1.
12 Years a Slave (film)
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Northup worked on plantations in the state of Louisiana for 12 years before his release. The first scholarly edition of Northups memoir, co-edited in 1968 by Sue Eakin and Joseph Logsdon, carefully retraced and validated the account, other characters in the film were also real people, including Edwin and Mary Epps, and Patsey. The film was directed by Steve McQueen, the screenplay was written by John Ridley. Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as Solomon Northup, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano, Paul Giamatti, Lupita Nyongo, Sarah Paulson, Brad Pitt, and Alfre Woodard are all featured in supporting roles. Principal photography took place in New Orleans, Louisiana, from June 27 to August 13,2012, the locations used were four historic antebellum plantations, Felicity, Bocage, Destrehan, and Magnolia. Of the four, Magnolia is nearest to the plantation where Northup was held. 12 Years a Slave received widespread acclaim, and was named the best film of 2013 by several media outlets. It proved to be a box office success, earning over $187 million on a budget of $22 million. The film won three Academy Awards, Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress for Nyongo, and Best Adapted Screenplay for Ridley, the Best Picture win made McQueen the first black producer ever to have received the award and the first black director to have directed a Best Picture winner. The film was awarded the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama, and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts recognized it with the Best Film and the Best Actor award for Ejiofor. In 1841, Solomon Northup is a free African-American man working as a violinist, living with his wife, two white men, Brown and Hamilton, offer him short-term employment as a musician if he will travel with them to Washington, D. C. However, once they arrive, the duo drug Northup and conspire to deliver him to a slave pen run by a man named Burch, Northup is later shipped to New Orleans along with others who have been detained against their will. A slave trader named Freeman gives Northup the identity of Platt, a slave from Georgia. Due to tension between Northup and another worker, Ford sells him to another slave owner named Edwin Epps. In the process, Northup attempts to explain that he is actually a free man, at the plantation, Northup meets Patsey, a favored slave, whom Epps regularly rapes and abuses. Some time later, an outbreak of cotton worm befalls Eppss plantation, unable to work his fields, Epps leases his slaves to a neighboring plantation for the season. While there, Northup gains the favor of the owner, Judge Turner, who allows him to play the fiddle at a neighbors wedding anniversary celebration. When Northup returns to Epps, he attempts to use the money to pay a white hand and former overseer, Armsby
2.
Steve McQueen (director)
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Steven Rodney Steve McQueen CBE is an English film director, producer, screenwriter, and video artist. McQueen is the first black filmmaker to win an Academy Award for Best Picture, McQueen is known for his collaborations with actor Michael Fassbender, who has starred in all three of McQueens feature films as of 2014. McQueens other feature films are Hunger, a drama about the 1981 Irish hunger strike, and Shame. For his artwork, McQueen has received the Turner Prize, the highest award given to a British visual artist, in 2006 he produced Queen and Country, which commemorates the deaths of British soldiers in Iraq by presenting their portraits as a sheet of stamps. For services to the arts, he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2011. In April 2014, TIME magazine included McQueen in its annual TIME100 as one of the Most Influential People in the World, in October 2016, McQueen was granted BFIs highest honour, the BFI Fellowship. McQueen was born in London and is of Grenadian and Trinidadian descent and he grew up in Hanwell, West London and went to Drayton Manor High School. Later, the new head of the school would admit that there had been institutional racism at the time. McQueen added that he was dyslexic and had to wear an eyepatch due to a lazy eye and he was a keen football player, turning out for the St. Georges Colts football team. He left Goldsmiths and studied briefly at New York Universitys Tisch School of the Arts in the United States and he found the approach there too stifling and insufficiently experimental, complaining that they wouldnt let you throw the camera up in the air. His artistic influences include Andy Warhol, Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Jean Vigo, Buster Keaton, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Robert Bresson, Bear was McQueens first major film, presented at the Royal College of Art in London. Although not a political piece, for many it raised questions about race, sexual attraction to men. It shows a wrestling match between two men who alternate ambiguous relations and gestures of aggression and erotic attraction, the films protagonists, one of them McQueen, are both black, but issues of race, he has said, do not take priority in his work. Like all McQueens early films, Bear is black-and-white, and was shot on 16-millimetre film, five Easy Pieces is a short film by McQueen. It follows a woman across a tight-rope, McQueen has stated that he finds a walker to be the perfect image of a combination of vulnerability. Just Above My Head is a film which shares close ties with McQueens preceding film with the key theme of walking. As stated by David Frankel, the fragility and persistence is seemingly meant as a metaphor for black life in England as elsewhere. Media Art noted that his use of black and white emulates 1920s film style without a historicizing strategy or to reinterpret the origins of moving images, the film was exhibited on loop in the Museum of Modern Arts Contemporary Galleries, 1980-Now from 17 November 2011 to 17 February 2014
3.
Breaking Bad
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Breaking Bad is an American crime drama television series created and produced by Vince Gilligan. The show originally aired on the AMC network for five seasons, from January 20,2008 and it tells the story of Walter White, a struggling high school chemistry teacher diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. The title is from a Southern colloquialism meaning to raise hell, Breaking Bad is set and was filmed in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Walters family consists of his wife Skyler and children, Walter, Jr. the show also features Skylers sister Marie Schrader, and her husband Hank, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent. Walter hires lawyer Saul Goodman, who connects him with private investigator and fixer Mike Ehrmantraut and in turn Mikes employer, the final season introduces the characters Todd Alquist and Lydia Rodarte-Quayle. Breaking Bad is widely regarded as one of the greatest television series of all time, by the time the series finale aired, the series was among the most-watched cable shows on American television. In 2013, Breaking Bad entered the Guinness World Records as the most critically acclaimed show of all time, Breaking Bad was created by Vince Gilligan, who spent several years writing the Fox series The X-Files. Gilligan wanted to create a series in which the protagonist became the antagonist, Television is historically good at keeping its characters in a self-imposed stasis so that shows can go on for years or even decades, he said. When I realized this, the next step was to think. He added that his goal with Walter White was to him from Mr. Chips into Scarface. The show title is based on a Southern colloquialism meaning, among other things, raising hell, according to Time entertainment editor Lily Rothman, the term has a broader meaning and is an old phrase which connotes more violence than raising hell does. As the series progressed, Gilligan and the staff of Breaking Bad made Walter increasingly unsympathetic. Gilligan said during the run of the series, Hes going from being a protagonist to an antagonist and we want to make people question who theyre pulling for, and why. Cranston said by the season, I think Walts figured out its better to be a pursuer than the pursued. Hes well on his way to badass, while still pitching the show to studios, Gilligan was initially discouraged when he learned of the existing series Weeds and its similarities to the premise of Breaking Bad. While his producers convinced him that the show was different enough to still be successful, the network ordered nine episodes for the first season, but the 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike limited the production to seven episodes. Once Gilligan recognized that this would mean wed always have to be avoiding the Sandia Mountains in shots directed toward the east and it was shot primarily on 35 mm film, with digital cameras employed as needed for additional angles, point of view shots and time-lapse photography. Breaking Bad reportedly cost $3 million per episode to produce, higher than the average cost for a cable program
4.
Orange Is the New Black
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Orange Is the New Black is an American comedy-drama web television series. Orange Is the New Black is streamed on Netflix, and premiered on July 11,2013, in February 2016, the series was renewed for a fifth, sixth, and seventh season. The fifth season will be released on June 9,2017, Orange Is the New Black has become Netflixs most-watched original series. It has received acclaim and many accolades. A new Emmy rule in 2015 forced the series to change categories from comedy to drama, for its second season, the series received four Emmy nominations, including Outstanding Drama Series, and Uzo Aduba won for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. Orange Is the New Black is the first series to score Emmy nominations in both comedy and drama categories, Piper had been convicted of transporting a suitcase full of drug money for her girlfriend Alex Vause, an international drug smuggler. The offense had occurred 10 years prior to the start of the series and in that time Piper had moved on to a quiet and her sudden and unexpected indictment severely disrupts her relationships with her fiancé, family and friends. In prison, Piper is reunited with Alex and they re-examine their relationship, simultaneously, Piper must learn how to survive in prison, and how to overcome its numerous, inherent struggles. Episodes often feature flashbacks of significant events from various inmates and prison guards pasts and these flashbacks typically explain how the inmate came to be in prison, or otherwise further develop the characters backstory. Show creator Jenji Kohan read Piper Kermans memoir after a friend sent it to her and this appealed to Kerman as it let her know that she was a fan and she signed off on the adaptation. Kohan would later go on to describe the character, Piper Chapman as a trojan horse for the series allowing it to focus on characters whose demographics would not normally be represented on TV. In July 2011, it was revealed that Netflix was in negotiations with Lionsgate for a 13-episode TV adaptation of Kermans memoirs with Kohan as creator, in November 2011, negotiations were finalized and the series had been greenlit. Casting announcements began in August 2012 with Taylor Schilling, the first to be cast, in the role as Piper Chapman. Kohan instead gave her the role of Alex, around the same time Laverne Cox, a black transgender woman, was cast as Sophia Burset, a transgender character. The Advocate touted Orange Is the New Black as possibly the first women-in-prison narrative to cast a woman for this type of role. This American Life host Ira Glass was offered a role as a radio host. The role instead went to Robert Stanton, who plays the fictional host Maury Kind, the series is set in a fictional prison in Litchfield, New York, which is a real town in upstate New York, but it does not have a federal penitentiary. The series began filming in the old Rockland Childrens Psychiatric Center in Rockland County, New York, the title sequence features photos of real former female prisoners including Kerman herself
5.
