Portal:Film

Anurag Kashyap is an Indian filmmaker and actor, known for his work in Hindi cinema. After writing a television series Kabhie Kabhie (1997), Kashyap co-wrote Ram Gopal Varma's crime drama Satya (1998). He later wrote and directed a short television film, Last Train to Mahakali (1999), and made his feature film debut with the yet-unreleased film Paanch. He next directed Black Friday (2007), a film on the 1993 Bombay bombings. Its release was barred by India's Censor Board for two years, but was eventually released in 2007 to positive reviews. The same year, he directed the critical and commercial failure No Smoking. Return of Hanuman (2007), an animated film, was Kashyap's next directorial venture. In 2009, he directed Dev.D, a modern-day take on Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay's Bengali novel Devdas, along with the political drama Gulaal. Despite positive reviews, the latter was a box-office failure.

Kashyap's production company Anurag Kashyap Films released its first film Udaan (2010)—a critical success that earned him the Filmfare Award for Best Story and Best Screenplay. He then directed one of the short films in the anthology film Mumbai Cutting. After directing the thriller That Girl in Yellow Boots (2011), the two-part crime film Gangs of Wasseypur (2012) was his next release, which garnered him the Filmfare Award for Best Dialogue. In 2013, he directed a short film on eve teasing titled That Day After Everyday, and directed one segment of the anthology film Bombay Talkies (2013). In 2013, he co-produced The Lunchbox, a film that was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language, and the biographical drama Shahid. In 2011, Kashyap started another production company Phantom Films, whose first feature was the period drama Lootera (2013). (Full article...)

Bridge of Spies is a 2015 historical legal thriller directed by Steven Spielberg. The screenplay was written by Matt Charman and Joel and Ethan Coen. The film is set during the Cold War and is based on the 1960 U-2 incident and its aftermath. Tom Hanks plays lawyer James B. Donovan who is tasked with negotiating the release of the captured American pilot Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell) in exchange for the convicted KGB spy Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance). Alan Alda, Sebastian Koch, and Amy Ryan feature in supporting roles.

The film premiered at the 53rd New York Film Festival on October 4, 2015. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures gave the film a wide release on October 16 at over 2,800 theaters in the United States and Canada. Bridge of Spies grossed a worldwide total of over $165 million on a production budget of $40 million. Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, surveyed 297 reviews and judged 91% to be positive. The film garnered many awards and nominations in a variety of categories with particular praise for Rylance's performance. (Full article...)

Scottish actor James McAvoy made his acting debut as a teen in the 1995 film The Near Room with Andy Serkis. He appeared in the films Wimbledon (2004) and Inside I'm Dancing (2004), before being cast as Mr. Tumnus in the 2005 fantasy film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, based on C. S. Lewis's 1950 novel. The following year, he starred in director Kevin Macdonald's drama film The Last King of Scotland. He co-starred in the romance films Penelope (2006) with Christina Ricci, Becoming Jane (2007) with Anne Hathaway, and Atonement (2007) with Keira Knightley. He made his theatre debut as Riff in the West Side Story at the Courtyard Centre for the Arts Hereford. He has since performed in several West End productions, receiving four Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor nominations.

In 2011, McAvoy was cast as Charles Xavier, a fictional character based on the Marvel Comics character in the superhero film X-Men: First Class (2011). He later reprised his role in X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), X-Men: Apocalypse (2016), Deadpool 2 (2018) and Dark Phoenix (2019). McAvoy starred in the 2013 crime comedy-drama film Filth, for which he won Best Actor in the British Independent Film Awards. A year later, he starred with Jessica Chastain in The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, the collective title of three films, Him, Her and Them. In 2016, he portrayed Kevin Wendell Crumb, a man with 23 alternate personalities, in M. Night Shyamalan's Split, for which he received critical acclaim, and later reprised the role for the sequel Glass (2019). He has starred in the science fiction horror film Victor Frankenstein with Daniel Radcliffe (2015), action thriller film Atomic Blonde with Charlize Theron (2017), and played Bill Denbrough in the supernatural horror film It Chapter Two, the second installment of the It film series based on Stephen King's 1986 novel. (Full article...)

WALL-E (promoted with an interpunct as WALL•E) is an American animation film released in 2008 and directed by Andrew Stanton. Walt Disney Pictures released it in the United States and Canada on June 27, 2008, grossing $23.1 million on its opening day, and $63 million during its opening weekend in 3,992 theaters, ranking number 1 at the box office. It eventually grossed $223 million domestically and $533 million worldwide. WALL-E received critical acclaim, with an approval rating of 95% on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

The film was nominated for several awards, including seven Annie Awards, six Academy Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards. WALL-E did not win any of the Annie Awards, all of them awarded to categories competitor Kung Fu Panda. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and was nominated for Best Original Song, Best Original Score, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing and Best Original Screenplay at the 81st Academy Awards. Walt Disney Pictures pushed for an Academy Award for Best Picture nomination, but it was not nominated, sparking controversy over whether the academy deliberately restricted WALL-E to the Best Animated Feature category. Film critic Peter Travers remarked, "If there was ever a time where an animated feature deserved to be nominated for best picture it's Wall-E." (Full article...)

J. Gordon Edwards (1867–1925) was a Canadian American film director, screenwriter, and producer of the silent era. His oeuvre consists of over fifty feature films made between 1914 and 1924. He is perhaps best known for directing twenty-four films starring vamp actress Theda Bara—including Cleopatra, her most famous role— and also the 1921 epic The Queen of Sheba. Edwards was born in Montreal and educated at a military academy with the expectation that he would pursue a career as a British Army officer. He decided against a life in the military in favor of a future in theater. At the time, the Canadian theater and film industry was limited primarily to repertory theatre, so Edwards became one of many to emigrate to the United States to work in the field. He had a short career as an actor before becoming a stage director. By 1910, he was working for American motion picture producer William Fox, who sent him to Europe to study film production.

In 1914, the Balboa Amusement Producing Company produced the drama St. Elmo. Balboa was not a film distributor, and had a standing agreement to sell its films to Fox's Box Office Attractions Company for distribution. Some modern writers credit this film as Edwards's directorial debut. However, contemporary sources named Bertram Bracken in that role, as does the American Film Institute. Aubrey Solomon's history of the Fox Film Corporation states Bracken "reportedly" directed. Regardless of Edwards's role in St. Elmo, he was chosen to direct Life's Shop Window (1914), Box Office Attractions' first film as a production company rather than merely a distributor. (Full article...)

Vera Farmiga is an American actress. She began her career on stage as an understudy in Ronald Harwood's 1996 play Taking Sides on Broadway. The following year, she starred in the Off-Broadway play Second-Hand Smoke (1997) by Mac Wellman. Farmiga made her film debut in the drama-thriller Return to Paradise (1998). She then had supporting roles in the romantic drama film Autumn in New York (2000), the crime drama film The Opportunists (2000), and the action thriller film 15 Minutes (2001). Farmiga's breakthrough role came in 2004, when she was cast in the drama film Down to the Bone. For her performance, she won the Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Prize for Acting and was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead. She then starred in the political thriller The Manchurian Candidate (2004) and the crime thriller Running Scared (2006).

Farmiga's role in The Departed (2006), which won the Academy Award for Best Picture, brought her to worldwide prominence. She subsequently had a lead role in the romantic drama Never Forever (2007). In 2008, Farmiga starred in the historical drama The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, for which she won the British Independent Film Award for Best Actress. That same year, she appeared in the political drama Nothing But the Truth, for which she was nominated for the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Supporting Actress. She then starred in the psychological thriller Orphan (2009), and gained critical acclaim for her role in the comedy-drama Up in the Air (2009), for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. (Full article...)

Hindi film actress Rani Mukerji made her screen debut in Biyer Phool (1996), a Bengali film directed by her father Ram Mukherjee. Her first leading role was that of a rape victim in the 1996 social drama Raja Ki Aayegi Baaraat. In 1998 she received wider recognition for her role alongside Aamir Khan in the action film Ghulam, and had her breakthrough as the romantic interest of Shah Rukh Khan's character in the romantic drama Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. The latter earned Mukerji her first Filmfare Award in the Best Supporting Actress category. She followed this by playing the leading lady in several films, including Hello Brother (1999) and Nayak: The Real Hero (2001), none of which helped propel her career forward.

Mukerji's career prospects improved in 2002 when she starred in Yash Raj Films' Saathiya, a romantic drama that gained her a Filmfare Critics Award for Best Actress. For her roles in the 2004 romantic comedy Hum Tum and the composite drama Yuva, Mukerji became the only actress to win both the Filmfare Award for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, respectively, in the same year. Also that year, she starred in Veer-Zaara—the highest-grossing Bollywood film of the year. In 2005, she received praise for portraying a blind, deaf and mute woman in the drama Black, and played a con woman in the crime comedy film Bunty Aur Babli. For her performance in Black, she was awarded the Best Actress and Best Actress (Critics) trophies at Filmfare. The following year, she played an unhappily married woman in the drama Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna — the top-grossing Bollywood film in overseas at that point. (Full article...)

The Latin Grammy Award for Best Long Form Music Video is an honor presented annually at the Latin Grammy Awards, a ceremony that recognizes excellence and promotes a wider awareness of cultural diversity and contributions of Latin recording artists in the United States and internationally. According to the category description guide for the 13th Latin Grammy Awards, the award is for video albums consisting of more than one song or track and is awarded to artists, video directors and/or producers of at least 51% of the total playing time. If the work is a tribute or collection of live performances, the award is presented only to the directors or producers.

The accolade for Best Long Form Music Video was first presented at the 7th Latin Grammy Awards in 2006 as a tie between Spanish recording artists Bebo and Cigala for their album Blanco y Negro En Vivo (2005) and Café Tacuba for their live album Un Viaje (2005). Three recipients of the award won with a MTV Unplugged release; Ricky Martin (2006), Julieta Venegas (2007) and Juanes (2012). Mexican singer Natalia Lafourcade holds the record of most wins in the category with three (2013, 2017, 2022). (Full article...)

Frozen II is a 2019 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios as the sequel to Frozen (2013). Produced by Peter Del Vecho, it was directed by Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee from a screenplay by Lee. The directors co-wrote the story with Marc Smith, Kristen Anderson-Lopez, and Robert Lopez. The film stars the voices of Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Josh Gad, and Jonathan Groff. Set three years after the first film, Frozen II follows sisters Anna and Elsa, and their companions Kristoff, Sven, and Olaf as they travel to an enchanted forest to unravel the origin of Elsa's magical power.

Frozen II premiered in Hollywood, Los Angeles, on November 7, 2019, and was released on November 22. Produced on a budget of $150 million, it grossed $1.453 billion worldwide, finishing its theatrical run as the third-highest-grossing film of 2019, the tenth-highest-grossing film of all time, and the second-highest-grossing animated film of all time. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 77% based on 336 reviews. (Full article...)