Mockbuster Films
A mockbuster (also known as knockbuster or drafting opportunity) is a film created to exploit the publicity of another major motion picture with a similar title or subject. Mockbusters are often made with a low budget and quick production to maximize profits. "Mockbuster" is a portmanteau of the words "mock" and "blockbuster". Criteria Unlike films produced to capitalize on the popularity of a recent release by adopting similar genre or storytelling elements, mockbusters are generally produced concurrently with upcoming films and released direct-to-video around the time the film they are inspired by is released. A mockbuster may be similar enough in title or packaging that consumers confuse it with the actual film it mimics; however, their producers maintain that they are simply offering additional products for consumers who want to watch more films in the same subgenres. History Mockbusters have a long history in Hollywood and elsewhere. For example, the 1959 Vanwick film '' The ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of newspapers in the United States, sixth-largest newspaper in the U.S. and the largest in the Western United States with a print circulation of 118,760. It has 500,000 online subscribers, the fifth-largest among U.S. newspapers. Owned by Patrick Soon-Shiong and published by California Times, the paper has won over 40 Pulitzer Prizes since its founding. In the 19th century, the paper developed a reputation for civic boosterism and opposition to Trade union, labor unions, the latter of which led to the Los Angeles Times bombing, bombing of its headquarters in 1910. The paper's profile grew substantially in the 1960s under publisher Otis Chandler, who adopted a more national focus. As with other regional newspapers in California and the United Sta ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg ( ; born December 18, 1946) is an American filmmaker. A major figure of the New Hollywood era and pioneer of the modern blockbuster, Spielberg is widely regarded as one of the greatest film directors of all time and is the highest-grossing film director of all time. Several of Spielberg's works are considered among the greatest films in history, and some are among the highest-grossing films ever. Spielberg was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. He moved to California and studied film in college. After directing several episodes for television, including '' Night Gallery'' and '' Columbo'', he directed the television film ''Duel'' (1971), which was approved by Barry Diller. He made his theatrical debut with '' The Sugarland Express'' (1974) and became a household name with the summer blockbuster ''Jaws'' (1975). He directed more escapist box office successes with '' Close Encounters of the Third Kind'' (1977), '' E.T. the Ext ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Black Lolita
''Black Lolita'' is a 3D blaxploitation film directed by Stephen Gibson. It was released in 1975 under that title. Some time later, new footage was added to create another film, which was released under the title of ''Wildcat Women''. It is about a singer who returns to her home town to fight the gangsters who have taken it over. It stars Yolanda Love, Ed Cheatwood, Susan Ayers and Joey Ginza. Premise A beautiful singer whose career is on the rise finds out that her relatives are being harassed by criminals. She returns to her hometown to take revenge on them. She puts together a team to take them on, and Buddha, the criminal boss who murdered her uncle, from whom he was trying to extort money. Background The film is also called ''Bad Lolita'', and was released in 1975. The original was released in 3D. It was announced in the January 20, 1975 issue of ''Box'' that the film was possibly the first black action movie to be filmed in 3D and that it was scheduled to open in Chicago i ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Shampoo (film)
''Shampoo'' is a 1975 American comedy film directed by Hal Ashby, and starring Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Goldie Hawn, Lee Grant, Jack Warden, Tony Bill, and Carrie Fisher in her film debut. Co-written by Beatty and Robert Towne, the film follows a promiscuous Los Angeles hairdresser on 1968 United States presidential election, Election Day 1968, as he juggles his relationships with several women. The film is a satire focusing on the theme of sexual politics and late-1960s sexual and social mores. Plot On the eve of the 1968 United States presidential election, successful Beverly Hills hairdresser George Roundy meets with Felicia, one of his several clients/sexual partners, at his apartment. During sex, he receives a phone call from Jill, his naive, younger, up-and-coming actress girlfriend, who is suffering a panic attack, paranoid that an intruder is in her home. George rushes from his house to calm Jill, which frustrates Felicia. George's occupation and charisma have pro ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Black Shampoo
''Black Shampoo'' is an American exploitation film directed by Greydon Clark. Released in 1976, the comedy film is considered an example of the blaxploitation and sexploitation subgenres of exploitation film. Produced on a budget of $50,000, the film stars John Daniels as Jonathan Knight, an African American businessman and hairdresser who frequently has sex with his predominantly white female clients, and Tanya Boyd as Brenda, Jonathan's secretary and girlfriend, who was previously in a relationship with a white mob boss, who, out of jealousy towards his ex's new lover, begins to regularly send goons to trash Jonathan's hair salon. The violence escalates as the film progresses. Clark purposely did not want to make a film that featured character archetypes that typically led blaxploitation films, such as pimps, private detectives or drug dealers, and set out to make a film in which an African American businessman was the lead, instead of more stereotypical blaxploitation char ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Blaxploitation
In American cinema, Blaxploitation is the film subgenre of action movie derived from the exploitation film genre in the early 1970s, consequent to the combined cultural momentum of the black civil rights movement, the black power movement, and the Black Panther Party, political and sociological circumstances that facilitated black artists reclaiming their power of the representation of the black ethnic identity in the arts. The term ''blaxploitation'' is a portmanteau of the words ''Black'' and ''exploitation'', coined by Junius Griffin, president of the Beverly Hills–Hollywood branch of the NAACP in 1972. In criticizing the Hollywood portrayal of the multiracial society of the US, Griffin said that the ''blaxploitation'' genre was "proliferating offenses" to and against the black community, by perpetuating racist stereotypes of inherent criminality. After the cultural misrepresentation of black people in the race films of the 1940s, the 1950s, and the 1960s, the Blaxploi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid
''Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid'' is a 1969 American Western (genre), Western buddy film directed by George Roy Hill and written by William Goldman. Based loosely on fact, the film tells the story of Wild West outlaws Robert LeRoy Parker, known as Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman), and his partner Harry Longabaugh, the "Sundance Kid" (Robert Redford), who are on the run from a crack US Posse comitatus, posse after a string of train robberies. The pair and Sundance's lover, Etta Place (Katharine Ross), flee to Bolivia to escape the posse. The film was released on September 24, 1969 and initially received lukewarm reviews from critics, but over the years it has since garnered some retrospective reappraisal. In 2003, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The American Film Institute ranked ''Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid'' as the 73rd-greatest ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Alias Smith And Jones
''Alias Smith and Jones'' is an American Western television series that originally aired on ABC from January 1971 to January 1973. The show initially starred Pete Duel (and, after Duel's death, Roger Davis) as Hannibal Heyes and Ben Murphy as Jedediah "Kid" Curry, outlaw cousins who are trying to reform. The governor offers them a clemency deal on two conditions: that they keep the agreement a secret, and that they will remain wanted fugitives until the governor decides that they should receive a formal amnesty. Plot Operating primarily in Wyoming Territory (1868–1890), cousins Hannibal Heyes and Jedediah "Kid" Curry (whose boyish face spawned the nickname) are the two most successful outlaws in the history of the West. However, crime-fighting methods are evolving to foil them; safes are becoming harder to crack, trains more difficult to stop, and posses more adept at tracking them down. Heyes, the brains of the Devil's Hole Gang, falls in disfavor with fellow members. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Star Wars (film)
''Star Wars'' (later retitled ''Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope'') is a 1977 American Epic film, epic space opera film written and directed by George Lucas, produced by Lucasfilm Ltd. and released by Twentieth Century-Fox. It is the first film in the ''Star Wars'' franchise and the fourth chronological chapter of the "Skywalker Saga". Set in Universe of Star Wars, a fictional galaxy under the rule of the tyrannical Galactic Empire (Star Wars), Galactic Empire, the film follows a group of freedom fighters known as the Rebel Alliance, who aim to destroy the Empire's ultimate weapon, the Death Star. When the rebel leader Princess Leia is captured by the Empire, Luke Skywalker acquires stolen architectural plans of the Death Star and sets out to rescue her while learning the ways of a metaphysical power known as "the Force" from the Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. The cast includes Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Cushing, Alec Guinness, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Bak ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Battlestar Galactica (1978 TV Series)
''Battlestar Galactica'' is an American science fiction on television, science fiction television series created by Glen A. Larson that aired on the American Broadcasting Company, ABC network from September 17, 1978, to April 29, 1979. It stars an ensemble cast led by Lorne Greene, Richard Hatch (actor), Richard Hatch, and Dirk Benedict. The series follows a group of humans fleeing the destruction of their homeworlds aboard the Battlestar Galactica (fictional spacecraft), titular spacecraft, searching for a new home while being pursued by the Cylons, a fearsome society of robots intent on exterminating all humans. Beginning production as a miniseries, ABC subsequently ordered a full season and the show was reworked as an episodic serial. However, high production costs and declining ratings led to the series' cancellation after 24 episodes. ABC attempted to revive the series as a lower-budget spinoff, ''Galactica 1980'', but it performed poorly and was cancelled after airing ten e ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Glen A
A glen is a valley, typically one that is long and bounded by gently sloped concave sides, unlike a ravine, which is deep and bounded by steep slopes. The word is Goidelic in origin: ''gleann'' in Irish and Scottish Gaelic, ''glion'' in Manx. The designation "glen" also occurs often in place names. Glens are appreciated by tourists for their tranquility and scenery. Etymology The word is Goidelic in origin: ''gleann'' in Irish and Scottish Gaelic, ''glion'' in Manx. In Manx, ''glan'' is also to be found meaning glen. It is cognate with Welsh ''glyn''. Whittow defines it as a "Scottish term for a deep valley in the Highlands" that is "narrower than a strath". Examples in Northern England, such as Glenridding, Westmorland, or Glendue, near Haltwhistle, Northumberland, are thought to derive from the aforementioned Cumbric cognate, or another Brythonic equivalent. This likely underlies some examples in Southern Scotland. As the name of a river, it is thought to derive ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Charlie's Angels
''Charlie's Angels'' is an American crime drama television series created by Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts for ABC. It originally aired from September 22, 1976, to June 24, 1981, airing for five seasons consisting of 115 episodes. It was produced by Spelling-Goldberg Productions. The show follows the crime-fighting adventures of three women working at a private detective agency in Los Angeles, California, and originally starred Kate Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, and Jaclyn Smith in the leading roles and John Forsythe providing the voice of their boss, the unseen Charlie Townsend, who directed the crime-fighting operations of the "Angels" over a speakerphone. There were a few casting changes: after the departure of Fawcett at the end of season 1, Cheryl Ladd joined in season 2 and remained in the show till the ending. When Jackson departed at the end of season 3, Shelley Hack joined for season 4, and she was subsequently replaced by Tanya Roberts in season 5. Despite mixed revi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |