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Act III Communications
Act III Communications is a media and entertainment company owned by TV producer Norman Lear. It was started in 1985 following Lear's sale of Embassy Communications to The Coca-Cola Company. In a Wall St. Journal interview in 1988, Lear explained the name by noting that in a Shakespeare play there are always more than three acts and that he expects there to be an Act IV and V. Act III is Lear's business vehicle and is unconnected to his other activities as a political activist and philanthropist. Act III notable investments and ventures Among the many activities of Act III Communications are a minority interest in Village Roadshow Pictures (VRP); an ownership interest in Concord Music Group (later merged with VRP to create Village Roadshow Entertainment Group); Act III Broadcasting; Act III Theatres; Act III Publishing; and Act III Television, a joint venture formed with Columbia Pictures Television in February 1989; and Act III Merchandising which handles the merchandising for ...
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Privately Held Company
A privately held company (or simply a private company) is a company whose shares and related rights or obligations are not offered for public subscription or publicly negotiated in the respective listed markets, but rather the company's stock is offered, owned, traded, exchanged privately, or Over-the-counter (finance), over-the-counter. In the case of a closed corporation, there are a relatively small number of shareholders or company members. Related terms are closely-held corporation, unquoted company, and unlisted company. Though less visible than their public company, publicly traded counterparts, private companies have major importance in the world's economy. In 2008, the 441 list of largest private non-governmental companies by revenue, largest private companies in the United States accounted for ($1.8 trillion) in revenues and employed 6.2 million people, according to ''Forbes''. In 2005, using a substantially smaller pool size (22.7%) for comparison, the 339 companies on ...
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Stand By Me (film)
''Stand by Me'' is a 1986 American coming-of-age drama film directed by Rob Reiner. It is based on Stephen King's 1982 novella '' The Body'', and the title derives from the song by Ben E. King. Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, and Jerry O'Connell star as four boys who, in 1959, go on a hike to find the dead body of a missing boy. ''Stand by Me'' was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and for two Golden Globe Awards: one for Best Drama Motion Picture and one for Best Director. Plot Writer Gordie Lachance reads a newspaper article about a fatal stabbing. As a youth, his parents were too busy grieving the loss of his older brother Denny to give 12-year-old Gordie much attention. He recalls a childhood incident when he, his best friend, Chris Chambers, and two other friends, Teddy Duchamp and Vern Tessio, journeyed to find the body of a missing boy near the town of Castle Rock, Oregon, during Labor Day weekend in September 1959. While looking ...
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Tom McGrath (media Executive)
Thomas Berard McGrath (born 1956) is an American media executive. He is the CEO and chairman of Crossroads Live, a production company which invests in live and location-based entertainment on a global scale. He was formerly the CEO of STX Entertainment; chairman of Key Brand Entertainment, a producer and distributor of live theatre in the United States and parent company of Broadway.com; President and COO of Act III Communications; Executive Vice President and COO of Viacom Entertainment Group; and Senior Managing Director of Crossroads Media, Inc. He is a nine-time Tony Award-winning producer, member of the National Recording Academy, and board member of the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. He also serves as trustee of New England Conservatory of Music and American Repertory Theater at Harvard. Early life and education McGrath was born and raised in Washington, DC. He received his B.A. from Harvard University in 1976, where he was music director for ...
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Stax Records
Stax Records is an American record company, originally based in Memphis, Tennessee. Founded in 1957 as Satellite Records, the label changed its name to Stax Records in 1961. It also shared its operations with sister label Volt Records. Stax was influential in the creation of Southern soul and Memphis soul music. Stax also released gospel, funk, and blues recordings. Renowned for its output of blues music, the label was founded by two siblings and business partners, Jim Stewart and his sister Estelle Axton (STewart/AXton = Stax). It featured several popular ethnically integrated bands (including the label's house band, Booker T. & the M.G.'s) and a racially integrated team of staff and artists unprecedented in that time of racial strife and tension in Memphis and the South. According to ethnomusicologist Rob Bowman, the label's use of "one studio, one equipment set-up, the same set of musicians and a small group of songwriters led to a readily identifiable sound. It was a soun ...
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Concord Records
Concord Records is an American record label owned by Concord and based in Los Angeles, California. Concord Records was launched in 1995 as an imprint designed to reach beyond the company's foundational Concord Jazz label. The label's artists have won 14 GRAMMY Awards and 88 GRAMMY nominations. The original logo, a stylized eighth note incorporating the C and J of "Concord Jazz", was created by Bay Area graphic designer Dan Buck, who also worked on several album covers for the company. History In 1999, Concord Records was purchased by a consortium led by Hal Gaba and television producer Norman Lear. Its offices were moved from Concord, California to Beverly Hills in 2002. That same year, Concord partnered with Starbucks to release Ray Charles's '' Genius Loves Company'', which won eight GRAMMY Awards, including Album of the Year. Concord Records purchased the Fantasy Label Group in 2004, and in December 2006 announced the reactivation of the Stax Records label as a forum for ne ...
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Charlie And The Chocolate Factory
''Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'' is a 1964 children's novel by British author Roald Dahl. The story features the adventures of young Charlie Bucket inside the chocolate factory of eccentric chocolatier Willy Wonka. The story was originally inspired by Roald Dahl's experience of chocolate companies during his schooldays at Repton School in Derbyshire. Cadbury would often send test packages to the schoolchildren in exchange for their opinions on the new products. At that time (around the 1920s), Cadbury and Rowntree's were England's two largest chocolate makers and they each often tried to steal trade secrets by sending spies, posing as employees, into the other's factory—inspiring Dahl's idea for the recipe-thieving spies (such as Wonka's rival Slugworth) depicted in the book. Because of this, both companies became highly protective of their chocolate-making processes. It was a combination of this secrecy and the elaborate, often gigantic, machines in the factory that insp ...
