The Joker, Lex Luthor, Catwoman, Doomsday, Bane. What makes them so thrillingly watchable? So terribly wonderful? So extremely vital to our super heroes and their worlds? This feature-length documentary explores these questions across seven decades of DC Comics’ hallowed Rogues’ Gallery of infamous evildoers. Narrated by esteemed film villain Christopher Lee,examines the tortured psyches of your favorite animation, comic book, game, TV and feature film baddies – both from the past and into the future – against the backdrop of culture, history and society. Insights from famed creators and storytellers, including Zack Snyder, Guillermo del Toro, Jim Lee, Geoff Johns and Richard Donner, shine a fascinating light on those malevolent, charismatic characters who thrive in the dark.
The film is the inside track on the World's most influential weapon. For over a thousand years this weapon dominated the battlefields of Japan, instilled fear and terror into every enemy it faced, and created a new spiritual way of life that lasts through to the present day. The Samurai sword – a weapon so technologically perfect in structure, so formidable in strength and so beautiful in creation. For the first time unique access has been granted and we travel into the core of the ancient foundries, sword-smiths and fighting schools to reveal what makes the so-called perfect sword. This is a no holds barred look at one of the most iconic man-made objects ever forged.
Ferdinand Magellan and Juan Sebastian Elcano set sail to gain control of the global spice trade, but end up becoming the first expedition to circumnavigate the earth. The yearslong voyage—along with the suffering, the violence and the loss of life and property—were all in pursuit of a shorter route to the so-called Spice Islands (now the Maluku Islands) and their much-coveted aromatics. The film puts in perspective the 16th century—the Age of Exploration, the Age of Discovery and the Age, problematically, of Colonialism. It also was an age of heroes. As the documentary insists, the journeys undertaken by the men whose names we learned in grade school and whose exploits straddled the 1400s and 1500s—including Ponce de Leon, Vasco da Gama, Lope de Aguirre and even Columbus—were about money, sometimes trade, sometimes plunder. But just as advances in medicine have often been propelled by war, knowledge about the world has been a byproduct of profit-seeking. Likewise, heroism.
Bobby Fischer Against the World is a documentary feature film that explores the life of chess Grandmaster and 11th World Champion Bobby Fischer. It incorporates interviews with chess players Anthony Saidy, Larry Evans, Sam Sloan, Susan Polgar, Gary Kasparov, Asa Hoffmann, Friðrik Ólafsson, Lothar Schmid and others. It includes never-before-seen footage from the World Chess Championship 1972. The drama of Bobby Fischer's career was undeniable, from his troubled childhood, to his rock star status as World Champion and Cold War icon, to his life as a fugitive on the run.
Richard Stanley had a dream of making a screen adaptation of the H.G. Wells classic The Island of Dr. Moreau. In the mid nineties, he finally managed to get the project up and running, but its shooting turned into a battle between art and industry interests that ended with the director being fired from the film. This documentary examines the story of a movie that could have been a masterpiece of fantasy that ended in an epic failure.
In the annals of Hollywood film since the artistic glories of the New Hollywood era, few have a better reputation and body of work in the field of suspense films exploring the contemporary darkness in American life than Brian De Palma. Here, the great film writer and director takes, us in his own words, through his professional life and a career that redefined film horror and suspense. All the while, he also confesses the challenges of working in Hollywood and the price even the great artists pay for being a part of it.
Narrated by esteemed film villain Christopher Lee,examines the tortured psyches of your favorite animation, comic book, game, TV and feature film baddies – both from the past and into the future – against the backdrop of culture, history and society. Insights from famed creators and storytellers, including Zack Snyder, Guillermo del Toro, Jim Lee, Geoff Johns and Richard Donner, shine a fascinating light on those malevolent, charismatic characters who thrive in the dark.