• AllRovi
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• 
  

• 
  California
  California (pronounced ⁱ/kælɨˈfɔrnjə/) is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third most extensive (after Alaska and Texas). It is home to the nation's second- and sixth-largest census statistical areas (Los Angeles Metropolitan Area and San Francisco Bay Area), and eight of the nation's fifty most populated cities (Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco, Fresno, Sacramento, Long Beach and Oakland). The capital city is Sacramento.
  California's diverse geography ranges from the Pacific Coast in the west, to the Sierra Nevada mountains in the east – from the Redwood–Douglas-fir forests of the northwest, to the Mojave Desert areas in the southeast. The center of the state is dominated by Central Valley, a major agricultural area. California contains both the highest and lowest points in the contiguous United States (Mount Whitney and Death Valley), and has the third-longest coastline of all states (after Alaska and Florida). Earthquakes are a common occurrence due to the state's location along the Pacific Ring of Fire: about 37,000 are recorded annually.
  
  wn.com/California
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  DreamWorks
  DreamWorks Studios, officially DW II Distribution Co., LLC, also known as DreamWorks, LLC, DreamWorks SKG, DreamWorks Studios or DW Studios, LLC, is an American film studio which develops, produces, and distributes films, video games and television programming. It has produced or distributed more than ten films with box-office grosses totalling more than $100 million each.
  DreamWorks began in 1994 as an ambitious attempt by media moguls Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen (forming the SKG present on the bottom of the DreamWorks logo) to create a new Hollywood studio of which they own 72%. In December 2005, the founders agreed to sell the studio to Viacom, parent of Paramount Pictures. The sale was completed in February 2006. In 2008, DreamWorks announced its intention to end its partnership with Paramount and signed a $1.5 billion deal to produce films with India's Reliance ADA Group. Reliance provided $325M of equity to fund recreating Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks studio as an independent entity. Clark Hallren, former Managing Director of the Entertainment Industries group of J.P. Morgan Securities and Alan J. Levine of J.P. Morgan Entertainment Advisors led the Reliance team in structuring the capital and business plan for the company. The movie studio is 50% owned by Reliance which is led by Anil Ambani.
  
  wn.com/DreamWorks
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  New York City
  New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. The city is referred to as New York City or The City of New York to distinguish it from the State of New York, of which it is a part. As a global power city, New York exerts a significant impact upon commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and entertainment. The home of the United Nations Headquarters, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has been described as the cultural capital of the world.
  Located on one of the world's largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, each of which comprises a state county. The five boroughs—The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island—were consolidated into a single city in 1898. With a Census-estimated 2011 population of 8,244,910 distributed over a land area of just 305 square miles (790 km²), New York is the most densely populated major city in the United States. As many as 800 languages are spoken in New York, making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. The New York City Metropolitan Area's population is the United States' largest, with 18.9 million people distributed over 6,720 square miles (17,400 km²), and is also part of the most populous combined statistical area in the United States, containing 22.1 million people as of the 2010 Census.
  
  wn.com/New_York_City
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  San Diego
  San Diego /ˌsæn diːˈeɪɡoʊ/ is the eighth-largest city in the United States and second-largest city in California. The city is located on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, immediately adjacent to the Mexican border. The birthplace of California, San Diego is known for its mild year-round climate, natural deep-water harbor, extensive beaches, long association with the U.S. Navy, and recent emergence as a healthcare and biotechnology enclave. The population was 1,301,617 at the 2010 census.
  Historically home to the Kumeyaay people, San Diego was the first site visited by Europeans on what is now the West Coast of the United States. Upon landing in San Diego Bay in 1542, Juan Cabrillo claimed the entire area for Spain, forming the basis for the settlement of Alta California 200 years later. The Presidio and Mission of San Diego, founded in 1769, were the first European settlement in what is now California. In 1821, San Diego became part of newly independent Mexico, and in 1850, became part of the United States following the Mexican-American War and the admission of California to the union.
  
  wn.com/San_Diego

• Andrew Sarris
  Andrew Sarris (born 31 October 1928, Brooklyn, New York City) is an American film critic and a leading proponent of the auteur theory of criticism.
  Sarris is generally credited with popularizing the auteur theory in the U.S. and coining the term itself in his 1962 essay, "Notes on the Auteur Theory," which was inspired by critics writing in Cahiers du Cinéma.
  Sarris wrote the highly influential book The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968 (1968), an opinionated assessment of films of the sound era, organized by director. The book was to influence many other critics and helped raise an awareness of the role of the film director and, in particular, of the auteur theory. In The American Cinema, Sarris lists what he terms the 'pantheon' of the fourteen greatest film directors who had worked in the United States. The list includes the Americans Robert Flaherty, John Ford, D. W. Griffith, Howard Hawks, Buster Keaton, and Orson Welles; the Germans Fritz Lang, Ernst Lubitsch, F. W. Murnau, Max Ophuls, and Josef von Sternberg; the British Charles Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock; and the French Jean Renoir. He also created second and third tiers of directors, downplaying the work of some such as Billy Wilder, David Lean, and Stanley Kubrick. In his 1998 book You Ain't Heard Nothing Yet: The American Talking Film, History and Memory 1927-1949, Sarris upgraded the status of Billy Wilder to pantheon level and apologized for his earlier harsh opinion of the director in The American Cinema.
  
  wn.com/Andrew_Sarris
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  Anna Paquin
  Anna Helene Paquin (/ˈpækwɪn/; born 24 July 1982) is a Canadian-born New Zealand actress. Paquin's first critically successful film was The Piano, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1993 at the age of 11 – the second youngest winner in history. Her acting career took off almost half a decade later when she appeared in a string of successful films including She's All That, Almost Famous and the X-Men franchise.
  Paquin has received critical acclaim for her role as Sookie Stackhouse in the HBO series True Blood, for which she won the 2008 Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama.
  Paquin was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, the daughter of Mary Paquin (née Brophy), an English teacher and native of Wellington, New Zealand, and Brian Paquin, a high school physical education teacher, native Canadian. Paquin is the youngest of three children; she has two older siblings: a brother, Andrew, a director, born in 1977, and a sister, Katya, born in 1980, who is the partner of Green Party co-leader Russel Norman. Paquin's family moved to New Zealand when she was four. She attended the Raphael House Rudolf Steiner School until she was eight or nine. Her musical childhood hobbies in New Zealand included playing the viola, cello, and piano. She also participated in gymnastics, ballet, swimming and downhill skiing, though she did not have any hobbies related to acting.
  
  wn.com/Anna_Paquin
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  Bijou Phillips
  Bijou Lilly Phillips (born April 1, 1980) is an American actress, model, and singer. Phillips began her career as a model but soon transitioned herself into acting and singing. When she was 13, she started as a model and became one of the youngest people to grace the cover of Interview Magazine and Italian Vogue. Bijou also appeared in several ads for Calvin Klein. She made her musical debut with her album I'd Rather Eat Glass in 1999. She has appeared in films such as Black and White (1999), Almost Famous (2000), Bully (2001), Octane (2003), The Door in the Floor (2004), Venom (2005), Hostel: Part II (2007), and Choke (2008).
  Named after the song "My Petite Bijou" by Lambert, Hendricks & Ross (bijou means 'jewel' in French), Phillips was born in Greenwich, Fairfield County, Connecticut, and is the daughter of John Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas and his then-wife Geneviève Waïte, a South African model, artist, and actress. The youngest of John Phillips's children, she has one brother, Tamerlane, and three half-siblings: Mackenzie, Jeffrey, and Chynna. After her parents split up, both were found unfit to have custody of Bijou and she was placed in foster care with a family in Bolton Landing, New York. She lived there on and off, doing extended visits with her parents, who had both acquired houses in the area.
  
  wn.com/Bijou_Phillips
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  Billy Crudup
  William Gaither "Billy" Crudup ( /ˈkruːdəp/; born July 8, 1968) is an American actor of film and stage. He is well known for his roles as guitarist Russell Hammond in Almost Famous, Will Bloom in Big Fish, and Prince Ashitaka in Princess Mononoke. He also starred in the 2007 romantic comedy film Dedication, alongside Mandy Moore. In 2009, he appeared as Doctor Manhattan in the film Watchmen and as J. Edgar Hoover in the film Public Enemies.
  Crudup was born in Manhasset, New York. His parents, Georgann (née Gaither) and Thomas Henry Crudup III, divorced during his childhood, and later remarried, before divorcing a second time. His maternal grandfather was William Cotter "Billy" Gaither, Jr., a well-known Florida trial lawyer, and his maternal grandmother later remarried to Episcopal bishop James Duncan. Crudup has two brothers: Tommy, an executive producer, and Brooks, also a producer. He left New York with his family when he was about eight years old, first living in Texas, then in Florida. He graduated from Saint Thomas Aquinas High School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 1986.
  
  wn.com/Billy_Crudup
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  Cameron Crowe
  Cameron Buttboy Crowe (born July 13, 1957) is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Before moving into the film industry, Crowe was a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine, for which he still frequently writes.
  Crowe has made his mark with character-driven, personal films that have been generally hailed as refreshingly original and devoid of cynicism. Michael Walker in The New York Times called Crowe "something of a cinematic spokesman for the post-baby boom generation" because his first few films focused on that specific age group, first as high schoolers and then as young adults making their way in the world.
  Crowe's debut screenwriting effort, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, grew out of a book he wrote while posing for one year undercover as a student at Clairemont High School in San Diego, California, where he met Geraldine Edwards, who was a student there while he was visiting mutual friends in 1975. He later based part of his Penny Lane character on her in Almost Famous after discovering that she had been going backstage to Rock and Roll concerts. Later, he wrote and directed one more high school saga, Say Anything, and then Singles, a story of Seattle twentysomethings that was woven together by a soundtrack centering on that city's burgeoning grunge music scene. Crowe landed his biggest hit, though, with Jerry Maguire. After this, he was given a green light to go ahead with a pet project, the autobiographical effort Almost Famous. Centering on a teenage music journalist on tour with an up-and-coming band, it gave insight to his life as a 15-year-old writer for Rolling Stone. Part of the dialogue was inspired by comments that were made by Bebe Buell in certain interviews. Also in late 1999, Crowe released his second book, Conversations with Billy Wilder, a question and answer session with the legendary director.
  
  wn.com/Cameron_Crowe
• David Ansen
  David Ansen is a reviewer and senior editor for Newsweek, where he has been reviewing movies since 1977. He came to Newsweek after several years as the chief film critic at Boston's The Real Paper. Ansen appeared in This Film Is Not Yet Rated.
  Ansen has also written several documentaries for television, on Greta Garbo (for TNT), Groucho Marx (HBO), Elizabeth Taylor (PBS) and the Ace Award winning All About Bette (Bette Davis) for TNT. He was on the selection committee of the New York Film Festival from 1990 to 1998.
  He is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle, the National Society of Film Critics and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and is a three-time winner of the Page One Award from the Newspaper Guild of New York.
  
  wn.com/David_Ansen
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  Fairuza Balk
  Fairuza Alejandra Balk (born May 21, 1974) is an American film actress best known for appearances in several moderately successful films in the 1990s. She made her theatrical film debut as Dorothy Gale in Disney's Return to Oz. Balk also made notable appearances in Valmont, The Craft, The Island of Dr. Moreau, American History X, The Waterboy, and Personal Velocity: Three Portraits.
  Balk was born as Fairuza Alejandra Feldthouse in Point Reyes, California. Her first name is Persian, meaning "Turquoise, Victory, or Precious One". Until age two, Balk lived in Cloverdale, California with her mother. They then moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, where she began acting at age six. They moved from London to Paris for another role. They remained there for six months before returning to Vancouver. Balk moved to Los Angeles as a teenager upon signing to act in The Craft.
  Fairuza's mother, Cathryn Balk, has studied, performed, and taught the ethnic and traditional dance forms of many countries such as Egypt, Turkey, Morocco and Spain. Her father, Solomon Feldthouse, was one of the founding members of the 1960s psychedelic rock group Kaleidoscope, and also a traveling folk musician. He was born in Pingree, Idaho and moved to Turkey at age 10, where he lived for six years and learned Greek, Turkish and Persian music. Balk claims Romani and Cherokee ancestry through her father.
  
  wn.com/Fairuza_Balk
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  Frances McDormand
  Frances Louise McDormand (born June 23, 1957) is an American film and stage actress. She has starred in a number of films, including her Academy Award-winning performance as Marge Gunderson in Fargo, in 1996. She won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play in 2011 for her performance in Good People as Margie Walsh, having been nominated for the same category in 1988 for the revival of A Streetcar Named Desire.
  McDormand is a three-time nominee of the Academy Award For Best Supporting Actress for her performances in Mississippi Burning, Almost Famous, and North Country, and has also been nominated for four Golden Globes, three BAFTA Awards, and an Emmy Award. She also starred in the Coen Brothers debut, Blood Simple.
  McDormand was born in Chicago and was adopted by the McDormands, a Canadian couple – Noreen, a registered nurse and receptionist, and Vernon, a Disciples of Christ pastor. She has said that her biological mother may have been one of the parishioners at Vernon's church. She has a sister, Dorothy A. McDormand, who is an ordained Disciples of Christ minister and chaplain, as well as another sibling, both of whom were adopted by the McDormands, who had no biological children. As her father specialized in restoring congregations, he frequently moved their family, and they lived in several small towns in Illinois, Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, before settling in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area town of Monessen, where she graduated from high school in 1976. She attended Bethany College, West Virginia, and earned a B.A. in Theater in 1979.
  
