The Spy Who Fleeced Me 720p Movies
Stefania Sholar
SAN FRANCISCO -- A San Francisco man was sentenced to five years in federal prison and ordered to pay almost $1.9 million in restitution to two fleeced investors -- including one he persuaded to believe he was a movie executive, federal authorities said Friday.
So, as I'm writing it as a Buddy Fleece, and looking at other Buddy Fleece movies, it occurred to me that very few BF films have a romantic buddy. Romancing the Stone and Far and Away are the only ones that come to mind where the Buddy is a love interest. Anyone have any helpful information out there about how to write a BF story where the buddy is a love interest?
The term "made-for-TV movie" was coined in the United States in the early 1960s as an incentive for movie audiences to stay home and watch what was promoted as the equivalent of a first-run theatrical film. Beginning in 1961 with NBC Saturday Night at the Movies, a prime time network showing of a television premiere of a major theatrical film release, the other networks soon copied the format, with each of the networks having several [Day of the Week] Night At The Movies showcases which led to a shortage of movie studio product. The first of these made-for-TV movies is generally acknowledged to be See How They Run, which debuted on NBC on October 7, 1964.[2] A previous film, The Killers, starring Lee Marvin and Ronald Reagan, was filmed as a TV-movie, although NBC decided it was too violent for television and it was released theatrically instead.[3]
These features originally filled a 90-minute programming time slot (including commercials), later expanded to two hours, and were usually broadcast as a weekly anthology television series (for example, the ABC Movie of the Week). Many early television movies featured major stars, and some were accorded higher budgets than standard television series of the same length, including the major dramatic anthology programs which they came to replace.
In 1996, 264 made-for-TV movies were made by five of the six largest American television networks at the time (CBS, NBC, Fox, ABC, and UPN), averaging a 7.5 rating.[clarification needed][4] By 2000, only 146 TV movies were made by those five networks, averaging a 5.4 rating,[4] while the number of made-for-cable movies made annually in the U.S. doubled between 1990 and 2000.[4]
In several respects, television films resemble B movies, the low-budget films issued by major studios from the 1930s through the 1950s for short-term showings in movie theaters, usually as a double bill alongside a major studio release. Like made-for-TV movies, B movies were designed as a disposable product, had low production costs and featured second-tier actors.[5]
Another popular and critically acclaimed television movie was 1971's Duel, written by Richard Matheson, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Dennis Weaver. Such was the quality and popularity of Duel that it was released to cinemas in Europe and Australia, and had a limited theatrical release to some venues in the United States and Canada. The 1971 made-for-TV movie Brian's Song was also briefly released to theatres after its success on television, and was even remade in 2001. In some instances, television movies of the period had more explicit content included in the versions prepared to be exhibited theatrically in Europe. Examples of this include The Legend of Lizzie Borden, Helter Skelter, Prince of Bel Air and Spectre.
Many television movies released in the 1970s were a source of controversy, such as Linda Blair's 1974 film Born Innocent and 1975's Sarah T. - Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic, as well as 1976's Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway and its 1977 sequel, Alexander: The Other Side of Dawn, which were vehicles for former Brady Bunch actress Eve Plumb. Another significant film was Elizabeth Montgomery's portrayal of a rape victim in the drama A Case of Rape (1974).
Occasionally, television movies are used as sequels to successful theatrical films. For example, only the first film in The Parent Trap series was released theatrically. The Parent Trap II, III and Hawaiian Honeymoon were produced for television, and similarly, the Midnight Run sequels have all been released as made-for-TV movies despite the first having a strong run in theaters. These types of films may be, and more commonly are, released direct-to-video; there have been some films, such as The Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning (a prequel to the film version of The Dukes of Hazzard) and James A. Michener's Texas, which have been released near simultaneously on DVD and on television, but have never been released in theatres.
Television movies traditionally were often broadcast by the major networks during sweeps season. Such offerings now are very rare; as Ken Tucker noted while reviewing the Jesse Stone CBS television movies, "broadcast networks aren't investing in made-for-TV movies anymore".[9] The slack has been taken up by cable networks such as Hallmark Channel, Syfy, Lifetime and HBO, with productions such as Temple Grandin and Recount, often utilizing top creative talent.
In a 1991 New York Times article, television critic John J. O'Connor wrote that "few artifacts of popular culture invite more condescension than the made-for-television movie".[10] Network-made television movies in the United States have tended to be inexpensively-produced and perceived to be of low quality.[citation needed] Stylistically, these films often resemble single episodes of dramatic television series. Often, television films are made to "cash in" on the interest centering on stories currently prominent in the news, as the films based on the "Long Island Lolita" scandal involving Joey Buttafuoco and Amy Fisher were in 1993.
The stories are written to reach periodic semi-cliffhangers coinciding with the network-scheduled times for the insertion of commercials, and are further managed to fill, but not exceed, the fixed running times allotted by the network to each movie "series". In the case of films made for cable channels, they may rely on common, repetitive tropes (Hallmark Channel, for example, is notorious for its formulaic holiday romances, while Lifetime movies are well known for their common use of damsel in distress storylines). The movies tend to rely on smaller casts, one such exception being those produced for premium cable, such as Behind the Candelabra (which featured established film actors Michael Douglas and Matt Damon in the lead roles) and a limited range of scene settings and camera setups. Even Spielberg's Duel, while having decent production values, features a very small cast (apart from Dennis Weaver, all other actors appearing in the film play smaller roles) and mostly outdoor shooting locations in the desert.
The movies typically employ smaller crews, and rarely feature expensive special effects. Although a film's expenses would be lessened by filming using video, as the movies were contracted by television studios, these films were required to be shot on 35 mm film. Various techniques are often employed to "pad" television movies with low budgets and underdeveloped scripts, such as music video-style montages, flashbacks, or repeated footage, and extended periods of dramatic slow motion footage. However, the less expensive digital 24p video format has made some quality improvements on the television movie market.
Occasionally, a long-running television series is used as the basis for television movies that air during the show's run (as opposed to the above-mentioned "reunion specials"). Typically, such movies employ a filmed single-camera setup even if the television series is videotaped using a multiple-camera setup, but are written to be easily broken up into individual 30- or 60-minute episodes for syndication. Many such movies relocate the cast of the show to an exotic overseas setting. However, although they may be advertised as movies, they are really simply extended episodes of television shows, such as the pilots and the finales of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager. Most of these are made and shown during sweeps period in order to attract a large television audience and boost viewership for a show.
In this hard-hitting call to arms, Dick Morris and Eileen McGann reveal the hundreds of ways American taxpayers are routinely fleeced--by our own government, by foreign countries, by Washington lobbying firms, by hedge-fund billionaires, and by the president himself--and offer practical agendas we all can follow to help turn the tide.
I'm a big fan of the way Blake Snyder breaks down genre in his book Save the Cat. I wanted to make lists for easy reference of all the genres. I'm starting out with the examples from Save the Cat Goes to the Movies, and then planning to go back through all the movies I've seen and add them into the genres where I think they best fit.
This second movie in the Percy Jackson series begins with a flashback exposition that reenacts Percy's arrival at Camp Half-Blood, in which the four new campers, Percy, Grover, Annabeth, and Thalia are attacked and Thalia martyrs herself to save the others.
With that out of the way, moviegoers learn that things at Camp Half-Blood are not so godly these days either.
It seems that Luke, the runaway renegade camper, now plans to revive his grandfather Kronos and destroy the gods of Olympus. To nullify any opposition from the demigod campers, he has managed to poison the Thalia tree and thereby breach her protective shield around the camp.
Percy, believing that he is the last demigod standing, the last child of the big three, Poseidon, Zeus, and Hades, feels that it is his duty to mount a quest for the Golden Fleece, the only talisman that will reverse the poisoning of the Thalia tree which protects the camp. Chiron and Dionysus, however, choose the take-no-prisoners, daughter of Ares Clarisse for the official Quest. Just before she departs, the campers are rescued from a steampunk bull, and meet a benign interloper, Thyson, who turns out to be Percy's Cyclopian half-brother, also a son of Poseidon, who despite being challenged in the binocular vision department, is played with bumbling sweetness and charm by newcomer, Douglas Smith.
Having consulted the Oracle, Percy believes his fate is to save Olympus or die, so, with his allies--Grover and Annabeth, and the new-found Thyson--he sets out on his own quest. After a wild Taxi of Desolation ride (shades of Harry and Ron's Anglia Ford ), the three locate Hermes (cleverly employed as a crack UPS manager), who give them a thermos of the winds and a hand-held package sealing dispenser that can make things disappear to speed their mission, and after a cool ride on a CGI-created giant sea horse, Hippocampus, (the cleverest of the fantasy beasts here), the seekers board a ship under the control of Luke Castellan, where they undergo many tests of their prowess before they finally claim the Golden Fleece, vanquish Kronos, and return to Camp Half-Blood in time to restore the Thalia tree--and shortly thereafter the real Thalia--to life as well.
Touches of teen/adult-friendly humor lighten the tale, as in the scene in which the Percy and his allies meet up with Clarisse in a ship crewed by lurching zombie sailors (they had to work them into the story somehow). One undead sailor responds to Clarisse's orders with a snappy "Aye-Aye, Captain," and then turns to the one-eyed Thyson, and deadpans, "Oops. Sorry, sir!" Oh, and poor cursed Dionysus is still hoping that when he pours a glass of his vintage wine, it won't turn into water, grumbling that that Christian guy gets to turn water into wine.
Although some of the monster encounters are intended to be frightful, the comic book nature of the action somehow renders all those CGI creations fairly non-scary and suitable for all but the most impressionable of elementary-age viewers. As with the first movie, kids unfamiliar with the actual book will find it suitable summer movie fare, with the requisite monster-a-minute formula that seems to appeal to middle graders.
With Chris Columbus (who directed the early Harry Potter movies), again involved, the parallels with the Potter stories are as evident as in the first movie, Riordan's The Lightning Thief, with the pleasant addition of Percy's well-meaning but befuddled Cyclopean half-brother, (also a son of Poseidon) Thyson, who, like Dobby, dies protecting his hero. Unlike Dobby, in a fortunate oversight by Lucas and his assorted monsters, Thyson is allowed to fall into a rampaging subterranean river and, apropos of a water god's son, revived to quest again.
I won't reiterate the compromises required by the screenplay's edits of Riordan's book: for those still pertinent criticisms, see my 2010 review here. My focus group for this movie was one now-fourteen-year-old (the ten-year-old critic cited in the review of first movie) who has long since read all the books, and a fourteen-year-old and eleven-year-old who had not read any of them. The non-readers liked the movie. The more sophisticated reader summed it all up well: "It was an okay movie, I guess, but it was NOTHING like the book! Read it!"
Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters is rated PG for fantasy violence. For a preview of what the action sequences include, see the movie trailer here.
And if the movie inspires a desire to read the books, Rick Riordan's still popular tweener series includes The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 1), The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson & the Olympians) The Titan's Curse (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 3), The Battle of the Labyrinth (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 4), and The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 5), all ably written and still top-selling fantasies which may also motivate some boning up on Greek mythology as well. At the rate of one movie every three years, current kids have plenty of time to get the whole series read before Book 3 hits the screen. Sadly, at this rate my original ten-year-old co-critic will be well into his twenties before the last one comes out. But maybe, after four year of high school and four years of college, he can write that review.Labels: (Grades 3-10), Adventure Stories, Greek Mythology--Fiction, Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters: Movie Review