Robert Anthony Rodriguez is an American filmmaker, composer, and visual effects supervisor. He shoots, edits, produces, and scores many of his films in Mexico and in his home state of Texas. Rodriguez directed the 1992 action film El Mariachi, which was a commercial success after grossing $2.6 million against a budget of $7,000. The film spawned two sequels known collectively as the Mexico Trilogy: Desperado (1995) and Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003).
Heat is a 1995 American crime film written and directed by Michael Mann. It features an ensemble cast led by Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, with Val Kilmer, Tom Sizemore, Diane Venora, Amy Brenneman, Ashley Judd, Wes Studi, Jon Voight, Ted Levine, Dennis Haysbert, and Danny Trejo in supporting roles. The film follows the conflict between an LAPD detective and a career criminal while also depicting its effect on their professional relationships and personal lives.
Daniel Trejo is an American actor. Born in Los Angeles, Trejo's film career began in 1985, when he landed a role in Runaway Train (1985). The first film in which he was given a proper credited role was as Art Sanella in Death Wish 4: The Crackdown (1987). He went on to star in a multitude of other films, many of which were small parts as inmates, gangsters, or other criminals, appearing in Desperado, Heat, From Dusk till Dawn (1996), Con Air (1997), The Replacement Killers (1998), Reindeer Games (2000), and Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003), among others.
From Dusk till Dawn is a 1996 American action horror film directed by Robert Rodriguez and written by Quentin Tarantino from a concept and story by Robert Kurtzman. Starring Harvey Keitel, George Clooney, Tarantino, Ernest Liu, and Juliette Lewis, the plot follows a pair of American criminal brothers who take a family as hostages in order to cross into Mexico, but ultimately find themselves trapped in a saloon frequented by vampires.
Desperado is a 1995 American neo-Western action film written, co-produced, edited and directed by Robert Rodriguez. It is the second part of Rodriguez's Mexico Trilogy. It stars Antonio Banderas as El Mariachi who seeks revenge on the drug lord who killed his lover. The film was screened out of competition at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival. Desperado grossed $58 million worldwide. It has been cited as Salma Hayek's breakout role.
Sam McCall is a fictional character from General Hospital, an American soap opera on the ABC network. Created by Charles Pratt, Jr. and Robert Guza, Jr., the character made her debut on the episode airing on October 1, 2003, portrayed by Kelly Monaco. Sam is the daughter of mob boss Julian Jerome and attorney Alexis Davis, born and placed for adoption when both were teenagers. She arrived in town as a con artist trying to reverse her family's bad luck by destroying the five lucky cards of the "Dead Man's Hand." Upon her arrival, she was characterized as a "sexy bad girl, with a nose for intrigue." Since her introduction, the character has matured into a self-assured and confident woman, while still retaining traces of her adventuresome, bad girl ways.
Mamma Mia! is a 2008 jukebox musical romantic comedy film directed by Phyllida Lloyd and written by Catherine Johnson, based on her book from the 1999 musical of the same name. The film is based on the songs of pop group ABBA, with additional music composed by ABBA member Benny Andersson. The film features an ensemble cast, including Christine Baranski, Pierce Brosnan, Dominic Cooper, Colin Firth, Amanda Seyfried, Stellan Skarsgård, Meryl Streep, and Julie Walters. The plot follows a young bride-to-be who invites three men to her upcoming wedding, with the possibility that any of them could be her father. The film was an international co-production between Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States, and was co-produced by Playtone and Littlestar Productions.
Machete is a 2010 American exploitation action film directed by Robert Rodriguez and Ethan Maniquis. The film is an expansion of a fake trailer of the same name published as a part of the promotion of Rodriguez's and Quentin Tarantino's 2007 Grindhouse double-feature. Machete continues the B movie and exploitation style of Grindhouse, and includes some of the footage from the original.