  wn.com/Frances_McDormand
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  Ian Bryce
  Ian Bryce (born in 1956) is an English film producer. Starting as a production assistant on Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi he is now an award-winning film producer.
  Bryce has won & been nominated for many awards, including multiple Golden Globes, Academy Awards and BAFTA nominations for his work as a producer. For Steven Spielberg's World War II drama Saving Private Ryan, he won a Golden Globe Award and nominations from the "Academy Awards" and BAFTA. The film was one of the top-grossing films of 1998. Almost Famous, another Bryce production, received a BAFTA Best Film award in 2000. One of the biggest movie franchises in recent years, the Transformers trilogy, are all Ian Bryce productions.
  Bryce now lives in L.A. with his wife, Taylor and their two kids Alex and Mackenzy.
  
  wn.com/Ian_Bryce
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  Jay Baruchel
  Jonathan Adam Saunders "Jay" Baruchel (born April 9, 1982) is a Canadian actor. He has had a successful career in comedy films, and has appeared in supporting roles in such box office successes as Million Dollar Baby, Knocked Up and Tropic Thunder, as well as starring in films like She's Out of My League, The Trotsky, How to Train Your Dragon and The Sorcerer's Apprentice.
  Baruchel was born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, the son of Robyne (née Ropell), a freelance writer, and Serge Baruchel, an antiques dealer. He grew up and still lives in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighbourhood of Montreal, Quebec, and has a younger sister, Taylor. His father was of half Sephardic Jewish and half French Catholic ancestry, and his mother is of Irish Catholic background; Baruchel has said that he is "probably agnostic".
  One of his first major acting roles was on local television series My Hometown in 1996. From 1997–1998, he co-hosted Popular Mechanics for Kids with Elisha Cuthbert. After appearing briefly in Cameron Crowe's Oscar-winning Almost Famous, Baruchel won the role of Steven Karp on Judd Apatow's acclaimed yet short-lived television series Undeclared, where he starred alongside Seth Rogen, Carla Gallo, Charlie Hunnam, and Monica Keena. He then appeared with James Van Der Beek in Roger Avary's The Rules of Attraction.
  
  wn.com/Jay_Baruchel
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  Jimmy Fallon
  James Thomas "Jimmy" Fallon, Jr. (born September 19, 1974) is an American actor, comedian, singer, musician and television host. He currently hosts Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, a late-night talk show that airs Monday through Friday on NBC. Prior to that he appeared in several films, and was best known as a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1998–2004.
  James Thomas Fallon, Jr., was born in Brooklyn, New York. Jimmy is the son of Gloria and James Fallon, Sr., who is a Vietnam War veteran. His family later settled in Saugerties, New York, while his father worked at IBM in nearby Kingston, New York. He is of Irish descent. As a child, he and his older sister, Gloria, would reenact the “clean parts” of Saturday Night Live that his parents had taped for him. Fallon was such a fan of Saturday Night Live that he made a weekly event of watching it in his dormitory during college. In his teens, he impressed his parents with different impersonations, the first being of James Cagney. He was also musically inclined, and started playing guitar at age 13. He would go on to mix comedy and music in contests and shows.
  
  wn.com/Jimmy_Fallon
• Joe Hutshing
  Joe Hutshing is an American film editor who grew up in San Diego, California and is best known for working multiple times with film director, Oliver Stone and well as with film director Cameron Crowe (who is also from San Diego, California). Hutshing graduated from the University of Oregon in 1980.
  Hutshing has received Academy Awards for the film JFK (1991) about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and for Born on the 4th of July (1989); both films were directed by Oliver Stone.
  Hutshing has been elected to membership in the American Cinema Editors.
  The release date and director of each film are indicated in parenthesis.
  
  wn.com/Joe_Hutshing
• John Fedevich
  John Fedevich (born in Massillon, Ohio) is an American drummer and actor. Born and raised in Massillon, OH, Fedevich currently lives and works in Las Vegas, NV.
  
  John Fedevich acted in the movie Almost Famous playing the character of Ed Vallencourt, the Stillwater band drummer. He later acted in the movies Vanilla Sky (2001) and Shopgirl (2005).
  