The Century Plaza Hotel
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It was known as the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza from 2006 to 2016, when it closed for reconstruction. The Century Plaza Hotel opened on June 1,1966 in the Century City neighborhood of Los Angeles on the backlot of 20th Century Fox Studios. Fox still has its lot in the neighborhood, as well as its headquarters, the new owners conceived Century City as a city within a city with the arc-shaped, 19-story, 750-room Minoru Yamasaki-designed Century Plaza as the centerpiece of the new city. When the Century Plaza began operating in 1966, its doormen wore red Beefeater costumes, the hotel was managed by Western International Hotels, which later changed its name to Westin Hotels. In 1967,1,300 club-swinging police clashed with about 10,000 Vietnam War demonstrators as President Johnson spoke at a Democratic fundraiser at the hotel. On August 13,1969, President Richard Nixon hosted a state dinner in the Los Angeles Ballroom to celebrate the Apollo 11 moon landing astronauts. In 1984, the added a 322-room tower on the south portion of the property. The Tower at Century Plaza was marketed as a wing of the hotel. Ronald Reagan by arrangement signed in as the first guest of the just completed Tower, while then Century Plaza Vice-President, in 1999 the hotel rededicated its penthouse suite, the entire 32nd floor the Ronald Reagan Suite, attendees including Nancy Reagan. While Reagan was in office, he stayed in the Tower so frequently the media dubbed it his Western White House. President Reagan had recently celebrated his re-election to a term as President on the stage of the Los Angeles Ballroom in the original Century Plaza Hotel on November 6,1984. In 2000, soon after Westin was acquired by Starwood, the Tower was converted into a hotel under a more luxurious Starwood brand. That hotel was sold by the owners of the Century Plaza in 2005 to developers who closed it for conversion to residential use. With its 1980s ceilings too low to meet modern demands, the relatively new building was razed to make way for The Century. In 2006, after being managed for its entire forty-year history by Westin Hotels, however, the sign above the main entrance reading The Century Plaza was left unchanged. Sunstone Hotel Investors Inc. bought the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in 2005 for $293 million and then spent $22 million upgrading the guest rooms, on June 1,2008, Sunstone sold the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza to Next Century Associates for $366.5 million. The sale price of $505,000 per room was one of the highest-paid for a hotel in California, on December 18,2008, the new owners announced plans to demolish the hotel and build a pair of fifty-story towers in its place. On April 28,2009, The Century Plaza Hotel was added to The National Trust for Historic Preservations list of the 11 most endangered places in America
6.
Century City, Los Angeles
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Century City is a 176-acre neighborhood and business district in Los Angeles Westside. Outside of Downtown Los Angeles, Century City is one of the areas most prominent employment centers. The district was developed on the backlot of film studio 20th Century Fox. There are two schools, but no public schools in the neighborhood. Important to the economy are the Westfield Century City shopping center, business towers, the land of Century City belonged to cowboy actor Tom Mix, who used it as a ranch. It later became a backlot of 20th Century Fox, which still has its headquarters just to the southwest. The following year, in 1957, they commissioned a development from Welton Becket Associates. Of America, also known as Alcoa, for US$300 million, herrscher had encouraged his uncle-in-law to borrow money instead, but once Skouras refused, he was out of the picture. The new owners conceived Century City as a city within a city, in 1963, the first building, Gateway West Building, was completed. The next year, in 1964, Minoru Yamasaki designed the Century Plaza Hotel, five years later, in 1969, architects Anthony J. Lumsden and César Pelli designed the Century City Medical Plaza. Century Citys plaza as it appeared in the early 1970s can be viewed in several scenes of still another Fox film, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. The 2000 U. S. census counted 5,513 residents in the 0. 70-square-mile Century City neighborhood—or 7,869 people per square mile, the Southern California Association of Governments estimates that the daytime population amounts to 48,343 on a working day. In 2008, the city estimated that the resident population had increased to 5,934, in 2008, the median age for residents was 46, older than average for the city and the county. The percentage of residents aged 65 and older was the highest for any neighborhood in Los Angeles County, the percentages of widowed men and women and of divorced men were among the countys highest. Military veterans accounted for 11. 9% of the population, a rate for the city. The neighborhood was considered not especially diverse ethnically, with a percentage of white residents. The breakdown was whites,82. 5%, Asians,8. 6%, Latinos,4. 4%, blacks,1. 4%, and others,3, 0%. Iran and Canada were the most common places of birth for the 25. 5% of the residents who were born abroad—a low percentage, the median yearly income in 2014 was $95,135, a high figure for Los Angeles
7.
Guillermo del Toro
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Guillermo del Toro Gómez is a Mexican film director, screenwriter, producer, and novelist. He was originally chosen by Peter Jackson to direct The Hobbit films, Del Toros work is characterised by a strong connection to fairy tales and horror, with an effort to infuse visual or poetic beauty. He has a fascination with monsters, which he considers symbols of great power. He is also friends with fellow Mexican directors Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González Iñárritu, Del Toro was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. He was raised in a strict Catholic household, Del Toro studied at the Centro de Investigación y Estudios Cinematográficos, in Guadalajara. When del Toro was about eight years old, he began experimenting with his fathers Super 8 camera, making films with Planet of the Apes toys. One short focused on a serial killer potato with ambitions of world domination, it murdered del Toros mother and brothers before stepping outside and being crushed by a car. Del Toro made about 10 short films before his first feature, including one titled Matilde and he also wrote four and directed five episodes of the cult series La Hora Marcada, along with other Mexican filmmakers such as Emmanuel Lubezki and Alfonso Cuarón. Del Toro studied special effects and make-up with special-effects artist Dick Smith and he spent 10 years as a special-effects make-up designer and formed his own company, Necropia. He also co-founded the Guadalajara International Film Festival, later in his directing career, he formed his own production company, the Tequila Gang. In 1997, at the age of 33, Guillermo was given a $30 million budget from Miramax Films to shoot another film, during this time, his father, automotive entrepreneur Federico del Toro, was kidnapped in Guadalajara. Although Federico was eventually released safely, due to economic pressure from his captors. The event prompted del Toro, his parents, and his siblings to move abroad, in an interview with Time magazine, he said this about the kidnapping of his father, Every day, every week, something happens that reminds me that I am an involuntary exile. These two films, The Devils Backbone and Pans Labyrinth, are among his most critically acclaimed works and they share similar settings, protagonists and themes with the 1973 Spanish film The Spirit of the Beehive, widely considered to be the finest Spanish film of the 1970s. Del Toro views the horror genre as political, explaining, Much like fairy tales. One is pro-institution, which is the most reprehensible type of tale, Dont wander into the woods. The other type of fairy tale is completely anarchic and antiestablishment and he is close friends with two other prominent and critically praised Mexican filmmakers Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González Iñárritu. The three often influence each others directorial decisions, and have been interviewed together by Charlie Rose, Cuarón was one of the producers of Pans Labyrinth, while Iñárritu assisted in editing the film
8.
Mike Medavoy
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Morris Mike Medavoy was born in 1941, in Shanghai, China. His father, Michael, was a mechanic, and his mother. His parents were both from Jewish families and his mother was born in Harbin, Manchuria and his father was born in Ukraine. Medavoy lived in Chile from 1947 to 1957, and he studied at the Liceo Valentín Letelier de Santiago and he became an American citizen in 1963. and graduated from UCLA that same year. Medavoy began his career at Universal Studios in 1964, in 1965 he became an agent at the General Artists Corporation and later moving into the vice president position of the Creative Management Agency. He became Creative Managements vice president of the picture department in 1967. In 1974, United Artists brought Medavoy in as vice president of production. There, he was part of the responsible for One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, Rocky, and Annie Hall. United Artists made a number of notable films at the time, including Apocalypse Now, Raging Bull, Network. In 1978, Medavoy co-founded Orion Pictures, during his tenure there, Orion released films such notable and successful films as Platoon, Amadeus, Robocop, Hannah and Her Sisters, The Terminator, Dances with Wolves, and The Silence of the Lambs. In 1995, Medavoy co-founded Phoenix Pictures, as its chairman and CEO, Medavoy co-produced such films as The People vs. Larry Flint, The Mirror Has Two Faces, U Turn, Apt Pupil, The Thin Red Line, The 6th Day, Basic, All the Kings Men, Zodiac, Pathfinder and Miss Potter, the Thin Red Line and The People vs. Phoenix Pictures has produced Shutter Island and Black Swan, Shutter Island was released on February 19,2010, earning over $42 million its opening weekend. Black Swan was directed by Darren Aronofsky and won awards including the Oscar®. In 2011, Medavoy announced his newest project surrounding the 2010 Chilean mining accident that left 33 men trapped underground for 69 days, also in 2011, Medavoy announced his collaboration with The Shanghai Film Group to create both a feature film and six-hour miniseries. The feature, an adaptation of the novel The Cursed Piano, is a story set in Japanese-occupied China concerning prosecuted Jews seeking refuge from an occupied Europe. The mini-series, Tears of a Sparrow, will focus in greater detail on the experience of these Jews in Shanghai and he is also working on an adaptation of Dandelion Wine, adapted from the novel of the same name by Ray Bradbury. In 2015, it was announced that he and Eric Esrailian are producing The Promise starring Oscar Isaac and he is a member of the board of directors of the University of Tel Aviv
9.
Ryan Coogler
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Ryan Kyle Coogler is an American film director and screenwriter. His first feature film, Fruitvale Station, won the Grand Jury Prize and he also wrote and directed the seventh film in the Rocky film saga, Creed. Coogler was born on May 23,1986 in Oakland, California and his mother, Joselyn, is a community organizer, and his father, Ira Coogler, is a juvenile hall probation counselor. Both parents graduated from California State University, Hayward and he has two brothers, Noah and Keenan. His uncle, Clarence Thomas, is a third-generation Oakland longshoreman, Coogler lived in Oakland, California until age eight, when he moved to Richmond, California. During his youth, he ran track and played football and he went to Saint Marys College High School, a private Catholic school in Berkeley, California, and was good at math and science. He started his journey at Saint Marys College of California on a football scholarship as a redshirt wide receiver his freshman semester intending to study chemistry. While he was there, his English professor Rosemary Graham encouraged him to pursue a career in screenwriting, at Sacramento he majored in finance and took as many film classes as he could fit in with the rigors of college football. He then attended USC School of Cinematic Arts, where he made a series of short films, the film was developed and produced by Oscar-winning actor Forest Whitaker. Ive worked with a number of truly unique voices, true auteurs, Whitaker said of Coogler, the film was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival where it won the award for Best First Film. Time named him with Michael B. Jordan one of 30 people under 30 who are changing the world, Fruitvale Station grossed over $17 million worldwide after its theatrical run, and earned a score of 94% on Rotten Tomatoes. In July 2013, it was reported that MGM had offered Coogler to direct Creed, a spin-off-sequel of the Rocky films and this film, which was released on November 25,2015 in the United States, reunited Coogler with Michael B. Jordan, who played Apollo Creeds son Adonis, the film was praised across the board by critics. For the film, Coogler won the New Generation Award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, in January 2013, Coogler said he was working on a graphic novel and a young adult novel about undisclosed subject matter. Coogler will also work with frequent collaborator Michael B. Jordan for a time in the upcoming film Wrong Answer. Coogler has worked since age 21 as a counselor with incarcerated youth at San Franciscos Juvenile Hall, following in the footsteps of his father and he is married to Zinzi Evans. Fruitvale Station Creed Black Panther Locks Fig Gap The Sculptor Ryan Coogler at the Internet Movie Database
10.
