steven Spielberg, written by Melissa Mathison and starring Henry Thomas, Robert MacNaughton, Drew Barrymore, Dee Wallace and Peter Coyote. It tells the story of Elliott (played by Thomas), a lonely boy who befriends a friendly alien, dubbed E.T., who is stranded on Earth. Elliott and his siblings help the alien return home while attempting to keep it hidden from their mother and the government. The concept for E.T. came from an imaginary friend Spielberg created after his parents' divorce. When work on Night Skies stalled, Spielberg met screenwriter Melissa Mathison, whom he hired to pen the script for E.T.. The film was shot from September to December 1981 in California on a budget of US$10.5 million. Unlike most motion pictures, to facilitate convincing emotional performances from the young cast, the film was shot in roughly chronological order. E.T. was a box office hit, surpassing Star Wars to become the most financially successful film released to that point. Critics acclaimed it as a timeless story of friendship, ranking it as best science fiction film ever made in a Rotten Tomatoes poll. The alien became the subject of analogies for Jesus. The film was re-released in 1985, and in 2002 with altered special effects and additional scenes. Spielberg believes E.T. epitomizes his work.
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Film Booking Offices of America (FBO) was an American film studio of the silent era, a producer and distributor of mostly low-budget films. The business began as Robertson-Cole (U.S.), the American division of a British import–export company. Robertson-Cole initiated movie production in 1920; two years later, a corporate reorganization led to the company's new name. In 1923, the studio contracted with Western actor Fred Thomson, who would soon emerge as one of Hollywood's most popular stars. Thomson was just one of numerous screen cowboys with whom FBO became identified. The studio, whose core market was America's small towns, also put out many romantic melodramas, non-Western action pictures, and comedic shorts. In 1926, financier Joseph P. Kennedy led a group that acquired the company. In June 1928, using RCA Photophone technology, FBO became only the second Hollywood studio to release a feature-length "talkie." A few months later, Kennedy and RCA chief David Sarnoff arranged the merger that created RKO, one of the major studios of Hollywood's Golden Age.
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Fritz the Cat is a 1972 animated film written and directed by Ralph Bakshi as his feature film debut. Based on the comic books by Robert Crumb, the film was the first animated feature film to receive an X rating in the United States. It focuses on Fritz (voiced by Skip Hinnant), an anthropomorphic feline in mid-1960s New York City who explores the ideals of hedonism and sociopolitical consciousness. The film is a satire focusing on American college life of the era, race relations, the free love movement, and left- and right-wing politics. Fritz the Cat was the first independent animated film to gross more than $100 million at the box office. Fritz the Cat had a troubled production history and controversial release. Creator Robert Crumb is known to have had disagreements with the filmmakers, claiming in interviews that his first wife signed over the film rights to the characters, and that he did not approve the production. Crumb was also critical of the film's approach to his material. Fritz the Cat was controversial for its rating and content, which viewers at the time found to be offensive. Its success led to a slew of other X-rated animated films, and a sequel, The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat, was made without Crumb's or Bakshi's involvement. Fritz the Cat was ranked as the 51st greatest animated film of all time by the Online Film Critics Society, and was also featured at number 56 on Channel 4's list of the 100 Greatest Cartoons.
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The Revolution Will Not Be Televised is a 2003 documentary focusing on events in Venezuela leading up to and during the April 2002 coup d'état attempt, which saw President Hugo Chávez removed from office for several days. With particular emphasis on the role played by Venezuela's private media, the film examines several key incidents: the protest march and subsequent violence that provided the impetus for Chávez's ousting; the opposition's formation of an interim government headed by business leader Pedro Carmona; and the Carmona administration's collapse, which paved the way for Chávez's return. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised was directed by Irish filmmakers Kim Bartley and Donnacha Ó Briain. Bartley and Ó Briain shot more than 200 hours of material; editing focused on identifying footage that would make the film entertaining and drive the plot. It was at this stage that the film's coverage narrowed to concentrate more on the coup attempt. The film was positively received by mainstream film critics and won several awards. Reviewers cited the filmmakers' unprecedented proximity to key events and praised the film for its "riveting narrative"; criticism focused on its lack of context and pro-Chávez bias. First shown on television in Europe and Venezuela in 2003, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised later appeared at film festivals and secured a limited theatrical release on the art house circuit. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised paints Chávez in a favorable light, which has led to disputes over its neutrality and accuracy; particular attention is paid to its framing of the violence of 11–13 April, the filmmakers' editing of the timeline, and the alleged omission of incidents and personnel. The film is alternately cited as an accurate portrayal or a misrepresentation of the events of April 2002.
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Tender Mercies is a 1983 American drama film directed by Bruce Beresford. The screenplay by Horton Foote focuses on Mac Sledge, a recovering alcoholic country music singer who seeks to turn his life around through his relationship with a young widow and her son in rural Texas. Robert Duvall plays the role of Mac; the supporting cast includes Tess Harper, Betty Buckley, Wilford Brimley, Ellen Barkin and Allan Hubbard. Financed by EMI Films, Tender Mercies was largely shot in Waxahachie, Texas. The script was rejected by several American directors before the Australian Beresford accepted it. The film encompasses several different themes, including the importance of love and family, the possibility of spiritual resurrection amid death, and the concept of redemption through Mac Sledge's conversion to Christianity. Following poor test screening results, distributor Universal Pictures made little effort to publicize Tender Mercies, which Duvall attributed to the studio's lack of understanding of country music. Although unsuccessful at the box office, it was critically acclaimed and earned five Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture. Tender Mercies won Oscars for Best Original Screenplay for Foote and Best Actor for Duvall.
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U2 3D is a 2008 American-produced 3-D concert film featuring rock band U2 performing during the Vertigo Tour in 2006. The concert footage includes political and social statements made during the shows. It is the band's second feature film, following their 1988 rockumentary Rattle and Hum. Among several cinematic firsts, U2 3D was the first live-action digital 3-D film. The project was created to experiment with a new type of 3-D film technology pioneered by producer Steve Schklair. After considering shooting American football games in 3-D, Schklair's company 3ality Digital decided to create a concert film with U2. Although set in Buenos Aires, U2 3D was shot at seven concerts across Latin America, and two in Australia. The film's complex setup involved shooting with up to 18 3-D cameras simultaneously and capturing the footage digitally. U2 3D premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and was shown at over 600 theaters internationally following its wide release in February 2008. It received mostly positive reviews, with many critics praising the 3-D technology and innovation. Some went as far as saying that viewing the film's 3-D effects was better than attending a concert. U2 3D won several awards, and its reception convinced some of its creators that the project marked a paradigm shift in filmmaking.
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Halloween II is a 1981 horror film produced by Dino De Laurentiis and is set in the fictional Midwest town of Haddonfield, Illinois, on Halloween night, 1978. It is the sequel to the influential film, Halloween (1978). While other films in the Halloween series follow, this is the last one written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill. The film immediately follows the events of the first film, and centers on Michael Myers's attempts to find and kill Laurie Strode and Samuel J. Loomis's efforts to track and kill Myers. Stylistically, the sequel reproduces certain key elements that made the original Halloween a success such as first-person camera perspectives and unexceptional settings. The film, however, departs significantly from the original by incorporating more graphic violence and gore, making it imitate more closely other films in the emerging splatter film subgenre. Still, Halloween II was not as successful as the original, even though it grossed $25.5 million at the box office in the United States despite its $2.5 million budget. Halloween II was intended to be the last chapter of the Halloween series to revolve around Michael Myers and the Haddonfield setting, but after the lacklustre reaction to Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), Myers returned in the film Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988).
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Halloween III: Season of the Witch is a 1982 horror film and the third in the Halloween series. It is the only Halloween film that does not feature a plot revolving around the character Michael Myers. Directed by Tommy Lee Wallace, the film stars Tom Atkins as Dr. Dan Challis, Stacey Nelkin as Ellie Grimbridge, and Dan O'Herlihy as Conal Cochran. The plot focuses on an investigation by Challis and Grimbridge into the activities of Cochran, the mysterious owner of the Silver Shamrock Novelties company, in the week approaching Halloween night. Besides wholly abandoning the Michael Myers plotline, Halloween III departs from the slasher film genre which the original Halloween spawned in 1978. The focus on a psychotic killer is replaced by a "mad scientist and witchcraft" theme. Moreover, the frequency of graphic violence and gore is less than that of Halloween II (1981), although scenes that depict the deaths of characters remain intense. Produced on a budget of $2.5 million, Halloween III grossed $14.4 million at the box office in the United States, making it the poorest performing film in the Halloween series at the time. In addition to weak box office returns, most critics gave the film negative reviews. Cultural and film historians have read significance into the film's plot, linking it to critiques of large corporations and American consumerism.
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Jabba the Hutt is a fictional character in George Lucas's science fiction saga Star Wars. He first appeared on film in Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi as an obese, slug-like alien. Jabba was originally portrayed by an immense latex puppet, but in other films he is a computer-generated image. The character's role in Star Wars is primarily antagonistic. He is a 600-year-old Hutt crime lord and gangster who employs a retinue of criminals, bounty hunters, smugglers, assassins, and bodyguards to operate his criminal empire. Jabba has a grim sense of humor, a bellicose laugh, an insatiable appetite, and an affinity for gambling, slave girls, and torture. The character was incorporated into the Star Wars merchandising campaign that corresponded with the theatrical release of Return of the Jedi. Jabba the Hutt's image has since played an influential role in popular culture, particularly in the United States. His name is used as a satirical literary device and a political caricature to underscore negative qualities such as morbid obesity and corruption.
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Jack Sparrow is a fictional character from the Pirates of the Caribbean universe who is portrayed by Johnny Depp. He was introduced in the film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), and appeared in the back-to-back sequels, Dead Man's Chest (2006) and At World's End (2007). He is also the subject of a children's book series, Pirates of the Caribbean: Jack Sparrow, which chronicles his adolescent years, and the character's image was introduced into the theme park ride that inspired the films when it was revamped in 2006. The character has also appeared in numerous video games. Sparrow is the Pirate Lord of the Caribbean Sea and can be treacherous, surviving mostly by using wit and negotiation rather than weapons and force; although he will fight if necessary, he tries to flee most dangerous situations. Sparrow is introduced seeking to regain his ship the Black Pearl from his mutinous first mate Hector Barbossa in the first film, and in the sequels, attempts to escape his blood debt to the mythical Davy Jones while battling the East India Trading Company. Initially, Sparrow was conceived for the first film as a trickster who guides the hero, Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), but Johnny Depp's performance led to Sparrow's role being altered. Depp's flamboyant and eccentric characterization, partially inspired by Pepé Le Pew and Keith Richards, turned Sparrow into an iconic anti-hero and the breakout character of the series.
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Jason Voorhees is a fictional character from the Friday the 13th series of slasher films. He first appeared in Friday the 13th (1980) as Mrs. Voorhees' son, portrayed by Ari Lehman. Created in combination by Victor Miller, Ron Kurz, Sean S. Cunningham and Tom Savini, he was never intended to carry the series as the main villain. Jason Voorhees has also been represented in numerous novels, comic books, and a cross-over film with another horror legend, Freddy Krueger. The character has primarily been an antagonist in the films, whether by stalking and killing the characters, or acting as a psychological threat to the lead character, as is the case in Friday the 13th: A New Beginning. Since Lehman's portrayal, the character has been represented by numerous actors and stuntmen, sometimes by more than one at a time; this has caused some controversy as to who should receive credit for the portrayal. Kane Hodder is the most well known of the stuntmen to portray Jason Voorhees, having played the character in four consecutive films. Jason Voorhees has been featured in many humor magazines, referenced in feature films, parodied in television shows, and been the inspiration for a horror punk band. Jason Voorhees was awarded the MTV Lifetime Achievement Award in 1992, and his hockey mask is one of the most recognizable images in popular culture.
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Jurassic Park is a 1993 science fiction film directed by Steven Spielberg, based on the novel of the same name by Michael Crichton. The film centers on the island of Isla Nublar, where scientists have created an amusement park of cloned dinosaurs. John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) invites a group of scientists, played by Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum and Laura Dern, to visit the park. Sabotage sets the dinosaurs on the loose, and technicians and visitors attempt to escape the island. Development of the film began before the novel was even published, and Crichton was hired to contribute to a script that cut much of its story. Spielberg hired Stan Winston Studios's puppets and worked with Industrial Light and Magic to develop cutting-edge computer-generated imagery to portray the dinosaurs. Jurassic Park was well received by critics, who praised the special effects, but found the film mediocre in other aspects. During its release, the film grossed more than $914 million, becoming the most successful film yet released, and it is currently the tenth-highest grossing feature film, significantly inspiring a new breed of films that primarily used CGI for special effects. Jurassic Park was the first film in the Jurassic Park franchise, followed by The Lost World: Jurassic Park in 1997 and by Jurassic Park III in 2001, with Jurassic Park IV in development.
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The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device. Though not a movie projector—it was designed for films to be viewed individually through the window of a cabinet housing its components—the Kinetoscope introduced the basic approach that would become the standard for all cinematic projection before the advent of video: it creates the illusion of movement by conveying a strip of perforated film bearing sequential images over a light source with a high-speed shutter. First described in conceptual terms by U.S. inventor Thomas Edison in 1888, it was largely developed by his employee William Kennedy Laurie Dickson between 1889 and 1892. Dickson and his team at the Edison lab also devised the Kinetograph, an innovative motion picture camera with rapid intermittent, or stop-and-go, film movement, to photograph movies for in-house experiments and, eventually, commercial Kinetoscope presentations. In April 1894, the first commercial exhibition of motion pictures in history was given in New York City, using ten Kinetoscopes. Instrumental to the birth of American movie culture, the Kinetoscope also had a major impact in Europe; its influence abroad was magnified by Edison's decision not to seek international patents on the device, facilitating numerous imitations of and improvements on the technology. Film projection soon superseded both the basic exhibition system and the Kinetophone—joining the Kinetoscope with a cylinder phonograph—introduced in 1895. Many of the projection systems developed by Edison's firm in later years would use the Kinetoscope name.
