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Robert Downey Sr.
Robert John Downey Sr. ( Elias Jr.; June 24, 1936 – July 7, 2021) was an American film director, screenwriter and actor. He was known for writing and directing the underground film '' Putney Swope'' (1969), a satire on the New York Madison Avenue advertising world. According to film scholar Wheeler Winston Dixon, Downey's films during the 1960s were "strictly take-no-prisoners affairs, with minimal budgets and outrageous satire, effectively pushing forward the countercultural agenda of the day." He was the father of American actor Robert Downey Jr. Early life Robert John Downey Sr. was born Robert John Elias Jr. in the Manhattan borough of New York City, on June 24, 1936. He was the son of Elizabeth "Betty" McLauchlen, a model and magazine editor, and Robert John Elias Sr., who worked in management of motels and restaurants. His paternal grandparents were Lithuanian Jews, while his mother was of half Hungarian Jewish and half Irish ancestry. He grew up in Rockville Centre, Ne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wheeler Winston Dixon
Wheeler Winston Dixon (born March 12, 1950) is an American filmmaker and scholar. He is an expert on film history, Film theory, theory and Film criticism, criticism.Bill Goodykoontz, December 23, 2012, USA TodayDefining Tarantino Accessed Aug. 25, 2013, Quote = "...long, involved chunks of onanistic, meaningless dialogue..." His scholarship has particular emphasis on François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Experimental film, American experimental cinema and horror films. He has written extensively on numerous aspects of film, including his books ''A Short History of Film'' (co-authored with Gwendolyn Audrey Foster) and ''A History of Horror''. From 1999 through the end of 2014, he was co-editor, along with Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, of the ''Quarterly Review of Film and Video.'' He is regarded as a top reviewer of films.Susan Wloszczyna, April 2, 2010, USA TODAYHow to watch your dragons: 10 fire-breathing beasts on DVD Accessed Aug. 25, 2013, Quote = “Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924).. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Downey Jr
Robert John Downey Jr. (born April 4, 1965), also known as RDJ, is an American actor. One of the highest-grossing actors of all time, his films as a leading actor have grossed over $14 billion worldwide. In 2008, Downey was named by ''Time'' magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and from 2013 to 2015, he was listed by ''Forbes'' as Hollywood's highest-paid actor. He is the recipient of numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, an Emmy Award, three Golden Globe Awards, two BAFTA Awards, and three Screen Actors Guild Awards. At the age of five, Downey made his acting debut in his father Robert Downey Sr.'s 1970 film '' Pound''. He subsequently worked with the Brat Pack in the teen films '' Weird Science'' (1985) and '' Less than Zero'' (1987). Downey's portrayal of Charlie Chaplin in the 1992 biopic ''Chaplin'' garnered him a BAFTA Award for Best Actor and his first Academy Award nomination. Following a stint at the Corcoran Substance Ab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Absurdist Fiction
Absurdist fiction is a genre of novels, Play (theatre), plays, poems, films, or other media that focuses on the experiences of characters in situations where they cannot find any inherent Meaning of life, purpose in life, most often represented by ultimately meaningless actions and events that call into question the certainty of existential concepts such as truth or value. In some cases, it may overlap with literary nonsense. The absurdist genre of literature arose in the 1950s and 1960s, first predominantly in France and Germany, prompted by post-war disillusionment. Absurdist fiction is a reaction against the surge in Romanticism in Paris in the 1830s, the collapse of religious tradition in Germany, and the societal and philosophical revolution led by the expressions of Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche. Common elements in absurdist fiction include satire, dark humor, incongruity, the abasement of reason, and controversy regarding the philosophical condition of being " ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pound (film)
''Pound'' is a 1970 American comedy film written and directed by Robert Downey Sr. It was based on ''The Comeuppance'', an Off-Off Broadway play written by Downey in 1961. It is about several dogs, along with a Siamese cat and a penguin, at a pound, as they await being euthanised; the animals are played by human actors. The film is best known for marking the acting debut of Downey's son and namesake, then-5-year-old Robert Jr., as Puppy. Cast See also * List of American films of 1970 This is a list of American films released in 1970. Box office The highest-grossing American films released in 1970, by domestic box office gross revenue as estimated by '' The Numbers'', are as follows: January–March April–June Jul ... References External links * * POUND: Revisiting A Neglected Cult Classic {{Robert Downey Sr. 1970 films 1970 comedy films 1970s English-language films Films about dogs Films directed by Robert Downey Sr. United Artists films ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chafed Elbows
''Chafed Elbows'' is a 1966 still image film directed by Robert Downey Sr. A manic comic parody underground film made for $12,000, ''Chafed Elbows'' was a commercial success. The film was premiered at The Gate Theater in New York City and ran for over one month alongside '' Scorpio Rising''. Production Downey photographed most of the movie with a still 35mm camera and had the film processed at Walgreens drugstore. These pictures were animated alongside a few live-action scenes and almost all the dialogue was dubbed to rather hilarious effect. One scene was shot in Anthology Film Archives’s upstairs theater back in the days when the building was still a defunct downtown courthouse. All 13 of the female roles were played by Elsie Downey, Robert Downey's wife, and the lead male role by George Morgan. Plot Hapless Walter Dinsmore undergoes his annual November breakdown at the 1964 New York World's Fair, has a love affair with his mother, recollects his hysterectomy operation, impe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
IMDb
