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The Film Portal

Film is a term that encompasses individual motion pictures, the field of film as an art form, and the motion picture industry. Films are produced by recording images from the world with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or special effects.

Film is an important art form; films entertain, educate, enlighten, and inspire audiences. The visual elements of cinema need no translation, giving the motion picture a universal power of communication. Films are also artifacts created by specific cultures, which reflect those cultures, and in turn, affect them.

Traditional films are made up of a series of individual images called frames. When these images are shown rapidly in succession, a viewer has the illusion that motion is occurring. The viewer cannot see the flickering between frames due to a combination of physiological and psychological effects. One is known as persistence of vision—whereby the eye retains a visual image for a fraction of a second after the source has been removed. Viewers also perceive motion due to psychological effects called beta movement and the phi phenomenon.

The origin of the name "film" comes from the fact that photographic film (also called film stock) has historically been the primary medium for recording and displaying motion pictures. Many other terms exist for an individual motion picture, including picture; picture show; photo-play; flick; and most commonly, movie. Additional terms for the field in general include the big screen; the silver screen; the cinema; and the movies.

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Marquee from the film's premiere in Springfield, Vermont.

The Simpsons Movie is a 2007 American animated comedy film based on the animated television series The Simpsons. The film was directed by David Silverman, produced by James L. Brooks, Matt Groening, Al Jean, Mike Scully, and Richard Sakai, and written by Scully, Jean, Brooks, Groening, George Meyer, David Mirkin, Mike Reiss, John Swartzwelder, Jon Vitti, Ian Maxtone-Graham, and Matt Selman. It stars the regular television cast of Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Hank Azaria, Harry Shearer, Tress MacNeille and Pamela Hayden and features Albert Brooks in a prominent guest role, as well as Tom Hanks and Green Day in smaller ones. After previous attempts to create a film version of The Simpsons had failed because of script length and lack of staff, production began in 2001. The script was re-written one hundred times continuing after animation had begun. This meant that "two films' worth" of finished material was cut, including cameos from Isla Fisher, Minnie Driver, Erin Brockovich, and Kelsey Grammer. The film premiered in Springfield, Vermont, which won the right to hold it through a Fox competition. The film was a box office success, and received positive reception from film critics, though some felt the film was too short.

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Welcome sign to Cannes Film Festival

Credit: Tangi Bertin

The Cannes Film Festival (French: le Festival de Cannes), founded in 1939, is one of the world's oldest, most influential and prestigious film festivals, like Venice Film Festival and Berlin Film Festival.

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Did you know...

...that copies of the 1982 biopic Will: G. Gordon Liddy, about a Watergate co-conspirator, are stored in the Nixon Presidential Materials collection at the U.S. National Archives?

...that Shin Sang-ok, a South Korean film director was kidnapped in 1978 under orders from future North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il and forced to direct a giant-monster film, Pulgasari?

...that Japanese film tycoon Haruki Kadokawa built a full-size replica of Columbus' flagship Santa María which sailed from Barcelona to Japan?

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News

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Featured biography

Cillian Murphy is an Irish film and theatre actor active since 1996. He is often noted by critics for chameleonic performances in diverse roles, as well as for his distinctive blue eyes. A native of Cork, Murphy began his performing career as a rock musician. After turning down a record deal, he made his professional acting debut in the play Disco Pigs. He went on to star in a number of Irish and UK film and stage productions throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, first coming to international attention in 2003 as the hero in the post-apocalyptic film 28 Days Later. Murphy's best known roles are as villains in two 2005 blockbusters: the Scarecrow in superhero film Batman Begins, and Jackson Rippner in the thriller Red Eye. Next came two contrasting, widely acclaimed starring roles: his Golden Globe Award-nominated performance as transgender outcast "Kitten" in 2005's Breakfast on Pluto and a turn as a 1920s Irish revolutionary in 2006 Palme d'Or winner The Wind That Shakes the Barley. 2007 saw Murphy on the London stage in Love Song and onscreen in science fiction film Sunshine. Uncomfortable on the celebrity circuit, he customarily gives interviews about his work, but does not appear on television talk shows or discuss details of his private life with the press.

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Judy Garland received numerous awards and honors in the course of a career that spanned over 40 years. Garland won or was nominated for awards for her work in motion pictures, television, music recording and on stage. She was twice nominated for an Academy Award and was awarded a special Academy Juvenile Award in 1940. Garland won a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for a second, and she received a special Tony Award for her record-breaking concert run at New York's Palace Theatre. Garland won two Grammy Awards for her concert album Judy at Carnegie Hall. Garland has also received a number of posthumous awards and honors. She was the recipient of a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and several of her recordings have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. She has twice been honored on United States postage stamps and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The American Film Institute has repeatedly recognized her talent, placing Garland eighth on its list of the top 100 female stars of all time and placing five of her recordings in its list of the 100 best songs from films, including "Over the Rainbow" at number one.

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I have always enjoyed dealing with a slightly surrealistic situation and presenting it in a realistic manner. I've always liked fairy tales and myths, magical stories. I think they are somehow closer to the sense of reality one feels today than the equally stylized "realistic" story in which a great deal of selectivity and omission has to occur in order to preserve its "realist" style.

— Stanley Kubrick

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