CASINO JACK AND THE UNITED STATES OF MONEY
This portrait of Washington super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, from his early years
as a gung-ho member of the GOP political machine to his final reckoning as a
disgraced, imprisoned pariah, confirms the adage that truth is indeed stranger
than fiction. A tale of international intrigue involving casinos, spies,
sweatshops and mob-style killings, this is a story of the way money corrupts
our political process. Oscar®-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney illuminates the
way politicians' desperate need to get elected and the millions of dollars it
costs may be undermining the basic principles of American democracy.
Infuriating, yet undeniably eye-opening and entertaining, CASINO JACK is
a saga of greed and corruption with a cynical villain audiences will love to hate.
The film tells the story of an Irish fisherman named Syracuse (Colin Farrell) who discovers
a woman named Ondine (Alicja Bachleda) in his fishing net, whom he believes to be a a
mermaid. She says her name is Ondine, which means "she came from the sea". His
daughter Annie (Alison Barry) comes to believe that the woman is a selkie, a magical
seal/woman creature, while Syracuse falls helplessly in love. In the Celtic myth, a selkie
is able to become human by taking off her seal coat, and can return to seal form by
putting it back on. However, like all fairy tales, enchantment and darkness go hand in
hand. Annie hopes that Ondine has come to live on land for 7 years and that she can
use her selkie wish to cure Annie's kidney failure. Whenever Ondine is onboard
Syracuse's fishing boat, she sings a siren song, and his nets and lobster pots are
full of fish and seafood in tremendous numbers hard to believe. However, being Irish,
Syracuse (or "Circus" the nickname he is trying to outlive, one he has earned for
his previous hard drinking ways) is mistrustful of good luck, with it comes bad..
Superstar genetic engineers Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley)
specialize in splicing DNA from different animals to create incredible new
hybrids. Now they want to use human DNA in a hybrid that could
revolutionize science and medicine. But when the pharmaceutical company
that funds their research forbids it, they secretly take their experiment
underground--risking their careers to push the boundaries of science and
serve their own curiosity and ambition. The result is Dren, an amazing,
strangely beautiful creature of uncommon intelligence and unexpected
physical developments. At first, Dren exceeds their wildest dreams. But
as she grows and learns at an accelerated rate, her existence threatens
to become their worst nightmare.
Vince Rizzo (Andy Garcia) is a lifelong resident of the tiny, tradition-steeped
Bronx enclave of City Island. A family man who makes his living as a
corrections officer, Vince longs to become an actor. Ashamed to admit
his aspirations to his family, Vince would rather let his fiery wife Joyce
(Julianna Margulies) believe his weekly poker games are a cover for an
extramarital affair than admit he’s secretly taking acting classes in
Manhattan. When Vince is asked to reveal his biggest secret in class,
he inadvertently sets off a chaotic chain of events that turns his
mundane suburban life upside down. Winner of the Audience Award at
the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival, City Island spins a web of
misrepresentations, misinterpretations and misunderstandings into a
smart and charming comedy about a family that stops at nothing to avoid
the truth.
There's a revolution underway in South America, but most of the
world doesn't know it. Oliver Stone sets out on a road trip across
five countries to explore the social and political movements as
well as the mainstream media's misperception of South America
while interviewing seven of its elected presidents. In casual
conversations with Presidents Hugo Chavez (Venezuela),
Evo Morales (Bolivia), Lula da Silva (Brazil), Cristina Kirchner
(Argentina), as well as her husband and ex-President Nestor Kirchner,
Fernando Lugo (Paraguay), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), and Raul Castro
(Cuba), Stone gains unprecedented access and sheds new light
upon the exciting transformations in the region.
Ballast is a stunningly evocative story of personal catastrophe and communal
redemption. In the cold winter light of the Mississippi Delta, three lonely people
stumble under the weight of a shared tragedy. Lawrence (Micheal J. Smith, Sr.)
is paralyzed with grief after the loss of his twin brother. Twelve-year-old James
(Jim Myron Ross) drifts into the perilous orbit of local teenagers while his single
mother, Marlee (Tarra Riggs), is too exhausted from her menial job to interpret
the clues. When sudden violence forces mother and son to flee their home in
the night, they alight desperately on Lawrence's property. Though this provides
safe harbor, it rekindles the fury of a bitter, longstanding conflict. Writer-director
Lance Hammer and his gifted cast of local, non-professional actors have created
an unflinching, profoundly humane story of lost souls forced by circumstance to
seek solace in the most unlikely of places.
On the 20-year anniversary of his groundbreaking masterpiece 'Roger & Me,' Michael
Moore's 'Capitalism: A Love Story' comes home to the issue he's been examining
throughout his career: the disastrous impact of corporate dominance on the everyday
lives of Americans (and by default, the rest of the world). But this time the culprit is much
bigger than General Motors, and the crime scene far wider than Flint, Michigan. From
Middle America, to the halls of power in Washington, to the global financial epicenter in
Manhattan, Michael Moore will once again take filmgoers into uncharted territory.
With both humor and outrage, Michael Moore's 'Capitalism: A Love Story' explores a
taboo question: What is the price that America pays for its love of capitalism? Years ago,
that love seemed so innocent. Today, however, the American dream is looking more like
a nightmare as families pay the price with their jobs, their homes and their savings.
Moore takes us into the homes of ordinary people whose lives have been turned upside
down; and he goes looking for explanations in Washington, DC and elsewhere. What he
finds are the all-too-familiar symptoms of a love affair gone astray: lies, abuse, betrayal...
and 14,000 jobs being lost every day.
'Capitalism: A Love Story' is both a culmination of Moore's previous works and a look into
what a more hopeful future could look like. It is Michael Moore's ultimate quest to answer
the question he?s posed throughout his illustrious filmmaking career: Who are we and
why do we behave the way that we do?
Scientists predict that if we continue fishing at the current rate, the planet
will run out of seafood by 2048 with catastrophic consequences. Based on
the book by Charles Clover, The End of the Line explores the devastating
effect that overfishing is having on fish stocks and the health of our oceans.
With Clover as his guide, Sundance veteran Rupert Murray (Unknown White Male)
crisscrosses the globe, examining what is causing the dilemma and what can
be done to solve it. Industrial fishing began in the 1950s. High-tech fisheries
now trawl the oceans with nets the size of football fields. Species cannot
survive at the rate they are being removed from the sea. Add in cofactors of
decades of bad science, corporate greed, small-minded governments, and
escalating consumer demand, and we’re left with a crisis of epic proportions.
Ninety percent of the big fish in our oceans are now gone.Murray interweaves
glorious footage from both underwater and above with shocking scientific
testimony to paint a vivid and alarming profile of the state of the sea. The
ultimate power of The End of the Line is that it moves beyond doomsday
rhetoric to proffer real solutions. Chillingly topical, The End of the Line drives
home the message: the clock is ticking, and the time to act is now.
On August 7th 1974, a young Frenchman named Philippe Petit stepped out
on a wire and illegally rigged between the New York's twin towers. After nearly
an hour dancing on the wire, he was arrested, taken for psychological evaluation,
and brought to jail before he was finally released. This documentary complies
Petits footage to show the numerous extraordinary challenges he faced in
completing the artistic crime of the century.
On the 40th anniversary of the Internet, WE LIVE IN PUBLIC tells the story
of the effect the web is having on our society, as seen through the eyes
of “the greatest Internet pioneer you’ve never...
Josh Harris, often called the “Warhol of the Web,” founded Pseudo.com,
the first Internet television network during the infamous dot-com boom
of the 1990s. He also created his vision of the future: an underground
bunker in NYC where 100 people lived together on camera for 30 days
over the turn of the millennium. (The project, named QUIET, also became
the subject of Ondi Timoner’s first cut of her documentary about Harris.
Her film shared the project’s name.) With Quiet, Harris proved how, in
the not-so-distant future of life online, we will willingly trade our privacy
for the connection and recognition we all deeply desire. Through his
experiments, including another six-month stint living under 24-hour live
surveillance online which led him to mental collapse, he demonstrated
the price we will all pay for living in public. --© Official Site
Record high oil prices, global warming, and an insatiable demand for energy:
these issues will be the catalyst for heated debates and positive change for
many years to come. 2008 Sundance award-winning film FUEL exposes
shocking connections between the auto industry, the oil industry and the
government, while exploring alternative energies such as solar, wind,
electricity and non-food-based biofuels.
Josh Tickell and his Veggie Van take us on the road as we discover the
pros and cons of biofuels, how America’s addiction to oil is destroying the
U.S. economy and how green energy can save us, but only if we act now.