Michael B. Jordan
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Michael Bakari Jordan is an American actor. Other film roles include Red Tails, Chronicle, and That Awkward Moment, Michael B Jordan was born in Santa Ana, California, the son of Donna, an artist and high school guidance counselor, and Michael A. Jordan. He is the middle of three children with a sister, Jamila, who works in production, and a younger brother, Khalid. Jordans family spent two years in California before moving to Newark, New Jersey and he attended Newark Arts High School, where his mother works, and where he played basketball. Jordans middle name, Bakari, is Swahili for noble promise and his first principal film role followed 2001 when he was featured in Hardball, which starred Keanu Reeves. In 2002, he gained attention by playing the small. In March 2003, he joined the cast of All My Children playing Reggie Porter, jordans other credits include guest starring appearances on CSI, Crime Scene Investigation, Without a Trace and Cold Case. Thereafter, he had a role in the independent film Blackout. In 2008, Jordan appeared in the music video Did You Wrong by R&B artist Pleasure P. In 2009, he guest-starred on Burn Notice in the episode Hot Spot, in 2010, he guest-starred in the Law & Order, Criminal Intent episode Inhumane Society as a boxer involved in a Michael Vick-inspired dog fighting scandal. In 2009, Jordan began starring in the NBC drama Friday Night Lights as quarterback Vince Howard and he played the character for two seasons until the show ended in 2011. In 2010, he was considered one of the 55 faces of the future by Nylon Magazines Young Hollywood Issue and that year, he landed a recurring role on the NBC show Parenthood playing Alex. This marked his second collaboration with showrunner Jason Katims, who was in charge of Friday Night Lights, buddyTV ranked him #80 on its list of TVs Sexiest Men of 2011. Jordan voiced Jace in the Xbox 360 game, Gears of War 3, in 2012, Jordan appeared in the George Lucas-produced movie Red Tails and played one of the leads in Chronicle, a film about three teenaged boys who develop superhuman abilities. He also guest-starred in an episode of Houses final season, playing a blind patient, in 2013, Jordan starred as shooting victim Oscar Grant in Fruitvale Station, directed by Ryan Coogler. His performance was received, with The Hollywood Reporter film critic Todd McCarthy writing that he reminded him of a young Denzel Washington. Following his role in Fruitvale Station, Jordan was named an actor to watch by People, time named him with Coogler one of 30 people under 30 who are changing the world and he was also named one of 2013s Breakout Stars by Entertainment Weekly and GQ. He lent his voice to Cyborg in the superhero adventure Justice League
11.
The Book Thief (film)
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The Book Thief is a 2013 American-German war drama film directed by Brian Percival and starring Geoffrey Rush, Emily Watson, and Sophie Nélisse. The film is based on the 2005 novel The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, the film is about a young girl living with her adoptive German family during the Nazi era. Taught to read by her foster father, the girl begins borrowing books. The film features a score by Oscar-winning composer John Williams. The Book Thief premiered at the Mill Valley Film Festival on October 3,2013, with a budget of $19 million, the film was successful at the box office, earning over $76 million. The Book Thief received Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations for its score, the film was released on Blu-ray and DVD on March 11,2014. In February 1938, a voice representing Death tells about how the young Liesel Meminger has piqued his interest, in one of the opening scenes, Liesel is traveling with her mother and younger brother on a train. On the way, her brother dies and is buried next to the tracks, Liesel steals her first book, titled The Grave Diggers Handbook, when it falls out of the gravediggers pocket. Liesel is then brought to her new home, where she meets her new foster parents Rosa Hubermann, Rudy Steiner, a boy who lives next door, accompanies her on her first day of school. When the teacher asks Liesel to write her name on the chalkboard and she is taunted by her schoolmates who chant dummkopf at her. One of the boys, Franz Deutscher, challenges her to read just one word to which Liesel responds by beating him up and she impresses Rudy, and they become fast friends. When Hans, her father, realizes that Liesel can not read, he begins to teach her. Liesel becomes captivated with reading anything she can, Liesel and Rudy become members of the Hitler Youth movement. While at a Nazi book burning ceremony, Liesel and Rudy are harassed into throwing books onto the bonfire by Franz, when the bonfire ends and everyone left Liesel was still there, she grabs a book that has been only singed. She is seen by Ilsa Hermann, wife of the mayor, when Rosa asks Liesel to take the laundry to the mayors house, she realizes that the woman who saw her taking the book is the mayors wife. Instead, Ilsa takes her into their library and tells Liesel she can come by anytime, one day Liesel is found reading by the mayor who not only puts a stop to her visits but dismisses Rosa as their laundress. During Kristallnacht, Max Vandenburg and his mother, who are Jewish, are told by a friend that one of them can escape. Maxs father had saved Hans life in World War I, and hence he goes to the Hubermanns house where Rosa, Max initially stays in Liesels room while recovering from his trip, and they begin to become friends over their mutual hatred of Hitler
12.
Matthew McConaughey
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Matthew David McConaughey is an American actor. He first gained notice for his role in the coming-of-age comedy Dazed and Confused. Matthew McConaughey, the youngest of three boys, was born on November 4,1969 in Uvalde, Texas and his mother, Mary Kathleen Kay or KMac, is a former kindergarten teacher and a published author. She was originally from Trenton, New Jersey and his father, James Donald McConaughey, was from Louisiana and ran an oil pipe supply business. He played for the Kentucky Wildcats and the Houston Cougars college football teams, in 1953, Jim McConaughey was drafted in the 27th round by the NFL football team the Green Bay Packers. He was released before the season began and never played a league game in the NFL. Matthews mother and late father married each other three times and his ancestry includes Scottish, English, Irish, Swedish and German. He is a relative of Confederate brigadier general Dandridge McRae, McConaughey moved to Longview, Texas in 1980, where he attended Longview High School. He lived for a year in Warnervale, New South Wales, Australia and he attended the University of Texas at Austin, where he joined Delta Tau Delta fraternity. He began in the fall of 1989 and graduated in the spring of 1993 with a degree in Radio-Television-Film. His original plan had changed as he wanted to attend Southern Methodist University until a brother told him that private school tuition would have been a burden on the family finances. He also had planned to attend law school graduation from college. McConaughey began working in commercials, including one for the Austin, Texas daily newspaper, the Austin American-Statesman. The line, How else am I gonna keep up with my Horns, – a reference to his beloved Texas Longhorns sports teams – gave the local community a look at the young actor, before he was cast in Richard Linklaters film Dazed and Confused. In 1992, he was cast as Joe in Trisha Yearwoods video for her hit song Walkaway Joe, in the late 1990s, McConaughey was cast in leading roles in more movies, including Contact, Amistad, The Newton Boys, EDtv and U-571. By the early 2000s, he was frequently cast in comedies, including The Wedding Planner and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. McConaughey starred in the 2005 feature film Sahara, along with Steve Zahn, prior to the release of the film, he promoted it by sailing down the Amazon River and trekking to Mali. That same year, McConaughey was named People magazines Sexiest Man Alive for 2005, in 2006, he co-starred with Sarah Jessica Parker in the romantic comedy Failure to Launch and as Marshall head football coach Jack Lengyal in We Are Marshall
13.
Cate Blanchett
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Catherine Elise Cate Blanchett is an Australian actress and theatre director. She has received acclaim and many accolades, including six AACTA Awards. In 2013, she starred as Jasmine Francis in Woody Allens Blue Jasmine, Blanchett is one of only six actors, and the only actress, to receive Academy Award nominations for portraying the same role in two films, accomplished in her case by portraying Queen Elizabeth I. She is additionally the only Australian to win two acting Oscars, a seven-time Oscar nominee, she has also received nominations for Notes on a Scandal, Elizabeth, The Golden Age, Im Not There and Carol. Blanchett has also had a career on stage and is a four-time Helpmann Award winner for Best Female Actor in a Play. From 2008 to 2013, she and her husband Andrew Upton were co-CEOs, Blanchett has been awarded the Centenary Medal for Service to Australian Society by the Australian government. She was appointed Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government in 2012, in 2015, she was honoured by the Museum of Modern Art and received the British Film Institute Fellowship in recognition of her outstanding contribution to the industry. Blanchett was born on 14 May 1969 in the Melbourne suburb of Ivanhoe and she is the middle of three children, her older brother is a computer systems engineer, and her younger sister is a theatrical designer. The two met when Blanchetts fathers ship broke down in Melbourne, when Blanchett was 10, her father died of a heart attack, leaving her mother to raise the family on her own. Blanchetts ancestry includes English, some Scottish, and remote French roots, Blanchett has described herself as being part extrovert, part wallflower during childhood. She had a penchant for dressing in traditionally masculine clothing, and went through goth and punk phases during her teenage years and she studied economics and fine arts at the University of Melbourne but dropped out after one year to travel overseas. While in Egypt, Blanchett was asked to play an American cheerleader, as an extra in the Egyptian boxing movie, Kaboria, in need of money, she accepted. Upon her return to Australia, she moved to Sydney and enrolled in the National Institute of Dramatic Art to pursue an acting career and she graduated from NIDA in 1992. Blanchetts first major role was opposite Geoffrey Rush, in the 1992 David Mamet play Oleanna for the Sydney Theatre Company. That year, she was also cast as Clytemnestra in a production of Sophocles’ Electra, a couple of weeks after rehearsals, the actress playing the title role pulled out, and director Lindy Davies cast Blanchett in the role. Her performance as Electra became one of her most acclaimed at NIDA, Blanchett played the role of Ophelia in an acclaimed 1994–95 Company B production of Hamlet directed by Neil Armfield, starring Rush and Richard Roxburgh, and was nominated for a Green Room Award. She appeared in the 1994 TV miniseries Heartland opposite Ernie Dingo, the miniseries Bordertown with Hugo Weaving and she also appeared in the 50-minute drama short Parklands, which received an Australian Film Institute nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Her first leading role was as Lucinda Leplastrier in Gillian Armstrongs romantic drama Oscar and Lucinda, Blanchett received wide acclaim for her performance, and earned her first AFI Award nomination as Best Leading Actress, she lost to Deborah Mailman in Radiance
14.
