Prelude (2013)
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Prelude to Fame is a 1950 British drama film directed by Fergus McDonell from a story by Aldous Huxley. While vacationing in Italy, Nick Morell (Robin Dowell), son of John Morell (Guy Rolfe), a famous English philosopher and amateur musician and his wife Catherine (Kathleen Ryan), becomes friendly with young Guido (Jeremy Spenser), and Morell discovers the boy has an extraordinary instinct for orchestration and a phenomenal music memory. A neighboring couple, Signor and Signora Boudini (Henry Oscar and Kathleen Byron) become aware of the boy's talents, and she appeals to his parents to let her educate him musically. Torn by their love for their son and, they feel,the duty to let the world hear his talent, they consent.
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A successful artist, weary of Parisian life and on the verge of divorce, returns to the country to live in his childhood house. He needs someone to make a real vegetable garden again out of the wilderness it has become. The gardener happens to be a former schoolfriend. A warm, fruitful conversation starts between the two men.
On a Tuesday night, five couples have separate sexual adventures. Matt and Kris, friends for years, want to have an only-once, no-strings good time. Abby and Andrew, married, celebrate his birthday, but it's marred by angst and miscommunication. Mia and Eric are exes, making sure they are over each other. Jaime and Ken work together and this is a first date. Inez and Gord invite his roommate, Dave, to join them. By the time each couple has gone through a prelude, foreplay, sex, an interlude, orgasm, and afterglow, they've answered basic questions: can sex be anonymous, are we bored, is our marriage really finished, does anyone tell the truth, and how do we make someone happy?
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A woman drives in her car, wearing a grave look on her face. In the background, we hear the sounds of the freeway. The camera often captures her face, but occasionally we look at her from behind. Hypnotising lines on the road whiz by. Just like trees and other elements surrounding the road. Some short telephone conversations alternate with long silences. Meanwhile, the spectator travels along with the woman for many miles. Next, her phone rings for the third time. It turns out to be her lover. Gradually, the nature of the conversation becomes clear. It is their final, but intense and extensive talk. One time, the tone is very impersonal, another time defiant or even particularly emotional. More and more becomes clear about the two characters and their past relationship.
A young married woman invites her mother, a celebrated concert pianist, to stay with her. Tensions rise as their buried hatred for one another comes to the surface.
A young Jeff Buckley (Penn Badgley) struggles to make peace with his late father Tim's legacy while preparing to perform at a tribute concert to the late singer-songwriter, in this stirring drama about the prelude to the tragically short-lived singer's creation of his monumental album Grace.
Reunited at a wedding after many years, former lovers again feel the pull of a mutual attraction neither is willing to admit. Escaping the reception for the privacy of a hotel room, the unnamed pair explore the choices of the past that led them to the present.
In Savamala, the most notorious part of Belgrade, lives an eighteen-year-old young man. In this turbulent atmosphere, different passions collide, and there are hints that the bloody strikes are a prelude to a major battle. The young man tries to escape from the slums and live in a better society. He falls in love and draws comics, while Savamala offers him the misery of everyday life, the world of criminals, gamblers, anarchists, singers and failed poets.
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When King Demba War sides with the Muslims, the Ceddo kidnap his daughter, Princess Dior Yacine, to protest their forcible conversion to Islam.
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A man arrives in the city upon news of a potential terrorist strike in Italy. He is Japanese foreign diplomat, Kosaku Kuroda, and heâs here under orders of his supervisor at the Foreign Ministry, Hiroshi Kataoka (Kiichi Nakai), to aid in the safeguarding of Japanese citizens. Kurodaâs main contacts at the Japanese embassy consist of Ambassador Kikuhara, Counselor Nishino, and fellow diplomatic envoys Haba and Tanimoto. All are busy preparing for the visit of Japanese Foreign Minister Kawagoe due to arrive for the high-profile G8 foreign ministerâs meeting. Meanwhile, somewhere on the festively-lit streets of the city, a young Japanese girl has suddenly gone missing. Is it an abduction simply for ransom? Or could it be a prelude to terror?
