Friday 29 August 2014

Billboard 66: releases of the week

The Grand Seduction


The small harbor of Tickle Cove is in dire need of a doctor so that the town can land a contract to secure a factory which will save the town from financial ruin. Village resident Murray French leads the search, and when he finds Dr. Paul Lewis he employs - along with the whole town - tactics to seduce the doctor to stay permanently.


The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz

The story of programming prodigy and information activist Aaron Swartz. From Swartz's help in the development of the basic internet protocol RSS to his co-founding of Reddit, his fingerprints are all over the internet. But it was Swartz's groundbreaking work in social justice and political organizing combined with his aggressive approach to information access that ensnared him in a two year legal nightmare. It was a battle that ended with the taking of his own life at the age of 26. Aaron's story touched a nerve with people far beyond the online communities in which he was a celebrity. This film is a personal story about what we lose when we are tone deaf about technology and its relationship to our civil liberties.


Million Dollar Arm

A sports agent stages an unconventional recruitment strategy to get talented Asian cricket players to play Major League Baseball.


Night Moves

A drama centered on three environmentalists who plot to blow up a dam.






Brooklyn comedian Donna Stern gets dumped, fired and pregnant just in time for the worst/best St. Valentine's Day of her life.


Friday 22 August 2014

Billboard 65: Releases of the Week

What If


A young man struggles with his his deepening connection to a woman who is in a relationship.



A woman, accidentally caught in a dark deal, turns the tables on her captors and transforms into a merciless warrior evolved beyond human logic.



The town's most hard-boiled citizens cross paths with some of its more reviled inhabitants. 




Thursday 21 August 2014

Fashion films: Material Success



A documentary that follows the misadventures of the eccentric fashion designer Bruno Ierullo as he readies for his first runway show after a personal tragedy inspires him to risk his life savings on a career change into the art.




Friday 15 August 2014

Billboard 64: Releases of the Week



A psychiatrist searches the globe to find the secret of happiness.


Blod Ties

New York, 1974. Fifty-year-old Chris has just been released on good behavior after several years in prison following a gangland murder. Reluctantly waiting for him outside the gates is his younger brother, Frank, a cop with a bright future. Chris and Frank have always been different, and their father, Leon, who raised them alone, seems to favor Chris despite all his troubles. Yet blood ties are the ones that bind, and Frank, hoping that his brother has changed, is willing to give him a chance - he shares his home, finds him a job, and helps him reconnect with his children and his ex-wife, Monica. But Chris' inevitable descent back into a life of crime proves to be the last in a long line of betrayals, and after his brother's latest transgressions, Frank banishes him from his life. But it's already too late, as the brothers' destiny is bound together, forever.



Dinosaur 13

When Paleontologist Peter Larson and his team from the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research made the world's greatest dinosaur discovery in 1990, they knew it was the find of a lifetime; the largest, most complete T. rex ever found. But during a ten-year battle with the US. government, powerful museums, Native American tribes, and competing paleontologists, they found themselves not only fighting to keep their dinosaur but fighting for their freedom as well.






Friday 8 August 2014

Billboard 63: Releases of the Week



When Mickey’s crazy step-son Leon is killed in a construction ‘accident’, nobody in the working class neighbourhood of God’s Pocket is sorry he’s gone. Mickey tries to bury the bad news with the body, but when the boy’s mother demands the truth, Mickey finds himself stuck in a life-and-death struggle between a body he can’t bury, a wife he can’t please and a debt the can’t pay.


Lilting

Lilting is a touching, intimate film about finding the things which bring us together. In contemporary London, a Cambodian Chinese mother mourns the untimely death of her son. Her world is further disrupted by the presence of a stranger. We observe their difficulties in trying to connect with one another without a common language, as through a translator they begin to piece together memories of a man they both loved.


Wednesday 6 August 2014

Fashion films: About Face: Supermodels Then and Now



'About Face' explores beauty and aging through the stories of the original supermodels: women, now between fifty and eighty years old, whose images defined our sense of beauty over the last half-century. Shot in Timothy Greenfield-Sanders' intimate portrait style, participants include Isabella Rossellini, Christie Brinkley, Marisa Berenson, China Machado, Beverly Johnson, Carmen Dell'Orefice, Paulina Porizkova, Jerry Hall, and Christy Turlington among others. They discuss the fashion industry, their careers, aging, plastic surgery, botox, and how they have reassessed and redefined their own sense of beauty as they have aged. Designer Calvin Klein says in the film, 'They had something inside that came through...they had character, they had personality. Those qualities never age'.