Jared Leto
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Jared Joseph Leto is an American actor, singer-songwriter, and director. After starting his career with appearances in the early 1990s. He made his debut in How to Make an American Quilt. He later began focusing increasingly on his career, returning to acting with Panic Room, Alexander, Lord of War, Lonely Hearts, Chapter 27. In 2012, he directed the documentary film Artifact, in 2016, he played the DC Comics supervillain Joker in the DC Extended Universe film Suicide Squad. Letos performance as a woman in Dallas Buyers Club earned him an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award. Leto is considered to be an actor, known for his constant devotion to. He often remains completely in character for the duration of the schedules of his films. He is also known to be selective about his film roles, Leto is the lead vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and main songwriter for Thirty Seconds to Mars, a band he formed in 1998 in Los Angeles, California, with his older brother Shannon Leto. Their debut album,30 Seconds to Mars, was released to positive reviews, the band achieved worldwide fame with the release of their second album A Beautiful Lie. Their following releases, This Is War and Love, Lust, Faith and Dreams, as of September 2014, the band has sold over 15 million albums worldwide. Leto has also directed videos, including the MTV Video Music Award–winning The Kill, Kings and Queens. Jared Joseph Leto was born on December 26,1971, in Bossier City, Louisiana, Leto is the surname of his stepfather. His parents divorced when he was a child, and he and his brother, Shannon Leto, lived with their mother and their maternal grandparents, Ruby. His father remarried, and committed suicide when Jared was eight, Leto moved frequently with his family from his native Louisiana to different cities around the country. My moms father was in the Air Force, Leto has explained, Leto has two younger half-brothers from his fathers second marriage. Constance joined the movement and encouraged her sons to get involved in the arts. We celebrated creative experience and creative expression and we didnt try and curtail it and stunt any of that kind of growth
15.
June Squibb
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June Louise Squibb is an American actress. She played supporting characters in films, such as Alice, Scent of a Woman, The Age of Innocence, In & Out. Squibb appeared on Broadway for the production of Gypsy. She also starred in two Alexander Payne films, including About Schmidt and Nebraska, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, Squibb was born and raised in Vandalia, Illinois, the only child of JoyBelle and Lewis Squibb. Her father was in the business and served in the Navy during World War II. Squibbs first husband was actor Edward Sostek, the two divorced and she is the widow of her second husband, acting teacher Charles Kakatsakis, with whom she has one child, Harry Kakatsakis, a filmmaker best known for his short film Admissions. Squibb converted to Judaism when she married Edward Sostek in the 1950s, when asked about ageism in show business, Squibb has stated, Well, it’s like anything else. I always feel, rules are meant to be broken, Squibb began her career in musical theatre at the St. Louis Muny and trained at the Cleveland Play House, and at the HB Studio after moving to New York City. In 2015, she was inducted into the Cleveland Play House Hall of Fame and she got her big break in New York by landing the role of Dulcie in The Boyfriend Off-Broadway in 1958. In 1959, she performed in an Off-Broadway revival of Lend an Ear starring Elizabeth Allen and she made her Broadway debut in the original production of Gypsy starring Ethel Merman, taking over the role of stripper Electra in 1960. She next appeared in The Happy Time, which opened in 1968 and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Musical, in-between these periods June also did modeling work for romance novels and did commercials. In 1995, she appeared in the play Sacrilege on Broadway, Squibb also played many roles in national tours, regional theatre, summer stock and off-Broadway. In 2012, she played the matriarch Stella Gordon in Dividing the Estate at the Dallas Theater Center for which she received standout reviews
16.
Steve Coogan
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Stephen John Coogan is an English actor, stand-up comedian, impressionist, screenwriter, and producer. He began his career in the 1980s, working as a voice artist on the puppet show Spitting Image. In the early 1990s, he began creating comic characters. In 1999, he co-founded the production company Baby Cow Productions and he featured in several television series, which earned him three BAFTA nominations and two wins for Best Comedy Performance. A feature-length film, Alan Partridge, Alpha Papa, was released in 2013, Coogan grew in prominence within the film industry in 2002, after starring in The Parole Officer and 24 Hour Party People. He was also an actor in the animated comedy films Despicable Me 2 and its prequel Minions. Coogan has also branched out into dramatic roles, with What Maisie Knew. He co-wrote, produced, and starred in the film adaptation Philomena, which earned him a Golden Globe and BAFTA nomination and he has been cast in the lead role for the ABC television pilot Doubt and the Showtime drama Happyish. On 22 November 2011, Coogan, along with Hugh Grant, Coogan was born in Middleton, Lancashire in 1965. He is the fourth of seven born to Kathleen, a housewife, and Anthony Coogan. He was raised Roman Catholic, in a working class family and his mother is Irish-born, from Mayo, and his father is of Irish descent. He attended Cardinal Langley Roman Catholic High School and he has stated that he had a happy childhood, and in addition to having four brothers and two sisters, his parents fostered children on a short-term basis. Coogan had a talent for impersonation, and wanted to go to drama school, Coogan began his career as a comic and impressionist, performing regularly in Ipswich, before working as a voice artist for television advertisements and the satirical puppet show Spitting Image. His most prominent characters developed at this time were Paul Calf, a working class Mancunian. He appeared as a presenter on the television comedy The Day Today, before hosting his own chat show. In 1997, Partridge returned in the sitcom Im Alan Partridge, which was followed by a series in 2002. Partridge featured in Coogans 2008 stand-up tour, a feature-length film, Alan Partridge, Alpha Papa, was released in 2013. Paul Calf first began as a character named Duncan Disorderly in Coogans early stand-up routines, Calf first came to wider public notice in 1993, with several appearances on Saturday Zoo, a late-night variety show presented by Jonathan Ross on Channel 4
17.
Jeff Pope
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He is also the Head of ITV Productions Factual Drama. Popes first media job was as a reporter for the Ealing Gazette and he joined London Weekend Television in 1983 as a researcher on The Six OClock Show. In 1996 Pope was appointed Head of Factual Drama at LWT before moving to Granada Television in the same role and he finally moved to ITV where he is Head of Factual Drama. In addition to winning a BAFTA for the television drama See No Evil, The Moors Murders in 2007, Pope was also nominated in 2001 for My Beautiful Son, in 2004 he appeared as himself in an episode of The South Bank Show. Pope and Steve Coogan are nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 86th Academy Awards for writing the Academy Award nominated film Philomena starring Judi Dench, in 2015, Popes contributions were recognised when he received a special BAFTA award in 2015. Jeff Pope at the Internet Movie Database Popes message - an interview with Jeff Pope Broadcast Now 15 February 2007
18.
David O. Russell
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David Owen Russell is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. His early directing career includes the comedy films Spanking the Monkey, Flirting with Disaster, Three Kings, Russell received his seventh Golden Globe nomination for the semi-biographical comedy-drama Joy. Russell was born in Manhattan, to Maria and Bernard Russell and his parents worked for Simon & Schuster, his father was the vice president of sales for the company and his mother was a secretary there. His father was from a Russian Jewish family and his mother was Italian American, russells maternal grandparents were Frank Muzio, born in Craco, and Philomena Brancata, born in Ferrandina, both in the province of Matera. His paternal grandfather, a butcher from the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Russell was raised in Larchmont, New York, in an atheist, middle-class household. When he was 13, he made his first film for a school project and he attended Mamaroneck High School, where he was voted Class Rebel. He fell in love with film in his teens but aspired to become a writer, Russell started a newspaper in high school and his parents worked for a publishing company, so he grew up in a household filled with books and novels. Russell received his A. B. degree from Amherst College and he wrote his senior thesis on the United States intervention in Chile from 1963 to 1973. After graduating from Amherst, Russell traveled to Nicaragua and taught in a Sandinista literacy program and he worked manual labor jobs, including waitering, bartending, and catering. Some of his colleagues included members of the Blue Man Group. He worked for an association and later became a community organizer in Maine. He used video equipment to document slums and bad housing conditions, Russell was a political activist and canvassed and raised money in neighborhoods, he also did community work in Bostons South End. In addition to working in several day jobs, he began to write short films, Russell directed a documentary about Panamanian immigrants in Boston, which led to a job as a production assistant on a PBS series called Smithsonian World. In 1987, Russell wrote, produced, and directed Bingo Inferno, A Parody on American Obsessions, two years later, he made another short titled Hairway to the Stars, which featured Bette Davis and William Hickey. Both shorts were shown at the Sundance Film Festival, after Russell made an award-winning short film for a Boston television station, he received grants from the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Instead of the money going towards a feature about a fortune cookie writer, he decided to make Spanking the Monkey, as a result, Russell had to return the funds to the NEA. Spanking the Monkey, the 1994 independent dark comedy, was his first directorial effort, the film was produced by Dean Silvers, and starred Jeremy Davies as a troubled young man and Alberta Watson as his lonely mother. His next project was the Miramax comedy Flirting with Disaster, his collaboration with Dean Silvers
19.
