Chinatown is a 1974 American neo-noir mystery film directed by Roman Polanski from a screenplay by Robert Towne. The film stars Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. It was inspired by the California water wars, a series of disputes over southern California water at the beginning of the 20th century, by which Los Angeles interests secured water rights in the Owens Valley. The Robert Evans production, released by Paramount Pictures, was Polanski's last film in the United States and features many elements of film noir, particularly a multi-layered story that is part mystery and part psychological drama.
Ricardo Gonzalo Pedro Montalbán y Merino, KSG was a Mexican and American film and television actor. Montalbán's career spanned seven decades, during which he became widely known for performances in genres from crime and drama to musicals and comedy.
Roger William Corman was an American film director, producer and actor. Known under various monikers such as "The Pope of Pop Cinema", "The Spiritual Godfather of the New Hollywood", and "The King of Cult", he was known as a trailblazer in the world of independent film.
Luis Buñuel Portolés was a Spanish and Mexican filmmaker who worked in France, Mexico, and Spain. He has been widely considered by many film critics, historians, and directors to be one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time. Buñuel's works were known for their avant-garde surrealism which were also infused with political commentary.
William David Friedkin was an American film, television and opera director, producer, and screenwriter who was closely identified with the "New Hollywood" movement of the 1970s. Beginning his career in documentaries in the early 1960s, he is best known for his crime thriller film The French Connection (1971), which won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and the horror film The Exorcist (1973), which earned him another Academy Award nomination for Best Director.
Robert John Wagner Jr. is an American actor. He is known for starring in the television shows It Takes a Thief (1968–1970), Switch (1975–1978), and Hart to Hart (1979–1984). He later had recurring roles on Two and a Half Men (2007–2008) and NCIS (2010–2019).
Charles Edward Durning was an American actor who appeared in over 200 movies, television shows and plays. Durning's best-known films include The Sting (1973), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), The Muppet Movie (1979), True Confessions (1981), Tootsie (1982), Dick Tracy (1990), and O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000). He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for both The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982) and To Be or Not to Be (1983). Prior to his acting career, Durning served in World War II and was decorated for valor in combat.
Carter Benedict Burwell is an American film composer. He has frequently collaborated with the Coen brothers, having scored most of their films. He has also scored films by other directors such as Bill Condon, Todd Haynes, Spike Jonze, Martin McDonagh, James Foley, Brian Helgeland, and John Lee Hancock. Burwell received Academy Award nominations for Best Original Score for Haynes's Carol (2015) and McDonagh's films Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), and The Banshees Of Inisherin (2022).
Kerstin Anita Marianne Ekberg was a Swedish actress active in American and European films, known for her beauty and curvaceous figure. She became prominent in her iconic role as Sylvia in the Federico Fellini film La Dolce Vita (1960). Ekberg worked primarily in Italy, where she became a permanent resident in 1964.
Mary Woronov is an American actress, writer, and figurative painter. She is primarily known as a "cult star" because of her work with Andy Warhol and her roles in Roger Corman's cult films. Woronov has appeared in over 80 movies and on stage at Lincoln Center and off-Broadway productions as well as numerous times in mainstream American TV series, such as Charlie's Angels and Knight Rider. She frequently co-starred with friend Paul Bartel; the pair appeared in 17 films together, often playing a married couple.
Wheeler Winston Dixon is an American filmmaker and scholar. He is an expert on film history, theory and criticism. His scholarship has particular emphasis on François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, American experimental cinema and horror films. He has written extensively on numerous aspects of film, including his books A Short History of Film and A History of Horror. From 1999 through the end of 2014, he was co-editor, along with Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, of the Quarterly Review of Film and Video. He is regarded as a top reviewer of films. In addition, he is notable as an experimental American filmmaker with films made over several decades, and the Museum of Modern Art exhibited his works in 2003. He taught at Rutgers University, The New School in New York, the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and as of May 2020, is the James E. Ryan professor emeritus of film studies at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln.
The 29th Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards, given by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA) on January 7, 2004, honored the best in film for 2003. The ceremony was originally called off because of the MPAA screener ban as members felt they could not see all the movies in time for their awards but when that was removed the show was back on.
Kenneth Turan is an American retired film critic, author, and lecturer in the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California. He was a film critic for the Los Angeles Times from 1991 until 2020 and was described by The Hollywood Reporter as "arguably the most widely read film critic in the town most associated with the making of movies".
Thom Andersen is an American filmmaker, film critic, and teacher best known for his works of experimental film, including his 1975 film Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer and the 2003 essay film Los Angeles Plays Itself.
Tom Cruise is an American actor and producer who made his film debut with a minor role in the 1981 romantic drama Endless Love. Two years later, he made his breakthrough by starring in the romantic comedy Risky Business (1983), which garnered his first nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. In 1986, Cruise played a naval aviator in the Tony Scott-directed action drama Top Gun which was the highest-grossing film of the year, and also appeared with Paul Newman in the Martin Scorsese-directed drama The Color of Money. Two years later, he starred with Dustin Hoffman in the drama Rain Man (1988). His next role was as anti-war activist Ron Kovic in the film adaptation of Kovic's memoir of the same name, Born on the Fourth of July (1989), for which he received the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama.
Hugo is a 2011 American adventure drama film directed and produced by Martin Scorsese, and adapted for the screen by John Logan. Based on Brian Selznick's 2007 book The Invention of Hugo Cabret, it tells the story of a boy who lives alone in the Gare Montparnasse railway station in Paris in the 1930s, only to become embroiled in a mystery surrounding his late father's automaton and the pioneering filmmaker Georges Méliès.
A Satanic film is a subgenre of horror film, and at times other film genres, that involves the Devil as a concept or a character. Common themes/characters in Satanic film include the Antichrist, demonic possession, exorcism, and witchcraft.
Fred Charles Halsted was an American gay pornographic film director, actor, escort, publisher, and sex club owner. His films Sex Garage and L.A. Plays Itself are the only gay pornographic movies in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, where they were screened before a capacity audience on April 23, 1974. A screening of L.A. Plays Itself was sponsored by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on February 28, 2013, and another took place on December 16, 2011, at the Los Angeles art gallery Human Resources. His films have also been shown the Netherlands Film Museum and in competition at The Deauville Film Festival.
La La Land is a 2016 American musical romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by Damien Chazelle. It stars Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone as a struggling jazz pianist and an aspiring actress who meet and fall in love while pursuing their dreams in Los Angeles. The supporting cast includes John Legend, Rosemarie DeWitt, Finn Wittrock, and J. K. Simmons.
