The British cinema continued to produce many propagandist, flag-waving war films glorifying their "finest hour" of battle against Germany and Japan, including the inspiring In Which We Serve (1942). The story, about a valiant crew of Lord Mountbatten's British destroyer (HMS Torrin) during the Battle of Crete in WWII was told in a non-linear fashion with vignettes/flashbacks. Mrs. Miniver - 1942The film was the directorial debut of David Lean with Noel Coward as producer, writer, co-director, and star. Director Carol Reed's semi-documentary Immortal Batallion (1944) (aka The Way Ahead) followed the training of army recruits by David Niven as they became a hardened combat team.

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The Maltese Falcon (1941) is one of the most popular and best classic detective mysteries ever made, and many film historians consider it the first in the dark film noir genre in Hollywood. It leaves the audience with a distinctly down-beat conclusion and bitter taste. The low-budget film reflects the remarkable directorial debut of John Huston (previously a screenwriter) who efficiently and skillfully composed and filmed this American classic for Warner Bros. studios, with great dialogue, deceitful characters, and menacing scenes.

The precocious director Huston was very faithful to Dashiell Hammett's 1929 novel The Maltese Falcon, that had originally appeared as a five-part serialized story in a pulp fiction, detective story magazine publication named Black Mask. However, for an early preview audience, the film took a different, short-lived title, The Gent From Frisco. There were two major differences between the book and film: (1) Gutman was killed by Wilmer, and (2) the last quotable line of dialogue, with a Shakespearean reference, was thought up by Bogart on the set.

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Ghosts as the subject of films date back to World War II era and post-war romantic comedies. A lengthy list of films with angels in them can be found in the genre section on fantasy films. Originally, supernatural apparitions were not intended to frighten audiences, but to entertain as they assisted earth-bound characters out of crazy predicaments, or interacted with them. For example:

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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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A controversial, explicitly racist, but landmark American film masterpiece - these all describe ground-breaking producer/director D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915). The domestic melodrama/epic originally premiered with the title The Clansman in February, 1915 in Los Angeles, California, but three months later was retitled with the present title at its world premiere in New York, to emphasize the birthing process of the US. The film was based on former North Carolina Baptist minister Rev. Thomas Dixon Jr.'s anti-black, 1905 bigoted melodramatic staged play, The Clansman, the second volume in a trilogy:

* The Leopard's Spots: A Romance of the White Man's Burden, 1865-1900
* The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan
* The Traitor


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Cast
Elle Fanning as Mary
Nathan Lane as Uncle Albert
John Turturro as The Rat King
Frances de la Tour as The Rat Queen
Shirley Henderson as the voice of The Nutcracker
Aaron Michael Drozin as Max
Charlie Rowe as The Prince

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Cast
Sam Rockwell as Bill
Shareeka Epps as Lisa
Emily Rios as Kathy
Rooney Mara as Wendy
Emma Roberts as Abbie
Meaghan Witri as Tamra
Melanie Hinkle as Mindy
Margo Martindale as Donna
Rob Corddry as Terry
Shana Dowdeswell as Molly
Caitlin Colford as Trish
Connor Paolo as Damon
Brian Berrebbi as Steve, Bill's Manager

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Stars: Daniell Edwards, Sami Darr and Anna Bård


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Cast:

Mel Gibson, Maria Bello, Gregg Henry, James Coburn, Kris Kristofferson, William Devane, David Paymer, Deborah Kara Unger


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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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