Lana Del Rey
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Elizabeth Woolridge Grant, better known by her stage name Lana Del Rey, is an American singer, songwriter, and model. Her music has been noted for its style, its preoccupation with themes of tragic romance and melancholia. Del Rey received further recognition after her major-label debut Born to Die peaked at two on the United States charts and was the fifth best-selling album of 2012. Three of the EPs tracks were featured in her short film Tropico, in 2014, Del Rey released her third studio album, Ultraviolence, which received positive critical and commercial reception, it became her first number-one record in the United States. In 2015, following a North American tour with Courtney Love and Grimes, Del Rey released her studio album. It also received critical and commercial response, the album had the fourth highest first week sales by a female artist in 2015. Del Rey is set to release her studio album, titled Lust for Life. She has one sister, Caroline Grant, and one brother. Her paternal grandfather, Robert England Grant, Sr. was a Kidder, Peabody & Co. investment banker, a president for Plough, Inc and Textron. Del Rey grew up in rural Lake Placid, New York, and attended a Catholic elementary school and for one year and she began singing in her church choir when she was a child, where she was the cantor. At age fifteen, she was sent to Kent School by her parents to deal with her rampant alcohol abuse, her uncle, before becoming a singer, Del Rey wanted to be a poet. As a child, her father wrote country songs for personal enjoyment, while her mother was interested in singing, during this time, Del Reys uncle taught her how to play guitar, and she realized could probably write a million songs with those six chords. Shortly after, she began writing songs and performing in nightclubs around the city under various names such as Sparkle Jump Rope Queen and Lizzy Grant, I was always singing, but didnt plan on pursuing it seriously, Del Rey said. The following fall, she enrolled at Fordham University where she majored in philosophy, Del Rey said she chose to study the subject because it bridged the gap between God and science. I was interested in God and how technology could bring us closer to finding out where we came from, according to Del Rey, she had trouble making friends in boarding school and college, and said, that was when my musical experience began. I kind of people for myself. After college, she moved to Brooklyn, where she resided for four years. On April 25,2005, a compact disc was registered under Elizabeth Woolridge Grant with the United States Copyright Office
20.
All Is Lost
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All Is Lost is a 2013 survival drama film written and directed by J. C. The film stars Robert Redford as a man lost at sea, Redford is the only cast member, and the film has very few spoken words. All Is Lost is Chandors second feature film, following his 2011 debut Margin Call and it screened out of competition at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. Among many honors, the film was nominated for Academy Award for Best Sound Editing, Redford was nominated for his own Golden Globe and won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor. Somewhere in the Indian Ocean, a man wakes to find water flooding his boat. He has collided with a shipping container, ripping a hole in the hull. He uses a sea anchor to dislodge the container, then changes course to tilt the boat away from the hole and he patches the hole and uses the manual bilge pump to remove the water from the cabin. The boat’s navigational and communications systems have been damaged by saltwater intrusion, the man tries to repair the marine radio and connects it to one of the boats batteries but is unsuccessful. When he climbs the mast to repair an antenna lead, he sees an oncoming tropical storm, when the storm arrives, he runs before the wind. He intends to bring the boat into a position, but when crawling to the bow to hoist the storm jib, he is thrown overboard. The boat capsizes, turtles after a further 180-degree roll and is dis-masted, with the boat badly holed and sinking, the man abandons ship in an inflatable life raft, salvaging whatever he can to survive. As the man learns to operate a sextant, he discovers he is being pulled towards a major shipping lane by ocean currents and he survives another storm but his supplies dwindle, and he learns too late that his drinking water has been contaminated with sea water. He improvises a solar still from his water container and a bag to produce freshwater. The man is passed by two ships, which do not see him, despite his use of signaling flares. He drifts out of the lane with no food and water. On the eighth day, he writes a letter, puts it in a jar, later that night, he sees a light in the distance. He tears pages from his journal along with charts to create a signal fire, the fire grows out of control and consumes his raft. He falls into the water and allows himself to sink, underwater, he sees the hull of a boat with a search light approaching his burning raft
21.
American Hustle
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American Hustle is a 2013 American black comedy-crime film directed by David O. Russell. It was written by Eric Warren Singer and Russell, inspired by the FBI ABSCAM operation of the late 1970s and early 1980s. It stars Christian Bale and Amy Adams as two con artists who are forced by an FBI agent to set up a sting operation on corrupt politicians, including the mayor of Camden. Jennifer Lawrence plays the wife of Bales character. Principal photography on the film began on March 8,2013, in Boston and Worcester, Massachusetts, American Hustle had its nationwide release in the United States on December 13,2013. It opened to acclaim from critics, who praised its writing. In 1978, con artists Irving Rosenfeld and Sydney Prosser have started a relationship and are working together, Sydney has improved Rosenfelds scams, posing as English aristocrat Lady Edith Greensly. Irving loves Sydney, though is hesitant to leave his unstable and histrionic wife Rosalyn, fearing he will contact with her son Danny. Rosalyn has also threatened to report Irving to the police if he leaves her, FBI agent Richie DiMaso catches Irving and Sydney in a loan scam, but offers to release them if Irving can line up four additional arrests. Richie believes Sydney is English but has proof that her claim of aristocracy is fraudulent, Sydney tells Irving she will manipulate Richie, distancing herself from Irving. Irving has a friend pretending to be a wealthy Arab sheikh looking for investments in America. Carmine seems to have a desire to help the areas economy. Richie devises a plan to make mayor Polito the target of an operation, despite the objections of Irving and of Richies boss. Sydney helps Richie manipulate an FBI secretary into making a wire transfer of $2,000,000. When Stoddards boss, Anthony Amado, hears of the operation, he praises Richies initiative, Carmine leaves their meeting when Richie presses him to accept a cash bribe. Irving convinces Carmine the sheikh is legitimate, expressing his dislike of Richie, Richie arranges for Carmine to meet the sheikh, and without consulting the others, has Mexican-American FBI agent Paco Hernandez play the sheikh, which displeases Irving. Carmine brings the sheikh to a party, explaining mobsters are there. Irving is surprised to hear that Mafia overlord Victor Tellegio, right-hand man to Meyer Lansky, is present, Mafia man Tellegio explains that the business needs the sheikh to become an American citizen and that Carmine will need to expedite the process
22.
Blue Jasmine
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Blue Jasmine is a 2013 American black comedy drama written and directed by Woody Allen. The film tells the story of a rich Manhattan socialite who falls into hard times and has to move into her sisters apartment in San Francisco. The film had a release on July 26,2013, in New York and Los Angeles. Blue Jasmine received praise from critics, particularly for Blanchetts performance, Blanchett won the Academy Award for Best Actress, and Hawkins and Allen were nominated for Best Supporting Actress and Original Screenplay, respectively. Blanchett also won the Golden Globe Award, the SAG Award, the film was a box office success, earning $97.5 million worldwide against a budget of $18 million. Jasmine Francis disembarks in San Francisco after a flight from New York City and she takes a taxi to her sister Gingers apartment, where Ginger is dismayed to learn that Jasmine traveled first class despite claiming to be broke. Jasmine has recently suffered a breakdown and, having incurred heavy debts, has been forced to seek refuge with her sister. Jasmine is haunted by memories of her past life as a Manhattan socialite, in a series of flashbacks, it is revealed that some years previously, Ginger and her working-class husband Augie visited New York, their first time there in many years. Jasmine provides a car and driver for them to tour the city, Ginger announces they have won $200,000 in the lottery, which Augie intends to use to start a construction business. However Jasmine offers Hals help in investing the money instead, which Augie reluctantly accepts, while touring New York, Ginger sees Hal kiss another woman. The woman later appears at Jasmines birthday party, Ginger debates whether to say anything to Jasmine but decides to stay quiet, aware that Jasmine might react badly to the suggestion that Hal is having an affair. In the meantime, Hal was exposed to the authorities as a major fraudster running a scheme with his clients money. He eventually commits suicide in prison after being publicly disgraced, Jasmines step-son Danny drops out of Harvard and cuts himself off completely from Jasmine, believing her to be complicit in Hals crimes. Ginger and Augie lost everything in the scheme and their marriage fell apart, after Hals death, Jasmine began drinking heavily and taking anti-anxiety medication. Moreover, she has a habit of babbling to herself and to others, Ginger is now dating a mechanic called Chili, whom Jasmine detests for his low breeding and coarse manners. She considers becoming a designer because of her great taste. She wants to take courses, but, having no computer skills. With no income, she takes a job as a receptionist with a dentist
23.
Captain Phillips (film)
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Captain Phillips is a 2013 American biographical survival thriller film directed by Paul Greengrass and starring Tom Hanks and Barkhad Abdi. The screenplay by Billy Ray is based on the 2010 book A Captains Duty, Somali Pirates, Navy SEALs, scott Rudin, Dana Brunetti and Michael De Luca served as producers on the project. It premiered at the 2013 New York Film Festival, and was released on October 11,2013. The film emerged as a box office grossing over $218 million against a budget of $55 million. In 2014, Captain Phillips received six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor for Abdi. Richard Phillips takes command of MV Maersk Alabama, a container ship from the Port of Salalah in Oman, with orders to sail through the Gulf of Aden to Mombasa. Wary of pirate activity off the coast of the Horn of Africa, he and First Officer Shane Murphy order strict security precautions on the vessel, during a drill, the vessel is chased by Somali pirates in two skiffs, and Phillips calls for help. Knowing that the pirates are listening to traffic, he pretends to call a warship. One skiff turns around in response, and the other – manned by four heavily armed pirates led by Abduwali Muse – loses engine power trying to steer through Maersk Alabamas wake. The next day Muses skiff, now fitted with two engines, returns with the same four pirates aboard. Despite the best efforts of Phillips and his crew, the pirates secure their ladder to the Maersk Alabama, as they board, Phillips tells the crew to hide in the engine room and allows himself to be captured. He offers Muse the $30,000 in the ships safe, while they search the ship, Murphy sees that the youngest pirate Bilal does not have sandals and tells the crew to line the engine room hallway with broken glass. Chief Engineer Mike Perry cuts power to the ship, plunging the lower decks into darkness, Bilal cuts his feet when they reach the engine room, and Muse continues to search alone. The crew members ambush Muse, holding him at knifepoint, and arrange to release him, however, Muses right-hand man Nour Najee refuses to board the lifeboat with Muse unless Phillips goes with them. Once all are on the lifeboat, Najee attacks Phillips, forcing him into the vessel before launching the boat with all five of them on board. As the lifeboat heads for Somalia, tensions flare between the pirates as they run low on the plant-based amphetamine khat and lose contact with their mother ship, Najee becomes agitated and tries to convince the others to kill Phillips. They are later intercepted by the U. S. Navy destroyer USS Bainbridge, Bainbridges captain Frank Castellano is ordered to prevent the pirates from reaching the Somali coast by any means necessary. Even when additional ships arrive, Muse asserts that he has come too far, while three SEAL marksmen get into positions, Castellano and the SEALs continue to try to find a peaceful solution, eventually taking the lifeboat under tow
24.