Friday 1 August 2014

Billboard 62: Releases of the Week

A Promise


Young Friederich has humble origins, but rises to the attention of his new boss, Karl. As he volunteers to tutor his employer's son, he gets more and more attached to Karl's young wife Lotte. She refuses however to betray her husband even when they learn Friedrich must go to Mexico for two years to supervise a mining project for Karl. Friedrich and Lotte swear one another they will stay true to each other, but the oncoming war keeps them apart for far longer than expected. After six years, Friedrich goes back to Germany and finally sweeps Lotte off her feet.


Mood Indigo

A woman suffers from an unusual illness caused by a flower growing in her lungs.


Monday 28 July 2014

Fashion films: Visionaries, inside the creative mind of Tom Ford


An insight into the working practices of creative thinkers. Now, time for Tom Ford


The hour-long documentary series Visionaries: Inside the Creative Mind follows some of the world’s most iconic innovators and takes audiences inside their creative process, offering never-before-seen views of true masterminds at work.

The five-episode series includes Tom Ford, who reveals the experiences, challenges and rewards of bringing his ideas to life. With unprecedented access, this series provides unique insight into what made these visionary who they are and what continues to inspire them.






Friday 25 July 2014

Billboard 61: releases of the week



Set in 1984 and inspired by true events, Believe is a funny and touching fictional tale about the legendary Manchester United football manager Sir Matt Busby, who helps a wayward boy fulfill his dream. An act of petty crime by 11 year old Georgie becomes a collision of fate as Sir Matt tracks him down, only to discover that the boy is an extraordinarily gifted footballer and captain of a team of unruly talents. Having lived with football all his life and survived the tragic 1958 Munich plane disaster, in which eight of his young players were killed, Sir Matt is still committed to continue his work of 'training lads for life' and so begins a thrilling adventure as Sir Matt Busby, comes out of retirement to transform a young group of scallywags into a dream team.



Fourteen hundred years ago, a tormented soul walked the earth that was neither man nor god. Hercules was the powerful son of the god king Zeus, for this he received nothing but suffering his entire life. After twelve arduous labours and the loss of his family, this dark, world-weary soul turned his back on the gods finding his only solace in bloody battle. Over the years he warmed to the company of six similar souls, their only bond being their love of fighting and presence of death. These men and women never question where they go to fight or why or whom, just how much they will be paid. Now the King of Thrace has hired these mercenaries to train his men to become the greatest army of all time. It is time for this bunch of lost souls to finally have their eyes opened to how far they have fallen when they must train an army to become as ruthless and blood thirsty as their reputation has become.




An ex-con, who is the unlikeliest of role models, meets a 15-year-old boy and is faced with the choice of redemption or ruin.


Who is Dayani Cristal?

An anonymous body in the Arizona desert sparks the beginning of a real-life human drama. The search for identity leads us back across a continent to seek out the people left behind and the meaning of a mysterious tattoo.








Wednesday 23 July 2014

Fashion films: Lagerfeld Confidential


«For the first time Karl Lagerfeld has agreed to let someone create an artwork on his every day life and to trust in the director. Until today there is no authorised biography existing and the memories who Karl Lagerfeld would compose stay perfectly confidential. After three years of work, and over three hundred hours of footage, Rodolphe Marconi discloses the daily life of the star through his personal lens as a filmmaker.»





Thursday 17 July 2014

Billboard 60: Releases of the Week


The Ghosts in Our Machine

The Ghosts in Our Machine illuminates the lives of individual animals living within and rescued from the machine of our modern world. Through the heart and photographic lens of acclaimed animal photographer Jo-Anne McArthur, we become intimately familiar with a cast of non-human animals. The film follows McArthur over the course of a year as she photographs several animal stories in parts of Canada, the US. and in Europe. Each story is a window into global animal industries: Food, Fashion, Entertainment and Research. All part of an epic photo project We Animals now in its 15th year and shot all over the globe, McArthur has documented the lives of animals with heart-breaking empathic vividness and professionalism. Are non-human animals property to be owned and used, or are they sentient beings deserving of rights.



A self-centered realtor enlists the help of his neighbor when he's suddenly left in charge of the granddaughter he never knew existed until his estranged son drops her off at his home.



A documentary on the late Vivian Maier, a nanny whose previously unknown cache of 100,000 photographs earned her a posthumous reputation as one the most accomplished street photographers.


Supermensch: The Legent of Shep Gordon

In his directorial debut, Mike Myers documents the astounding career of Hollywood insider, the loveable Shep Gordon, who fell into music management by chance after moving to LA straight out of college, and befriending Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix. Shep managed rock stars such as Pink Floyd, Luther Vandross, Teddy Pendergrass and Alice Cooper, and later went on to manage chefs such as Emeril Lagasse, ushering in the era of celebrity chefs on television. Stuffed with fantastic archive footage the film traces Shep's transformation from the 1970's hedonist to today's practicing Buddhist yearning for a family of his own.