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Killing Them Softly
''Killing Them Softly'' (stylized in marketing as ''killing them softly'') is a 2012 American neo-noir crime film written and directed by Andrew Dominik and stars Brad Pitt. Based on George V. Higgins' 1974 novel ''Cogan's Trade'', the story follows Jackie Cogan, a hitman who is hired to deal with the aftermath of a Mafia poker game robbery that ruptured the criminal economy; the events are set during the 2008 United States presidential election and financial crisis. On May 22, 2012, the film premiered in competition for the Palme d'Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival and received positive early reviews. ''Killing Them Softly'' was released on November 30, 2012, domestically by The Weinstein Company and internationally by Inferno Distribution to mostly positive reviews, even though general audiences were less receptive to the film. It grossed $37.9 million against a budget of $15 million. Plot During the American financial crisis and presidential election campaign of 2008, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Killin' Them Softly
''Dave Chappelle: Killin' Them Softly'' is a 2000 American stand-up comedy television film directed by Stan Lathan and written by and starring comedian Dave Chappelle. Filmed at the Lincoln Theatre in Washington, D.C., it was Chappelle's first hour-long HBO special, premiering on HBO on July 26, 2000. In the special, Chappelle talks about a variety of topics, including racism, police brutality, and drug use. Reception Shortly after the special's release, Steve Johnson of the ''Chicago Tribune'' gave it a positive review, writing that it " oversthe predictable black people versus white people and men versus women territory, but doing it with fresh observations and, more important, a sophisticated structure", and noting: "somebody give this guy a TV series". In 2015, ''Dave Chappelle: Killin' Them Softly'' was ranked #6 on a ''Rolling Stone'' list of the 25 best stand-up specials and films, with writer Matthew Love stating that the special "delivers everything we know now as the c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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] |
Heroin
Heroin, also known as diacetylmorphine and diamorphine among other names, is a potent opioid mainly used as a recreational drug for its euphoric effects. Medical grade diamorphine is used as a pure hydrochloride salt. Various white and brown powders sold illegally around the world as heroin have variable "cuts". Black tar heroin is a variable admixture of morphine derivatives—predominantly 6-MAM (6-monoacetylmorphine), which is the result of crude acetylation during clandestine production of street heroin. Heroin is used medically in several countries to relieve pain, such as during childbirth or a heart attack, as well as in opioid replacement therapy. It is typically injected, usually into a vein, but it can also be smoked, snorted, or inhaled. In a clinical context, the route of administration is most commonly intravenous injection; it may also be given by intramuscular or subcutaneous injection, as well as orally in the form of tablets. The onset of effects is usuall ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Italian-American Mafia
The American Mafia, commonly referred to in North America as the Italian American Mafia, the Mafia, or the Mob, is a highly organized Italian American criminal society and organized crime group. The organization is often referred to by its members as Cosa Nostra (, "our thing" or "this thing of ours") and by the American government as La Cosa Nostra (LCN). The organization's name is derived from the original ''Mafia'' or ''Cosa nostra'', the Sicilian Mafia, with "American Mafia" originally referring simply to Mafia (or ''Cosa nostra'') groups from Sicily operating in the United States, as the organization initially emerged as an offshoot of the Sicilian Mafia (known also as ''Cosa nostra'' by its members) formed by Italian immigrants in the United States. However, the organization gradually evolved into a separate entity partially independent of the original Mafia in Sicily, and it eventually encompassed or absorbed other Italian immigrant and Italian-American gangsters and Ita ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palme D'Or
The Palme d'Or (; en, Golden Palm) is the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival. It was introduced in 1955 by the festival's organizing committee. Previously, from 1939 to 1954, the festival's highest prize was the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film. In 1964, The Palme d'Or was replaced again by the Grand Prix, before being reintroduced in 1975. The Palme d'Or is widely considered one of the film industry's most prestigious awards. History In 1954, the festival decided to present an award annually, titled the Grand Prix of the International Film Festival, with a new design each year from a contemporary artist. The festival's board of directors invited several jewellers to submit designs for a palm, in tribute to the coat of arms of the city of Cannes, evoking the famous legend of Saint Honorat and the palm trees lining the famous Promenade de la Croisette. The original design by Parisian jeweller Lucienne Lazon, inspired by a sketch by director Jean ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Financial Crisis Of 2007–2008
Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of financial economics bridges the two). Finance activities take place in financial systems at various scopes, thus the field can be roughly divided into personal, corporate, and public finance. In a financial system, assets are bought, sold, or traded as financial instruments, such as currencies, loans, bonds, shares, stocks, options, futures, etc. Assets can also be banked, invested, and insured to maximize value and minimize loss. In practice, risks are always present in any financial action and entities. A broad range of subfields within finance exist due to its wide scope. Asset, money, risk and investment management aim to maximize value and minimize volatility. Financial analysis is viability, stability, and profitability a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2008 United States Presidential Election