Gravity (2013 film)
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Gravity is a 2013 British-American science fiction adventure film directed, produced, co-written and co-edited by Alfonso Cuarón. It stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney as astronauts who are stranded in space after the destruction of their space shuttle. Cuarón wrote the screenplay with his son Jonás and attempted to develop the film at Universal Pictures, the rights were sold to Warner Bros. Pictures, where the project eventually found traction, david Heyman, who previously worked with Cuarón on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, produced the film with him. Gravity opened the 70th Venice International Film Festival on August 28,2013 and had its North American premiere three days later at the Telluride Film Festival. Upon its release, Gravity was met with acclaim, and has been regarded as one of the best films of the 2010s. The film became the film of 2013 with a worldwide gross of over US$723 million against production budget of only $100 million. The film was awarded six BAFTA Awards, including Outstanding British Film and Best Director, the Golden Globe Award for Best Director, seven Critics Choice Movie Awards. Dr. Ryan Stone, an engineer from Lake Zurich, Illinois, is aboard the NASA Space Shuttle Explorer for her first space mission. Veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski is commanding his final mission, Mission Control orders that the mission be aborted and the crew begin re-entry immediately because the debris is speeding towards the Shuttle. Communication with Mission Control is lost shortly thereafter, high-speed debris from the Russian satellite strikes the Explorer and Hubble, detaching Stone from the shuttle and leaving her tumbling through space. Kowalski, using a Manned Maneuvering Unit, recovers Stone and they return to the Explorer and they discover that it has suffered catastrophic damage and the rest of the crew are dead. They decide to use the MMU to reach the International Space Station, Kowalski estimates they have 90 minutes before the debris field completes an orbit and threatens them again. On their way to the International Space Station, the two discuss Stones home life and her daughter, who died young in an accident, as they approach, they see that its crew has evacuated in one of its two Soyuz TMA capsules. The parachute of the remaining Soyuz TMA-14M has deployed, rendering the capsule useless for returning to Earth, Kowalski suggests using it to travel to the nearby Chinese space station Tiangong,100 km away, in order to board a Chinese module to return safely to Earth. Out of air and maneuvering power, the two try to grab onto the ISS as they fly by, Stones leg gets entangled in the Soyuzs parachute cords and she grabs a strap on Kowalskis suit, but it soon becomes clear that the cords will not support them both. Despite Stones protests, Kowalski detaches himself from the tether to save her from drifting away with him and he continues to support her until he is out of communications range. Stone enters the station via an airlock
25.
Inside Llewyn Davis
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Inside Llewyn Davis /ˈluː. ɪn deɪvɪs/ is a 2013 American black comedy drama film written, directed, produced, and edited by Joel and Ethan Coen. Set in 1961, the film one week in the life of Llewyn Davis, played by Oscar Isaac. It co-stars Carey Mulligan, John Goodman, Garrett Hedlund, F. Murray Abraham, although Davis is a fictional character, the story was partly inspired by the autobiography of folk singer Dave Van Ronk. Most of the songs performed in the film are sung in full. T Bone Burnett was the music producer. The film won the Grand Prix at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, the film received a limited release in the United States on December 6,2013, and was given a wide release on January 10,2014. Inside Llewyn Davis has been acclaimed, and was voted the 11th best film of the 21st century by 177 critics in a 2016 BBC Culture poll. In February 1961, Llewyn Davis is a folk singer in New York Citys Greenwich Village. His musical partner, Mike Timlin, has died by suicide, his recent solo album Inside Llewyn Davis is not selling, he has no money and is sleeping on the couches of friends and acquaintances. Llewyn wakes up in the apartment of two of his older and wealthier friends, the Gorfeins, when he leaves, the Gorfeins cat escapes and Llewyn is locked out. Llewyn takes the cat to the apartment of Jim and Jean Berkey, Jean reluctantly agrees to let Llewyn stay that night. Jean tells Llewyn she is pregnant, the next morning, the Gorfeins cat escapes again. Later Jean, fearing that Llewyn may be the father, asks him to pay for an abortion, Llewyn visits his sister in the hope of borrowing money but realizes it wont be possible. Their conversation makes it clear that they are living in different worlds and she mentions that he should look into going back to the Merchant Marine if the music business isnt working out. On Jims invitation, Llewyn, as part of the John Glenn Singers, records a novelty song with Jim, needing money immediately, Llewyn agrees to $200 with no royalties. While talking to Jean at a café, Llewyn spots what he believes to be the Gorfeins cat, asked to play after dinner, he reluctantly performs Fare Thee Well, a song he had recorded with Mike. When Mrs. Gorfein starts to sing Mikes harmony, Llewyn becomes angry, Mrs. Gorfein leaves the table crying, then returns with the cat, having realized that it is not theirs. Llewyn rides with two musicians driving to Chicago, the beat poet Johnny Five and the odious jazz musician Roland Turner
26.
Philomena (film)
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Philomena is a 2013 British drama film directed by Stephen Frears, based on the book The Lost Child of Philomena Lee by journalist Martin Sixsmith. Starring Judi Dench and Steve Coogan, it tells the story of Philomena Lees 50-year search for her forcibly adopted son. The film was co-produced in the United States and the United Kingdom and it gained critical acclaim and received several international film awards. Coogan and Jeff Pope won Best Screenplay at the 70th Venice International Film Festival and it was also awarded the Peoples Choice Award Runner-Up prize at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. The film was nominated in four categories at the 86th Academy Awards, Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay for Coogan and Pope, Best Actress for Dench and it was also nominated for four BAFTA Awards and three Golden Globe Awards. London based journalist Martin Sixsmith has lost his job as a government adviser and he is approached at a party by the daughter of Philomena Lee. She suggests that he write a story about her mother, who was forced to give up her toddler son Anthony nearly fifty years ago, though Sixsmith is initially reluctant in writing a human interest story, he meets Philomena and decides to investigate her case. In 1951, Philomena became pregnant and was sent by her father to Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea in Ireland, after giving birth, she was forced to work in the convent laundry for four years, with little contact with her son. The nuns gave her son up for adoption without giving Philomena a chance to say goodbye and she kept her lost son a secret from her family for nearly fifty years. Martin and Philomena begin their search at the convent, at a pub, the locals tell Martin that the convent burnt the records deliberately, and that most of the children were sold for £1,000 each to wealthy Americans. Martins investigation reaches an end in Ireland, but he receives a promising lead from the United States and invites Philomena to accompany him there. His contacts help him discover that Anthony was renamed Michael A. Hess, when Philomena notices Martin in the background of a photo of Michael, he remembers that he met him years earlier while working in the US. They also learn that he has been dead for eight years, Philomena decides she wants to meet people who knew Michael and learn more about him from them. They visit a former colleague of Michaels and discover that Michael was gay and they also visit his sister Mary, who was adopted at the same time from the convent, and learn about his lover Pete Olsson. After avoiding Martins attempts to him, Pete agrees to talk to Philomena. He shows Philomena some videos of his life with Michael, Pete informs them that the nuns had told Michael that his mother had abandoned him and that they had lost contact with her. He also reveals that, against his parents wishes, he had Michael buried in the convents cemetery, Philomena and Martin go to the convent to ask them where Michaels grave is. He accuses her of lying to a man and denying him the chance to finally reunite with his mother
27.
Saving Mr. Banks
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Saving Mr. Banks is a 2013 period drama film directed by John Lee Hancock from a screenplay written by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith. The films subject matter piqued Disneys interest, leading the studio to acquire the screenplay and produce the film. Saving Mr. Banks premiered at the London Film Festival on October 20,2013, upon release, the film received positive reviews, with praise directed towards the acting, screenplay, and musical score. The film was commercially successful, grossing $118 million at the worldwide box office. In 1961, the financially strapped author Pamela P. L. Travers reluctantly travels from her home in London to Los Angeles to work with Walt Disney at the urging of her agent, Diarmuid Russell. Disney has pursued the rights to her Mary Poppins stories for twenty years. Travers has steadfastly resisted Disneys efforts because she fears what he would do to her character, however, she has not written anything in a while and her book royalties have dwindled to nothing, so she risks losing her house. Still, Russell has to remind her that Disney has agreed to two major stipulations—no animation and unprecedented script approval—before she agrees to go, Travers difficult childhood in Allora, Queensland, Australia, is depicted through flashbacks, and is the inspiration for much of Mary Poppins. Goff died at an age from tuberculosis when Travers was seven years old. In Los Angeles, Travers is irritated by what she perceives as the citys unreality, at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, Travers meets the creative team that are developing Mary Poppins for the screen, screenwriter Don DaGradi, and music composers Richard and Robert Sherman. She finds their presumptions and casual manners highly improper, a view she also holds of the jocular Disney, Travers working relationship with Disney and his team is difficult from the outset, with her insistence that Mary Poppins is the enemy of sentiment and whimsy. Disney and his people are puzzled by Travers disdain for fantasy, given the nature of the Mary Poppins story, as well as Travers own rich imagination. She particularly objects to how the character George Banks, the father of the children in Mary Poppins charge, is depicted. Gradually, they grasp how deeply personal the Mary Poppins stories are to her, the team realize Travers has valid criticisms and make changes, though she becomes increasingly disengaged as painful childhood memories resurface. Disney learns that Travers is actually her pen name, taken from her fathers given name and her real name is Helen Goff, and shes actually Australian, not British. This gives Disney new insight into Travers, and he follows her to London, arriving unexpectedly at her door, Disney tells her that he also had a less-than-ideal childhood, but stresses the healing value of his art. He urges Travers to not let deeply-rooted past disappointments dictate the present, Travers relents and grants Disney the film rights. Three years later, in 1964, Mary Poppins is to have its premiere at Graumans Chinese Theatre in Hollywood
28.
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013 film)
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The Wolf of Wall Street is a 2013 American biographical black comedy crime film directed by Martin Scorsese. Matthew McConaughey, Rob Reiner, Jon Favreau, Joanna Lumley, the Wolf of Wall Street premiered in New York City on December 17,2013 and was released theatrically on December 25,2013 in the United States, distributed by Paramount Pictures. The film was the first to be released entirely through digital distribution and it was a major commercial success, grossing more than $392 million worldwide during its original theatrical run to become Scorseses highest-grossing movie and the 17th-highest-grossing film of 2013. The film was controversial for its morally ambiguous depiction of events, explicit content, profanity, depiction of hard drug use. The film also caused controversy due to revelations that it was financed by illegally obtained funds from 1Malaysia Development Berhad, the film received mostly positive reviews from critics, with praise for Scorseses direction, the comedic performance of DiCaprio and the fast-paced and consistent humor. It was also recognized by numerous other awards ceremonies, as well as guilds, the word fuck and its numerous conjugations are said between 506 and 569 times, making this the film with the most uses of the word in a mainstream, non-documentary film. Jordan soon finds his career terminated following Black Monday, and takes a job at a boiler room brokerage firm on Long Island that specializes in penny stocks, thanks to his aggressive pitching style and the high commissions, Jordan makes a small fortune. Jordan befriends his neighbor Donnie Azoff, and the two found their own company and they recruit several of Jordans friends, whom Jordan trains in the art of the hard sell. The basic method of the firm is a pump and dump scam, to cloak this, Jordan gives the firm the respectable name of Stratton Oakmont. After an exposé in Forbes, hundreds of ambitious young financiers flock to his company, Jordan becomes immensely successful, and slides into a decadent lifestyle of prostitutes and drugs. He has an affair with a woman named Naomi Lapaglia, when his wife finds out, they divorce and he marries Naomi. Meanwhile, the SEC and the FBI begin investigating Stratton Oakmont, Jordan illegally makes $22 million in three hours upon securing the IPO of Steve Madden. This brings him and his firm to the attention of the FBI and he uses the wife and in-laws of his friend Brad Bodnick, who have European passports, to smuggle the cash into Switzerland. Donnie gets into a brawl with Brad, and while Donnie escapes. Jordan also learns from his private investigator that the FBI is wiretapping his phones, fearing for his son, Jordans father advises him to leave Stratton Oakmont and lie low while Jordans lawyer negotiates a deal to keep him out of prison. Jordan, however, cannot bear to quit, and talks himself into staying in the middle of his farewell speech, Jordan, Donnie and their wives are on a yacht trip to Italy when they learn that Aunt Emma has died of a heart attack. Jordan decides to travel to Switzerland immediately to settle the bank account, in order to bypass border controls, he forces his yacht captain to sail to Monaco, and the ship is capsized in a storm. After their rescue, the plane sent to them to Geneva is destroyed when a seagull flies into the engine
29.
Coen brothers
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Joel David Coen and Ethan Jesse Coen, collectively referred to as the Coen brothers, are American filmmakers. Their films span many genres and styles, which they frequently subvert or parody and their best-reviewed works include Fargo, The Big Lebowski, No Country for Old Men, A Serious Man, True Grit, and Inside Llewyn Davis. The brothers write, direct, and produce their films jointly, although until The Ladykillers, Joel received sole credit for directing and they often alternate top billing for their screenplays while sharing film credits for editor under the alias Roderick Jaynes. The duo also won the Palme dOr for Barton Fink, and were nominated for Fargo, the Coen brothers have written a number of films that neither of the two directed. Ethan is also a writer of stories, theater. Their films No Country for Old Men, A Serious Man, Joel and Ethan Coen were born and raised in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. Their mother, Rena, was an art historian at St. Cloud State University, when they were children, Joel saved money from mowing lawns to buy a Vivitar Super 8 camera. Together, the brothers remade movies they saw on television, with a kid, Mark Zimering. Their first attempt was a romp entitled Henry Kissinger, Man on the Go, cornel Wildes The Naked Prey became their Zeimers in Zambia, which also featured Ethan as a native with a spear. Joel Coen has said, in regards to whether our background influences our film making, theres no doubt that our Jewish heritage affects how we see things. Joel and Ethan graduated from St. Louis Park High School in 1973 and 1976 and they both also graduated from Bard College at Simons Rock in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Joel then spent four years in the film program at New York University. Ethan went on to Princeton University and earned a degree in philosophy in 1979. His senior thesis was a 41-page essay, Two Views of Wittgensteins Later Philosophy, Joel has been married to actress Frances McDormand since 1984. They adopted a son from Paraguay, named Pedro McDormand Coen and she also did a voice-over in Barton Fink. Ethan married film editor Tricia Cooke in 1990 and they have two children, daughter Dusty and son Buster Jacob, who goes to Vassar College. Both couples live in New York, after graduating from New York University, Joel worked as a production assistant on a variety of industrial films and music videos. He developed a talent for film editing and met Sam Raimi while assisting Enda Ruth Paul in editing Raimis first feature film, in 1984, the brothers wrote and directed Blood Simple, their first commercial film together
30.
Paul Greengrass
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Paul Greengrass is an English film director, film producer, screenwriter and former journalist. He specialises in dramatisations of real-life events and is known for his use of hand-held cameras. His early film Bloody Sunday won the Golden Bear at 52nd Berlin International Film Festival, in 2004 he co-wrote and produced the film Omagh, which won British Academy Television Award. In 2007 Greengrass co-founded Directors UK, an organization of British filmmakers. In 2008 The Telegraph named him among the most influential people in British culture, Greengrass was born 13 August 1955 in Cheam, Surrey, England. His mother was a teacher and his father a river pilot and he is the brother of noted English historian Mark Greengrass. Greengrass was educated at Westcourt Primary School, Gravesend Grammar School and Sevenoaks School, in October 2012, he received an honorary degree from Kingston University in recognition of his “outstanding contribution to television and cinema. Greengrass is a self-confessed Crystal Palace supporter and his 1998 film The Theory of Flight starred Kenneth Branagh and Helena Bonham Carter, who played a woman with motor neurone disease. The film dealt with the issue of the sexuality of people with disabilities. Bloody Sunday was inspired by Don Mullans politically influential book Eyewitness Bloody Sunday, mullan was a schoolboy witness of the events of Bloody Sunday. The book is credited as a major catalyst in the establishment of the new Bloody Sunday Inquiry chaired by Lord Saville, the inquiry, the longest running and most expensive in British legal history, led to an historic apology by Prime Minister David Cameron on 15 June 2010. Mullan was co-producer and actor in Bloody Sunday, in 2004 Paul Greengrass co-wrote the television film Omagh with Guy Hibbert. Based on the bombing of 1998, the film was a critical success and this was the first professional film that Paul Greengrass had not directed, instead being credited as a writer and producer, because of his work on The Bourne Supremacy. Instead the film was directed by Pete Travis and it was the second film Greengrass had written about terrorism and mass killing in Ireland after Bloody Sunday. Based on that film, Greengrass was hired to direct 2004s The Bourne Supremacy, the film starred Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, an amnesiac who realises he was once a top CIA assassin and is now being pursued by his former employers. It proved to be an enormous financial and critical success. In 2006, Greengrass directed United 93, a based on the 11 September 2001 hijacking of United Airlines Flight 93. The film received acclaim, particularly for Greengrass quasi-documentary-style directing
31.
Ron Howard
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Ronald William Ron Howard is an American actor and filmmaker. Howard is best known for playing two roles in television sitcoms in his youth and directing a number of successful feature films later in his career. Howard first came to prominence playing young Opie Taylor in the sitcom The Andy Griffith Show for eight years, in 1980, Howard left Happy Days to focus on directing. His films include, the science-fiction/fantasy film Cocoon, the historical docudrama Apollo 13, the biographical drama A Beautiful Mind, in 2002, Howard narrated the Fox comedy series, Arrested Development, on which he would also serve as producer and play a semi-fictionalized version of himself. In 2003, Howard was awarded the National Medal of Arts, asteroid 12561 Howard is named after him. He was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 2013, Howard has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions in the television and motion pictures industries. Howard was born in Duncan, Oklahoma, the son of Jean Speegle Howard, an actress, and Rance Howard, a director, a writer. He has German, English, Scottish, Irish, and Dutch ancestry and his father was born with the surname Beckenholdt, and had taken the stage name Howard by 1948, for his acting career. Rance Howard was serving three years in the United States Air Force at the time of Rons birth, the family moved to Hollywood in 1958, the year before the birth of his younger brother, Clint Howard. They rented a house on the south of the Desilu Studios. They lived in Hollywood for at least three years, before moving to Burbank, Howard was tutored at Desilu Studios in his younger years, and graduated from John Burroughs High School. He later attended the University of Southern Californias School of Cinematic Arts, Howard has said he knew from a young age he might want to go into directing thanks to his early experience as an actor. In 1959, Howard had his first credited role, in The Journey. Howard played Timmy in Counterfeit Gun, Season 4, Episode 2 of the TV series, in 1960, Howard was cast as Opie Taylor in The Andy Griffith Show. Credited as Ronny Howard, he portrayed the son of the character for all eight seasons of the show. He and Griffith remained close until Griffiths death nearly 45 years later, in the 1962 film version of The Music Man, Howard played Winthrop Paroo, the child with the lisp, the film starred Robert Preston and Shirley Jones. He also starred in the 1963 film The Courtship of Eddies Father and he appeared as Barry Stewart on The Eleventh Hour, in the episode Is Mr. Martian Coming Back. In the 1970s, he appeared in at least one episode of The Bold Ones, Howard appeared on the 1969 Disneyland Records album The Story and Song from the Haunted Mansion
32.
Rush (2013 film)
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Rush is a 2013 biographical sports drama film centred on the rivalry between Formula 1 drivers James Hunt and Niki Lauda during the 1976 Formula One motor-racing season. It was written by Peter Morgan, directed by Ron Howard and stars Chris Hemsworth as Hunt, the film premiered in London on 2 September 2013 and was shown at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival before its United Kingdom release on 13 September 2013. Hunt is a brash, young Englishman with a tendency to vomit before every race, while Lauda is a cool, calculating Austrian technical genius who relies on precision. After a falling out with his father, Lauda takes a bank loan and buys his way into the British Racing Motors Formula One team. Meanwhile, Hesketh Racing, the racing team Hunt drives for. Lauda then joins Scuderia Ferrari with Regazzoni and wins his first championship in 1975, Hesketh closes shop after failing to secure a sponsor, but Hunt joins McLaren when Emerson Fittipaldi leaves the team. During this time, Hunt marries supermodel Suzy Miller, while Lauda develops a relationship with German socialite Marlene Knaus, the 1976 Formula One season starts with Lauda dominating the first two races while Hunt struggles to catch up. Hunt wins the Spanish Grand Prix, but is disqualified after a post-race inspection rules that his car is too wide. Following his divorce, he regains his spirit and his disqualification in Spain is overturned. Meanwhile, Lauda marries Marlene in a private ceremony but begins to have concerns about the effects of his marriage on his racing career, at the German Grand Prix, Lauda urges the F1 committee to cancel the race due to heavy rain on the already notoriously dangerous Nürburgring. At the drivers meeting, Hunt argues that Lauda would benefit by having one fewer race in the season, the drivers vote to go ahead with the race. Both Hunt and Lauda start the race with wet weather tyres, after being pulled out of the flaming wreckage, he is airlifted to the hospital with third-degree burns to his head and face and dangerous internal burns to his lungs. For the next six weeks, Lauda is treated for his injuries while he watches his rival dominate the races in his absence, despite his doctors orders, he decides to drive his Ferrari at the Italian Grand Prix to finish fourth while Hunt fails to finish the race. The 1976 season comes to a climax at the rain-soaked Japanese Grand Prix, hunts late rally in Laudas absence has pulled him within three points of Lauda. At the end of the lap, Lauda returns to the pits and retires from the race. This opens the door for Hunt to win the championship if he can notch a podium finish and he spends the rest of the year with fame, sex and drugs, while Lauda takes an interest in flying private planes. At a private airfield in Bologna, Lauda suggests to Hunt that he focus on the racing season. Hunt continues to race until his retirement in 1979, and becomes a motorsport broadcast commentator until his death in 1993 at the age of 45, the film was shot on location in the United Kingdom, Germany and Austria
33.
Martin Scorsese
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Martin Charles Scorsese is an American director, producer, screenwriter, and film historian, whose career spans more than 50 years. Scorseses body of work addresses such themes as Sicilian-American identity, Roman Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption, faith, machismo, modern crime, many of his films are also known for their depiction of violence and liberal use of profanity. Part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmaking, he is regarded as one of the most significant. In 1990, he founded The Film Foundation, an organization dedicated to film preservation. Their third film together, The Departed, won Scorsese the Academy Award for Best Director in addition to the winning the award for Best Picture. Their collaborations have resulted in numerous Academy Award nominations for both as well as winning several other prestigious awards. His work in television includes the episode of the HBO series Boardwalk Empire and Vinyl. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for the crime drama The Departed, with eight Best Director nominations, he is the most nominated living director and is tied with Billy Wilder for the second most nominations overall. Scorsese was born in Queens, New York and his family moved to Little Italy, Manhattan before he started school. His father, Charles Scorsese, and mother, Catherine Scorsese and his father was a clothes presser and an actor, and his mother was a seamstress and an actress. His fathers parents emigrated from Polizzi Generosa, in the province of Palermo, Sicily, Scorsese was raised in a devoutly Catholic environment. As a teenager in the Bronx, Scorsese frequently rented Powell, Scorsese was one of only two people who regularly rented that reel. The other was future Night Of The Living Dead director George A. Romero, Scorsese has cited Sabu and Victor Mature as his favorite actors during his youth. He has also spoken of the influence of the 1947 Powell and Pressburger film Black Narcissus, whose innovative techniques later impacted his filmmaking. Enamored of historical epics in his adolescence, at least two films of the genre, Land of the Pharaohs and El Cid, appear to have had a deep, Scorsese also developed an admiration for neorealist cinema at this time. He acknowledges owing a debt to the French New Wave and has stated that the French New Wave has influenced all filmmakers who have worked since. He has also cited filmmakers including Satyajit Ray, Ingmar Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni and he went on to earn his M. F. A. from NYUs School of the Arts in 1966, a year after the school was founded. Scorsese attended New York Universitys Tisch School of the Arts making the short films Whats a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This. and Its Not Just You, Murray
34.
Woody Allen
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Heywood Woody Allen is an American actor, writer, director, comedian, playwright, and musician whose career spans more than six decades. He worked as a writer in the 1950s, writing jokes and scripts for television. In the early 1960s, Allen began performing as a stand-up comedian, as a comedian, he developed the persona of an insecure, intellectual, fretful nebbish, which he maintains is quite different from his real-life personality. In 2004, Comedy Central ranked Allen in fourth place on a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comedians and he is often identified as part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmakers of the mid-1960s to late 1970s. Allen often stars in his films, typically in the persona he developed as a standup, some of the best-known of his over 40 films are Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Hannah and Her Sisters. In 2007 he said Stardust Memories, The Purple Rose of Cairo, critic Roger Ebert described Allen as a treasure of the cinema. Allen won four Academy Awards, three for Best Original Screenplay and one for Best Director and he also won nine British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards. His screenplay for Annie Hall was named the funniest screenplay by the Writers Guild of America in its list of the 101 Funniest Screenplays, in 2011, PBS televised the film biography Woody Allen, A Documentary on the American Masters TV series. Allen was born Allan Stewart Konigsberg in Brooklyn, New York and he and his sister, Letty, were raised in Midwood, Brooklyn. He is the son of Nettie, a bookkeeper at her familys delicatessen, and Martin Konigsberg and his family was Jewish, his grandparents immigrated from Russia and Austria, and spoke Yiddish, Hebrew, and German. His parents were born and raised on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His childhood was not particularly happy, his parents did not get along, Allen spoke German quite a bit in his early years. He would later joke that when he was young he was sent to inter-faith summer camps. While attending Hebrew school for eight years, he went to Public School 99 and to Midwood High School, at that time, he lived in an apartment at 968 East 14th Street. Unlike his comic persona, he was interested in baseball than school. He impressed students with his talent at card and magic tricks. To raise money, he wrote jokes for agent David O. Alber, at the age of 17, he legally changed his name to Heywood Allen and later began to call himself Woody Allen. According to Allen, his first published joke read, Woody Allen says he ate at a restaurant that had O. P. S and he was then earning more than both parents combined
35.
Dallas Buyers Club
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Dallas Buyers Club is a 2013 American biographical drama film, co-written by Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack, and directed by Jean-Marc Vallée. The film tells the story of Ron Woodroof, an AIDS patient diagnosed in the mid 1980s when HIV/AIDS treatments were under-researched, while the disease was not understood and highly stigmatized. Two fictional supporting characters, Dr. Eve Saks, and Rayon, were composite roles created from the interviews with transgender AIDS patients, activists. Screenwriter Borten interviewed Woodroof in 1992 and wrote the script, which he polished with writer Wallack in 2000, several other actors, directors, and producers who were attached at various times to the development of the film left the project. Universal Pictures also tried to make the film, but did not, a couple of screenwriters wrote drafts that were rejected. In 2009, producer Brenner involved Matthew McConaughey, because of his Texas origins, Brenner selected the first draft, written by Borten and Wallack, for the film, and then Vallée was set to direct the film. Principal photography began on November 11,2012, in New Orleans, Louisiana, continuing for 25 days of filming, Brenner and Rachel Winter co-produced the film. The official soundtrack album was featured by various artists, and was released digitally on October 29,2013, by the Relativity Music Group. The film grossed over $27 million domestically and $27.9 million internationally and it grossed over $4.5 million from DVD, and over $3 million from Blu-ray sales. The film received critical acclaim, resulting in numerous accolades. The film also won the award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling, and garnered nominations for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, in 1985, Dallas electrician and rodeo cowboy Ron Woodroof is diagnosed with AIDS and given 30 days to live. He initially refuses to accept the diagnosis, but remembers having unprotected sex with a woman who was a drug user. He is soon ostracized by family and friends, gets fired from his job, Woodroof bribes a hospital worker to get him the AZT. As soon as he begins taking it, he finds his health deteriorating, when he returns to the hospital, he meets Rayon, a drug addicted, HIV-positive trans woman, toward whom he is hostile. As his health worsens, he drives to a Mexican hospital to get more AZT, Dr. Vass, who has had his American medical license revoked, tells him that the AZT is poisonous and kills every cell it comes into contact with. He instead prescribes ddC and the protein peptide T, which are not approved in the US, three months later, Woodroof finds his health much improved. It occurs to him that he could make money by importing the drugs, since the drugs are not illegal, he is able to get them over the border by masquerading as a priest and swearing that they are for personal use. Meanwhile, Dr. Saks also begins to notice the effects of AZT
36.
Christian Bale
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Christian Charles Philip Bale is an English actor. He has starred both in films and smaller projects from independent producers and art houses. Bale first caught the eye at the age of 13. Based on the story by J. G. Ballard, Bale played an English boy who is separated from his parents. In 2000, he garnered acclaim for his portrayal of serial killer Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. He is known for going to lengths to portray characters in films, notably for the psychological thriller The Machinist. Bale went on to greater commercial recognition for his starring role as Batman in Christopher Nolans Batman Begins, The Dark Knight. His portrayal of Dicky Eklund in the David O. Russell-directed biographical film The Fighter, earned him critical acclaim, Bale was born in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, the son of Jenny, a circus performer, and David Bale, an entrepreneur, commercial pilot and talent manager. His mother is English and his father was born in South Africa, to English parents, Bale has remarked, I was born in Wales and he spent his childhood in Wales, Surrey and Dorset in England, and Portugal. Bale acknowledged that the frequent relocation had a influence on his career choice. He attended Bournemouth School, but left at age 16 and his first acting role was a commercial for the fabric softener Lenor in 1982. A year later, he appeared in a Pac-Man cereal commercial playing a rock star. In 1984, he made his debut in The Nerd on Londons West End with Rowan Atkinson. Bales parents divorced in 1991, and while his mother and sister Sharon stayed in Bournemouth, in 1990, he played the role of Jim Hawkins opposite Charlton Heston in Treasure Island, an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevensons classic book. Bale starred in the musical films Newsies and Swing Kids, the latter about teenagers who secretly listened to jazz during the rise of Nazi Germany. Bale was recommended by actress Winona Ryder to star in Gillian Armstrongs 1994 film Little Women, Bale also voiced Thomas, a young compatriot of Captain John Smith, in Disneys Pocahontas and in 1997 played Arthur Stuart in Velvet Goldmine, Todd Haynes tribute to glam rock. In 1999, Bale played serial killer Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, Bale was briefly dropped from the project in favour of Leonardo DiCaprio, but DiCaprio eventually dropped out to star in The Beach, and Bale was cast once again. He went so far as to himself from the cast
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