Texas Fear Fest was a horror-oriented for-profit media event held in the Dallas, Texas, area. Guests included actors, directors, and producers from classic and upcoming horror films. Texas Fear Fest was organized by John Gray and presented in conjunction with horror websites "Pit of Horror" and "Dread Central". Despite the apparent success of the first three events, the organization collapsed in 2011 due to internal issues which forced the cancellation of scheduled and future events.
Stiletto is a 2008 American direct-to-video action film directed by Nick Vallelonga and produced by Nick Vallelonga and Warren Ostergard. It stars Tom Berenger, Michael Biehn, Stana Katic, William Forsythe, and Tom Sizemore. It premiered at Newport Beach International Film Festival on April 28, 2008, and was released on DVD March 3, 2009 by First Look Studios.
Deborah Ruth Lurie is an American composer, arranger, and music producer from Boston, Massachusetts. She has scored several films such as Sleepover (2004), An Unfinished Life, Mozart and the Whale,, Sydney White (2007), Dear John (2010), One for the Money (2012), Safe Haven (2013), and Poms (2019). She has been a string arranger for musicians such as Brandi Carlile, Kelly Clarkson, Allison Iraheta, Adam Lambert, and Katy Perry. Lurie has also been a string arranger for several rock bands such as 3 Doors Down, Bon Jovi, Creed, Halestorm, Papa Roach, Simple Plan, The All-American Rejects, and Three Days Grace, though her best known collaborations have been with Hoobastank and Theory of a Deadman.
There are extensive and varied beliefs in ghosts in Mexican culture. In Mexico, the beliefs of the Maya, Nahua, Purépecha; and other indigenous groups in a supernatural world has survived and evolved, combined with the Catholic beliefs of the Spanish. The Day of the Dead incorporates pre-Columbian beliefs with Christian elements. Mexican literature and cinema include many stories of ghosts interacting with the living.
Dead in Tombstone is a 2013 American direct-to-video horror Western film produced by Universal 1440 Entertainment. It was directed by Roel Reiné and written by Shane Kuhn and Brendan Cowles. The film stars Danny Trejo as Guerrero, a gang leader who gets double-crossed by his fellow gang members. Striking a pact with the Devil after entering Hell, he resurfaces to the earthly world to avenge his own death by killing the men who murdered him. The film was released in home media on October 22, 2013, and was followed by a sequel, Dead Again in Tombstone (2017).
Danny Trejo is an American actor. His filmography consists of about 250 film and television roles. His prominence in the B movie scene has resulted in disparate media sources referring to Trejo as an "iconic actor" and a "film legend", among other titles.
Supremacy is a 2014 American drama thriller film directed by Deon Taylor, written by Eric J. Adams, and starring Joe Anderson, Dawn Olivieri and Danny Glover. The film chronicles the real life events of March 29–30, 1995, perpetrated by Aryan Brotherhood members Robert Walter Scully Jr. and Brenda Kay Moore. After fatally shooting a police officer, neo-Nazi Garrett Tully, along with his companion, Doreen Lesser, breaks into a house and takes an African-American family hostage.
Ethan Winters is a character in Resident Evil, a survival horror video game series created by the Japanese company Capcom. Ethan was introduced as one of the playable characters in the 2017 video game Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, in which he is depicted as an ordinary civilian searching for his missing wife within a dilapidated estate in Louisiana. He is also the protagonist of the 2021 sequel Resident Evil Village, where he is forced to locate his kidnapped daughter who was taken by a cult leader in a mysterious European village.
The third season of Dynasty, an American television series based on the 1980s prime time soap opera of the same name, premiered in the United States on The CW on October 11, 2019. The season is produced by CBS Television Studios, with Josh Reims as showrunner and executive producer alongside executive producers Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage. Dynasty was renewed for a third season on January 31, 2019, and for a fourth season on January 10, 2020. Production of season three was suspended in March 2020 as a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic, with only 20 of a planned 22 episodes completed.
