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![]() Deeply affecting, intellectually engaging, and terrifically charismatic, A Beautiful Mind established Russell Crowe as an uncommonly talented movie star while also serving as a showcase for director Ron Howard, co-star Jennifer Connelly and everyone else involved with this Oscar-dominating prod…
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Beautiful Math from a Beautiful Mind
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![]() Stately to a fault, reverential to an extreme, The Grandmaster is kung fu cinema elevated to formal art. Stodginess aside, it no doubt lingers in the mind’s eye of hard core kung fu fans, let alone for the legendary Ip Man’s disciples. For the rest of us – focused on the Bruce Lee connection …
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Hey, isn't that little Bruce Lee?
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![]() Ip Man 2 was supposed to focus on the legendary Grandmaster’s relationship with Bruce Lee, his most famous disciple. But Lee’s descendants didn’t go along with the plan, so the movie ends up being about Ip Man’s post-war struggles to establish Wing Chun kung fu in colonial Hong Kong. The resul…
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Ip Man teaches Wing Chun kung fu
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![]() The Rolling Stones, the Allman Brothers, Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Etta James and Percy Sledge did their best work in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Lynyrd Skynyrd added the piano intro to Freebird while there. This Muscle Shoals documentary covers all that rocking glory, with Bono commenta…
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Keef vouches for Muscle Shoals magic
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![]() What a treat this 45 minute documentary is, full of home movies featuring Elvis during the summer when he went from regional star to superstar. It captures the King of Rock & Roll as both the first rockstar and the perfect rockstar. Not yet jaded or degraded, this is the Elvis who soon became m…
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Elvis & June: Summer of '56
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![]() “Are you experienced?” Rock fans of a certain age recognize that bold question as cover for “Do you dig Jimi Hendrix?” Ya dig. For those of us in that cohort and for rock and blues fans of all ages, Jimi Hendrix: Hear My Train a Comin’ is a 90 minute documentary well worth viewing, turned up …
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Hendrix â© Wild Thing â© Monterey Pop
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![]() Get on Up joins the pantheon of great rock biopics, memorializing James Brown as a seminal rockstar whose power, pomp and circumstances paved the way for the Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson, Sly & the Family Stone, hip-hop and every other form of funkable & funkadelic music. Get on Up gets on…
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James Brown ✫ Please, Please, Pleas...
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![]() A Mormon missionary’s time in Tonga makes for an entertaining family movie, if you can leave the proselytizing aside. The Other Side of Heaven is also an appealing period piece, first in the 1950s United States, but mostly in the South Pacific Islands of that era. Based on the biography of …
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Before she was a star: Anne Hathaway
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![]() Audrey Hepburn is the spoon-full-of-sugar who makes the cultural imperialism go down in Funny Face. Stanley Donen’s musical – done Broadway style – is an intoxicating Vogue-tini, a Size 0 fashion fantasy. Richard Avedon famously created the opening titles, which are perfectly high fashion. …
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Avedon's timeless portrait of Hepburn
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![]() 12 Angry Men has lost its punch, coming across today as more tortured and melodramatic than taut and credible. Still, it’s a classic, enduring as a case study of group dynamics more than as a compelling drama. The well-known story follows a jury into and through their deliberations on a murd…
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12 Great Actors
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