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Ocean's Eleven
''Ocean's Eleven'' is a 2001 American heist comedy film directed by Steven Soderbergh from a screenplay by Ted Griffin. The first installment in the ''Ocean's'' film trilogy, it is a remake of the 1960 Rat Pack film of the same name. The film features an ensemble cast including George Clooney, Matt Damon, Andy García, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Casey Affleck, Scott Caan, Elliott Gould, Bernie Mac, Qin Shaobo, and Carl Reiner. The story follows friends Danny Ocean (Clooney) and Rusty Ryan (Pitt), who plan a heist of $160million from casino owner Terry Benedict (García), the lover of Ocean's ex-wife Tess (Roberts). ''Ocean's Eleven'' was theatrically released in the United States on December7, 2001, by Warner Bros. Pictures. The film received positive reviews from critics and was a box-office hit, grossing $450.7million worldwide and becoming the fifth-highest-grossing film of 2001. Soderbergh directed two sequels, ''Ocean's Twelve'' in 2004 and ''Ocean's Thirteen'' in 200 ...
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Training Day
''Training Day'' is a 2001 American crime thriller film directed by Antoine Fuqua and written by David Ayer. It stars Denzel Washington as Alonzo Harris and Ethan Hawke as Jake Hoyt, two LAPD narcotics officers over a 24-hour period in the gang-ridden neighborhoods of Westlake, Echo Park, and South Central Los Angeles. It also features Scott Glenn, Cliff Curtis, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and Macy Gray in supporting roles. ''Training Day'' was released on October 5, 2001, by Warner Bros. Pictures. It received positive reviews from critics, who praised Washington and Hawke's performances but were divided on the screenplay. It was a commercial success, grossing $104 million worldwide against a production budget of $45 million. The film received numerous accolades and nominations, with Washington's performance earning him the Academy Award for Best Actor and Hawke being nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the 74th Academy Awards. A television series based on the film, produced by ...
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Miss Congeniality (film)
''Miss Congeniality'' is a 2000 American comedy film directed by Donald Petrie, produced by Sandra Bullock, and written by Marc Lawrence, Katie Ford and Caryn Lucas. The film stars Bullock as Gracie Hart, a tomboy agent who is asked by the FBI to go undercover as a contestant when a terrorist threatens to bomb the Miss United States pageant. Michael Caine, Benjamin Bratt, Candice Bergen, William Shatner, and Ernie Hudson star in supporting roles. ''Miss Congeniality'' was released by Warner Bros. Pictures on December 22, 2000. The film was a box office hit, grossing $212 million worldwide against its $45 million budget, and earned Bullock a nomination for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical. It was followed by the sequel '' Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous'' in 2005. Plot In 1982, a young Gracie Hart steps into a playground fight to beat up a bully who is threatening a boy she likes. However, the boy feels humiliated at being rescu ...
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The Lego Movie
''The Lego Movie'' is a 2014 computer-animated adventure comedy film written and directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller from a story by Lord, Miller, and Dan and Kevin Hageman. Based on the Lego line of construction toys, its story focuses on Emmet, an ordinary Lego minifigure who helps a resistance movement stop a tyrannical businessman from gluing everything in the Lego world into his vision of perfection. Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Nick Offerman, Alison Brie, Charlie Day, Liam Neeson, and Morgan Freeman provide their voices for the film's characters. Plans of the feature film based on ''Lego'' started in 2008 following the discussion with Lin and Lee before Lin left Warner Bros. to form his own production company, Lin Pictures. By August 2009, it was announced that Dan and Kevin Hageman were writing the script. It was officially green-lit by Warner Bros. in November 2011 as the planned 2014 release date. Chris McKay was brought in to ...
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Winter's Tale (film)
''Winter's Tale'' (released in the United Kingdom and Ireland as ''A New York Winter's Tale'') is a 2014 American romantic fantasy film based on the 1983 novel ''Winter's Tale'' by Mark Helprin. The film is written, produced and directed by Akiva Goldsman (in his directorial debut). It stars Colin Farrell, Jessica Brown Findlay, Jennifer Connelly, William Hurt, Eva Marie Saint (in her final film role before her retirement), Russell Crowe and Will Smith. ''Winter's Tale'' premiered at London on February 13 and was theatrically released on February 14 in the United States by Warner Bros. Pictures. The film has a 13% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and grossed $30.8 million on a $75 million budget. It also received a Golden Trailer nomination for Best Romance Poster. ''Winter's Tale'' was released on DVD and Blu-ray on June 24, 2014 by Warner Home Video. Plot In 1895, a young immigrant couple is refused entry into Manhattan because they have consumption (Tuberculosis). When thei ...
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The Great Gatsby
''The Great Gatsby'' is a 1925 novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the Jazz Age on Long Island, near New York City, the novel depicts First-person narrative, first-person narrator Nick Carraway's interactions with mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and Gatsby's obsession to reunite with his former lover, Daisy Buchanan. The novel was inspired by a youthful romance Fitzgerald had with socialite Ginevra King, and the riotous parties he attended on Long Island's North Shore (Long Island), North Shore in 1922. Following a move to the French Riviera, Fitzgerald completed a rough draft of the novel in 1924. He submitted it to editor Maxwell Perkins, who persuaded Fitzgerald to revise the work over the following winter. After making revisions, Fitzgerald was satisfied with the text, but remained ambivalent about the book's title and considered several alternatives. Painter Francis Cugat's cover art greatly impressed Fitzgerald, and he incorporated aspects of it into the ...
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