The 2008 United States presidential election was the 56th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 4, 2008. The Democratic ticket of Barack Obama, the junior senator from Illinois, and Joe Biden, the senior senator from Delaware, defeated the Republican ticket of John McCain, the senior senator from Arizona, and Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska. Obama became the first African American to be elected to the presidency, as well as being only the third sitting United States senator elected president, joining Warren G. Harding and John F. Kennedy. Meanwhile, Biden became the first senator running mate of a senator elected president since Lyndon B. Johnson (who was Kennedy's running mate) in the 1960 election. Incumbent Republican President George W. Bush was ineligible to pursue a third term due to the term limits established by the 22nd Amendment. McCain secured the Republican nomination by March 2008, defeating former governors Mitt Romney, Mike Hu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Mafia
The American Mafia, commonly referred to in North America as the Italian American Mafia, the Mafia, or the Mob, is a highly organized Italian American criminal society and organized crime group. The organization is often referred to by its members as Cosa Nostra (, "our thing" or "this thing of ours") and by the American government as La Cosa Nostra (LCN). The organization's name is derived from the original ''Mafia'' or ''Cosa nostra'', the Sicilian Mafia, with "American Mafia" originally referring simply to Mafia (or ''Cosa nostra'') groups from Sicily operating in the United States, as the organization initially emerged as an offshoot of the Sicilian Mafia (known also as ''Cosa nostra'' by its members) formed by Italian immigrants in the United States. However, the organization gradually evolved into a separate entity partially independent of the original Mafia in Sicily, and it eventually encompassed or absorbed other Italian immigrant and Italian-American gangsters and Italia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crime Film
Crime films, in the broadest sense, is a film genre inspired by and analogous to the crime fiction literary genre. Films of this genre generally involve various aspects of crime and its detection. Stylistically, the genre may overlap and combine with many other genres, such as drama or gangster film, but also include comedy, and, in turn, is divided into many sub-genres, such as mystery, suspense or noir. Screenwriter and scholar Eric R. Williams identified crime film as one of eleven super-genres in his Screenwriters Taxonomy, claiming that all feature-length narrative films can be classified by these super-genres. The other ten super-genres are action, fantasy, horror, romance, science fiction, slice of life, sports, thriller, war and western. Williams identifies drama in a broader category called "film type", mystery and suspense as "macro-genres", and film noir as a "screenwriter's pathway" explaining that these categories are additive rather than exclusionary. '' C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neo-noir
Neo-noir is a revival of film noir, a genre that had originally flourished during the post-World War II era in the United Statesroughly from 1940 to 1960. The French term, ''film noir'', translates literally to English as "black film", indicating sinister stories often presented in a shadowy cinematographic style. Neo-noir has a similar style but with updated themes, content, style, and visual elements. Definition The neologism neo-noir, using the Greek prefix for the word ''new'', is defined by Mark Conard as "any film coming after the classic noir period that contains noir themes and noir sensibility". Another definition describes it as later noir that often synthesizes diverse genres while foregrounding the scaffolding of ''film noir''. History " Film noir" was coined by critic Nino Frank in 1946 and popularized by French critics Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton in 1955. The term revived in general use beginning in the 1980s, with a revival of the style. The classic ''fil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Box Office Mojo
Box Office Mojo is an American website that tracks box-office revenue in a systematic, algorithmic way. The site was founded in 1998 by Brandon Gray, and was bought in 2008 by IMDb, which itself is owned by Amazon. History Brandon Gray began the site on August 7, 1998, making forecasts of the top-10 highest-grossing films in the United States for the following weekend. To compare his forecasts to the actual results, he started posting the weekend grosses and wrote a regular column with box-office analysis. In 1999, he started to post the Friday daily box-office grosses, sourced from Exhibitor Relations, so that they were publicly available online on Saturdays and posted the Sunday weekend estimates on Sundays. Along with the weekend grosses, he was publishing the daily grosses, release schedules, and other charts, such as all-time charts, international box-office charts, genre charts, and actor and director charts. The site gradually expanded to include weekend charts going b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British Board Of Film Classification
The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC, previously the British Board of Film Censors) is a non-governmental organisation founded by the British film industry in 1912 and responsible for the national classification and censorship of films exhibited at cinemas and video works (such as television programmes, trailers, adverts, public information/campaigning films, menus, bonus content, etc.) released on physical media within the United Kingdom. It has a statutory requirement to classify all video works released on VHS, DVD, Blu-ray (including 3D and 4K UHD formats), and, to a lesser extent, some video games under the Video Recordings Act 1984. The BBFC was also the designated regulator for the UK age-verification scheme which was abandoned before being implemented. History and overview The BBFC was established in 1912 as the British Board of Film Censors by members of the film industry, who preferred to manage their own censorship than to have national or local gove ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
