Transcendence (2014 Film)
''Transcendence'' is a 2014 American science fiction thriller film directed by Wally Pfister (in his directorial debut) and written by Jack Paglen. The film stars Johnny Depp, Morgan Freeman, Rebecca Hall, Paul Bettany, Kate Mara, Cillian Murphy and Cole Hauser, and follows a group of scientists who race to finish an artificial intelligence project while being targeted by a radical anti-technology organization. Paglen's screenplay was listed on the 2012 edition of The Black List, a list of popular unproduced screenplays in Hollywood. ''Transcendence'' was a box office flop, grossing just $103 million against a budget of as much as $150 million. The film received mainly mixed reviews; it was criticized for its plot structure, characters and dialogue but praised for its cinematography, acting, and score. Plot Dr. Will Caster is a scientist who researches the nature of sapience, including artificial intelligence. He and his team work to create a sentient computer; he pre ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Wally Pfister
Walter C. Pfister (born July 8, 1961) is an American director and former cinematographer. He's best known for his partnership with filmmaker Christopher Nolan, working as a cinematographer in all his films from 2000 to 2012, with his work in '' Inception'' (2010) earning him an Academy Award for Best Cinematography. Pfister then transitioned to a career as a director, debuting with '' Transcendence'' (2014). After that, he worked mostly in commercials and television, including episodes of '' Flaked'' and '' The Tick''. Early life Pfister was born in Chicago, Illinois, and raised in the New York City suburb of Irvington-on-Hudson. He is the son of Patricia Ann (née Conway) and Walter J. Pfister, Jr. His grandfather was the city editor of a newspaper in Wisconsin. His father, also known as Wally, was a TV news producer, who began his career with CBS-TV in Chicago in 1955. Later, as an executive at ABC News, the elder Pfister worked with David Brinkley and Peter Jennings ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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DMG Entertainment
DMG Entertainment is an American entertainment and media company, specializing in the co-production and distribution of American films for the Chinese market. The studio's most recognizable films include ''Looper (film), Looper'' (2012), ''Iron Man 3'' (2013) and ''Bloodshot (film), Bloodshot'' (2020). History DMG Entertainment began as a film production company that was founded by Dan Mintz (producer, director and executive), Dan Mintz, Wu Bing, and Peter Xiao. In 2012, DMG started co-producing and financing major motion pictures. Their first picture ''Looper (film), Looper'' generated 177 million dollars on a 30 million dollar budget. After Looper, DMG would go on to produce ''Iron Man 3'' with Marvel Studios, which would later become the most successful of all the Iron Man movies grossing over $1.2 billion in worldwide box office revenue. DMG Interactive In 2017, DMG Entertainment launched DMG VR, a new division focused on immersive storytelling. As part of a new project, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sapience
Wisdom, also known as sapience, is the ability to apply knowledge, experience, and good judgment to navigate life’s complexities. It is often associated with insight, discernment, and ethics in decision-making. Throughout history, wisdom has been regarded as a key virtue in philosophy, religion, and psychology, representing the ability to understand and respond to reality in a balanced and thoughtful manner. Unlike intelligence, which primarily concerns problem-solving and reasoning, wisdom involves a deeper comprehension of human nature, moral principles, and the long-term consequences of actions. Philosophically, wisdom has been explored by thinkers from Ancient Greece to modern times. Socrates famously equated wisdom with recognizing one’s own ignorance, while Aristotle saw it as practical reasoning (''phronesis'') and deep contemplation ('' sophia''). Eastern traditions, such as Confucianism and Buddhism, emphasize wisdom as a form of enlightened understanding that le ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Box-office Bomb
A box-office bomb is a film that is unprofitable or considered highly unsuccessful during its theatrical run. Although any film for which the combined production budget, marketing, and distribution costs exceed the revenue after release has technically "bombed", the term is more frequently used for major studio releases that were highly anticipated, extensively marketed, and expensive to produce, but nevertheless failed commercially. Originally, a "bomb" had the opposite meaning, referring instead to a successful film that "exploded" at the box office. The term continued to be used this way in the United Kingdom into the 1970s. Causes Negative word of mouth With the advent of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter in the 2000s, word of mouth regarding new films is easily spread and has had a marked effect on box office performance. A film's ability or failure to attract positive or negative commentary can strongly impact its performance at the box office, espe ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Black List (survey)
The Black List is an annual survey of the "most-liked" motion picture screenplays not yet produced. It has been published every year since 2005 on the second Friday of December by Franklin Leonard, a development executive who subsequently worked at Universal Pictures and Will Smith's Overbrook Entertainment. The website states that these are not necessarily "the best" screenplays, but rather "the most liked", since it is based on a survey of studio and production company executives. Of the more than 1,000 screenplays The Black List has included since 2005, at least 450 have been produced as theatrical films, including ''Argo'', '' American Hustle'', '' Juno'', ''The King's Speech'', ''Slumdog Millionaire'', '' Spotlight'', '' The Revenant'', '' The Descendants'', ''Promising Young Woman'' and '' Hell or High Water''. The produced films have together grossed over $30 billion, and been nominated for 241 Academy Awards and 205 Golden Globe Awards, winning 50 and 40 respective ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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List Of Directorial Debuts
This is a list of film directorial debuts in chronological order. The films and dates referred to are a director's first commercial cinematic release. Many filmmakers have directed works which were not commercially released, for example early works by Orson Welles such as his filming of his stage production of ''Twelfth Night (1933 film), Twelfth Night'' in 1933 or his experimental short film ''The Hearts of Age'' in 1934. Often, these early works were not intended for commercial release by intent, such as film school projects or inability to find distribution. Subsequently, many directors learned their trade in the medium of television as it became popular in the 1940s and 1950s. Notable directors who did their first directorial work in this medium include Robert Altman, Sidney Lumet, and Alfonso Cuarón. As commercial television advertising became more cinematic in the 1960s and 1970s, many directors early work was in this medium, including directors such as Alan Parker and Ridle ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Thriller Film
Thriller film, also known as suspense film or suspense thriller, is a broad film genre that evokes excitement and suspense in the audience. The suspense element found in most films' plots is particularly exploited by the filmmaker in this genre. Tension is created by delaying what the audience sees as inevitable, and is built through situations that are menacing or where escape seems impossible. The cover-up of important information from the viewer, and fight and chase scenes are common methods. Life is typically threatened in a thriller film, such as when the protagonist does not realize that they are entering a dangerous situation. Thriller films' characters conflict with each other or with an outside force, which can sometimes be abstract. The protagonist is usually set against a problem, such as an escape, a goal, mission, or a mystery. Screenwriter and scholar Eric R. Williams identifies thriller films as one of eleven super-genres in his Screenwriters Taxonomy, screenwriter ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Science Fiction Film
Science fiction (or sci-fi) is a film genre that uses Speculative fiction, speculative, fictional science-based depictions of phenomena that are not fully accepted by mainstream science, such as Extraterrestrial life in fiction, extraterrestrial lifeforms, List of fictional spacecraft, spacecraft, robots, cyborgs, Mutants in fiction, mutants, interstellar travel, time travel, or other technologies. Science fiction films have often been used to focus on politics, political or social issues, and to explore philosophical issues like the human condition. The genre has existed since the early years of silent cinema, when Georges Méliès' ''A Trip to the Moon'' (1902) employed Special effect, trick photography effects. The next major example (first in feature-length in the genre) was the film ''Metropolis (1927 film), Metropolis'' (1927). From the 1930s to the 1950s, the genre consisted mainly of low-budget B movies. After Stanley Kubrick's landmark ''2001: A Space Odyssey (film), 20 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Box Office Mojo
Box Office Mojo is an American website that tracks box-office revenue in a systematic, algorithmic way. The site was founded in 1998 by Brandon Gray, and was bought in 2008 by IMDb, which itself is owned by Amazon. History Brandon Gray began the site on August 7, 1998, making forecasts of the top-10 highest-grossing films in the United States for the following weekend. To compare his forecasts to the actual results, he started posting the weekend grosses and wrote a regular column with box-office analysis. In 1999, he started to post the Friday daily box-office grosses, sourced from Exhibitor Relations, so that they were publicly available online on Saturdays and posted the Sunday weekend estimates on Sundays. Along with the weekend grosses, he was publishing the daily grosses, release schedules and other charts, such as all-time charts, international box office charts, genre charts, and actor and director charts. The site gradually expanded to include weekend charts goin ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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ContactMusic
''Contactmusic.com'' is an online magazine of cultural criticism based in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It publishes reviews, interviews, and detailed essays on most cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, films, and theater. The website was created in April 2000 by a team of music and entertainment journalists. It has since expanded to over fifty staff and freelance contributors located around the globe, based in different continents and countries. Its staff includes writers from various backgrounds, ranging from academics and professional journalists to career professionals and first time writers. Contactmusic.com has been cited as a source by BBC Radio, '' The Express Tribune'', Warp Records and '' Vogue'', and was added to the list of ratings sources of Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate st ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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British Board Of Film Classification
The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) is a non-governmental organization, non-governmental organisation founded by the British film industry in 1912 and responsible for the national classification and censorship of films exhibited at cinemas and video works (such as television programmes, Trailer (promotion), trailers, adverts, public information/campaigning films, menus, bonus content, etc.) released on physical media within the United Kingdom. It has a statutory requirement to classify all video works released on VHS, DVD, Blu-ray Disc, Blu-ray (including Blu-ray 3D, 3D and Ultra HD Blu-ray, 4K UHD formats), and, to a lesser extent, some video games under the Video Recordings Act 1984. The BBFC was also the designated regulator for the UK age-verification, UK age-verification scheme, which was abandoned before being implemented. History and overview The BBFC was established in 1912 as the British Board of Film Censors, under the aegis of the Incorporated Associa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Entertainment Film Distributors
Entertainment Film Distributors Limited is a British distributor of independent films in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It was founded by Michael L. Green and is currently run by his son Nigel Green. The company has released many BAFTA and Oscar-winning films including ''The Departed'', ''Million Dollar Baby'', ''Gosford Park'', ''Brokeback Mountain'' and '' The Artist''. History Michael L. Green was a veteran producer/distributor involved in the film industry since the 1930s when he was a teenager. In 1972, he founded Variety, a prolific film distributor. On 10 November 1977, Green closed Variety and with his two sons, Nigel and Trevor, formed Entertainment Film Distributors (and later its video arm, Entertainment in Video), which served as one of the leading forces in UK distribution. Michael L. Green died on 17 June 2003 at the age of 84 and Trevor Green died on 30 April 2020 at the age of 66. Their first big success was ''Teen Wolf'' (1985) starring Michael J. Fox. Enterta ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |