Kenneth Turan ( /təˈræn/; born October 27, 1946) is an American film critic and Lecturer in the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California.

Turan was born in Brooklyn, New York. He received his B.S. in history from Swarthmore College in 1967 and M.S. from Columbia University in 1968. From 1969-1978 he was a sports writer and feature writer for the Washington Post. He also served as film critic for a number of publications including The Progressive, New West/California Magazine, Gentlemen's Quarterly, and E!Entertainment.

He has been a film critic for the Los Angeles Times since 1991 and the Director for the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, Los Angeles Times since 1993. He is the founding film critic for Arts Alive on KUSC-FM and www.kusc.org. He also provides regular reviews for Morning Edition on National Public Radio

Kenneth Turan is featured in the documentary For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism discussing his famous public quarrel with James Cameron, and recalling how Cameron e-mailed the LA Times’s editors calling for Turan’s firing after Turan wrote a negative review of Titanic.

Alexander Payne (born Constantine Alexander Payne; February 10, 1961) is an American film director and screenwriter, known for films like Sideways (2004) and Election (1999). His films are noted for their dark humor and satirical depictions of contemporary American society.

Payne was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of Peggy (née Constantine) and George Payne, restaurant owners. He is of Greek descent (his grandfather Anglicized the last name from Papadopoulos). He was the youngest of three sons and grew up in the same neighborhood as billionaire Warren Buffett. Payne attended Creighton Preparatory School high school and later Stanford University, where he double majored in Spanish and History. As a part of his Spanish degree, he studied at the University of Salamanca (Spain). Payne got his MFA in 1990 from the UCLA Film School.

Bill Cunningham (born December 11, 1947) is an American radio and television talk show host and conservative commentator.

On the radio, he hosts The Big Show with Bill Cunningham, a local show on WLW AM 700 in Cincinnati, Ohio; and Live on Sunday Night, it's Bill Cunningham, which is syndicated nationally by Premiere Radio Networks.

On television he hosts a self-titled talk show that is currently seen in select markets, and as of September 2012 will be seen nationally on The CW. He is also a commentator/contributor for Fox News Channel.

Cunningham won the National Association of Broadcasters Marconi Award for Large-Market Personality of the Year in 2001.

Cunningham's first regular show on the station was at night, generally from 9:00 p.m. until midnight. His show was not heard during the summer months, when WLW broadcasts Cincinnati Reds baseball games. In the late 1990s, Cunningham's show was moved to early afternoons, which put his show directly opposite that of one of his favorite radio presenters, Rush Limbaugh, whose show is heard on sister station WKRC.

Hayao Miyazaki (宮崎 駿, Miyazaki Hayao^?, born January 5, 1941) is a Japanese manga artist and prominent film director and animator of many popular anime feature films. Through a career that has spanned nearly fifty years, Miyazaki has attained international acclaim as a maker of animated feature films and, along with Isao Takahata, co-founded Studio Ghibli, an animation studio and production company. The success of Miyazaki's films has invited comparisons with American animator Walt Disney, British animator Nick Park and Robert Zemeckis; he has also been named one of the most influential people by Time magazine.

Born in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Miyazaki began his animation career in 1961, when he joined Toei Animation. From there, Miyazaki worked as an in-between artist for Gulliver's Travels Beyond the Moon where he pitched his own ideas that eventually became the movie's ending. He continued to work in various roles in the animation industry over the decade until he was able to direct his first feature film Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro which was released in 1979. After the success of his next film, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, he co-founded Studio Ghibli where he continued to produce many feature films until his temporary retirement in 1997 following Princess Mononoke.