Michael Apted is one of those rare, versatile filmmakers who can make mindless Hollywood blockbusters and thoughtful independent productions with equal aplomb. Apted's resume is as impressive as it is diverse, and has included a handful of critically praised documentaries, a James Bond movie (The World Is Not Enough), and an Oscar-nominated drama (Coal Miner's Daughter). Enough is Apted at his most commercial, and, unfortunately, his least compelling. This is a by-the-numbers thriller that doesn't even succeed on the most basic, visceral level. One can only hope that Apted is taking his salary for this effort and putting it into the next movie in the 7 Up series.

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The first American serial was the groundbreaking 12-reel What Happened to Mary? (1912), a production of Thomas A. Edison's Company, that starred Mary Fuller (the first true serial queen), and was released concurrently with the serial story "What Happened to Mary?" in McClure's Ladies' World Magazine. Each film chapter was released simultaneously with the corresponding story in the magazine, one story per month, beginning July 26th, 1912. The series was followed with the six-episode Who Will Marry Mary? (1913), and with another twelve episode series, The Active Life of Dolly of the Dailies (1914).

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The Apartment (1960) is producer/director Billy Wilder's bittersweet, heart-rending tragi-comedy/drama of a compliant insurance clerk (Lemmon) who secretly lends out his apartment to other company executives for adulterous sexual affairs and liaisons. The plot thickens when the clerk realizes that his building's elevator operator (MacLaine) is being taken for trysts by his married boss (MacMurray) to his apartment. The sophisticated yet cynical film of the early 60s is a bleak assessment of corporate America, big business and capitalism, success, and the work ethic, when a lowly but ambitious accountant enables his climb up the corporate ladder by ingratiating himself to his superiors - he literally prostitutes his own standards and moral integrity and allows himself to be exploited.

It won five major Academy Awards out of ten nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay (co-written by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond), Best B/W Art Direction/Set Decoration, and Best Film Editing. [It was not until thirty-three years later that another black and white Film would win Best Picture - Spielberg's Schindler's List (1993)].Three acting awards were passed over: Jack Lemmon for Best Actor, Shirley MacLaine for Best Actress and Jack Kruschen for Best Supporting Actor. It was a triple win for Wilder as Director (Wilder's second directing Oscar), Producer, and Screenplay author. Wilder's previous The Lost Weekend (1945) had also won Best Picture and Best Director. Wilder would cast Jack Lemmon in five more films as a leading man, including Irma La Douce (1963), The Fortune Cookie (1966), Avanti! (1972), The Front Page (1974), and Buddy Buddy (1981).

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Other historical swashbuckler films included the retelling of Alexandre Dumas' classic novels. In Dumas' often-told tale of revenge in The Count of Monte Cristo (1912, 1934, 1974, and 2002), an unjustly imprisoned sailor Edmond Dantes escaped after fifteen years from an island prison and returned to 1820s Paris to find revenge. British-born actor Robert Donat appeared in the 1934 version - the only film he made in Hollywood. Director James Whale's The Man in the Iron Mask (1939 and 1998) was about twin brothers (one - the tyrannical Louis XIV, the other - exiled and imprisoned with an iron mask) in 18th century France separated at birth - one eventually became a swashbuckling member of the Three Musketeers. Alexander Dumas' classic, The Corsican Brothers (1942) repeated the plot twist of twins (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. in both roles) separated at birth but later reunited to join together to defeat a tyrannical Corsican baron.

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A wide variety of romantic melodramas in gaudy, lush, super-saturated Technicolor - classic, histrionic-laden, exaggerated, glossy, tear-jerking soaps, appeared from director Douglas Sirk. Since these overwrought films appeared during a time of Hollywood censorship, all of the sexual transgressions, ungratified desires, illegitimacies, psycho-sexual disorders (impotence, frigidity, nymphomania, Oedipal problems, etc.), rapes, adulteries, domestically-oppressed women, abuses, abortions, and affairs were not made entirely explicit. These potentially-subversive topics, nonetheless, were brought to the screen. Today, they are sometimes considered over-the-top, but should be viewed with irony for the hidden meanings contained within:

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The themes of noir, derived from sources in Europe, were imported to Hollywood by emigre film-makers. Noirs were rooted in German Expressionism of the 1920s and 1930s, such as in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920, Germ.) or Fritz Lang's M (1931, Germ.), Fury (1936) and You Only Live Once (1937). Films from German directors, such as F. W. Murnau, G. W. Pabst, and Robert Wiene, were noted for their stark camera angles and movements, chiaroscuro lighting and shadowy, high-contrast images - all elements of later film noir. In addition, the French sound films of the 30s, such as director Julien Duvivier's Pepe Le Moko (1937), contributed to noir's development.

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Stars: Natalie Gal, Alicja Bachleda and Cameron Goodman

Review:

This second film by the German commercial director Markus Goller will inevitably remind most viewers of its more accomplished predecessor, "Goodbye, Lenin!," in the genre of "man, was life ever stupid in the former East Germany!" Luckily, "Friendship!" shifts focus to the other end of the spectrum, to concentrate on the comic and apparently true-life travails of two young Ossies who decide to head toward San Francisco in 1990 in search of freedom and real junk food.

This shift helps a lot, but the film ends up being crippled by the cliches of the fish-out-of-water, road-movie composite genre. Yet director Goller is nothing if not energetic, and he has an ability to keep things moving in the best Hollywood fashion.

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Cast
Zoe Felix
Eric Savin
Arie Elmaleh
Ivan Franek
Igor Skreblin
Margaux Guenier
Philippe Krhajac
Jana Bitternova
Clara Barbosa
Typhaine Hilaire
Thais Fischer
Goran Kostic
Eric Kailey
Sacha Mijovic


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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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G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra writers David Elliot and Paul Lovett sold their pitch of an action fantasy about stone gargoyles on buildings coming to life to Disney.

Download G.I. Joe Writers Take on GARGOYLES For Disney!