Portal:Film


The Film Portal

Man working with a movie projector in a movie theater, 1958
Man working with a movie projector in a movie theater, 1958

A film, movie, or motion picture is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are generally, since the 1930s, synchronized with sound and sometimes feature other sensory stimuli.

Films are produced by recording people and objects with cameras or by creating them using animation techniques and special effects. They comprise a series of individual frames, but when these images are shown rapidly in succession, the illusion of motion is seen by the viewer. Flickering between frames is not noticeable due to an effect traditionally known as persistence of vision, and now more specifically known as flicker fusion, whereby the visual system processes a sufficiently fast succession of pictures and interruptions into a steady image of averaged brightness. (Full article...)

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Fight Club is a 1999 American film directed by David Fincher starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter. It is based on the 1996 novel Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. Norton plays the unnamed narrator, who is discontented with his white-collar job. He forms a "fight club" with a soap salesman, Tyler Durden (Pitt) and becomes embroiled with an impoverished but beguiling woman, Marla Singer (Bonham Carter).

Palahniuk's novel was optioned by Fox 2000 Pictures producer Laura Ziskin, who hired Uhls to write the film adaptation. Fincher was selected because of his enthusiasm for the story. He developed the script with Uhls and sought screenwriting advice from the cast and others in the film industry. It was filmed in and around Los Angeles from July to December 1998. He and the cast compared the film to Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and The Graduate (1967), with a theme of conflict between Generation X and the value system of advertising. (Portal:Film/Featured content)

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Grauman's Chinese Theatre
Grauman's Chinese Theatre
Credit: Carol M. Highsmith

Grauman's Chinese Theatre is a movie theatre located at 6925 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California. The Chinese Theatre was commissioned following the success of the nearby Grauman's Egyptian Theatre which opened in 1922.

Did you know...

  • ... that Pier Paolo Pasolini used recordings of Romanian ritual songs to the dead as on-screen music in his film Oedipus Rex?
  • ... that while filming a music video for her debut album at a motel, Underscores had the police called on her by the motel staff because they thought she was shooting a pornographic film?
  • ... that Riley, a film about a closeted high school football player, is inspired by the director's own experience as a student athlete?
  • ... that the director of the lesbian film The First Girl I Loved based the plot on true stories gathered from all-girls school graduates he interviewed?
  • ... that the documentary Hitler's Favourite Royal was considered by some reviewers to be overly sympathetic to its subject?

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West in 1932

Mary Jane West (August 17, 1893 – November 22, 1980), known as Mae West, was an American actress, singer, comedian, screenwriter, and playwright. Recognized as a prominent sex symbol of her time, she was known for portraying sexually confident characters and for her use of double entendres, often delivering her lines in a distinctive contralto voice. With a career spanning more than seven decades, she was frequently associated with controversies over censorship and once stated, "I believe in censorship. I made a fortune out of it." West is listed as one of the top 25 female movie stars of all time in the American Film Institute's survey AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars. For her contribution to the motion picture industry, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

West began performing in vaudeville and on stage in New York before moving on to film in Los Angeles. By 1933, she was one of the largest box-office draws in the U.S. and, by 1935, she was also the highest paid woman and the second-highest paid person in the U.S. (after William Randolph Hearst). Censorship had increasingly made West's sexually suggestive humor difficult to sustain on screen. She was included in the "Box Office Poison" list published by the Independent Theatre Owners Association in 1938. Among her film credits include Night After Night (1932; her motion picture debut), She Done Him Wrong and I'm No Angel (both 1933), Belle of the Nineties (1934), Go West, Young Man (1936), My Little Chickadee (1940), The Heat's On (1943), and Myra Breckinridge (1970). As her movie career declined, she remained active by writing books and plays, performing in Las Vegas and London, and appearing on radio and television shows. In later years, West also released rock and roll records, including the studio albums Way Out West (1966) and Great Balls of Fire (1972). Her final film role was in the musical comedy Sextette (1978). (Full article...)

  Per a review process, Featured lists are considered to be the best list articles on English Wikipedia.

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George Clooney
I think now films are reflecting the exact same thing that goes on in society today which is for the first time since then people are sitting at restaurants and having conversations about their concerns or their beliefs in the political system and I think that films reflect that. We're not good first responder films. We have to write a script after things happen. We have to direct it. We have to shoot it. We have to edit it and release it. So, in general we tend to be, you know, is there a liberal bend, sure. I don't make any apologies about that. I'm a liberal, you know. I believe in it.
— George Clooney, 2006

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