James Berardinelli (born September 25, 1967) is an American online film critic.

Berardinelli was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey and spent his early childhood in Morristown, New Jersey. At the age of nine years, he relocated to the township of Cherry Hill, New Jersey. He attended the University of Pennsylvania from 1985 until 1990, obtaining both a Bachelor of Science and Master's degree in Electrical Engineering. After graduating he worked for Bellcore company, now Telcordia Technologies, and spent the next 15 years working "in a variety of fields, including fiber optics, video testing, and software systems." In 2004, he married one of his longtime readers. In 2010 he announced publicly that he and his wife were expecting their first child.

As a child, Berardinelli did not spend much time in theaters, and as a teenager saw only five or six movies a year. He did not become interested in cinema until he was in college. In 1991, the year before he started reviewing, he saw about 30 films. The number increased to 180 in 1992, when he wrote reviews for his own use. Starting in 1993, when he started publishing his reviews in Usenet, he began seeing between 220 and 250 theatrical releases per year. In 1997 he became a film critic and now estimates that he has seen more than 7000 films in total.

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".

Krzysztof Kieślowski (Polish pronunciation: [ˈkʂɨʂtɔf kʲɛˈɕlɔfskʲi] ( listen); 27 June 1941 – 13 March 1996) was an influential Polish film director and screenwriter known internationally for The Decalogue (1989), The Double Life of Véronique (1991), and The Three Colors Trilogy (1993–1994). Kieślowski received numerous awards throughout his career, including the Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize (1988), FIPRESCI Prize (1988, 1991), and Prize of the Ecumenical Jury (1991); the Venice Film Festival FIPRESCI Prize (1989), Golden Lion (1993), and OCIC Award (1993); and the Berlin International Film Festival Silver Bear (1994). In 1995 he received Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Writing.

Kieślowski was born in Warsaw and grew up in several small towns, moving wherever his engineer father, a tuberculosis patient, could find treatment. At sixteen, he briefly attended a firefighters' training school, but dropped out after three months. Without any career goals, he then entered the College for Theatre Technicians in Warsaw in 1957 because it was run by a relative. He decided to become a theatre director, but at the time you had to already have at least a bachelor to apply for the theatre school, so he chose to study film as an intermediate step. He was raised Roman Catholic and retained what he called a "personal and private" relationship with God.

George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, writer and producer who worked extensively in theater, radio and film. He is best remembered for his innovative work in all three media, most notably Caesar (1937), a groundbreaking Broadway adaption of Julius Caesar and the debut of the Mercury Theatre; The War of the Worlds (1938), the most famous broadcast in the history of radio; and Citizen Kane (1941), which many critics and scholars name as the best film of all time.

After directing a number of high-profile theatrical productions in his early twenties, including an innovative adaptation of Macbeth and The Cradle Will Rock, Welles found national and international fame as the director and narrator of a 1938 radio adaptation of H. G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds performed for the radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was reported to have caused widespread panic when listeners thought that an invasion by extraterrestrial beings was occurring. Although these reports of panic were mostly false and overstated, they rocketed Welles to instant notoriety.

Robert Ellis Orrall (born May 4, 1955 in Winthrop, Massachusetts) is an American singer, songwriter, and record producer. Signed to RCA Records in 1980, Orrall debuted that year with the album "Fixation". His first Top 40 single was "I Couldn't Say No", a duet with Carlene Carter. By 1990, Orrall had found success as a songwriter, having penned Number One singles for Shenandoah and Clay Walker. He returned to RCA in 1991 and charted the singles "Boom! It Was Over" and "A Little Bit of Her Love", from his first country music album, Flying Colors. Orrall then joined frequent songwriting partner Curtis Wright in the CMA-nominated duo Orrall & Wright, recording one more album and charting two singles. They split up in 1994, however, and Orrall returned to his solo career, writing singles for Reba McEntire, Taylor Swift, and Lindsay Lohan, as well as producing records for Swift, be your own PET, and Love and Theft. He also performs and records as an indie rock musician in the band Monkey Bowl.