Blue Velvet is a 1986 American neo-noir mystery thriller film written and directed by David Lynch. Blending psychological horror with film noir, the film stars Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini, Dennis Hopper, and Laura Dern, and is named after the 1951 song of the same name. The film concerns a young college student who, returning home to visit his ill father, discovers a severed human ear in a field. The ear then leads him to uncover a vast criminal conspiracy, and into a romantic relationship with a troubled lounge singer.
Forrest Gump is a 1994 American comedy-drama film directed by Robert Zemeckis and written by Eric Roth. It is based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Winston Groom and stars Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Gary Sinise, Mykelti Williamson and Sally Field. The story depicts several decades in the life of Forrest Gump (Hanks), a slow-witted and kindhearted man from Alabama who witnesses and unwittingly influences several defining historical events in the 20th-century United States. The film differs substantially from the novel.
Pornographic films (pornos), erotic films, or sex films, are films that present sexually explicit subject matter in order to arouse and satisfy the viewer. Pornographic films present sexual fantasies and usually include erotically stimulating material such as nudity (softcore) and sexual intercourse (hardcore). A distinction is sometimes made between "erotic" and "pornographic" films on the basis that the latter category contains more explicit sexuality, and focuses more on arousal than storytelling; the distinction is highly subjective.
Will Penny is a 1968 American Western film written and directed by Tom Gries and starring Charlton Heston, Joan Hackett and Donald Pleasence. The picture was based upon an episode of the 1960 Sam Peckinpah television series The Westerner starring Brian Keith called "Line Camp," also written and directed by Tom Gries. Heston mentioned that this was his favorite film in which he appeared. The supporting cast features Ben Johnson, Bruce Dern, and Slim Pickens.
The Thin Blue Line is a 1988 American documentary film by Errol Morris, about the trial and conviction of Randall Dale Adams for the murder of Texas police officer Robert Wood. Morris became interested in the case while doing research for a film about Dr. James Grigson, a psychiatrist known in Texas as "Dr. Death" for testifying with "100 percent certainty" of a defendant's recidivism in many trials, including that of Randall Adams. The film centered around the "inconsistencies, incongruities and loose ends" of the case, and through his investigation, not only comes to a different conclusion, actually obtained an admission of Adams' innocence by the original suspect of the case, David Harris. The "thin blue line" in the title "refers to what Mr. Morris feels is an ironic, mythical image of a protective policeman on the other side of anarchy".
"Blue Moon" is a classic popular song written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart in 1934. This may be the first instance of the familiar "50s progression" in a popular song, and it has become a standard ballad. Early recordings included those by Connee Boswell and by Al Bowlly in 1935. The song was a hit twice in 1949, with successful recordings in the U.S. by Billy Eckstine and Mel Tormé.
Marc Wallace Jordan is an American-born Canadian singer-songwriter, record producer, session musician, and actor. Covering a wide variety of genres, he has written songs for a number of well-known artists, including Diana Ross, Rod Stewart, Cher, Bette Midler, Chicago, and Josh Groban. He was named best producer with Steven MacKinnon at the Juno Awards in 1994 for "Waiting for a Miracle" from Reckless Valentine. In early 2014, Jordan was named Chair of Slaight Family Music Lab at Norman Jewison's Canadian Film Centre.
Balance is a German surrealist stop-motion animated film, released in 1989. It was directed and produced by twin brothers Wolfgang and Christoph Lauenstein.
Alphonse Lee Mouzon was an American jazz fusion drummer and the owner of Tenacious Records, a label that primarily released Mouzon's recordings. He was a composer, arranger, producer, and actor. He gained popularity in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Blue Movie is a 1969 American erotic film written, produced and directed by Andy Warhol. It is the first adult erotic film depicting explicit sex to receive wide theatrical release in the United States, and is regarded as a seminal film in the Golden Age of Porn. It helped inaugurate the "porno chic" phenomenon, in which porn was publicly discussed by celebrities and taken seriously by film critics, in modern American culture, and later, in many other countries throughout the world. According to Warhol, Blue Movie was a major influence in the making of Last Tango in Paris, an internationally controversial erotic drama film starring Marlon Brando and released a few years after Blue Movie was made. Viva and Louis Waldon, playing themselves, starred in Blue Movie.
