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Ricky Fitts
''American Beauty'' is a 1999 American Psychological fiction, psychological dark comedy, dark comedy-drama film written by Alan Ball (screenwriter), Alan Ball and directed by Sam Mendes in his feature directorial debut. Kevin Spacey stars as Lester Burnham, an advertising executive who has a midlife crisis when he becomes infatuated with his teenage daughter's best friend, played by Mena Suvari. Annette Bening stars as Lester's materialistic wife, Carolyn, and Thora Birch plays their insecure daughter, Jane. Wes Bentley, Chris Cooper, and Allison Janney co-star. Academics have described the film as satirizing how beauty and personal satisfaction are perceived by the American middle class; further analysis has focused on the film's explorations of romantic and paternal love, sexuality, materialism and self-liberation. After being filmed in California from December 1998 to February 1999, ''American Beauty'' was released by DreamWorks Pictures in North America on September 17, 199 ...
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Sam Mendes
Sir Samuel Alexander Mendes (born 1 August 1965) is a British film and stage director, producer, and screenwriter. In 2000, Mendes was appointed a CBE for his services to drama, and he was Knight Bachelor, knighted in the 2020 New Year Honours, 2020 New Years Honours List. In 2000, Mendes was awarded the Shakespeare Prize by the Alfred Toepfer Stiftung F.V.S., Alfred Toepfer Foundation in Hamburg, Germany. In 2005, he received a lifetime achievement award from the Directors Guild of Great Britain."Sam Mendes gets directing honour"
BBC. Retrieved 18 June 2012
In 2008, ''The Daily Telegraph'' ranked him number 15 in their list of the "100 most powerful people in Culture of the United Kingdom, British culture". Born in Berkshire to a Trinidadians and Tobagonians, Trinidad ...
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Grauman's Egyptian Theatre
Grauman's Egyptian Theatre, also known as Egyptian Hollywood and the Egyptian, is a historic movie theater located on Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. Opened in 1922, it is an early example of a lavish movie palace and is noted as having been the site of the world's first film premiere, however, its popularity was supplanted by Grauman's Chinese Theatre when it opened five years later. From 1998 until 2020, the Egyptian was owned and operated by the American Cinematheque, and in May 2020, Netflix bought the theater. Following a large restoration project, the theater re-opened in November 2023, with Netflix handling the programming Monday through Thursday and the American Cinematheque overseeing Friday through Sunday. History Origins The Egyptian was built by showman Sid Grauman and real estate developer Charles E. Toberman, who subsequently built the nearby El Capitan Theatre and Chinese Theatre. Grauman had previously opened one of the ...
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72nd Academy Awards
The 72nd Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored 1999 in film, films released in 1999 and took place on March 26, 2000, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, beginning at 5:30 p.m. Pacific Time Zone, PST / 8:30 p.m. Eastern Time Zone, EST. During the ceremony, the AMPAS presented Academy Awards (commonly referred to as Oscars) in 23 categories. The ceremony, televised in the United States by American Broadcasting Company, ABC, was produced by husband-and-wife producing team Richard D. Zanuck, Richard and Lili Fini Zanuck and was directed by Louis J. Horvitz. Actor Billy Crystal hosted the show for the seventh time. He first presided over the 62nd Academy Awards, 62nd ceremony held in 1990 and had last hosted the 70th Academy Awards, 70th ceremony held in 1998. Three weeks earlier in a ceremony at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California held on March 4, the Ac ...
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Saving Private Ryan
''Saving Private Ryan'' is a 1998 American epic war film directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Robert Rodat. Set in 1944 in Normandy, France, during World War II, it follows a group of soldiers, led by Captain John Miller ( Tom Hanks), on a mission to locate Private James Francis Ryan (Matt Damon) and bring him home safely after his three brothers have been killed in action. The cast also includes Edward Burns, Tom Sizemore and Jeremy Davies. Inspired by the books of Stephen E. Ambrose and accounts of multiple soldiers in a single family, such as the Niland brothers, being killed in action, Rodat drafted the script, and Paramount Pictures hired him to finish writing it. The project came to the attention of Hanks and Spielberg, whose involvement, due to their previous successes, secured the project's development. Spielberg wanted to make ''Saving Private Ryan'' as authentic as possible and hired Frank Darabont and Scott Frank to do uncredited rewrites based on re ...
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Academy Award For Best Picture
The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards (also known as Oscars) presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) since the awards debuted in 1929. This award goes to the producers of the film and is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible to submit a nomination and vote on the final ballot. The Best Picture category is traditionally the final award of the night and is widely considered the most prestigious honor of the ceremony. The Grand Staircase columns at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, where the Academy Awards ceremonies have been held since 2002, showcase every film that has won the Best Picture title since the award's inception. There have been 611 films nominated for Best Picture and 97 winners. History Category name changes At the 1st Academy Awards ceremony held in 1929 (for films made in 1927 and 1928), there were two categories of awards that were each considered the top award of the ni ...
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Academy Awards
The Academy Awards, commonly known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit in film. They are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in the United States in recognition of excellence in cinematic achievements as assessed by the Academy's voting membership. The Oscars are widely considered to be the most prestigious awards in the film industry. The major award categories, known as the Academy Awards of Merit, are presented during a live-televised Hollywood, Los Angeles, Hollywood ceremony in February or March. It is the oldest worldwide entertainment awards ceremony. The 1st Academy Awards were held in 1929. The 2nd Academy Awards, second ceremony, in 1930, was the first one broadcast by radio. The 25th Academy Awards, 1953 ceremony was the first one televised. It is the oldest of the EGOT, four major annual American entertainment awards. Its counterparts—the Emmy Awards for television, the Tony Awards for theater, and ...
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1999 In Film
The year 1999 in film included Stanley Kubrick's posthumous final film ''Eyes Wide Shut'', Pedro Almodóvar's first Oscar-winning film '' All About My Mother'', the science-fiction film ''The Matrix'', the animated works ''The Iron Giant'', ''Toy Story 2'', ''Tarzan'', and '' South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut'', the Best Picture-winner '' American Beauty'', and the well-received '' The Green Mile''. Other noteworthy releases include M. Night Shyamalan's ''The Sixth Sense'', David Fincher's ''Fight Club'', Sofia Coppola's ''The Virgin Suicides'', Paul Thomas Anderson's ''Magnolia'' and Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman's ''Being John Malkovich''. The year also featured George Lucas' top-grossing '' Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace''. Columbia Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer celebrated their 75th anniversaries in 1999. Highest-grossing films The top 10 films released in 1999 by worldwide gross are as follows: Awards 1999 films By country/region * List of ...
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Being John Malkovich
''Being John Malkovich'' is a 1999 American surrealist fantasy comedy drama film directed by Spike Jonze and written by Charlie Kaufman, both making their feature film debut. The film stars John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, and Catherine Keener, with John Malkovich as a satirical version of himself. Cusack plays a puppeteer who finds a portal that leads into Malkovich's mind. Released by USA Films, the film received widespread acclaim, with praise for its writing and direction, and grossed $23 million against a $13 million budget. The film was nominated in three categories at the 72nd Academy Awards: Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actress for Keener. The film ranked 441st on ''Empire'' magazine's 2008 list of the 500 greatest films of all time, while Malkovich's performance is ranked number 90 on ''Premiere's'' "100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time". Plot Craig Schwartz is an unemployed puppeteer in New York City, in a forlorn marriage wi ...
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American Middle Class
Though the American middle class does not have a definitive definition, contemporary social scientists have put forward several ostensibly congruent theories on it. Depending on the class model used, the middle class constitutes anywhere from 25% to 75% of households. One of the first major studies of the middle class in America was ''White Collar: The American Middle Classes'', published in 1951 by sociologist C. Wright Mills. Later sociologists such as Dennis Gilbert (sociologist), Dennis Gilbert commonly divide the middle class into two sub-groups: the professional or upper middle class (~15-20% of all households) consisting of highly educated, salaried professionals and managers, and the lower middle class (~33% of all households) consisting mostly of semi-professionals, skilled craftsmen and lower-level management. Middle-class persons commonly have a comfortable standard of living, significant economic security, considerable work autonomy and rely on their expertise to ...
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Midlife Crisis
A midlife crisis is a transition of identity and self-confidence that can occur in middle-aged individuals, typically 45 to 65 years old. The phenomenon is described as a psychological crisis brought about by events that highlight a person's growing age, inevitable mortality, and possible lack of accomplishments in life. This may produce feelings of intense depression, remorse, and high levels of anxiety; or the desire to achieve youthfulness, make drastic changes to their current lifestyle, or change past decisions and events. Crisis versus stressors Personality and a history of psychological crisis are believed to predispose some people to this "traditional" midlife crisis. People going through midlife crisis have a variety of symptoms and exhibit a disparate range of behaviors. Mid-life is the time from years 40-60 where a person is often evaluating their own life. However, many mid-life stressors are often labeled as a mid-life crisis. Day-to-day stressors are likely to add u ...
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Comedy-drama Film
Comedy drama (also known by the portmanteau dramedy) is a hybrid genre of works that combine elements of comedy and drama. In film, as well as scripted television series, serious dramatic subjects (such as death, illness, betrayal, grief, etc.) are handled with realism and subtlety, while preserving a humorous tenor. The term "dramedy" began to be used in the television industry in the 1980s. Modern television comedy dramas tend to have more humour integrated into the story than the comic relief common in drama series, but usually contain a lower joke rate than sitcoms. History In Greek theatre, plays were considered comedies or tragedies (i.e. drama): the former being light stories with a happy ending, and the latter serious stories with a sad ending. This concept even influenced Roman theatre and theatre of the Hellenistic period. Theatre of that era is thought to have long-lasting influence, even in modern narrative works. Even today, works are often classified into ...
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Dark Comedy
Black comedy, also known as black humor, bleak comedy, dark comedy, dark humor, gallows humor or morbid humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally considered serious or painful to discuss, aiming to provoke discomfort, serious thought, and amusement for their audience. Thus, in fiction, for example, the term ''black comedy'' can also refer to a genre in which dark humor is a core component. Black comedy differs from ribaldry#Blue comedy, blue comedy—which focuses more on topics such as nudity, Human sexual activity, sex, and body fluids—and from obscenity. Additionally, whereas the term ''black comedy'' is a relatively broad term covering humor relating to many serious subjects, ''gallows humor'' tends to be used more specifically in relation to death, or situations that are reminiscent of dying. Black humor can occasionally be related to the grotesque genre. Literary critics h ...
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