Pete, an eight-year-old Catholic boy growing up in the suburbs of Chicago in the mid-1970s, attends Catholic school, where as classes let out for the summer, he's admonished by a nun to follow the path of the Lord, and not that of the Devil. Perhaps taking this message a bit too seriously, Pete decides it's his goal for the summer to help someone get into heaven; having been told that Catholicism is the only sure path to the kingdom of the Lord, Pete decides to convert a Jew to Catholicism in order to improve their standing in the afterlife. Hoping to find a likely candidate, Pete begins visiting a nearby synagogue, where he gets to know Rabbi Jacobson, who responds to Pete's barrage of questions with good humor. Pete also makes friends with the Rabbi's son, Danny, who is about the same age; when he learns that Danny is seriously ill, he decides Danny would be an excellent choice for conversion.
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Jaime has lost his job and has to provide for his wife, son and daughter. Pressured by this circumstances, he visits his mom, who lives in an apartment he owns, to ask her to move with him so he can sell the apartment. But she is not going to cooperate. And, to Jaime's surprise, she also has a boyfriend!
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Famous pianist Zetterström returns home to his native Denmark, to give a concert, just to find out that the choices he has made in his life have affected his love life greatly.
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Leni Riefenstahl made her film debut in this "mountain film" by writer/director Arnold Fanck, and went on to appear in five more under his direction. In Der Heilige Berg she plays the professional dancer Diotima who finds herself the apex of a love triangle when she is pursued by two mountain climbers, Vigo (Ernst Petersen) and his unnamed older friend (Luis Trenker).
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20th century computer games designer Scott exchanges love letters with 19th century poet Elizabeth Whitcomb through an antique desk that can make letters travel through time.
The time is the late '80s, a crucial period in the history of South Africa. President P.W. Botha is hanging on to power by a thread as the African National Congress (ANC) takes up arms against apartheid and the country tumbles toward insurrection. A British mining concern is convinced that their interests would be better served in a stable South Africa and they quietly dispatch Michael Young, their head of public affairs, to open an unofficial dialogue between the bitter rivals. Assembling a reluctant yet brilliant team to pave the way to reconciliation by confronting obstacles that initially seem insurmountable, Young places his trust in ANC leader Thabo Mbeki and Afrikaner philosophy professor Willie Esterhuyse. It is their empathy that will ultimately serve as the catalyst for change by proving more powerful than the terrorist bombs that threaten to disrupt the peaceful dialogue.
A drama based on the life of 18th century Italian lyricist Lorenzo da Ponte, who collaborated with Mozart on his "Don Giovanni" opera.
In the 17th century, a Bulgarian Christian region is selected by the Ottoman rulers to serve as an example of conversion to Islam. A Janissary who was kidnapped from the village as a boy is sent to force the reluctant inhabitants to convert. The Turkish governor seeks a peaceful solution, but ultimately torture, violence, and rebellion break out.
Jared, the son of a Baptist pastor in a small American town, is outed to his parents at age 19. Jared is faced with an ultimatum: attend a gay conversion therapy program â or be permanently exiled and shunned by his family, friends, and faith.
The nuns of a musical convent work hard in order to prevent the religious school from closing.
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An offbeat romantic comedy about a silver-painted street performer and the soft spoken zoo worker who falls for him.
Caleb, a 26 year old coder at the world's largest internet company, wins a competition to spend a week at a private mountain retreat belonging to Nathan, the reclusive CEO of the company. But when Caleb arrives at the remote location he finds that he will have to participate in a strange and fascinating experiment in which he must interact with the world's first true artificial intelligence, housed in the body of a beautiful robot girl.
Rock Hudson plays an Air Force Colonel who has just been re-assigned as a cold war B-52 commander who must shape up his men to pass a grueling inspection that the previous commander had failed, and had been fired for. He is also recently married, and as a tough commanding officer doing whatever he has to do to shape his men up, his wife sees a side to him that she hadn't seen before.
Nathan Algren is an American hired to instruct the Japanese army in the ways of modern warfare -- in this lush epic set in the 1870s, which finds Algren learning to respect the samurai and the honorable principles that rule them. Pressed to destroy the samurai's way of life in the name of modernization and open trade, Algren decides to become an ultimate warrior himself and to fight for their right to exist.
When Billy returns from reform school he has to attend a different high school at the other side of town. He tries to start with a clean slate but his old rival doesn't make it easy on him and his buddy Louie tries to make him go astray again. His brother Joe, quite the opposite of Billy, is a good runner and determined to win a track scholarship. He suggests Billy to join his school's track team, which pits the two brothers against each other.
The story of a great rivalry between a father and son, both eccentric professors in the Talmud department of Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The son has an addictive dependency on the embrace and accolades that the establishment provides, while his father is a stubborn purist with a fear and profound revulsion for what the establishment stands for, yet beneath his contempt lies a desperate thirst for some kind of recognition. The Israel Prize, Israel's most prestigious national award, is the jewel that brings these two to a final, bitter confrontation.
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An efficient gang enters a Manhattan bank, locks the doors, and takes hostages. They work deliberately, without haste. Detective Frazier is assigned to negotiate, but his mind is occupied with the corruption charges he is facing. With an army of police surrounding the bank, the thief, the cop, and the plutocrat's fixer enter high-stakes negotiations. Why are the robbers asking for a plane, if they are so competent and they know they won't get one? Why aren't they in more of a hurry?
Ivy League Freshman, Aaron Milton (17) gets a different kind of education when he falls for Linda (34) a vivacious former wild-child who has returned to college to straighten out her life. The curriculum gets more challenging when Aaron meets Linda's sarcastic 14 year-old daughter, Beth - who quickly develops a crush on him. The math doesn't work in either direction but the dysfunctional triangle becomes a learning experience for all involved.
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In 1973, the Loud family became a television sensation of a new kind. It was long before a metal rock star showed his eccentric family on the small screen and decades before housewives had screaming matches with each other on camera in public. CINEMA VERITE tells the behind-the-scenes story of the groundbreaking documentary "An American Family," which chronicled the lives of the Louds in the early 1970s and catapulted the Santa Barbara family to notoriety while creating a new television genre: the reality TV series.
Police Inspector Renko tries to solve the case of three bodies found in Moscow's Gorky Park but finds his attempts to solve the crime impeded by his superiors. Working on his own, Renko seeks out more information and stumbles across a conspiracy involving the highest levels of the government.
A convicted thief in Dartmoor prison hides the location of the stolen Bank of England printing plates inside three music boxes. When the innocent purchasers of the boxes start to be murdered, Holmes and Watson investigate.
AJ Manglehorn is an aging, ordinary guy in a small town. He nurses his sick cat, squeezes out a conversation with the local bank teller every Friday, and eats at the same place every day. But there is more to Manglehorn than meets the eye: heâs an ex-con who, 40 years ago, gave up the woman of his dreams for a big âjobâ. He now obsesses daily over the choices he made. After a dramatic effort to start over, Manglehorn faces a terrifying moment and is unmasked as a guy with a very, very dark past.
Twenty years ago, Kurt Cobain was found dead of an apparent gunshot wound to the head. The world was told it was a suicide, but evidence would lead many people to believe it might be otherwise. The film investigates the possibilities that exist that Kurt Cobain's death might not have been a suicide, that the Seattle Police Department rushed their verdict, and the global media perpetuated lies and misinformation fed to them by Courtney Love that created the belief in many that Cobain killed himself, but when revealed to be lies, lead many to now question what happened.
An unscrupulous newspaper editor searches for headlines at any cost.
The life of Danny Wright, a salesman forever on the road, veers into dangerous and surreal territory when he wanders into a Mexican bar and meets a mysterious stranger, Julian, who's very likely a hit man. Their meeting sets off a chain of events that will change their lives forever, as Wright is suddenly thrust into a far-from-mundane existence that he takes to surprisingly well ⦠once he gets acclimated to it.
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