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Hotel Chevalier is a short film written and directed by Wes Anderson and released in 2007. Starring Jason Schwartzman and Natalie Portman as former lovers who reunite in a Paris hotel room, the 13-minute film acts as a prologue to Anderson's 2007 feature The Darjeeling Limited. It was shot on location in a Parisian hotel by a small crew and self-financed by Anderson, who initially intended it to be a stand-alone work. Its first showing was at the Venice Film Festival première of the feature film on September 2, 2007, and it made its own debut later that month at Apple Stores in four American cities. The day after its premiere, it was made available for free from the iTunes Store for one month, during which it was downloaded more than 500,000 times. Hotel Chevalier became one of the most-discussed short films of the year, with much popular attention drawn in particular by Portman's extended nude scene. The film garnered near-universal critical acclaim from reviewers who compared it favorably with The Darjeeling Limited and praised its richness, poignancy, and careful construction.
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Lage Raho Munna Bhai is a 2006 Indian musical comedy directed by Rajkumar Hirani and produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra. It is the first Hindi film to be shown in the United Nations and is the second film in the popular Munna Bhai series of Bollywood. Sanjay Dutt stars in this film as Munna Bhai, a Mumbai underworld don, who begins to see the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi. Through his interactions with the image of Gandhi, Munna Bhai begins to practice what he calls Gandhigiri (Satyagraha, non-violence, and truth) to help ordinary people solve their problems. His sidekick, Circuit, is portrayed by Arshad Warsi. Lage Raho Munna Bhai has had a strong cultural impact in India, popularising Gandhism under Munna Bhai's notion of Gandhigiri. It was praised by the Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh, who stated (using Gandhi's nickname, "Bapu" or father) that the movie "captures Bapu's message about the power of truth and humanism". The film was generally well received by critics and at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, declared a "blockbuster", and was the recipient of a number of awards.
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Latter Days is a gay romantic drama released in 2003. Set in Los Angeles, California it portrays the seduction of Aaron Davis, a Mormon missionary, by Christian Markelli, a party animal who falls in love with him. The film, written and directed by C. Jay Cox, stars Steve Sandvoss as Aaron, Wes Ramsey as Christian, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Elder Ryder, and Rebekah Johnson as Julie Taylor. Mary Kay Place and Jacqueline Bisset have supporting roles. Latter Days premiered at the Philadelphia International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival on 10 July 2003. It was released across America over the next 12 months, and was released, mostly at gay film festivals, in a few other countries. It was the first film to openly show the clash between the principles of the Mormon church and homosexuality, and its exhibition in some states was polemic. Various religious groups demanded the movie to be retired from theatres and DVD stores under boycott threats. The movie was not well received by film critics, although it was popular with most film festival attendees. In 2004 T. Fabris made Latter Days into a novel, which was published by Alyson Publications.
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Mom and Dad (known as The Family Story in the United Kingdom) is a feature-length 1945 film directed by William Beaudine, and largely produced by the exploitation filmmaker and presenter Kroger Babb. Mom and Dad is considered the most successful film within its genre. Although it faced numerous legal challenges, and was condemned by the National Legion of Decency, it went on to become the third highest grossing film of the 1940s. Mom and Dad starred the young Hardie Albright. It is regarded as an exploitation film; a term used to describe repackaged films with a controversial content, sometimes including medical footage, designed to establish an educational value that might circumvent U.S. censorship law. Babb's marketing of his film incorporated old-style medicine show techniques, and used unique promotions to build an audience. These formed a template for his later work, which were aped by his contemporary filmmakers. In 2005, the film was added to the United States National Film Registry, in recognition of its numerous achievements.
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Sherlock Holmes Baffled is a very short American silent film created between 1900 and 1903, with cinematography by Arthur Marvin. It is the earliest known film to feature Arthur Conan Doyle's detective character Sherlock Holmes, albeit in a form unlike that of later screen incarnations. The inclusion of the character also makes it the first recorded detective film. In the film, a thief who can appear and disappear at will steals a sack of items from Sherlock Holmes. At each point, Holmes's attempts to thwart the intruder end in failure. Originally shown in Mutoscope machines in arcades, Sherlock Holmes Baffled has a running time of 30 seconds. Although produced in 1900, it was only registered in 1903, and a copyright notice stating this is seen on some prints. The identities of the first screen Holmes and his assailant are not recorded. Assumed to be lost for many years, the film was rediscovered in 1968 as a paper print in the Library of Congress.
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RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum) Pictures is an American film production and distribution company. As Radio Pictures Inc. and then RKO Radio Pictures Inc., it was one of the Big Five studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum (KAO) theater chains and Joseph P. Kennedy's Film Booking Offices of America (FBO) studio were brought together under the control of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in October 1928. RCA chief David Sarnoff engineered the merger to create a market for the company's sound-on-film technology, RCA Photophone. RKO has long been celebrated for its cycle of musicals starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the mid- to late 1930s. Actors Katharine Hepburn and, later, Robert Mitchum had their first major successes at the studio. The work of producer Val Lewton's low-budget horror unit and RKO's many ventures into the field now known as film noir have been acclaimed, largely after the fact, by film critics and historians. The studio produced two of the most famous films in motion picture history: King Kong and Citizen Kane. The original RKO Pictures ceased production in 1957 and was effectively dissolved two years later. In 1989, this business with its few remaining assets, the trademarks and remake rights to many classic RKO films, was sold to new owners, who now operate the small independent company RKO Pictures LLC.
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Palpatine is a fictional character in George Lucas' science fiction saga Star Wars. He was introduced in the original Star Wars films as the Emperor of the Galactic Empire, an aged, cowled, and pale-faced figure who walks with a cane. Palpatine appears in the prequel films as a middle-aged politician in the Galactic Republic who rises to power through deception and treachery. The character is featured in the animated miniseries Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003–2005) and in Star Wars literature. Scottish actor Ian McDiarmid portrays the character in the Star Wars feature films. Palpatine is a major antagonist in Star Wars fiction. Born on the planet Naboo 82 years before the events of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977), he is a key politician in the Republic who claims to represent peace and democracy. In reality, Palpatine is Darth Sidious, a powerful Sith Lord who practices the dark side of the Force. He initiates and manipulates the Clone Wars to destroy the Jedi and establish the totalitarian Galactic Empire. Lucas' original scripts for Star Wars characterize Palpatine as a cunning but weak politician under the control of powerful bureaucrats. However, in Return of the Jedi, the prequel trilogy and Star Wars literature, the character is depicted as the personification of evil. Palpatine was incorporated into the Star Wars merchandising campaigns that corresponded with the theatrical release of Return of the Jedi and the prequel films. He has since become a symbol of evil and sinister deception in popular culture, particularly in the United States.
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Panavision is a motion picture equipment company specializing in camera, lens, and grip equipment, along with related accessories. After starting out as a small partnership that created anamorphic attachments for projection lenses, they have slowly but steadily expanded their operations and product lines while maintaining a high level of design and quality, making for a prestigious brand name in the eyes of film crews. Unlike most of their competition, including rival Arri, Panavision operates exclusively as a rental house and owns their entire inventory. (Ironically, their comprehensive offerings of in-house and externally produced camera models means they are also one of Arri's top customers.) The company is currently based in Woodland Hills, California, United States. Any major production that uses Panavision's services is contractually obligated to provide a credit that says "Filmed with Panavision Cameras and Lenses" if using spherical lenses, or "Filmed in Panavision" if using anamorphic lenses.