IMDb, historically known as the Internet Movie Database, is an online database of information related to films, television series, podcasts, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and biographies, plot summaries, trivia, ratings, and fan and critical reviews. IMDb began as a fan-operated movie database on the Usenet group "rec.arts.movies" in 1990, and moved to the Web in 1993. Since 1998, it has been owned and operated by IMDb.com, Inc., a subsidiary of Amazon. The site's message boards were disabled in February 2017. , IMDb was the 51st most visited website on the Internet, as ranked by Semrush. the database contained some million titles (including television episodes), million person records, and 83 million registered users. Features User profile pages show a user's registration date and, optionally, their personal ratings of titles. Since 2015, "badges" can be added showing a count of contributions. These badges rang ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greaser's Palace
''Greaser's Palace'' is a 1972 American Western film written and directed by Robert Downey Sr. It stars Allan Arbus as Jesse, a man with amnesia who heals the sick, resurrects the dead and tap dances on water on the American frontier. A parable based on the life of Jesus in the New Testament, the film has been described as an acid Western. Plot Jesse ( Allan Arbus) paraglides into a town on the American frontier run by a saloon owner named Seaweedhead Greaser ( Albert Henderson), a tyrant who collects the town's taxes while keeping his mother and favorite mariachi band in cages, and suffering from chronic constipation. Jesse has amnesia and remembers nothing except that he is anticipated by talent agent Morris, telling people that he's on his way to Jerusalem, where he will become a singer, dancer and actor. Greaser murders his son, Lamy Homo Greaser (Michael Sullivan), for being a homosexual, and Jesse resurrects the dead man. Subsequently, Jesse heals the sick and tap ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Surrealism
Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike scenes and ideas. Its intention was, according to leader André Breton, to "resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality", or ''surreality.'' It produced works of painting, writing, photography, Theatre of Cruelty, theatre, Surrealist cinema, filmmaking, Surrealist music, music, Surreal humour, comedy and other media as well. Works of Surrealism feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and ''Non sequitur (literary device), non sequitur''. However, many Surrealist artists and writers regard their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost (for instance, of the "pure psychic automatic behavior, automatism" Breton speaks of in the fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Central Park
Central Park is an urban park between the Upper West Side and Upper East Side neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City, and the first landscaped park in the United States. It is the List of parks in New York City, sixth-largest park in the city, containing , and the most visited urban park in the United States, with an estimated 42 million visitors annually . It is also one of the most filmed locations in the world. The creation of a large park in Manhattan was first proposed in the 1840s, and a park approved in 1853. In 1858, landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a Architectural design competition, design competition for the park with their "Greensward Plan". Construction began in 1857; existing structures, including a majority-Black settlement named Seneca Village, were seized through eminent domain and razed. The park's first areas were opened to the public in late 1858. Additional land at the northern end of Central Park was purchased in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Short Films
A short film is a film with a low running time. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of not more than 40 minutes including all credits". Other film organizations may use different definitions, however; the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, for example, currently defines a short film as 45 minutes or less in the case of documentaries, and 59 minutes or less in the case of scripted narrative films (it is not made clear whether this includes closing credits). In the United States, short films were generally termed short subjects from the 1920s into the 1970s when confined to two 35 mm reels or less, and featurettes for a film of three or four reels. "Short" was an abbreviation for either term. The increasingly rare industry term "short subject" carries more of an assumption that the film is shown as part of a presentation along with a feature film. Short films are often ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Underground Films
An underground film is a film that is out of the mainstream either in its style, genre or financing. Notable examples include John Waters' ''Pink Flamingos'', David Lynch's ''Eraserhead'', Andy Warhol's ''Blue Movie'', Rosa von Praunheim's ''Tally Brown, New York'', Frank Henenlotter's Basket Case (film), ''Basket Case'', Nikos Nikolaidis' Singapore Sling (1990 film), ''Singapore Sling'', Rinse Dreams' ''Café Flesh'', and Jörg Buttgereit's ''Nekromantik''. Definition and history The first printed use of the term "underground film" occurs in a 1957 essay by American film critic Manny Farber, "Underground Films." Farber uses it to refer to the work of directors who "played an anti-art role in Hollywood." He contrasts "such soldier-cowboy-gangster directors as Raoul Walsh, Howard Hawks, William Wellman," and others with the "less talented Vittorio De Sica, De Sicas and Fred Zinnemann, Zinnemanns [who] continue to fascinate the critics." However, as in "Underground Press", the ter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
16mm Film
16 mm film is a historically popular and economical Film gauge, gauge of Photographic film, film. 16 mm refers to the width of the film (about inch); other common film gauges include 8 mm film, 8 mm and 35mm movie film, 35 mm. It is generally used for non-theatrical (e.g., industrial, educational, television) film-making, or for low-budget motion pictures. It also existed as a popular amateur or home movie-making format for several decades, alongside 8 mm film and later Super 8 film. Kodak, Eastman Kodak released the first 16 mm "outfit" in 1923, consisting of a Ciné-Kodak camera, Kodascope projector, tripod, screen and splicer, for US$335 (). RCA Records, RCA-Victor introduced a 16 mm sound movie projector in 1932, and developed an optical sound-on-film 16 mm camera, released in 1935. History Eastman Kodak introduced 16 mm film in 1923, as a less expensive alternative to 35mm movie film, 35 mm Film formats, film for amateurs. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
