Maternal melodramas featured plots with sacrificial, selfless mother-loving figures who suffered hardships. They were a popular tearjerker (or 'soaper') sub-genre requiring multiple hankies to make it to the emotional finales. Maternal characters were cruelly neglected and scorned by their children, or separated from their children for any number of causes (social pressures to give up the child, financial destitution, scandal or a moral lapse, etc.). However victimized, they would often become heroines by sacrificing themselves for their children.

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Short who-dun-its in the 1930s and 40s featured the B-movie, Canton-born, Honolulu-based Oriental sleuth Charlie Chan, derived from Earl Derr Biggers' works, and based on real-life Hawaiian cop Chang Apana (very unlike the movie version). The round-faced, meticulous sleuth was one of the screen's most prolific detectives, with 46 Chan films and one serial from 1926 to 1949. [Charlie Chan was never played on the screen by a Chinese actor.]

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Fairbanks, in the silent era, was succeeded by the dashing Australian actor Errol Flynn - the major swashbuckling male star of the 30s and early 40s adventure films in the sound era. His first of many historical, costume adventure films was director Michael Curtiz' Captain Blood (1935) about an Irish surgeon named Dr. Peter Blood who was charged with treason, sold into slavery, and ultimately became a buccaneer in the Caribbean. This was Flynn's first film (of eight features) with a young and lovely 19 year-old Olivia de Havilland, and the film featured the first original film score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Flynn played a 19th century British army officer stationed in India in the military swashbuckler The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), and he portrayed Sherwood Forest's 12th century legendary outlaw in the three Oscar-winning The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). The latter was his most popular film and the quintessential adventure-tale swashbuckler about the Robin Hood legend. The Technicolor film was noted for the lengthy swordfight in Nottingham Castle between Flynn and Basil Rathbone (as Sir Guy of Gisbourne), and Flynn's love for leading lady Olivia de Havilland.

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Action-oriented (and adventure-oriented) survival films have commonly been set in harsh, uncivilized locales - a desert, an island, a searing jungle, or a cold polar area, where an individual (or a group) must struggle against the forces of nature to keep alive. The threats of death, the selfishness of other individuals in the group, and other forces test the spirit (ingenuity, will-power, and altruism) of the survivors under these grueling circumstances.

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Starring Caitlin Stasey
Rachel Hurd-Wood
Lincoln Lewis
Deniz Akdeniz
Phoebe Tonkin
Chris Pang
Ashleigh Cummings
Andy Ryan
Colin Friels


Review:

Seven teenagers from a small Australian country town called Wirrawee – Ellie, Corrie, Homer, Kevin, Lee, Robyn and Fiona – decide to pack a Landrover and go bush for the weekend. They don their packs and venture into the wild, little-visited, cliff-encircled gorge called Hell: flirting with members of the opposite sex, mucking about, and generally enjoying themselves so much that they think little of the fleet of planes that fly overhead one night.


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Cast
Nicolas Cage as Behmen
Ron Perlman as Felson
Claire Foy as Anna (credited as The Girl)
Stephen Campbell Moore as Debelzaq
Robert Sheehan as Kay
Ulrich Thomsen as Eckhardt
Stephen Graham as Hagamar
Christopher Lee as Cardinal D'Ambroise


Download Season of the Witch

Cast
James Cosmo as Laird
James Nesbitt as Cathal
Ian Whyte as The Beast
Niall Bruton as Fergal
Karen Gillan as Ally
Kate Dickie as Mary
Ciarán McMenamin as Liam
Christine Tremarco as Housing Officer
Christopher Downie as Police Officer #1
Therese Bradley as Jitta
Josh Whitelaw as Tomatsk
Hanna Stanbridge as Petronella
Claire Catterson as Susan
Daniel Porter as Paul
Andrew Martin as James
Sean McCarthy as Old Hands

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Cast:

Sihung Lung, Kuei-Mei-Yang, Chien-Lien Wu, Yu-Wen Wang, Winston Chao, Chao-Jung Chen

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Kim Kardashian is being ripped apart by her Twitter fans and PETA for the way she held a kitten in a photo she posted on her page -- but according to another animal rights group, it's not as bad as it seems.

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Soon after Naomie Harris confirmed her role as the new Miss Moneypenny, the sassy assistant to Bond's Boss M, played by Judi Dench, First Showing reported on Amazing Spider-Man villain Rhys Ifans joining the upcoming Bond 23.

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