Posts Tagged ‘child-prodigy’

Shine (1996)

Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
Genres: Biography | Drama | Music | Romance
Countries: Australia
Actors: Rush, Geoffrey | Braine, Justin | Todd, Sonia | Haywood, Chris | Rafalowicz, Alex | Poole, Gordon | Mueller-Stahl, Armin | Bell, Nicholas | Cox, Danielle | Gooden, Rebecca | Kaczmarek, Marta | Cousins, John | Taylor, Noah | Linkson, Paul | Berger, Randall
Directors: Hicks, Scott
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Based on the true story of Australian pianist David Helfgott, this delightful movie charts the early and traumatic early years. Telling the story in flashback we see David as he grows up and into a child prodigy while his father abuses him and his siblings with the memory of his childhood in Europe and the loss of his family in the concentration camps. David finally breaks away from his father and goes away to study overseas, he later suffers a breakdown and returns to Australia and a life in an institution. Many years later he is released and through several twists of fate (in reality even more unlikely than film portrays) he starts playing a piano in a bar before finally returning to the concert hall.

Red Violin, The (1998)

Wednesday, August 15th, 2007
Genres: Drama | Music | Mystery | Romance
Countries: Canada | Italy | UK
Actors: Grazioli, Irene | Cecchi, Carlo | Laurenzi, Anita | Puntelli, Tommaso | Amighetti, Samuele | Brugnini, Aldo | Bideau, Jean-Luc | Koncz, Christoph | Mollet, Clotilde | Groll, Florentín | Silberschneider, Johannes | Egger, Rainer | Koeker, Paul | Böck, Wolfgang | Mairginter, Josef
Directors: Girard, François
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In present day Montreal, a famous Nicolo Bussotti violin, known as “the red violin,” is being auctioned off. During the auction, we flash back to the creation of the violin in 17th century Italy, and follow the violin as it makes its way through an 18th century Austrian monastery, a violinist in 19th century Oxford, China during the Cultural Revolution, and back to Montreal, where a collector tries to establish the identity and the secrets of “the red violin.”

Bee Season (2005)

Sunday, May 6th, 2007
Genres: Drama
Countries: USA
Actors: Gere, Richard | Binoche, Juliette | Cross, Flora | Minghella, Max | Bosworth, Kate | Fischer, Corey | Zuckerman, Sam | Mankin, Joan | Mackenzie, Piers | Holt, Lorri | Leonard, Brian | McGraw, Kathy | Evans, John | Mullally, Alisha | Charles, Olivia
Directors: McGehee, Scott | Siegel, David
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11-year-old Eliza Naumann comes from an odd family; they all divert their emotional frustrations into secret channels. When Eliza unexpectedly begins winning spelling bees, what had been a stable dynamic within the family becomes disrupted; long held secrets emerge, and a latent spiritual yearning is awakened in her withdrawn father Saul and compulsive mother Miriam. As Eliza moves closer and closer to the national spelling bee, the Naumann family finds itself in a spiral of surprising discovery and jarring uncertainty…

Magnolia (1999)

Monday, April 2nd, 2007
Genres: Drama
Countries: USA
Actors: Cruise, Tom | Healy, Pat | Zweig, Genevieve | Moore, Julianne | Macy, William H. | Flannagan, Mark | Flynn, Neil | Hoffman, Philip Seymour | McLachlan, Rod | Walters, Melora | Graf, Allan | Hall, Philip Baker | Oswalt, Patton | Blackman, Jeremy | Gonzales, Raymond 'Big Guy'
Directors: Anderson, Paul Thomas
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Magnolia is the study of nine lives in one day in San Fernando Valley, California. These nine lives all connect and revolve around the game show “What Do Kids Know?”(WDKK), where a team of three kids play against adults and everytime the show is on, there is a new team of adults and the kids remain; if they won the previous game. Earl Partridge (the late Jason Robards) produced “WDKK” when it was first on in the late 60s. He is dying of brain and lung cancer and is being taken care of by Phil Parma (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a male nurse. Linda, Earl’s trophy wife (Julianne Moore) starts to fall in love with Earl for real, despite her cheating. Earl, rapidly dying on his bed, asks Phil to find his estranged son, Frank T.J. Mackey (Tom Cruise), who grew up hating Earl and now runs a seminar for single men, which teaches them how to seduce a woman and leave her… The host of “WDKK”, Jimmy Gator (Philip Baker Hall), is also dying, but not as rapidly as Earl. He has a very rocky relationship with his daughter Claudia (Melora Waters), who sniffs crack 24/7 and accuses her father of sexually molesting her. Police Officer Jim (John C. Reilly) goes to Claudia’s house after getting called about a disturbance. He falls in love with her right away… Stanley Specter (Jeremy Blackman) is a contestant on “WDKK”, who is a genius and is being used by his father to make money. If Stanley and his team keep winning, they will set a record on the show and get tons of money. The record Stanley is trying to beat is the 1968 record set by Donnie Smith (William H. Macy), who had the exact same childhood when he was on the show and has now grown up to be a pathetic loser. He’s been recently fired from his job, and is trying to find his way into happiness…

Contact (1997)

Monday, February 12th, 2007
Genres: Drama | Mystery | Sci-Fi
Countries: USA
Actors: Malone, Jena | Morse, David | Foster, Jodie | Blake, Geoffrey | Fichtner, William | Chester, Sami | McNeil, Timothy | Surillo, Laura Elena | McConaughey, Matthew | Skerritt, Tom | Strozier, Henry | Chaban, Michael | Martini, Max | King, Larry | Garner, Thomas
Directors: Zemeckis, Robert
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Contact, based on the novel of the same name by Carl Sagan, is the story of a free thinking radio astronomer (Jodie Foster) who discovers an intelligent signal broadcast from deep space. She and her fellow scientists are able to decipher the Message and discover detailed instructions for building a mysterious Machine. Will the Machine spell the end of our world, or the end of our superstitions? Will we take our place among the races of the Galaxy, or are we just an upstart species with a long way to go?