The story begins at the height of Gleason's career. He has it all: women, wealth, and extraordinary power. But he is haunted by memories of his childhood. Gleason spends his formative years entering amateur contests, performing in sleazy night spots. Along the way, he steals gags from the best comics in town and finds love with Genevieve, a dancer whom he marries. But Gleason isn't the ideal husband or even a responsible father as he abandons his family to answer the call of Hollywood. Brash, arrogant, and egotistical, he alienates his directors and the man who discovers him. When he ends up back in New York, Gleason gets one of those rare second chances in the new medium of television, creating some of its most unforgettable characters. But even as Gleason becomes the talk of the tube, his life - ruled by demons of rage, booze, and insecurity - unravels.
The story begins at the height of Gleason's career. He has it all: women, wealth, and extraordinary power. But he is haunted by memories of his childhood. Gleason spends his formative years entering amateur contests, performing in sleazy night spots. Along the way, he steals gags from the best comics in town and finds love with Genevieve, a dancer whom he marries. But Gleason isn't the ideal husband or even a responsible father as he abandons his family to answer the call of Hollywood. Brash, arrogant, and egotistical, he alienates his directors and the man who discovers him. When he ends up back in New York, Gleason gets one of those rare second chances in the new medium of television, creating some of its most unforgettable characters. But even as Gleason becomes the talk of the tube, his life - ruled by demons of rage, booze, and insecurity - unravels.
2002-10-13
5.7
How Sweet It Was!
TV movie based on the singer's life, under his mother's thumb, competing with the ghost of one of the most famous singers in C&W music history, and aspiring to rise above it all.
On the edge of the universe, the Doctor, Leela and K9 encounter a Minyan ship on an epic quest to find their race banks... but their people have encountered the Time Lords before...
Delves deep into the anxiety, thrill and uncertainty of six aspiring animation artists as they are plunged into the twelve-week trial-by-fire that is the NFB's Hothouse for animation filmmakers.
Laurie has just made it in Hollywood by landing a role in a TV show. To celebrate, she decides to invite the old gang from high school to her Los Angeles home for a weekend. It's then that she realizes she still has the hots for her old flame Todd.
A filmmaker captures images that characterize the violence and repression as well as the hope of rebirth and remembrance in northeastern Thailand.
When Amy is woken in the middle of the night by the TARDIS telephone, she learns the Doctor carries on a very active social and adventuring life while his companions sleep.
Bill Elliot is back as Red Ryder in Cheyenne Wildcat. Also back are Ryder's perennial cohorts Little Beaver (Bobby Blake, later Robert Blake of Baretta fame) and the Duchess (Alice Fleming). When not pummeling the bad guys, Ryder is the reluctant apex of a love triangle.
Film about a woman's struggle in a male-dominated society in the late 1800s. Amalie Skram was one of our first female writers who fought woman liberation cause. In a society that did not accept that a woman could have its own independent work, it was difficult for a woman to work as a creative artist, wife and mother. The author's autobiographical novels "Professor Hieronimus" and "On St. Jorgen" underlies this film.
An animated short film about a man struggling against the storm. Suddenly he discovers that not everybody is affected by the wind...
A former inmate of the Auschwitz concentration camp, accused of being a kapo, is serving a life sentence. From the monologue to the camera, we learn the story of an average man destroyed in terrible times.
An eerie night, supposedly outside of reality, becomes darker when “Unnamed” stumbles upon a white dressed man with a paper bag for a head.
In the city of Sevarambes, where giant machine hands impose the law, any artistic expression by the human workers is pursued and terminated. When Er is seized while attempting to play music, he manages to escape inside the apparatus of a sinister machine. Until he realizes that he is not alone.
A promising MLB player is forced to return to his country after being found to be using steroids, and the only option he gets to rebuild his life is joining a team of losers in the Dominican league.
Based on the model of documentary fiction (alternating period films, interviews and re-enactments with actors), the film begins on September 8, 1961 with the failure of the Pont-sur-Seine attack on a road convoy carrying Charles de Gaulle, then President of the Republic, and continues with the slow preparation, the occurrence and the consequences of the Petit-Clamart attack on August 22, 1962.
