Meet the Feebles is a 1989 New Zealand puppet musical black comedy film directed by Peter Jackson, and written by Jackson, Fran Walsh, Stephen Sinclair and Danny Mulheron. It features Jim Henson-esque puppets in a perverse comic satire. Like Henson's Muppets, the Feebles are animal-figured puppets who are members of a stage troupe. However, whereas the Muppets characterize positivity, naïve folly, and innocence, the Feebles largely present negativity, vice, and other misanthropic characteristics. It is the first Jackson film that was co-written by his future partner Fran Walsh, who has gone on to act as co-writer for all his subsequent films.
Paul Edward Winfield was an American actor. He was known for his portrayal of a Louisiana sharecropper who struggles to support his family during the Great Depression in the landmark film Sounder (1972), which earned him an Academy Award nomination. He portrayed Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1978 television miniseries King, for which he was nominated for an Emmy Award. Winfield was also known for his roles in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, The Terminator, L.A. Law, and 24 episodes of the sitcom 227. He received four Emmy nominations overall, winning in 1995 for his 1994 guest role in Picket Fences.
Super Fly is a 1972 American blaxploitation crime drama film directed by Gordon Parks Jr. and starring Ron O'Neal as Youngblood Priest, an African American cocaine dealer who is trying to quit the underworld drug business. The film is well known for its soundtrack, written and produced by soul musician Curtis Mayfield. It was released on August 4, 1972.
Contract killing is a form of murder or assassination in which one party hires another party to kill a targeted person or people. It involves an agreement which includes some form of compensation, monetary or otherwise. It is an illegal agreement. Either party may be a person, group, or organization. Contract killing has been associated with organized crime, government conspiracies, dictatorships, and vendettas. For example, in the United States, the Italian- and Jewish-American organized crime gang Murder, Inc. committed hundreds of murders on behalf of the National Crime Syndicate during the 1930s and 1940s.
Derek and the Dominos was an English–American blues rock band formed in the spring of 1970 by singer-guitarist Eric Clapton, keyboardist-singer Bobby Whitlock, bassist Carl Radle and drummer Jim Gordon. All four members had previously played together in Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, during and after Clapton's brief tenure with Blind Faith. Dave Mason supplied additional lead guitar on early studio sessions and played at their first live gig. Another participant at their first session as a band was George Harrison, the recording for whose album All Things Must Pass marked the formation of Derek and the Dominos.
Frank Borzage was an American film director and actor. He was the first person to win the Academy Award for Best Director for his film 7th Heaven (1927) at the 1st Academy Awards.
Elisha Vanslyck Cook Jr. was an American character actor famed for his work in film noir. According to Bill Georgaris of They Shoot Pictures, Don't They, Cook appeared in 21 films noir, more than any other actor or actress. He played cheerful, brainy collegiates until he was cast against type as the bug-eyed baby-faced psychopathic killer Wilmer Cook in the 1941 version of The Maltese Falcon. He went on to play deceptively mild-mannered villains. Cook's acting career spanned more than 60 years, with roles in productions including The Big Sleep, Shane, The Killing, House on Haunted Hill and Rosemary's Baby.
Trouble Man is a 1972 American blaxploitation crime thriller film directed by Ivan Dixon and produced and released by 20th Century Fox. The film stars Robert Hooks as "Mr. T.", a hard-edged private detective who tends to take justice into his own hands. It is still of note today for its soundtrack, written, produced and performed by Marvin Gaye.
Richard Lynch was an American actor best known for portraying villains in films and television.
Skidoo is a 1968 American comedy film directed by Otto Preminger, starring Jackie Gleason, Carol Channing, Frankie Avalon, Fred Clark, Michael Constantine, Frank Gorshin, John Phillip Law, Peter Lawford, Burgess Meredith, George Raft, Cesar Romero, Mickey Rooney and Groucho Marx playing a top mobster named "God". It was written by Doran William Cannon and released by Paramount Pictures on December 19, 1968. The screenplay satirizes late-1960s counterculture lifestyle and its creature comforts, technology, anti-technology, hippies, free love and then-topical use of the drug LSD.
Rollin' with the Nines is a 2006 British film set mainly in South London, about a rap group turned drug dealers. The working film title was Proper Little Charlie. The film stars Vas Blackwood, Robbie Gee, Mark Smith (Gladiator), Simon Webbe and Billy Murray. Small appearances are made by Jason Flemyng, Dizzee Rascal, Rodney P, Kano and Aisleyne Horgan-Wallace.
Peter Paul Fix was an American film and television character actor who was best known for his work in Westerns. Fix appeared in more than 100 movies and dozens of television shows over a 56-year career between 1925 and 1981. Fix portrayed Marshal Micah Torrance, opposite Chuck Connors's character in The Rifleman from 1958 to 1963. He later appeared with Connors in the 1966 Western film Ride Beyond Vengeance.
Blaxploitation is an ethnic subgenre of the exploitation film that emerged in the United States during the early 1970s, when the combined momentum of the civil rights movement, the black power movement, and the Black Panthers spurred African-American artists to reclaim the power of depiction of their ethnicity, and institutions like UCLA to provide financial assistance for African-American students to study filmmaking. This combined with Hollywood adopting a less restrictive rating system in 1968. The term, a portmanteau of the words "black" and "exploitation", was coined in August 1972 by Junius Griffin, the president of the Beverly Hills–Hollywood NAACP branch. He claimed the genre was "proliferating offenses" to the black community in its perpetuation of stereotypes often involved in crime. After the race films of the 1940s and 1960s, the genre emerged as one of the first in which black characters and communities were protagonists, rather than sidekicks, supportive characters, or victims of brutality. The genre's inception coincides with the rethinking of race relations in the 1970s.
The Nickel Ride is a 1974 American neo-noir crime film directed and produced by Robert Mulligan and starring Jason Miller, Linda Haynes, Victor French, Bo Hopkins, and John Hillerman. It is the debut film of screenwriter Eric Roth. It was entered into the 1974 Cannes Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Palme d'Or. On December 13, 2011, Shout! Factory released the film on DVD as part of a double feature with 99 and 44/100% Dead.
Harry Brown is a 2009 British vigilante action-thriller film directed by Daniel Barber and starring Michael Caine, Emily Mortimer, Jack O'Connell, and Liam Cunningham. The story follows Harry Brown, a widowed Royal Marines veteran who had served in Northern Ireland during The Troubles, living on a London housing estate that is rapidly descending into youth crime. After a violent gang murders his friend, Harry decides to take justice into his own hands.
The Best Things in Life Are Free is a 1956 American musical film directed by Michael Curtiz. The film stars Gordon MacRae, Dan Dailey, and Ernest Borgnine as the real-life songwriting team of Buddy DeSylva, Lew Brown, and Ray Henderson of the late 1920s and early 1930s, and Sheree North as Kitty Kane, a singer.
Highs and Lows is a Hong Kong television crime drama serial produced by TVB under executive producer Lam Chi-wah. The drama stars Michael Miu, Raymond Lam, Kate Tsui, Elaine Ng, Ella Koon and Ben Wong. It originally aired from 24 September to 4 November 2012, on Hong Kong's Jade, and ran for 30 episodes.
Naked Evil is a black-and-white independent 1966 British horror film, written and directed by Stanley Goulder and starring Basil Dingnam, Anthony Ainley, Richard Coleman and John Ashley Hamilton. It was produced by Michael F. Johnson and based on the BBC-TV play The Obi by Jon Manchip White. The police investigate voodoo activities in a student hostel.
The Harder They Come is a 1972 Jamaican crime film directed by Perry Henzell and co-written by Trevor D. Rhone, and starring Jimmy Cliff. The film is most famous for its reggae soundtrack that is said to have "brought reggae to the world".
Lackawanna Blues is a 2005 American biographical drama television film directed by George C. Wolfe and written by Ruben Santiago-Hudson. It aired on HBO on February 12, 2005. It is based on the play of the same name by Santiago-Hudson. Wolfe had commissioned the stage version.
