Gregory Mottola
Gregory J. Mottola (born July 11, 1964) is an American film director, screenwriter, and television director. Life and career Mottola grew up in Dix Hills, New York, in a Catholic family of Italian and Irish descent. He received his BFA in art from Carnegie Mellon University and MFA in film from Columbia University. He wrote and directed the 1996 independent film ''The Daytrippers'', then concentrated for several years on directing in television for series such as ''Undeclared'' and ''Arrested Development''. More recently, he has directed the feature films ''Superbad'', '' Adventureland'', and ''Paul''. '' Adventureland'' (2009) is a "first love" story about a group of college-age kids working at an amusement park in the 1980s. The film starred Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig. It premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and received critical praise. He directed ''Paul'', a science fiction/comedy film about two comic book nerds (played by the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dix Hills, New York
Dix Hills is an affluent hamlet and census-designated place (CDP) on Long Island in the town of Huntington in Suffolk County, New York. The population was 26,892 at the 2010 census. In the past, Dix Hills and some of its neighbors have proposed incorporating as the Incorporated Village of Half Hollow Hills. These proposals were all mothballed. History Settlers traded goods with the Indigenous Secatogue tribe for the land that became Dix Hills in 1699. The Secatogues lived in the northern portion of the region during the later half of that century. The land was known as Dick's Hills. By lore, the name traces to a local native named Dick Pechegan, likely of the Secatogues. Scholar William Wallace Tooker wrote that the addition of the English name "Dick" to the indigenous name "Pechegan" was a common practice. Tooker wrote that Pechegan's wigwam and his planted fields became the hilly area's namesake, known as the shortened "Dix Hills" by 1911. The area was mostly used for fa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bill Hader
William Thomas Hader Jr.''Finding Your Roots'', January 26, 2016, PBS. (born June 7, 1978) is an American actor, comedian, writer, and producer. He is the creator, producer, writer, director, and star of the HBO dark comedy series ''Barry'' (2018–present), for which he has been nominated for eight Emmy Awards, winning two. Hader's initial success was for his eight-year stint (2005–2013) as a cast member on the long-running NBC variety series ''Saturday Night Live'', for which he received four Primetime Emmy Award nominations and a Peabody Award. He became known for his impressions and especially for his work on the ''Weekend Update'' segments, in which he played Stefon Meyers, a flamboyant New York tour guide who recommends unusual nightclubs and parties with bizarre characters with unusual tastes. He is also the star and producer of the IFC mockumentary comedy series ''Documentary Now!'' (2015–present) which he co-created along with Fred Armisen and Seth Meyers. Hader h ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Confess, Fletch
''Confess, Fletch'' is a 2022 American crime comedy film directed by Greg Mottola, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Zev Borow. Based on Gregory Mcdonald's 1976 novel of the same name, the film stars Jon Hamm, Lorenza Izzo, Marcia Gay Harden, Kyle MacLachlan, Roy Wood Jr. and John Slattery. It is the third installment in the ''Fletch'' series, following '' Fletch'' (1985) and ''Fletch Lives'' (1989), and the first not to star Chevy Chase. ''Confess, Fletch'' was released in a limited theatrical release and on premium video on demand on September 16, 2022, before a Showtime premiere on October 28, 2022. The film received generally positive reviews. Plot Irwin M. "Fletch" Fletcher is sent to Boston from Italy by his girlfriend Angela to recover her father’s multimillion-dollar art collection. The paintings were stolen and are in the possession of an American art dealer named Ronald Horan. Angela’s father is an Italian billionaire count who was kidnapped by a mob demanding h ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Keeping Up With The Joneses (film)
''Keeping Up with the Joneses'' is a 2016 American action comedy film directed by Greg Mottola and distributed by 20th Century Fox. It was written by Michael LeSieur. Its story follows a suburban couple (Zach Galifianakis and Isla Fisher) who begin to suspect their new neighbors (Jon Hamm and Gal Gadot) are secret agents. Production began in the United States in 2015 and was released on October 21, 2016. It grossed $5,461,475 during its opening week and $29.9 million worldwide, against a $40 million budget. It received generally negative reviews and is considered a box office bomb. Plot Jeff Gaffney works as a human resources professional at MBI, a defense contractor company based in Atlanta. He and his wife Karen live in a nice cul-de-sac with their two children, who are away at summer camp. They make the acquaintance of their new neighbors, Tim and Natalie Jones. Tim is a travel writer whose hobbies include glassblowing, and Natalie is a social media consultant, cooking blogg ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Television Film
A television film, alternatively known as a television movie, made-for-TV film/movie or TV film/movie, is a feature-length film that is produced and originally distributed by or to a television network, in contrast to theatrical films made for initial showing in movie theaters, and direct-to-video films made for initial release on home video formats. In certain cases, such films may also be referred to and shown as a miniseries, which typically indicates a film that has been divided into multiple parts or a series that contains a predetermined, limited number of episodes. Origins and history Precursors of "television movies" include ''Talk Faster, Mister'', which aired on WABD (now WNYW) in New York City on December 18, 1944, and was produced by RKO Pictures, and the 1957 ''The Pied Piper of Hamelin'', based on the poem by Robert Browning, and starring Van Johnson, one of the first filmed "family musicals" made directly for television. That film was made in Technicolor, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Clear History
''Clear History'' is a 2013 American comedy film written by Larry David, Alec Berg, David Mandel and Jeff Schaffer, directed by Greg Mottola and starring Larry David, Kate Hudson, Danny McBride, Philip Baker Hall, Jon Hamm, Michael Keaton, Eva Mendes, Amy Ryan, Bill Hader and J. B. Smoove. The film premiered on August 10, 2013, on HBO. Plot In 2003, bearded, long-haired Nathan Flomm (Larry David) is an opinionated, obnoxious business associate of Will Haney (Jon Hamm), whose company in San Jose, California is about to introduce a new electric car. Flomm objects to the car being named "the Howard" after Haney's son, who is himself named after Howard Roark, hero of ''The Fountainhead''. After Flomm accepts a severance package to cut ties with the company, he becomes a ridiculed public figure when the Howard is a huge success, costing Flomm what would have been his share — a billion dollars. Ten years later, a balding, clean-shaven Flomm has changed his name to Rolly DaVore and mo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Dangerous Book For Boys (TV Series)
''The Dangerous Book for Boys'' is an American comedy-drama Comedy drama, also known by the portmanteau ''dramedy'', is a genre of dramatic works that combines elements of comedy and drama. The modern, scripted-television examples tend to have more humorous bits than simple comic relief seen in a typical ... streaming television series, based on The Dangerous Book for Boys, the book of the same name by Conn & Hal Iggulden, that premiered on March 30, 2018, on Amazon Prime Video. The series was created by Bryan Cranston and Greg Mottola and it stars Chris Diamantopoulos, Gabriel Bateman, Drew Logan Powell, Kyan Zielinski, and Erinn Hayes. On August 1, 2018, it was announced that Amazon had cancelled the series after one season. Premise ''The Dangerous Book for Boys'' follows Wyatt McKenna and his brothers as they "are coming to terms with the death of their dad, Patrick, a wonderful, whimsical inventor who touched the lives of everyone who knew him. Patrick leaves the boys with ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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IndieWire
IndieWire (sometimes stylized as indieWIRE or Indiewire) is a film industry and review website that was established in 1996. The site's focus was predominantly independent film, although its coverage has grown to "to include all aspects of Hollywood and the expanding universes of TV and streaming." IndieWire is part of Penske Media. History The original IndieWire newsletter launched on July 15, 1996, billing itself as "the daily news service for independent film." Following in the footsteps of various web- and AOL-based editorial ventures, IndieWire was launched as a free daily email publication in the summer of 1996 by New York- and Los Angeles-based filmmakers and writers Eugene Hernandez, Mark Rabinowitz, Cheri Barner, Roberto A. Quezada, and Mark L. Feinsod. Initially distributed to a few hundred subscribers, the readership grew rapidly, passing 6,000 in late 1997. In January 1997, IndieWire made its first appearance at the Sundance Film Festival to begin their coverage o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Plan B Entertainment
Plan B Entertainment, Inc., more commonly known as Plan B, is an American production company founded in November in 2001 by Brad Grey, Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston and Kristin Hahn. In 2005, after Pitt and Aniston divorced, Grey became the CEO of Paramount Pictures and Pitt became the sole owner of the company. The president of the company was for many years Dede Gardner, but she and Pitt named Jeremy Kleiner co-president with Gardner in 2013. Three of the production company's movies, ''The Departed'', '' 12 Years a Slave'' and ''Moonlight'', have won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Pitt, Gardner and Kleiner received the Producers Guild of America's David O. Selznick Achievement Award in Theatrical Motion Pictures in 2020. This name was previously used for an unrelated production company that was headed by Bruce Berman from 1996 to 1997. On October 30, 2022, it was reported that Mediawan was in talks to acquiring in a significant stake of the studio. Production deals Active ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Natalie Portman
Natalie Portman (born Natalie Hershlag, he, נטע-לי הרשלג, ) is an Israeli-born American actress. She has had a prolific film career since her teenage years and has starred in various blockbusters and independent films, receiving multiple accolades, including an Academy Award and two Golden Globe Awards. Portman began her acting career at age twelve, when she starred as the young protégée of a hitman in the action film '' Léon: The Professional'' (1994). While in high school, she made her Broadway debut in a 1998 production of ''The Diary of a Young Girl'' and gained international recognition for starring as Padmé Amidala in '' Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace'' (1999). From 1999 to 2003, Portman attended Harvard University, graduating with a bachelor's degree in psychology. She reduced her number of acting roles, but continued to act in the ''Star Wars'' prequel trilogy (2002, 2005) and in The Public Theater's 2001 revival of Anton Chekhov's play ''T ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Leanne Shapton
Leanne Shapton (born June 25, 1973) in Mississauga, Ontario is a Canadian artist and graphic novelist, now living in New York City. Her second work, ''Important Artifacts and Personal Property From the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion and Jewelry'', was optioned for a film slated to star Brad Pitt and Natalie Portman. The novel, which takes the form of an auction catalog, uses photographs and accompanying captions to chronicle the romance and subsequent breakup of a couple via the relationship's significant possessions or "artifacts". Shapton's first work, ''Was She Pretty?'', was a nominee for the Doug Wright Award, a Canadian award for comics and graphic novels, in 2007. It explored, via a series of line-drawn illustrations, the issues of relationship jealousy and insecurity as told through the imagined superior traits of the subjects' exes. Shapton is also an art director for newspapers and magazines. Formerly associated with '' Sa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nick Frost
Nicholas Jonathan Frost (born 28 March 1972) is a British actor, author, comedian, painter, producer and screenwriter. He has appeared in the ''Three Flavours Cornetto'' trilogy of films, consisting of ''Shaun of the Dead'' (2004), ''Hot Fuzz'' (2007), and '' The World's End'' (2013), and the television comedy ''Spaced'' (1999–2001). He also appeared in Joe Cornish's film '' Attack the Block'' (2011). He co-starred in the 2011 film ''Paul'', which he co-wrote with frequent collaborator and best friend Simon Pegg. He has also portrayed various roles in the sketch show ''Man Stroke Woman''. In 2020, he co-created and starred in the paranormal comedy horror series ''Truth Seekers'' with Pegg. Early life Frost was born on 28 March 1972 in Hornchurch, East London, the son of John Frost and his Welsh wife, Tricia (died 2005), who were office furniture designers. When he was 10, his sister died of an asthma attack, aged 18. He attended Beal High School in Ilford. When Frost was 1 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |