Alan Arkin
1) People Soup
Author
Language
English
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Description
Unbeknownst to many fans, Oscar-winning actor Alan Arkin, whose movie career was revitalized with his 2006 role in the indie hit Little Miss Sunshine, also had a brief career as a science-fiction writer in the 1950s. People Soup is a charming and somewhat unsettling tale of two boys who inadvertently concoct a magical potion. The story is the inspiration for a short film with the same name that Arkin directed in 1969, starring his
...Author
Language
English
Description
Alan Arkin knew he was going to be an actor from the age of five. "Every film I saw, every play, every piece of music fed an unquenchable need to turn myself into something other than what I was." Following Arkin's professional journey as an actor and his personal development along the way, An Improvised Life is a revealing look into the creative mind of one of the craft's best practitioners on stage or screen.
3) Marley & me
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Formats
Description
John and Jen are journalists who are a newly married couple. Marley is the adopted puppy that no one wants, a high-strung lab who is virtually untrainable. Marley shreds cushions, destroys floors and walls and most everything in between. Instead of taking him to the pound, they love their dog and he faithfully loves them in return. John and Jen eventually have three children and Jen gives up her career to be a mom. John's career continues to advance...
4) City Island
Language
English
Description
Vince Rizzo is a lifelong resident of the tiny, tradition-steeped Bronx enclave of City Island. A family man who makes his living as a corrections officer, Vince longs to become an actor. Vince would rather let his wife believe his weekly poker games are a cover for an affair than admit he is secretly taking acting classes in Manhattan. When Vince is asked to reveal his biggest secret in class, he inadvertently sets off a chaotic chain of events that...
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English
Formats
Description
Growing up together, Mitch and Dave were inseparable best friends, but slowly drifted apart. While Dave is an overworked lawyer, husband and father of three, Mitch has remained a single, quasi-employed man-child. Both guys seem to think the other has it made. Following a drunken night out together, Mitch and Dave's worlds are turned upside down when they wake up in each other's bodies. The guys soon discover that each other's lives are nowhere near...
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English
Appears on list
Formats
Description
Val is released from prison after serving twenty-eight years for refusing to give up one of his close criminal associates. He's reunited with his two best friends Doc and Hirsch. But one of the friends is keeping a dangerous secret. He's been put in an impossible quandary by a former mob boss, and his time to find an acceptable alternative is running out. As the sun rises on the guys' legendary reunion, their position becomes more and more desperate....
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English
Description
JB Bernstein is a once-successful sports agent who may have to close his business. To save it, he comes up with an idea so radical it just might work. Setting off for Mumbai, JB stages a televised, nationwide competition called 'Million Dollar Arm' where two young finalists emerge as winners. JB brings them back to the US with a goal: get them signed as pitchers to a major league team. While the boys learn the game, they teach JB the meaning of teamwork...
8) Thin ice
Language
English
Description
Mickey Prohaska is a small-time insurance agent looking for one big score to get him out of frigid Wisconsin. But Mickey's clever con spirals out of control when an unstable locksmith turns the tables and raises the stakes higher than Mickey ever imagined.
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English
Formats
Description
"Once upon a time in a castle high on a hill lived an inventor whose greatest creation was named Edward. Although Edward had an irresistible charm, he wasn't quite perfect. The inventor's sudden death left him unfinished, with sharp shears of metal for hands. Edward lived alone in the darkness until one day a kind Avon lady took him home to live with her family. And so began Edward's fantastical adventures in a pastel paradise known as Suburbia"--Container....
10) Santa clause 3
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
With another Christmas season fast approaching, Santa Claus/Scott Calvin is feeling even more pressure. Mrs. Claus is expecting a little Claus. She is also longing for the company of some "tall people." So Scott agrees to let her parents visit as long as they believe that they're really in Canada rather than at the North Pole. Further complicating matters is a visit by Scott's ex-wife, her husband, and their daughter, Lucy. A member of the Council...
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
JB Bernstein is a once-successful sports agent who may have to close his business. To save it, he comes up with an idea so radical it just might work. Setting off for Mumbai, JB stages a televised nationwide competition called "Million dollar arm" where two young finalists emerge as winners. JB brings them back to the US with a goal: get them signed as pitchers to a major league team. While the boys learn the game, they teach JB the meaning of teamwork...
Language
English
Description
Rose Lorkowski is a single mother attempting to support her son Oscar and her unreliable sister Norah. She works a mundane job as a maid. Once the head cheerleader in school with plenty of prospects, Rose now has little to show for her life. She still sees the former head football player, but it is little more than a despondent affair. When Oscar is expelled from public school, Rose takes a job as a bio-hazard crime-scene cleaner to help pay for a...
13) Gattaca
Series
Language
English
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Description
As one of the last "natural" beings born into a genetically engineered world, Vincent Freeman has none of the 'pre-ordered' DNA that will guarantee him success. Desperate to realize his dream of exploring space, Vincent assumes the identity of a genetically superior athlete. Avoiding detection using the athlete's genetic markers, Vincent becomes a rising star at Gattaca Aerospace, attracting the attention of a beautiful co-worker. When a flight director...
15) The in-laws
Series
Criterion collection volume 823
Language
English
Formats
Description
Dentist Sheldon Kornpett is a respectable man. He has a daughter who is about to marry the son of a very suspicious character, Vince Ricardo. Nonetheless, Vince calls on Sheldon and convinces him to go with him on a series of adventures, claiming all the while that he is a CIA agent, and that what he is doing is in national interest. Sheldon follows Vince to a South American country ruled by a very odd man, General Garcia, who talks to his hand. It...
16) Naples '44
Language
English
Description
In 1943 a young British officer, Norman Lewis, entered a war-torn Naples with the American Fifth Army. Lewis began writing down everything that happened to him during his one-year stay, observing the complex social cauldron of a city that contrived unbelievable methods of survival on a daily basis. These notes turned into his masterpiece, a memoir titled NAPLES ‘44. Francesco Patierno's new documentary imagines Lewis returning many years later to...
Author
Language
English
Description
Alan Arkin has starred on Broadway, TV, over sixty films, and has won almost every acting award in North America. In this, his ninth published book, with his characteristic wry humor, he digs into his long time search for meaning past the seductive glamour of show business. By the time he was in his early thirties, his career was in full bloom and he had achieved everything he'd ever thought he wanted, only to find that it was not what he had hoped...
Language
English
Description
With another Christmas season fast approaching, Santa Claus/Scott Calvin is feeling even more pressure. Mrs. Claus is expecting a little Claus. She is also longing for the company of some "tall people." So Scott agrees to let her parents visit as long as they believe that they're really in Canada rather than at the North Pole. Further complicating matters is a visit by Scott's ex-wife, her husband, and their daughter, Lucy. A member of the Council...
20) Firewall
Language
English
Description
Bank security expert Jack Stanfield specializes in designing infallible theft-proof financial computer systems. But there is a hidden vulnerability in the system he didn't account for - himself. When a ruthless criminal mastermind kidnaps his family, Jack is forced to find a flaw in his system and steal $100 million. With the lives of his wife and children at stake and under constant surveillance, he has only hours to find a loophole in the thief's...