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The Boys from Baghdad High is a British/Iraqi television documentary film. It was first shown in the United Kingdom at the 2007 Sheffield Doc/Fest, before airing on BBC Two on 8 January 2008. It also aired in many other countries including France, Australia, the United States, Canada, Germany and the Netherlands. It documents the lives of four Iraqi schoolboys of different religious or ethnic backgrounds over the course of one year in the form of a video diary. The documentary was filmed by the boys themselves, who were given video cameras for the project. Directed and produced by Ivan O'Mahone and Laura Winter of Renegade Pictures and StoryLabTV, for the United Kingdom's British Broadcasting Corporation, Home Box Office in the United States, and the Franco-German network Arte, The Boys from Baghdad High was produced by Alan Hayling and Karen O'Connor for the BBC, Hans Robert Eisenhauer for Arte, and Sheila Nevins for HBO. The Boys from Baghdad High received high viewership when it initially aired in the UK, and was reviewed favourably in the media. It was named the Best News and Current Affairs Film at the European Independent Film Festival, won the Premier Prize at the Sandford St. Martin Trust Awards, and was nominated for awards at two film festivals.
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Red vs. Blue is a science fiction comedy series created by Rooster Teeth Productions. The series is produced primarily by using the machinima technique of synchronizing video footage from computer and video games to pre-recorded dialogue and other audio. Footage is taken mostly from the multiplayer modes of the first-person shooter (FPS) video games Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2 on the Xbox video game console. Chronicling the story of two opposing teams of soldiers fighting a civil war in the middle of a desolate box canyon, the series is an absurdist parody of FPS games, military life, and other science fiction films. Begun in 2003 and having concluded its fourth season, Red vs. Blue has won four awards from the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences. The series is generally praised for its originality, and has been credited with bringing new popularity to machinima, helping it to gain more mainstream exposure, and attracting more people to the art form.
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Richard III is a 1955 British film adaptation of William Shakespeare's historical play Richard III. The film also contains elements of Shakespeare's Henry VI, part 3. It was directed by Laurence Olivier, who also played Richard. The cast includes many noted Shakespearean actors of the time, including a quartet of acting knights. The film depicts Richard plotting and conspiring to grasp the throne from his brother, King Edward, played by Cedric Hardwicke. In the process, many are killed and betrayed, with Richard's evil leading to his own downfall. The prologue of the film states that history without its legends would be "a dry matter indeed", thus the film admits that it is not portraying the actual events of the time, but rather the legend. Many critics now consider Olivier's Richard III his best screen version of Shakespeare. As well, the British Film Institute has called Olivier's rendition of the play "definitive" and that it has done more to popularise Shakespeare than any other single piece of work.
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Rob-B-Hood (simplified Chinese: 宝贝计划; traditional Chinese: 寶貝計劃; pinyin: bǎobèi jìhuà) is a 2006 action comedy film written and directed by Benny Chan, starring Jackie Chan, Louis Koo and Michael Hui. The film was produced with a budget of HK$16.8 million and filmed between December 2005 and April 2006. Rob-B-Hood is notable as the first film in over 30 years, in which Jackie Chan, tired of being typecast as "Mr. Nice Guy", plays a negative character—A burglar and compulsive gambler. Rob-B-Hood tells the story of a kidnapping gone wrong in Hong Kong; a gang of burglars consisting of Thongs, Octopus and the Landlord kidnap a baby from a wealthy family on behalf of triads. With the Landlord arrested, Thongs and Octopus take care of the baby for a short time, developing strong bonds with him. Reluctant to hand the baby over, the two are forced to protect him from the triads who hired them in the first place. Rob-B-Hood was released in Hong Kong, China and Southeast Asia on 29 September 2006 to generally positive reviews. The film topped the Chinese box office in October 2006 and despite not being given a release in most European and North American countries, it grossed over US$20 million worldwide.
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A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but it would be decades before reliable synchronization was achieved in a commercially practical way. The first commercial screening of movies with fully synchronized sound took place in the United States in April 1923. In the early years after the introduction of sound, films incorporating synchronized dialogue were known as "talkies." The first feature-length movie originally presented as a talkie was The Jazz Singer, released in October 1927. By the early 1930s, the talkies were a global phenomenon. In the United States, they helped secure Hollywood's position as one of the world's most powerful cultural/commercial systems.
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Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a 1979 American science fiction film released by Paramount Pictures. It is the first film based on the Star Trek television series. The plot of the film is set in the twenty-third century, when a mysterious and immensely powerful alien cloud called V'Ger approaches the Earth, destroying everything in its path. Admiral James T. Kirk (William Shatner) assumes command of his old starship—the USS Enterprise—to lead it on a mission to save the planet and determine V'Ger's origins. The success of Star Trek in syndication convinced Paramount to begin work on a feature film in 1975. A series of writers attempted to craft a suitably epic script, but the attempts did not satisfy Paramount, so the studio scrapped the project in 1977. The box office success of Close Encounters of the Third Kind convinced Paramount that science fiction films other than Star Wars could do well at the box office, so the studio resumed its attempts at making a Star Trek film. Released in North America in December 1979, Star Trek: The Motion Picture received mixed reviews from critics, many of whom criticized the film for its lack of action and over-reliance on special effects. The film earned $139 million worldwide, falling short of studio expectations but enough for Paramount to propose a cheaper sequel.
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Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is a 1986 American science fiction film released by Paramount Pictures. It is the fourth feature film based on the Star Trek science fiction television series and completes the story arc begun in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and continued in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. Intent on returning home to Earth to face trial for their crimes, the former crew of the USS Enterprise finds the planet in grave danger from an alien probe attempting to contact now-extinct humpback whales. The crew travel to Earth's past to find whales who can answer the probe's call. After directing The Search for Spock, cast member Leonard Nimoy was asked to direct the next feature. Nimoy and producer Harve Bennett conceived a story with an environmental message and no clear-cut villain. Bennett divided the story with writer and director Nicholas Meyer, getting approval from Nimoy, lead actor William Shatner and Paramount. Unlike previous Star Trek films, The Voyage Home was shot extensively on location; many real settings and buildings were used as stand-ins for scenes set around and in the city of San Francisco. Special effects firm Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) assisted in postproduction and the film's special effects. Few of the humpback whales in the film were real: ILM devised full-size animatronics and small motorized models to stand in for the real creatures. The film's humor and unconventional story were well received by critics, fans of the series and the general audience.
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Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is a 1989 American science fiction film released by Paramount Pictures. It is the fifth feature in the franchise and the penultimate to star the cast of the original Star Trek science fiction television series. Taking place shortly after the events of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, the plot follows the crew of the USS Enterprise-A as they confront a renegade Vulcan, Sybok, who is searching for God at the center of the galaxy. The film was directed by cast member William Shatner, who developed the initial storyline in which Sybok searches for God, but instead finds Satan. Many Star Trek veterans assisted in the production; art director Nilo Rodis developed the designs for many of the film's locales, shots and characters, while Herman Zimmerman served as production designer. Jerry Goldsmith, composer for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, returned to score The Final Frontier. The film had the highest opening gross of any film in the series at that point and was number one its first week at the box office, but its grosses quickly dropped in subsequent weeks. The Final Frontier received generally mixed or poor reviews by critics on release, and according to its producer nearly killed the franchise.