  
  
  wn.com/John_Fedevich
• John Toll
  John Toll A.S.C. is a Cleveland-born American cinematographer.
  In 1978 he worked on his first film, Norma Rae, as camera operator. He won back-to-back Academy Awards for Best Cinematography in 1994 and 1995, for the movies Legends of the Fall and Braveheart.
  He was also nominated for an Academy Award for his work on The Thin Red Line and won an Honorable Mention at the 49th Berlin International Film Festival. He was also nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for the pilot of Breaking Bad.
  He was the cinematographer in 1987 for a Ben-Gay baseball-themed national television commercial shot in Anaheim Stadium in southern California, written and co-directed by Peter Hoffman, a creative director at the New York advertising agency Ally & Gargano. It was the first commercial to use a baseball team's human mascot - in this case a giant "bird" - as a star in a commercial.
  
  wn.com/John_Toll
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  Kate Hudson
  Kate Garry Hudson (born April 19, 1979) is an American actress. She came to prominence in 2001 after winning a Golden Globe and receiving several nominations, including a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, for her role in Almost Famous. She then starred in the hit film How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003) which gained her wider fame. She has since established herself in Hollywood after starring in several productions including Raising Helen (2004), The Skeleton Key (2005), You, Me and Dupree (2006), Fool's Gold (2008) and Bride Wars (2009).
  Hudson was born in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Academy Award-winning actress Goldie Hawn and Bill Hudson, an actor, comedian, and musician. Her parents divorced eighteen months after her birth; she and her brother, actor Oliver Hudson, were raised in Colorado by her mother and her mother's long-time boyfriend, actor Kurt Russell.
  Hudson has stated that her biological father "doesn't know me from a hole in the wall", and that she considers Russell to be her father. Her biological father has indicated that he has made several efforts to connect with Kate and Oliver, but neither has reciprocated. Hudson has described her mother as "the woman that I've learned the most from, and who I look up to, who has conducted her life in a way that I can look up to". She has four half-siblings: Emily and Zachary Hudson, from her biological father's subsequent marriage to actress Cindy Williams; Lalania Hudson, from his relationship with another woman; and Wyatt, from her mother's relationship with Russell.
  
  wn.com/Kate_Hudson
• Lester Bangs
  Leslie Conway "Lester" Bangs (December 13, 1948 – April 30, 1982) was an American music journalist, author, and musician. He wrote for Creem and Rolling Stone magazines and was known for his leading influence in rock music criticism.
  Bangs was born in Escondido, California, the son of Norma Belle (née Clifton) and Conway Leslie Bangs, a truck driver. His parents were both from Texas, his father from Enlow and his mother from Pecos County. His mother was a devout Jehovah's Witness; his father died in a fire when Bangs was young. In 1969, Bangs began writing freelance after reading an ad in Rolling Stone soliciting readers' reviews. His first piece was a negative review of the MC5 album, Kick Out The Jams, which he sent to Rolling Stone with a note requesting that if the magazine were to pass on publishing the review, that he receive a reason for their decision; however, no reply was forthcoming as the magazine did indeed publish the review.
  Bangs wrote about Janis Joplin's death by drug overdose, "It's not just that this kind of early death has become a fact of life that has become disturbing, but that it's been accepted as a given so quickly". In 1973, Jann Wenner fired Bangs from Rolling Stone, a negative review of Canned Heat being the final event. He moved to Detroit to edit and write for Creem. After leaving Creem, he wrote for The Village Voice, Penthouse, Playboy, New Musical Express, and many other publications.
  
  wn.com/Lester_Bangs
• Liz Stauber
  Liz Stauber (born June 27, 1979) is an American actress. She attended North Central High School in Indianapolis, Indiana.
  Film
  Television
  
  
  
  wn.com/Liz_Stauber
• Manohla Dargis
  Manohla Dargis is a chief film critic for The New York Times, along with A.O. Scott. She was formerly a chief film critic for the Los Angeles Times, the film editor at the LA Weekly, and a film critic at The Village Voice. She has written for a variety of publications, including Film Comment and Sight and Sound. She wrote the monograph on Curtis Hanson's film L.A. Confidential for the British Film Institute and is featured in American Movie Critics: An Anthology From the Silents Until Now, edited by Phillip Lopate and published by the Library of America.
  Dargis, born in 1961, grew up in Manhattan's East Village, evincing an early love of film through regular attendance at St. Mark's Cinema and Theater 80.
  
  
  
  wn.com/Manohla_Dargis
• Mark Kozelek
  Mark Kozelek (born January 24, 1967 in Massillon, Ohio) is an American singer/songwriter Producer and frontman of Sun Kil Moon and Red House Painters.
  Mark Kozelek was born and raised in Massillon, Ohio. Upon relocating to Atlanta, Georgia, he met drummer Anthony Koutsos. After the pair moved once again to San Francisco, California, Red House Painters formed with the addition of guitarist Gorden Mack and bassist Jerry Vessel. From 1992 to 1996, Red House Painters released a series of acclaimed albums, showcasing Kozelek's intense, highly autobiographical songs.
  However, Kozelek's parting with the record label 4AD, followed by a major label merger which left Red House Painters' 1998 album Old Ramon on the shelf, proved highly frustrating and stifled the group's momentum. Kozelek opted to occupy himself with a series of idiosyncratic solo recordings as Red House Painters dissolved.
  In 2000, he released the solo EP Rock 'n' Roll Singer, which featured three original songs as well as covers of John Denver's "Around and Around" and three AC/DC songs ("Rock 'n' Roll Singer," "Bad Boy Boogie," and "You Ain't Got a Hold on Me"). Two of the AC/DC cover versions on Rock 'n' Roll Singer were radical re-arrangements of the originals which removed the Bon Scott-penned lyrics from their hard rock context and placed them into gentle, acoustic "folk ballad" settings.
  
  wn.com/Mark_Kozelek
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  Michael Angarano
  Michael Anthony Angarano (born December 3, 1987) is an American actor.
  Angarano was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Doreen and Michael P. Angarano. He is of Italian descent. His family owns and operates three successful dance studios; two in New York (Brooklyn and Staten Island) and one in California (Los Angeles) called Reflections in Dance. His mother is the owner and director of all three. Kristen, his older sister, is the co-director of the LA studio and is the manager of the NY studios.^{[citation needed]} Younger sister Erica teaches at the LA studio, while going to school at San Diego State University. Angarano graduated from Crespi Carmelite High School in 2005 and currently has an apartment in Sherman Oaks in Los Angeles.
  In 2000, 12-year old Angarano acted in Cover Me: Based on the True Life of an FBI Family. The following year, he landed his first major film role in Little Secrets, opposite Evan Rachel Wood and David Gallagher.
  Michael then starred in a 2003 telefilm named Maniac Magee as Jeffery Lionel Magee, a 12-year-old boy who finds his way into Two Mills, Pennsylvania, a place divided by racial prejudice. It premiered on Nickelodeon.
  
  wn.com/Michael_Angarano
• Noah Taylor
  Noah George Taylor (born 4 September 1969) is an English-born Australian actor and musician.
  Taylor, elder of two boys, was born in London, England, the son of Maggie, a journalist and book editor, and Paul Taylor, a copywriter and journalist. Taylor's Australian parents returned to Australia when he was five, and he grew up in Clifton Hill and St Kilda, Victoria, suburbs of Melbourne. His parents divorced when he was 14. Taylor left both school and home at 16 with no intention of becoming an actor; a friend, however, suggested that he try the theater as 'something to do at the weekends', and Taylor found the experience so enjoyable that he opted to make it his career. After performing in plays at St Martin's Youth Theater in South Yarra for a year, he gained the attention of director John Duigan, who cast him in the 1987 film The Year My Voice Broke, the first part of a planned trilogy. Taylor also appeared in its sequel, 1991's Flirting which also starred Nicole Kidman.
  Taylor first gained international attention playing the tormented young pianist David Helfgott in the 1996 film Shine. Taylor's résumé includes action movies (Lara Croft: Tomb Raider), comedies (The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou), psychological thrillers (Vanilla Sky) and historical dramas (Max, in which he played the young Adolf Hitler.)
  
  wn.com/Noah_Taylor
• Owen Gleiberman
  Owen Gleiberman is an American film critic for Entertainment Weekly, a position he has held since the magazine's launch in 1990. From 1981–89, he worked at the Boston Phoenix.
  Besides Entertainment Weekly, his work has been published in Film Comment, and collected in the film criticism anthology Love and Hisses. Gleiberman reviews movies for National Public Radio and for NY1, New York City's 24-hour cable news television station and is a member and former chair of the New York Film Critics Circle. He is one of the critics featured in Gerald Peary's 2009 documentary film For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism.
  Gleiberman's first foray into journalism came at Ann Arbor Pioneer High School while working as the film critic for The Optimist, the student newspaper.
  Gleiberman has acknowledged that he has difficulty dealing with the grading system at EW and that it has "never been [his] favorite thing."
  He is featured in For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism, discussing the implications of being a young critic championed by Pauline Kael, and also explaining the impact on him as child watching Rosemary's Baby.
  
  wn.com/Owen_Gleiberman
• 
  Patrick Fugit
  Patrick Raymond Fugit (born October 27, 1982) is an American actor best known for his debut performance in the lead role of Cameron Crowe's film Almost Famous.
  Making his acting debut in a school production while in the seventh grade (he played the shoemaker in The Twelve Dancing Princesses), Fugit pursued an acting career and landed guest roles on episodes of Promised Land and Touched by an Angel (both from CBS) in 1998. That same year, he was a meal for hungry insects in the Fox television movie Legion of Fire: Killer Ants. Work in the more mild-mannered Beyond the Prairie: The True Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder (CBS) followed in 2000.
  Fugit became much more widely known when he was cast in the starring role in Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous, playing a young rock-fan-turned-reporter. He later claimed that his knowledge of 1970s rock music was nil ("I actually thought Led Zeppelin was one person"). Fugit's performance was widely praised. Before Almost Famous was released, he auditioned for the title role in Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko. The role eventually went to Jake Gyllenhaal.
  
  wn.com/Patrick_Fugit
• 
  Rainn Wilson
  Rainn Dietrich Wilson (born January 20, 1966) is an American actor and comedian. He is primarily known for his Emmy-nominated role as the egomaniacal Dwight Schrute on the American version of the television comedy The Office. He has also directed three episodes of The Office: the sixth season's "The Cover-Up", the seventh season's "Classy Christmas", and the eighth season's "Get the Girl".
  Wilson was born in Seattle, Washington, the son of Shay Cooper, a yoga teacher and actress, and Robert G. Wilson, a novel writer, artist, and business consultant who wrote the science fiction novel Tentacles of Dawn. Rainn showed the book and read from it on Jimmy Kimmel Live! March 22, 2011. Wilson attended Central Middle School and Shorecrest High School in Shoreline, Washington, where he played the clarinet and bassoon in the band. He transferred to and graduated from New Trier High School after his family moved to Winnetka, Illinois to serve at the Bahá'í National Center. Wilson has a theatre background from Tufts University and the University of Washington, and has taught acting classes. He holds an MFA from New York University's Graduate Acting Program at the Tisch School of the Arts and was a member of The Acting Company. While acting in theatrical productions in New York, he drove a moving van to make ends meet.
  
  wn.com/Rainn_Wilson
• Richard Corliss
  Richard Nelson Corliss (born March 6, 1944) is a writer for Time magazine who focuses on movies, with the occasional article on music or sports. Corliss is the former editor-in-chief of Film Comment. Talking Pictures, one of his three books as well as his writing for Time and other publications were some of the first writings to help draw attention to the role of the screenwriter, as opposed to the director, in the creation of movies.
  Corliss was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Elizabeth Brown (née McCluskey) and Paul William Corliss. He attended Saint Joseph's College (now Saint Joseph's University), obtaining a bachelor's degree, before progressing to Columbia University to earn a master's degree in film studies. Corliss lives in New York City with his wife, Mary, whom he married on Sunday, August 31, 1969. Mary was formerly a curator in the Film Stills Archive of the Museum of Modern Art.
  According to Awake in the Dark, Corliss's mother takes all the movie posters where a quote of Corliss's appears on and pins them to her refrigerator.
  
  wn.com/Richard_Corliss
• 
  Roger Ebert
  Roger Joseph Ebert ( /ˈiːbərt/; born June 18, 1942) is an American journalist, film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.
  Ebert is known for his film review column (appearing in the Chicago Sun-Times since 1967, and later online) and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The Movies, all of which he co-hosted for a combined 23 years with Gene Siskel. After Siskel's death in 1999, Ebert teamed with Richard Roeper for the television series Ebert & Roeper & the Movies, which began airing in 2000. Although his name remained in the title, Ebert did not appear on the show after mid-2006 after he suffered post-surgical complications related to thyroid cancer, leaving him unable to speak. Ebert ended his association with the show in July 2008, but in February 2009 he stated that he and Roeper would continue their work on a new show. Ebert's current show, Ebert Presents: At the Movies, premiered on January 21, 2011, with Ebert contributing a review voiced by someone else in a brief segment called "Roger's Office".
  
  wn.com/Roger_Ebert
• Saar Klein
  Saar Klein (born 1967 in Israel) is an American film editor who has been nominated twice for Academy Awards (for The Thin Red Line (1998) and for Almost Famous (2000)), and who received an ACE Eddie Award for editing the latter film.
  Klein was born in Israel. He emigrated to the United States with his parents at the age of 10. In 1989, Klein received a bachelor's degree in psychology from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. Klein was offered an internship with editor Joe Hutshing on the film JFK (directed by Oliver Stone-1991); his first editing credit (as an apprentice to editors David Brenner and Sally Menke) was for the 1993 film Heaven & Earth (directed by Oliver Stone).The Thin Red Line, which was nominated for an editing Academy Award, was only his second credit as an editor. Klein shared this credit with Leslie Jones and Billy Weber; the film was directed by Terrence Malick. Klein and Joe Hutshing co-edited Almost Famous (2000), which was directed by Cameron Crowe.
  Klein edited The Bourne Identity (directed by Doug Liman - 2002), which was the first in the series of films based on the novels of Robert Ludlum. Christopher Rouse, who worked as an additional editor on The Bourne Identity, edited the subsequent films that were directed by Paul Greengrass. Klein subsequently co-edited The New World (2005) (again with director Terrence Malick); Malick's films have typically used several editors. Klein recently edited Jumper (2008) (with director Doug Liman).
  
  wn.com/Saar_Klein
• Shakespeare in Love
  Shakespeare in Love is a 1998 British-American romantic comedy-drama film directed by John Madden, written by Marc Norman and playwright Tom Stoppard. The film depicts a love affair involving playwright William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) at the time that he was writing the play Romeo and Juliet. The story is fiction, though several of the characters are based on real people. In addition, many of the characters, lines, and plot devices are references to Shakespeare's plays.
  Shakespeare in Love won seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actress (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Best Supporting Actress (Judi Dench).
  William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) is a poor playwright for Philip Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush), owner of The Rose Theatre, in 1593 London. After learning that his love was cheating on him with his patron, Shakespeare burns his new comedy, Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter, rewriting it as the tragedy Romeo and Juliet. Suffering from writer's block, he is unable to complete the play, but begins auditions for Romeo. A young man named Thomas Kent is cast in the role after impressing Shakespeare with his performance and his love of Shakespeare's previous work. Kent is actually Viola de Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow), the daughter of a wealthy merchant who desires to act but, since women are banned from the stage, she must disguise herself.
  
  wn.com/Shakespeare_in_Love
• 
  Zooey Deschanel
  Zooey Claire Deschanel ( /ˈzoʊ.iː deɪʃəˈnɛl/ ZOH-ee day-shə-NEL; born January 17, 1980) is an American actress, musician and singer-songwriter. In 1999, Deschanel made her film debut in Mumford, followed by her breakout role as young protagonist William Miller's troubled older sister Anita in Cameron Crowe's 2000 semi-autobiographical film Almost Famous. Deschanel soon became known for her deadpan or "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" supporting roles in films such as Elf (2003), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), Failure to Launch (2006), Bridge to Terabithia (2007), and Happening, TheThe Happening (2008). She then began playing lead roles in films, including Yes Man (2008) and (500) Days of Summer (2009). She currently stars in the Fox series New Girl. She has been nominated for Golden Globe and Grammy Awards.
  For a few years starting in 2001, Deschanel performed in the jazz cabaret act If All the Stars Were Pretty Babies with fellow actress Samantha Shelton. Besides singing, she plays keyboards, percussion, banjo and ukulele. She also often sings in her films. Deschanel teamed up with M. Ward to release their debut album Volume One (recorded with M. Ward under the moniker She & Him) which was released in March 2008. The follow-up album Volume Two was released in the U.S. in March 2010. She married Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard in September 2009, and filed for divorce from him in December 2011.
  
  wn.com/Zooey_Deschanel

Almost Famous (2000)

Actors

• Patrick Fugit
• Kate Hudson
• Frances Mcdormand
• Fairuza Balk
• Zooey Deschanel
• Bijou Phillips
• John Fedevich
• Mark Kozelek
• Alice Marie Crowe
• Pauley Perrette
• Anna Paquin
• Billy Crudup
• Jason Lee
• Jimmy Fallon
• Noah Taylor

Director

• Cameron Crowe

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• timeline:
• 2012
• 2011
• 2010
• 2009
• 2008
• 2007
• 2006
• 2005
• 2004
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• 2001