Mystery Train is a 1989 comedy-drama anthology film written and directed by Jim Jarmusch and set in Memphis, Tennessee. The film is a triptych of stories involving foreign protagonists, unfolding over the course of the same night. "Far from Yokohama" features a Japanese couple on a cultural pilgrimage, "A Ghost" focuses on an Italian widow stranded in the city overnight, and "Lost in Space" follows the misadventures of a newly single and unemployed Englishman and his reluctant companions. The narratives are linked by a run-down flophouse overseen by a night clerk and his disheveled bellboy, the use of Elvis Presley's song "Blue Moon", and a gunshot.
Something the Lord Made is a 2004 American made-for-television biographical drama film about the black cardiac pioneer Vivien Thomas (1910–1985) and his complex and volatile partnership with white surgeon Alfred Blalock (1899–1964), the "Blue Baby doctor" who pioneered modern heart surgery. Based on the National Magazine Award-winning Washingtonian magazine article "Like Something the Lord Made" by Katie McCabe, the film was directed by Joseph Sargent and written by Peter Silverman and Robert Caswell.
Ronald Mathews was an American jazz pianist who worked with Max Roach from 1963 to 1968 and Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. He acted as lead in recording from 1963 and 1978–79. His most recent work was in 2008, as both a mentor and musician with Generations, a group of jazz musicians headed by veteran drummer Jimmy Cobb. He contributed two new compositions for the album that was released by San Francisco State University's International Center for the Arts on September 15, 2008.
Stephen Robert Herek is an American film director. Herek was born in San Antonio, Texas. He attended the University of Texas at Austin.
The term "Golden Age of Porn", or "porno chic", refers to a 15-year period (1969–1984) in commercial American pornography, in which sexually explicit films experienced positive attention from mainstream cinemas, movie critics, and the general public. This American period, which had subsequently spread internationally, and that began before the legalization of pornography in Denmark on July 1, 1969, started on June 12, 1969, with the theatrical release of the film Blue Movie directed by Andy Warhol, and, somewhat later, with the release of the 1970 film Mona produced by Bill Osco. These films were the first adult erotic films depicting explicit sex to receive wide theatrical release in the United States. Both influenced the making of films such as 1972's Deep Throat starring Linda Lovelace and directed by Gerard Damiano, Behind the Green Door starring Marilyn Chambers and directed by the Mitchell brothers, 1973's The Devil in Miss Jones also by Damiano, and 1976's The Opening of Misty Beethoven by Radley Metzger. According to Warhol, Blue Movie was a major influence in the making of Last Tango in Paris, an internationally controversial erotic drama film, starring Marlon Brando, and released a few years after Blue Movie was shown in theaters.
Jet Pilot is a 1957 American Cold War romance film directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring John Wayne and Janet Leigh. It was written and produced by Jules Furthman, and presented by Howard Hughes. Filming lasted more than eighteen months, beginning in 1949. The last day of shooting was in May 1953, but the Technicolor film was kept out of release by Hughes due to his tinkering until October 1957, by which time Hughes had sold RKO. Universal-International ended up distributing Jet Pilot.
Welcome to Hard Times is a 1967 American Western film directed by Burt Kennedy and starring Henry Fonda as the leader of a dying town who is too weak to stand up to a brute terrorizing the few remaining residents. It is based upon a novel by the same name by E. L. Doctorow.
Von Richthofen and Brown, alternatively titled The Red Baron, is a 1971 war film directed by Roger Corman and starring John Phillip Law and Don Stroud as Manfred von Richthofen and Roy Brown. Although names of real people are used, the story by Joyce Hooper Corrington and John William Corrington makes no claim to be historically accurate, and in fact is largely fictional.
The Secret of the Blue Room is a 1933 American pre-Code mystery/horror film directed by Kurt Neumann and starring Lionel Atwill, Gloria Stuart, Paul Lukas and Edward Arnold. The film's plot concerns a group of wealthy people who stay at a European mansion that features a blue room that is said to be cursed, as everyone who has stayed there has died shortly after. Three people suggest a wager that each can survive a night in the blue room.
Stephen Michael "Steve" Martino is an American designer and film director. He is best known for directing the films Horton Hears a Who! (2008), Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012), and The Peanuts Movie (2015).