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Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is the sixth feature film in the Star Trek science fiction franchise and is the last of the Star Trek films to include the entire main cast of the 1960s Star Trek television series. It was released in 1991 by Paramount Pictures, directed by Nicholas Meyer and written by Meyer with Denny Martin Flinn. After an ecological disaster leads to two longstanding enemies—the Federation and the Klingon Empire—brokering a tenuous truce, the crew of the USS Enterprise must prevent war from breaking out on the eve of universal peace. Faced with producing a new film in time for Star Trek's 25th anniversary, Flinn and Meyer, the director of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, wrote a script based on a suggestion from Leonard Nimoy about what would happen if "the wall came down in space", touching on the contemporary events of the Cold War. The production budget was smaller than anticipated because of the critical and commercial failure of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Meyer and cinematographer Hiro Narita aimed for a darker and more dramatic mood, subtly altering redresses of sets originally used for the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation. The film garnered positive reviews, with publications praising the lighthearted acting and facetious references. The Undiscovered Country performed strongly at the box office, and is the only Star Trek movie to win a Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film. Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry died shortly before the movie's premiere, just days after viewing the film.
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Summer of '42 is a 1971 American "coming-of-age" motion picture drama based on the memoirs of screenwriter Herman Raucher. It tells the story of him as a boy in his early teens on his 1942 summer vacation at Nantucket Island off the coast of New England, where he embarked on a one-sided romance with a woman, Dorothy, whose husband had gone off to fight in World War II. Their ill-fated relationship culminates and promptly ends after a drunken depressed Dorothy makes love with him while grieving over the death of her husband. The film was directed by Robert Mulligan, and starred Gary Grimes as Hermie, Jerry Houser as his best friend Oscy, Oliver Conant as their nerdy young friend Benjie, Jennifer O'Neill as Hermie's mysterious love interest, and Katherine Allentuck and Christopher Norris as a pair of girls whom Hermie and Oscy attempt to seduce. Raucher's novelization of his screenplay was released prior to the film's release and became a bestseller. Though a pop culture phenomenon in the first half of the 1970s, the novelization went out of print and slipped into obscurity throughout the next two decades until a Broadway adaptation in 2001 brought it back into the public light and prompted Barnes & Noble to acquire the publishing rights to the book. The next year, the film received a digitally remastered DVD release from Warner Bros.; today, the book remains in-print, although new copies can only be obtained by special order through Barnes & Noble.
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The Superman film series currently consists of five superhero films based on the fictional DC comics character of the same name. The series was conceived in 1973 under producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind. Between these and other producers, five films were made between 1978 and 2006. Not counting Supergirl, also made by the Salkinds, the original four starred Christopher Reeve in the title role. Distributor Warner Bros. picked up production rights in 1993, and a series of unsuccessful attempts to either film The Death of Superman story or reboot the series followed. For 19 years, the series was stuck in development hell, with Warner Bros. constantly looking for new ideas, producers, and directors. Tim Burton, (who was famous for producing Batman and Batman Returns), and Nicholas Cage were once attached to the series for production of Superman Lives, a cancelled film that created many rumours and tension for the studio. After Superman Lives was cancelled and several unsuccessful attempts were pitched, Bryan Singer directed Superman Returns in 2006, a semi-sequel to the first two Reeve films.
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Khan Noonien Singh, commonly shortened to Khan, is a villain in the fictional Star Trek universe. According to backstory given in the character's first appearance, the Star Trek original series episode "Space Seed", Khan is a genetically engineered superhuman tyrant who once controlled more than a quarter of the Earth during the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s. After being revived in 2267 by the crew of the Enterprise, Khan attempts to capture the starship, but is thwarted by James T. Kirk and exiled on Ceti Alpha V to create a new civilization with his people. The character returns in the 1982 film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, set fifteen years after "Space Seed", in which Khan escapes his imprisonment and sets out to seek revenge upon Kirk. The character was portrayed by Ricardo Montalbán in both the television episode and in the film. Initially conceived as a brutal man of Nordic ancestry, Khan first appears as an Indian, who is both admired and reviled by the Enterprise crew. Harve Bennett, executive producer for Star Trek II, chose Khan as the villain. To reflect the time spent marooned on an inhospitable world, Khan was given a costume which looked as though it was scavenged from different items and showed off Montalbán's physique. The character has been positively received by critics and fans; Khan was voted as one of the top ten greatest film villains of all time by the Online Film Critics Society.
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The Cat and the Canary is a 1927 American silent horror film adaptation of John Willard's 1922 black comedy play of the same name. Directed by German expressionist filmmaker Paul Leni, the film stars Laura La Plante as Annabelle West, Forrest Stanley as Charles "Charlie" Wilder, and Creighton Hale as Paul Jones. The plot revolves around the death of Annabelle, Charlie, and Paul's insane uncle and the reading of his will 20 years later. Annabelle inherits her uncle's fortune, but when she and her family spend the night in his haunted mansion they are stalked by a mysterious figure. Meanwhile, a lunatic known as "the Cat" escapes from an asylum and hides in the mansion. The Cat and the Canary is part of a genre of comedy horror films inspired by 1920s Broadway stage plays. Paul Leni's adaptation of Willard's play blended expressionism with humor, a style Leni was notable for and critics recognized as unique. Leni's style of directing made The Cat and the Canary influential in the "old dark house" genre of films popular from the 1930s through the 1950s. The film was one of Universal's early horror productions and is considered "the cornerstone of Universal's school of horror." It has been remade five times, with the most notable starring comedic actor Bob Hope.
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J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is a 1978 animated fantasy film directed by Ralph Bakshi. It is an adaptation of the first half of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Set in Middle-earth, the film follows a group of hobbits, elves, men, dwarves and wizards who form a Fellowship. They embark on a quest to destroy the One Ring made by the Dark Lord Sauron, and ensure his destruction. The film features the voices of William Squire, John Hurt, Michael Graham Cox and Anthony Daniels. The screenplay was written by Peter S. Beagle, based on an earlier draft by Chris Conkling. Director Ralph Bakshi encountered Tolkien's writing early in his career, and had made several attempts to produce The Lord of the Rings as an animated film before being given funding by producer Saul Zaentz and distributor United Artists. The film is notable for its extensive use of rotoscoping, a technique in which scenes are first shot in live-action, then traced onto animation cels. Although the film was a financial success, it received a mixed reaction from critics, and the original distributors refused to fund a sequel to cover the remainder of the story. However, the film sparked new interest in Tolkien's writing, inspiring the production of several further adaptations of the story.
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The Pit and the Pendulum (also known as Pit and the Pendulum) is a 1961 horror film directed by Roger Corman, starring Vincent Price, Barbara Steele, John Kerr, and Luana Anders. The screenplay by Richard Matheson was very loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe’s short story of the same name. Set in 16th Century Spain, the story is about a young Englishman who visits a forbidding castle to investigate his sister's mysterious death. After a series of horrific revelations, apparently ghostly appearances and violent deaths, the young man becomes strapped to the titular torture device by his lunatic brother-in-law during the film's climactic sequence. The Pit and the Pendulum was the second title in the popular series of Poe-based movies released by American International Pictures, the first having been Corman’s House of Usher released the previous year. Like House, the film features widescreen cinematography by Floyd Crosby, huge sets designed by art director Daniel Haller, and a film score composed by Les Baxter. A critical and box office hit, Pit's commercial success convinced AIP and Corman to continue adapting Poe stories for another six films, five of them starring Price. The series ended in 1965 with the release of The Tomb of Ligeia. Film critic Tim Lucas and writer Ernesto Gastaldi have both noted the film’s strong influence on numerous subsequent Italian thrillers, from Mario Bava’s The Whip and the Body (1963) to Dario Argento’s Deep Red (1975). Stephen King has described one of Pit’s major shock sequences as being among the most important moments in the post-1960 horror film.