In Madrid, Azu's husband Filipe is smug and boorish, but it's his money she slips to family members constantly in need of cash and that she uses to buy gifts for her lover, Pablo. Things start to fall apart when Pablo wants to leave her and when Filipe wants to evict Azu's cousin from a butcher shop he rents. Azu hatches a plan that relies on her sister, her cousin the butcher, and his mentally-challenged delivery man. When things start to go wrong, can Azu make them right?
Based on real life events, the film is set in January 1949 and focuses around a group of soldiers involved in the final stages of the Battle of Pingjin
The brief life of Jean Michel Basquiat, a world renowned New York street artist struggling with fame, drugs and his identity.
A true story about Frank Abagnale Jr. who, before his 19th birthday, successfully conned millions of dollars worth of checks as a Pan Am pilot, doctor, and legal prosecutor. An FBI agent makes it his mission to put him behind bars. But Frank not only eludes capture, he revels in the pursuit.
The daughter of jazz pianist Joe Albany witnesses her beloved father's struggle -- and failure -- to kick his heroin habit.
The true story of how Dave Fishwick, a working class man and self-made millionaire, fought to set up a community bank so that he could help the local businesses of Burnley not only survive, but thrive. In his bid to help his beloved community, he has to take on the elitist financial institutions of London and fight to receive the first, new banking license to be issued in over 100 years.
Trying to shake his troubled past and start a new honest life, Floyd loses his job because of that past. With nowhere to go but back home in Oklahoma he gets news that his father's been murdered and the local sheriff lets the killer off with a self-defense plea. Bent on revenge, Floyd does what he must which leads him down a dark road littered with robbing banks and loose women. Floyd's final days are anything BUT pretty!
The true story of pianist Władysław Szpilman's experiences in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation. When the Jews of the city find themselves forced into a ghetto, Szpilman finds work playing in a café; and when his family is deported in 1942, he stays behind, works for a while as a laborer, and eventually goes into hiding in the ruins of the war-torn city.
The true story of how businessman Oskar Schindler saved over a thousand Jewish lives from the Nazis while they worked as slaves in his factory during World War II.
Brilliant mathematician, John Nash, is on the brink of international acclaim when he becomes entangled in a mysterious conspiracy.
Sissi is now the empress of Austria and attempts to learn etiquette. While she is busy being empress she also has to deal with her difficult new mother-in-law, while the arch-duchess Sophie is trying to tell the emperor how to rule and also Sissi how to be a mother.
After a wonderful time in Hungary Sissi falls extremely ill and must retreat to a Mediterranean climate to rest. The young empress’ mother takes her from Austria to recover in Madeira.
A twice-divorced mother of three who sees an injustice, takes on the bad guy and wins -- with a little help from her push-up bra. Erin goes to work for an attorney and comes across medical records describing illnesses clustered in one nearby town. She starts investigating and soon exposes a monumental cover-up.
A biopic depicting the life of filmmaker and aviation pioneer Howard Hughes from 1927 to 1947, during which time he became a successful film producer and an aviation magnate, while simultaneously growing more unstable due to severe obsessive-compulsive disorder.
The true, harrowing story of a young Jewish girl who, with her family and their friends, is forced into hiding in an attic in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam.
Paralyzed in the Vietnam war, Ron Kovic becomes an anti-war and pro-human rights political activist after feeling betrayed by the country he fought for.
Rather than choosing a great leader or king, God chooses Abraham, an elderly shepherd from Mesopotamia, as the way to establish his Covenant with mankind... A man of great faith, Abraham continues to believe in God even when He seems to have abandoned him.
From his birth in Bethlehem to his death and eventual resurrection, the life of Jesus Christ is given the all-star treatment in this epic retelling. Major aspects of Christ's life are touched upon, including the execution of all the newborn males in Egypt by King Herod; Christ's baptism by John the Baptist; and the betrayal by Judas after the Last Supper that eventually leads to Christ's crucifixion and miraculous return.
The behind the scenes story of the life of A.A. Milne and the creation of the Winnie the Pooh stories inspired by his son Christopher Robin.
Electricity titans Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse compete to create a sustainable system and market it to the American people.