dAmerican Teen (2008)
“American Teen” Documentary following the lives of four teenagers–a jock, the popular girl, the artsy girl and the geek–in one small town in Indiana through their senior year of high school. We see the insecurities, the cliques, the jealousies, the first loves and heartbreaks, and the struggle to make profound decisions about the future. Filming daily for ten months, filmmaker Nanette Burstein developed a deep understanding of her subjects. The result is a film that goes beyond the enduring stereotypes of high school to render complex young people trying to find their way into adulthood. Hannah Bailey is smart and beautiful, but a misfit in her high school. She is a liberal, atheist living in a traditional, Christian, conservative town and dreams of moving to California after graduation. Colin Clemens is the star of the high school basketball team–and in Indiana, basketball is everything. Colin is under enormous pressure this year playing not only to make his town, his school, and his father proud, but for a college scholarship. Jake Tusing is considered to be a nerd in high school. Though quite funny and charming one-on-one, he is painfully shy in group situations and crushed with self-doubt. In his senior year he vows that nothing will stand in the way of him finding a girlfriend. Megan Krizmanich is the student council Vice President and the youngest daughter of a prominent local surgeon, anxiously awaiting word from Notre Dame University admissions. Wealthy, pretty, smart and popular, she rules her high school–just don’t get on her bad side. When Megan’s peers challenge her authority, she can’t help but take action, even if it means risking her future. Mitch Reinholdt is an attractive and charming Varsity basketball jock with a soft side. When he puts his social status on the line, avoiding his popular friends for dates with artsy Hannah Bailey, he strains to maintain his reputation while discovering a new side of himself. American Teen Watch
Release Date: July 25th, 2008 (limited)
Being king isn’t for everyone–especially if you’re a prickly ogre who smells like the shallow end of a swamp. When Shrek married Fiona, the last thing he wanted was to rule Far Far Away, but when his frogger-in-law, King Harold, suddenly croaks, Shrek is quickly fitted for the crown. Now, unless the reluctant would-be king can find a suitable replacement, he’ll be royally screwed for the rest of his days. As if Shrek didn’t have enough on his plate, Princess Fiona has another little surprise on the way. With his head spinning and his belly in knots, Shrek sets off on a quest to find the only other possible heir to the throne, Fiona’s long-lost cousin Artie, an underachieving medieval high schooler. While the ogre is away, his old nemesis Prince Charming rears his handsome head and returns to the kingdom of Far Far Away with redemption on his shallow little mind. Even with Donkey and the ever-so-suave Puss in Boots by their side, it’s going to take an ogre-sized effort–and a whole lot of help from Fiona and her band of princesses–for Shrek and Artie to save the day and find their own “Happily Ever After.”
Aspiring reporter Kit Kittredge canât resist bringing home strays, whether itâs Grace, an abandoned basset hound, or Will and Countee, a pair of young hobos willing to trade work for meals. Bright, inquisitive and generous, Kit is a natural born leader. But her happy childhood is abruptly interrupted when her father loses his car dealership and must leave Cincinnati to look for work. Kit and her mother Margaret are left to manage on their own, growing vegetables, selling eggs and even taking in an assortment of boarders including an itinerant magician, a vivacious dance instructor on the prowl for a husband and a zany mobile librarian. When a crime spree sweeps Cincinnati, all signs point to the local âhobo jungle,â where Will and Countee live with a group of their impoverished companions. Kit, who always has her antennae out for a good news story, convinces her new friends to take her to see the hobo camp for herself and writes an article that creates a sympathetic portrait of the campâs residents. But when Kitâs mother and their boarders become the latest victims in a string of robberies, Kitâs loyalties are tested. Will is accused of the crimes and, with all of their savings gone, the Kittredges face losing their house to foreclosure. Determined to recover the stolen money and believing Will is innocent, Kit recruits her friends Ruthie and Stirling to help her track down the real culprit. Together they uncover a plot that goes far beyond Cincinnati!
Maxwell Smart is on a mission to thwart the latest plot for world domination by the evil crime syndicate known as KAOS. When the headquarters of U.S. spy agency Control is attacked and the identities of its agents compromised, the Chief has no choice but to promote his ever-eager analyst Maxwell Smart, who has always dreamt of working in the field alongside stalwart superstar Agent 23. Smart is partnered instead with the only other agent whose identity has not been compromised: the lovely-but-lethal veteran Agent 99. As Smart and 99 get closer to unraveling KAOS’ master plan–and each other–they discover that key KAOS operative Siegfried and his sidekick Shtarker are scheming to cash in with their network of terror. Given little field experience and even less time, Smart–armed with nothing but a few spy-tech gadgets and his unbridled enthusiasm–must defeat KAOS if he is to save the day. 
Kailey, a small town pool hustler in upstate New York, ekes out a living playing poker, periodically driving into Manhattan to check up on her mentor, Quinn, who runs Quinn’s, a hardcore pool hall. Kailey is determined to raise $50,000 to wrest her son Gulley, who she was forced to give up at birth, from the toxic clutches of her alcoholic ex-husband David and his domineering mother and move to Canada for a better life. In order to win the money, Kailey must score a match with the best player at Quinn’s, Duncan. With this as her only hope for a future with her son, Kailey starts to play and the stakes have never been higher.
A thirtysomething Manhattan dad is in the midst of a divorce when his 10-year-old daughter, Maya, starts to question him about his life before marriage. Maya wants to know absolutely everything about how her parents met and fell in love: Will’s story begins in 1992, as a young, starry-eyed aspiring politician who moves to New York from Wisconsin in order to work on the presidential campaign. For Maya, Will relives his past as an idealistic young man learning the ‘ins’ and ‘outs’ of big city politics, and recounts the history of his romantic relationships with three very different women. Will hopelessly attempts a gentler version of his story for his daughter, and changes the names so Maya has to guess who is the woman her father finally married. Is her mother Will’s college sweetheart, the dependable girl next door Emily? Is she his longtime best friend and confidante, the apolitical April? Or is she the free-spirited but ambitious journalist Summer? As Maya puts together the pieces of her dad’s romantic puzzle, she begins to understand that love is not so simple or easy. And as Will tells her his tale, Maya helps him to understand that itâ¿¿s definitely never too late to go back–and maybe even possible to find a happy ending.
Screenwriter Dalton Trumbo’s remarkable journey from Hollywood royalty to blacklisted writer to Academy Award winner is told through the writer’s own indelible words. Combined are performances of some of his extraordinary letters, clips from his films and archival and contemporary interviews with those who knew him best, which illustrate how one man’s unerring belief in the First Amendment and the power of the written word–plus a drink or two–empowered him to fight back after being blacklisted by HUAC.