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The Power of Nightmares, subtitled The Rise of the Politics of Fear, is a BBC documentary film series, written and produced by Adam Curtis. The series consists of three one-hour films, consisting mostly of a montage of archive footage with Curtis's narration, which were first broadcast in the United Kingdom in late 2004 and have been subsequently aired in multiple countries and shown in several film festivals, including the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. The films compare the rise of the American Neo-Conservative movement and the radical Islamist movement, making comparisons on their origins and noting strong similarities between the two. More controversially, it argues that the threat of radical Islamism as a massive, sinister organised force of destruction, specifically in the form of al-Qaeda, is in fact a myth perpetrated by politicians in many countries—and particularly American Neo-Conservatives—in an attempt to unite and inspire their people following the failure of earlier, more utopian ideologies. The Power of Nightmares has been praised by film critics in both Britain and the United States. Its message and content have also been the subject of various critiques and criticisms from conservatives and progressives.
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Trembling Before G-d is a 2001 documentary film about gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews trying to reconcile their sexuality with their faith. It was directed by Sandi Simcha DuBowski, who wanted to compare Orthodox attitudes to homosexuality with his own upbringing as a gay Conservative Jew. The film won several awards, including Teddy Award for Best Documentary Film at the 2001 Berlin Film Festival, the 2001 Chicago International Film Festival, and the 2003 GLAAD Media Awards. Trembling Before G-d is filmed in the style of cinéma vérité. This style of filmmaking aims for extreme naturalism using non-intrusive filming techniques, genuine locations instead of sound stages, and little post-production mixing or voiceovers. The film is mostly in English, but also has some subtitled Yiddish and Hebrew. The film follows the lives of several gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews and includes interviews with rabbis and psychotherapists about Orthodox attitudes towards homosexuality. During the film's six-year production, DuBowski met hundreds of homosexual Jews but only a handful agreed to be filmed out of fear of being ostracized from their communities. Many people who agreed to be interviewed are shown only in silhouette or with their faces pixelized. Trembling Before G-d was successful at the box office, grossing over $5,500 on a single screen on its first day of release and $788,896 on eight screens by its close date on January 5, 2003. The film received ten award nominations, winning seven.
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Lord of the Universe is a 1974 American documentary film about Prem Rawat (at the time known as Guru Maharaj Ji) at an event in November 1973 at the Houston Astrodome called "Millennium '73". Lord of the Universe was first broadcast on PBS on February 2, 1974, and released in a VHS format on November 1, 1991. The documentary chronicles Maharaj Ji, his followers and anti-Vietnam War activist Rennie Davis who was a spokesperson of the Divine Light Mission at the time. A counterpoint is presented by Abbie Hoffman who appears as a commentator. It includes interviews with several protagonists, including followers, ex-followers, a mahatma, a born-again Christian, and a Hare Krishna. The production team of Top Value Television produced the documentary, using Portapak video cameras. The TVTV team followed Maharaj Ji across the United States over a period of six weeks, and edited a large amount of tape down to the fifty-eight minute piece. It was the first documentary made on 1/2-inch (13 mm) video tape broadcast nationally, and also the first independent video documentary shown on national public television. The documentary was generally well-received, and garnered its TVTV production team the 1974 Alfred I. du Pont/Columbia University Award in Broadcast Journalism.
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The Simpsons Movie is a 2007 American animated comedy film based on the animated television series The Simpsons. The film was directed by David Silverman, produced by James L. Brooks, Matt Groening, Al Jean, Mike Scully, and Richard Sakai, and written by Scully, Jean, Brooks, Groening, George Meyer, David Mirkin, Mike Reiss, John Swartzwelder, Jon Vitti, Ian Maxtone-Graham, and Matt Selman. It stars the regular television cast of Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Hank Azaria, Harry Shearer, Tress MacNeille and Pamela Hayden and features Albert Brooks in a prominent guest role, as well as Tom Hanks and Green Day in smaller ones. After previous attempts to create a film version of The Simpsons had failed because of script length and lack of staff, production began in 2001. The script was re-written one hundred times continuing after animation had begun. This meant that "two films' worth" of finished material was cut, including cameos from Isla Fisher, Minnie Driver, Erin Brockovich, and Kelsey Grammer. The film premiered in Springfield, Vermont, which won the right to hold it through a Fox competition. The film was a box office success, and received positive reception from film critics, though some felt the film was too short.
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Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 is a 2000 American film adaptation of the novel Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard. The film stars John Travolta, Forrest Whitaker and Barry Pepper. It was a commercial and critical disaster and has been widely criticized as one of the worst films ever made. Travolta, a long-time Scientologist, had sought for many years to deliver a big-screen adaptation of the novel by Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. He was unable to obtain funding from any major studio due to concerns about the film's script, prospects and the connections with Scientology. The project was eventually taken on by an independent production company, Franchise Pictures, which specialized in rescuing stars' stalled pet projects. Travolta signed on as a co-producer and contributed millions of dollars of his own money to the production, which was largely funded by a German film distribution company. The investors later successfully sued and bankrupted Franchise after it emerged that the company had fraudulently overstated the film's budget by $31 million. Reviewers universally panned the film, criticizing virtually every aspect of the production. Audiences were reported to have ridiculed early screenings, and stayed away from the film after its opening weekend. This resulted in Battlefield Earth failing to recoup its costs. Travolta originally envisioned the film as the first of two adapted from the book, as Battlefield Earth's screenplay only covered the first half of the novel. However, the film's poor box office performance meant that the planned sequel was not made.
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Zodiac is a 2007 American film directed by David Fincher and based on Robert Graysmith's non-fiction books Zodiac and Zodiac Unmasked. The Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. joint production stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, and Robert Downey Jr.. Zodiac tells the story of the people involved in the hunt for a notorious serial killer known as "Zodiac", who haunted the San Francisco Bay Area during the late 1960s, leaving several victims in his wake and taunting police with his letters and ciphers mailed to newspapers. The case remains one of San Francisco's most famous unsolved crimes. Fincher, screenwriter James Vanderbilt and producer Brad Fischer spent 18 months conducting their own investigation and research into the Zodiac murders. During filming, Fincher employed the digital Thomson Viper Filmstream camera to shoot the film. This was the first time this camera was used to shoot an entire Hollywood feature film. Reviews for the film were highly positive. It did not perform strongly at the North American box office, grossing only USD $33 million. However, it performed better in other parts of the world, earning $51 million, to bring its box office total to $84 million, with a budget of $65 million spent on its production.
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Alien vs. Predator (also known as AVP) is a science fiction film released in 2004 by 20th Century Fox. It is an adaptation of a crossover franchise between the titular extraterrestrials from the Alien and Predator series, a concept which originated in a 1989 comic book. An Alien vs. Predator film was put on hiatus until 2002, with the final production based on an original screenplay by director Paul W. S. Anderson and Shane Salerno, who were influenced by Aztec mythology, the comic book series, and the writings of Erich von Däniken. Set in 2004, Alien vs. Predator follows a group of paleontologists, archaeologists, and others assembled by billionaire Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen) for an expedition near the Antarctic after discovering a mysterious heat signal. Hoping to claim the find for himself, Weyland and the group discover a pyramid below the surface of a whaling station. Hieroglyphics and sculptures reveal that the pyramid is a hunting ground for Predators who kill Aliens as a "coming of age" ritual. The humans are caught in the middle of a battle between the two species and attempt to prevent the Aliens reaching the surface. Alien vs. Predator received negative reviews from film critics, scoring a 22% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and 29 on Metacritic. Alien vs. Predator became the most commercially successful film in the franchises, grossing a total of $171 million. The film's success led to a sequel in 2007 titled Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem.
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Transformers is a 2007 American science fiction action film based on the Transformers toy line. The film, which combines computer animation with live action, is directed by Michael Bay and produced by Steven Spielberg. It stars Shia LaBeouf as Sam Witwicky, a teenager involved in a war between the heroic Autobots and the evil Decepticons, two factions of alien robots that can disguise themselves by transforming into everyday machinery. The Decepticons desire control of the AllSpark, the object that created their robotic race, with the intention of using it to build an army by giving life to the machines of Earth. Megan Fox, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, Jon Voight, Anthony Anderson and John Turturro also star, while actors Peter Cullen and Hugo Weaving voice Optimus Prime and Megatron respectively. Transformers was a box-office success, despite mixed critical reaction. Two sequels have been released: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen in 2009 and Transformers: Dark of the Moon in 2011.
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Bezhin Meadow is a 1937 Soviet Union film, directed by Sergei Eisenstein, which is renowned for having been suppressed and believed destroyed before its completion. It tells the story of a young farm boy whose father attempts to betray the government for political reasons by sabotaging the year's harvest, the son's efforts to stop his own father to protect the Soviet state, and culminates in the boys murder and a social uprising. The film draws its title from a story by Ivan Turgenev, but is based on the life of a young Russian boy who became a political martyr following his death in 1932, after he denounced his father to Soviet government authorities and subsequently died at the hands of his family. The boy, Pavlik Morozov, was immortalized in school programs, poetry, music, and in film. Commissioned by a Communist youth group, the film's production ran from 1935 to 1937, until it was halted by the central Soviet government for alleged artistic, social, and political failures in the film's content. Some, however, blamed the failure of Bezhin Meadow on government interference and policies, extending all the way to Joseph Stalin himself. In the wake of the film's failure, Eisenstein publicly recanted his work as an error. Individuals were arrested during and after the ensuing debacle and, in one case, a government official was executed as an alleged foreign spy.
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The Mummy is a 1999 American adventure film written and directed by Stephen Sommers, starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz, with Arnold Vosloo in the title role as the reanimated mummy. The movie features substantial dialogue in ancient Egyptian language, spoken with the assistance of a professional Egyptologist. It is a loose remake of the 1932 film of the same name which starred Boris Karloff in the title role. Originally intended to be part of a low-budget horror franchise, the movie was eventually turned into a blockbuster adventure film. The Mummy opened on May 7, 1999 and grossed $43 million in 3,210 theaters; the movie went on to gross $415 million worldwide. Reception to the film was mixed, with reviewers alternatively praising or complaining about the special effects, the slapstick nature of the story and characters, and the stereotyped villains. The box-office success led to a 2001 sequel, The Mummy Returns, as well as The Mummy: The Animated Series, and the spin-off film The Scorpion King. Another sequel, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, will open on August 1, 2008. Universal Studios also opened a roller coaster, Revenge of the Mummy, in 2004. The movie and its sequel's novelizations were written by Max Allan Collins.
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Mulholland Drive is a 2001 mystery film written and directed by David Lynch that exhibits elements of film noir and surrealism. It stars Naomi Watts, Laura Elena Harring and Justin Theroux. The film was highly acclaimed by many critics and earned Lynch the Prix de la mise en scène (Best Director Award) at the Cannes Film Festival as well as an Oscar nomination for Best Director. Mulholland Drive also launched the careers of Watts and Harring and was the last feature film to star veteran Hollywood actor Ann Miller. The film is widely regarded as one of Lynch's finest works, alongside Eraserhead (1977) and Blue Velvet (1986). Originally conceived as a television pilot, a large portion of the film was shot with Lynch's plan to keep it open-ended for a potential series. After viewing Lynch's version, however, television executives decided to reject it; Lynch then provided an ending to the project, making it a feature film. The film tells the story of an aspiring actress named Betty Elms, newly arrived in Los Angeles, California, who meets and befriends an amnesiac hiding in her aunt's apartment. The story includes several other seemingly unrelated vignettes that eventually connect in various ways, as well as some surreal scenes and images that relate to the cryptic narrative.
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Little Miss Sunshine is a 2006 American comedy-drama, and the film directorial debut of the husband-wife team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. The screenplay was written by first-time writer Michael Arndt. It stars Greg Kinnear, Steve Carell, Toni Collette, Paul Dano, Abigail Breslin, and Alan Arkin, and was produced by Big Beach Films on a budget of US$8 million. The film is a road movie about a family's trip to a children's beauty pageant, with a large portion focusing on events related to the family vehicle, a Volkswagen T2 Microbus. Filming began on June 6, 2005 and took place over 30 days in Arizona and Southern California. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 20, 2006, and its distribution rights were bought by Fox Searchlight Pictures for one of the biggest deals made in the history of the festival. The film had its limited release in the United States on July 26, 2006 and later expanded to a wider release starting on August 18, 2006. Little Miss Sunshine received generally positive reviews and had an international box office gross of $100.3 million. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won two: Best Original Screenplay for Michael Arndt and Best Supporting Actor for Alan Arkin. It also won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Feature, and received multiple other awards and nominations.
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Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is a 1982 motion picture released by Paramount Pictures. The film is the second feature based on the Star Trek science fiction franchise. The plot features James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and the crew of the starship USS Enterprise facing off against the genetically-engineered tyrant Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalbán), a character who first appeared in the 1960s Star Trek television series episode "Space Seed". When Khan escapes from a 15-year exile to exact revenge on Kirk, the crew of the Enterprise must stop him from acquiring a powerful terraforming device. The film concludes with the death of Enterprise crewmember Spock (Leonard Nimoy), beginning a story arc that continues to 1986's Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. The Wrath of Khan was released in North America on June 4, 1982. It was a box office success, earning US$97 million worldwide and setting a world record for first-day box office gross. Critical reaction to the film was positive; reviewers highlighted Khan, the film's pacing and the character interactions as strong elements. Negative reaction focused on weak special effects and some of the acting. The Wrath of Khan is generally considered one of the best films of the Star Trek series and is credited with creating renewed interest in the franchise.
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Barton Fink is a 1991 American film written and directed by the Coen brothers. Set in 1941, it stars John Turturro in the title role as a young New York City playwright who is hired to write scripts for a movie studio in Hollywood, and John Goodman as Charlie, the insurance salesman who lives next door at the run-down Hotel Earle. The Coens wrote the screenplay in three weeks while experiencing difficulty during the writing of another movie, Miller's Crossing. Soon after Miller's Crossing was finished, the Coens began filming Barton Fink, and it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1991. In a rare sweep, it won the Palme d'Or prize, as well as awards for Best Director and Best Actor (Turturro). Although it was celebrated almost universally by critics, the movie only grossed $6,000,000 at the box office – two-thirds of its estimated budget. The process of writing and the culture of entertainment production are two prominent themes of Barton Fink. The world of Hollywood is contrasted with that of Broadway, and the film analyzes superficial distinctions between high culture and low culture. Other themes in the film include fascism and World War II; slavery and conditions of labor in creative industries; and how intellectuals relate to "the common man". Several religious overtones appear, including references to the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament, King Nebuchadnezzar and Bathsheba.
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Bride of Frankenstein (advertised as The Bride of Frankenstein) is a 1935 horror film, the first sequel to the influential Frankenstein (1931). Bride of Frankenstein was directed by James Whale and stars Boris Karloff as The Monster, Elsa Lanchester in the dual role of his mate and Mary Shelley, Colin Clive as Henry Frankenstein, and Ernest Thesiger as Doctor Septimus Pretorius. The film follows on immediately from the events of the first film, and is rooted in a subplot of the original novel, Frankenstein (1818). In the film, a chastened Henry Frankenstein abandons his plans to create life, only to be tempted and finally coerced by the Monster, encouraged by Henry's old mentor Dr Pretorius, into constructing a mate for him. The Bride rejects the Monster however, resulting in her death, that of Pretorius, and apparently the Monster's own death, when he destroys Henry's laboratory. Preparation began shortly after the first film premiered, but script problems delayed the project. Principal photography started in January 1935, with creative personnel from the original returning in front of and behind the camera. Bride of Frankenstein was released to critical and popular acclaim, although it encountered difficulties with some state and national censorship boards. Since its release the film's reputation has grown, and it is hailed as Whale's masterpiece. Modern film scholars, noting Whale's homosexuality and that of others involved in the production, have found a gay sensibility in the film, although a number of Whale's associates have dismissed the idea.
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Changeling is a 2008 American drama film directed by Clint Eastwood and written by J. Michael Straczynski. Based on real life events in 1928 Los Angeles, the film stars Angelina Jolie as a woman who is reunited with her missing son—only to realize he is an impostor. After she confronts the city authorities they vilify her as an unfit mother and brand her delusional. The dramatized incident was connected to the "Wineville Chicken Coop" kidnapping and murder case. Changeling explores female disempowerment, political corruption, child endangerment and the repercussions of violence. Ron Howard intended to direct, but scheduling conflicts led to his replacement by Eastwood. Howard and Imagine Entertainment partner Brian Grazer produced, alongside Malpaso Productions' Robert Lorenz and Eastwood. Universal Pictures financed and distributed the film. Changeling premiered at the 61st Cannes Film Festival on May 20, 2008, to critical acclaim. Further festival appearances preceded a limited release in the United States on October 24, 2008. The film opened wide in North America on October 31, 2008, in the United Kingdom on November 26, 2008, and in Australia on February 5, 2009. Critical reaction was more mixed than at Cannes; the acting and story were generally praised, while criticism focused on the film's conventional staging and lack of nuance. It performed better at the international box office than in North America, earning $111.5 million worldwide. Changeling received nominations in three Academy Award and eight BAFTA Award categories.
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Fight Club is a 1999 American feature film adapted from the 1996 novel of the same name by Chuck Palahniuk. The film was directed by David Fincher and stars Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, and Helena Bonham Carter. Norton plays the nameless protagonist, an "everyman" who is discontented with his white-collar job in American society. He forms a "fight club" with soap salesman Tyler Durden, played by Pitt, and becomes embroiled in a relationship with him and a destitute woman, Marla Singer, played by Bonham Carter. Palahniuk's novel was optioned by 20th Century Fox producer Laura Ziskin, who hired Jim Uhls to write the film adaptation. Fincher was one of four directors the producers considered; they hired him because of his enthusiasm for the film. Fincher developed the script with Uhls and sought screenwriting advice from the cast and others in the film industry. The director and the cast compared the film to Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and The Graduate (1967). They said its theme was the conflict between a generation of young people and the value system of advertising. Fincher intended Fight Club's violence to serve as a metaphor for this. The director copied the homoerotic overtones from Palahniuk's novel to make audiences uncomfortable and keep them from anticipating the twist ending. Studio executives did not like the film, and they restructured Fincher's intended marketing campaign to try to reduce anticipated losses. Fight Club failed to meet the studio's expectations at the box office, and received polarized reactions from critics. It was cited as one of the most controversial and talked-about films of 1999. The Guardian saw it as an omen for change in American political life, and described its visual style as ground-breaking. The film later found commercial success with its DVD release, which established Fight Club as a cult film.
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Star Trek: First Contact is the eighth feature film in the Star Trek science fiction franchise, released in November 1996 by Paramount Pictures. First Contact is the first film in the franchise to exclusively feature the cast of the Star Trek: The Next Generation television series. The television cast is joined by Alice Krige, Neal McDonough, James Cromwell and Alfre Woodard. In the film's plot, the crew of the USS Enterprise travel from the 24th to 21st century to save their future after the cybernetic Borg conquer Earth by changing the timeline. First Contact was the highest-grossing film on its opening weekend, making $30.7 million. The film made $92 million in the United States and an additional $57.4 million in other territories, for a theatrical run of about $146 million worldwide. Critical reception was mostly positive; critics including Roger Ebert considered it one of the best Star Trek films. The Borg and the special effects were lauded, while characterization was less evenly received. First Contact was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Makeup and won three Saturn Awards. The film has been released on videotape, LaserDisc, DVD, and Blu-ray home video formats. Scholarly analysis of the film has focused on Captain Jean-Luc Picard's parallels to Herman Melville's Ahab and the nature of the Borg.
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Tropic Thunder is a 2008 American action satire comedy film directed and produced by Ben Stiller. The film stars Stiller, Jack Black, and Robert Downey, Jr. as a group of prima donna actors making a Vietnam War film. When their frustrated writer and director decide to drop them in the middle of a jungle, the actors are forced to portray their roles without the comforts of a film set. Written by Stiller, Justin Theroux, and Etan Cohen, the film was produced by DreamWorks and Red Hour Films and distributed by Paramount Pictures. After the film was greenlit in 2006, filming took place in 2007 on the Hawaiian island of Kauai over thirteen weeks and was later deemed the largest film production in the island's history. It received generally favorable reviews with critics approving of the film's characters, story, and faux trailers while criticizing its offensive content. In its North American opening weekend, the film earned US$26 million and retained the number one position for the first three weekends of release. The film and its cast were nominated for several awards from various groups including the Screen Actors Guild, Broadcast Film Critics Association, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Tropic Thunder grossed $180 million in theaters before its release on home video on November 18, 2008.
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Hoodwinked! is a 2005 computer-animated film that retells the folktale Little Red Riding Hood as a police investigation, using flashbacks to show multiple characters' points of view. It was directed and written by Cory Edwards, Todd Edwards, and Tony Leech and was among the earliest computer-animated films to be completely independently funded. Due to its small budget, the animation was produced in the Philippines with a less realistic design inspired by stop motion films. Its structure was inspired by the Japanese film Rashomon and it is part of the fairy tale parody genre. Released shortly after the first two installments in the successful Shrek series, Hoodwinked! intentionally deviated from that series in its style of humor and in certain plot elements. The Weinstein Company signed on as the distributor near the end of production, and while the company recast many roles, it otherwise made few changes. Critical reception to the film was varied; although its script and cast were praised by many reviews, its animation quality was heavily criticized. It was a commercial success, earning over ten times its budget. A sequel, Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil, was released in 2011.
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