Steven Allan Spielberg was born December 18, 1946, in the great state of Ohio. Before becoming one of our most beloved directors, Spielberg attended Long Beach State University, and made his first short film, Amblin‘, while working as an intern at Universal Studios (the title of which used when naming his production company, Amblin Entertainment). His first television job came when he was chosen to direct one of the segments for the 1969 pilot episode of Night Gallery. He would go on to direct a few TV films, including Duel (1971), a film about a truck driver that goes crazy and runs people off the road. Spielberg’s debut feature film was The Sugarland Express (1974).
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Categories: Circuit 3 Tags: circuit 3, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, Indiana Jones, Jaws, Jurassic Park, Lincoln, Minority Report, Munich, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List, Steven Spielberg, The Color Purple, war horse
 Katherine Hepburn has the distinct honor of being awarded four Oscars in her lifetime, all for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Hepburn won for Morning Glory (1933), Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? (1967), The Lion in the Winter (1968), and On Golden Pond (1982).
You mission, if you choose to accept it, is to award one actor/actress or director with four Oscars for their frame of work thus far. Read more on Oscar Question of the Day – Four-Time Oscar Winner…
Categories: Question of the Day Tags: American film directors, Cinema of the United States, Coach, Director, Entertainment/Culture, Film, Forrest Gump, gene hackman, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Human Interest, Jimmy Dugan, Katharine Hepburn, Katherine Hepburn, Meryl Streep, Movie Release, On Golden Pond, Oscar, Oscars, Penny Marshall, Philadelphia, Private, Robert Zemeckis, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List, Space advocacy, Steven Spielberg, Supporting Actor, The Color Purple, tom hanks
 Has an entire decade passed since Martin Scorsese’s massive and flawed, and massively flawed Gangs of New York (2002) thundered onto screens for the first time? It seems like yesterday that I was reading the film’s release date being delayed a full year in light of 9/11, which also permitted Scorsese to film further scenes and edit the film down to a reasonable length, all to the anger of Weinstein.
A dream project of Scorsese’s, he was invited to make the film for Miramax, which meant working with Harvey Weinstein, perhaps the only man in the industry with a temper as volatile as the director. Of course, Weinstein had an agenda, bringing an important director such as Scorsese to Miramax made his company all the more impressive, and Weinstein believed for the film, Scorsese would finally win that long elusive Academy Award. Why? Because he said so. Read more on Martin Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York” – Ten Years Later…
Categories: Article Tags: Chicago, Daniel Day-Lewis, Gangs of New York, Goodfellas, Leonardo di Caprio, Leonardo DiCaprio, Martin Scorsese, Miramax Films, Oscar, Oscars, Raging Bull, Rob Marshall, Roman Polanski, Saving Private Ryan, Shakespeare in Love, The Aviator, The Departed, the Golden Globe Awards, The Pianist
Thomas Jeffrey Hanks turns a young 56 this week. The two-time Academy Award winner was born on July 9th, 1956 in Concord, California. He studied theatre at Chabot College before transferring over to California State University. After moving to New York City, Hanks made his film debut in a low-budget horror film titled He Knows You’re Alone (1980). The following year he earned a lead role on the ABC television pilot of Bosom Buddies, where he played an advertising man who (along with Peter Scolari) dressed as a woman in order to stay in an affordable all-female hotel. The show only ran for two seasons, but gave Hanks enough attention to move on into larger roles in movies.
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 Happy 4th of July to all our fellow Americans here on the Awards Circuit. As our readership is full of international men and women from all around the world, we salute any of your independence days if you celebrate it. This is also a special shout out to all our service men and women who continue to protect so I can have the ability to type this very sentence.
There are many films that have come out over the years that celebrate America in all her glory and where she’s come from. Listed below are my ten favorite films (in no particular order) that celebrate independence and America. Feel free to share your own take on the subject either for here or your own country.
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Categories: Article, Editor Tags: All the President's Men, Born on the Fourth of July, Clint Eastwood, Editor, Forrest Gump, Independence Day, letters from iwo jima, Oliver Stone, Rocky, Roland Emmerich, Saving Private Ryan, Steven Spielberg, Sylvester Stallone, To Kill a Mockingbird, tom hanks, Top Ten
 So much has been written about the film’s stunning opening sequence, and the closing battle that I often fear the film’s greatest moment is missed. It comes mid-way through the picture after the death of the little medic Wade (Giovanni Ribisi). We watch as Wade, shot several times, tries to help Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) identify the wounds and where they are. The look of terror that crosses his face when he realizes his liver has been shot through is heartbreaking because we know that he knows he is doomed to die on that field. Slowly, and in great pain, he does indeed pass with the shots of morphine dulling the pain, nothing more, until his body lies still. Miller, devastated by the loss, walks away to be alone behind a hill. There he begins to break down, slowly at first, fearful that his men may hear him weeping, and then the sobs escape him as though from his very soul. We see for the first time that the stoic Captain, the leader is just as terrified as the men he is leading into battle. He is us, we are him; we know that man, we are that man.
Thousands of miles from home, at war with another nation for a cause he believes to be right, he leads his men quietly terrified, concerned each day that one of his decisions may lead to their death, and he will have yet another dead soldier on his conscience. Nothing he had done in his life before the war prepared him for what he was dealing with when he got there, he led like he taught in the classroom, with efficiency and integrity, his soldiers trusting him as the children he taught back in Philadelphia trusted him. Eventually the sobs subside, and he gathers himself together and goes back to his men, where he will again make life and death decisions each and every day.
Read more on Historical Circuit: Saving Private Ryan (****)…
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