A fast paced action movie, with a fair amount of drama, a wrong court decision, and the need to get revenge (and clear his name) were some of the parts that made The Fugitive a very famous and commercially successful movie. The movie was nominated for a clutch of Oscars, and also earned more than $500 million worldwide. It helped that it starred 2 famous actors in the person of Harrison Ford (very famous for Star Wars and Indiana Jones), and Tommy Lee Jones. The movie also got good reviews from critics, making it really successful (it is not always seen for a movie to be both commercially successful and earn praise from critics).
The movie was released in 1993, and was based on a television series that aired on ABC between 1963 and 1967. The series ran for 4 years (interestingly, the first 3 seasons were in black and white, and the fourth season was in color). The movie has the same premise, where a doctor is charged for the murder of his wife, and escapes in order to prove his innocence.

The movie has principally 2 characters – Harrison Ford as Dr. Richard Kimble, and Tommy Lee Jones as Deputy United States Marshal Samuel Gerard. Dr. Kimble has been charged for the murder of his wife, based on the fact that his wife made a call to 911 which apparently led to Dr. Kimble being blamed for the murder. In addition, there was no evidence to back the claim of Dr. Kimble that a man with an artificial hand was responsible for the murder (there were no signs of somebody breaking into the house, there were no other fingerprints on the gun). Dr. Kimble was charged for murder, and convicted by a jury, sentenced to die.
However, on the way to prison in a bus (along with other convicts), there is a disturbance inside the bus that causes the bus to fall onto the path of an oncoming train. In the disturbance. Dr. Kimble manages to run away and is now being pursued by the United States Marshal service, led by officer Samuel Gerard. Kimble manages to change out of his prison uniform, shave, and alter his appearance, but Gerard is soon on the chase, and manages to corner him inside a storm drain inside a dam. The only option for Kimble to survive is by jumping into the flow of water falling from the dam, and he does so in a fairly spectacular shot.
Now, Kimble is on a mission to find people who have received a prosthetic arm, while striving to be hidden from the police who is chasing him. In the middle of this, while hidden in a hospital, he even saves a boy by altering the diagnosis and sending him to emergency surgery. Kimble even heads to the jail to try to find the one-armed man, but is not able to find him. He eventually gets into the home of a former police office called Frederick Sykes (Katsulas). Sykes was there in Kimble’s list since he had received a prosthetic arm. It is in Sykes’s home that Kimble finds evidence of what could have caused the attacks at Kimble’s home, as well as the involvement of somebody close to Kimble. Can Kimble save himself from the police, and expose the involvement of others ?

The Fugitive was nominated for 7 Oscars:
Won: Best Supporting Actor – Tommy Lee Jones
Best Picture (lost to Schindler’s List)
Best Cinematography (lost to Schindler’s List)
Best Sound Effects Editing (lost to Jurassic Park)
Best Film Editing (lost to Schindler’s List)
Best Original Music Score (lost to Schindler’s List)
Best Sound (lost to Jurassic Park)

There are many movies that have been adapted from screenplays or from books, and West Side Story is one of the most successful of the lot. The movie was adapted from a running screenplay of the same name, which was adapted from a very famous piece of work by Shakespeare called ‘Romeo and Juliet’. The movie credits the direction by 2 people – Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins. Jerome Robbins was the first director, and he was also the director of the stage version, as well as being responsible for planning and directing all music and dance sequences in the film, as well as all the fight scenes. However, when around 60% of the movie had been shot, the producer of the movie (Robert Wise) felt that the costs had not been in check, and Robbins was fired. In the end, when the movie earned 10 Oscars (out of a total of 11 Academy Awards nominations), Robbins got a special award.

The concept of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is an extremely old concept, valid in different cultures and across geographies. The theory that a girl and boy from 2 rival clans meet, fall in love, and fall victim to the enmity between their clans (and getting killed due to this rivalry) is something that finds mention in a lot of different cultures. This movie is also based on the same concept, with the clans being modified to be 2 different gangs set in New York in the 1950’s. These are 2 rival gangs called the American Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks (and these are composed of members from different racial backgrounds), fighting for supremacy over the New York neighborhoods in which they operate.
The romantic duo are Tony (Richard Beymer), who is a former member of the Jets gang (and also its co-founder), and Maria (Natalie Wood), who is the sister of Bernardo (George Chakiris), the head of the rival Puerto Rican immigrants gang, the Sharks. These 2 meet at a dance, to which Tony has gone to convey a message about a challenger between the 2 gangs, something that would decide the rivalry once and for all.
The movie is a musical, so there are several song and dances about the tension in the gangs as they proceed to a final rumble (the challenge) between them, along with the excitement in the life of Tony and Maria as their love increases. The story climaxes when Maria requests Tony to stop the rumble, and Tony is subject to ridicule from the gang members when he tries to stop them. His attempts are met with scorn, and the Jets head Riff cannot stand to see this ridicule of his close friend and starts fighting with Bernardo. In this tussle, Bernardo kills Riff, and Tony kills Bernardo in revenge. At this point, the police arrive and the gang members disperse.
Maria is informed by another gang member Chino (Jose DeVega) about the fight and about Tony killing her brother. When Tony arrives, Maria is very angry, but Tony manages to convince her by detailing what happened at the fight, and by offering to surrender to the police. However, the story happens in tragedy when Tony and Maria are about to meet, Chino comes in and shoots Tony. It is in this tragedy that the gangs unite, when member of both gangs carry Tony’s body.

Academy awards:

Wins:

Academy Award for Best Picture – Robert Wise, producer
Academy Award for Directing – Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor – George Chakiris
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress – Rita Moreno
Academy Award for Best Art Direction (Set Decoration, Color) – Victor A. Gangelin and Boris Leven
Academy Award for Best Cinematography (Color) – Daniel L. Fapp
Academy Award for Costume Design (Color) – Irene Sharaff
Academy Award for Film Editing – Thomas Stanford
Academy Award for Original Music Score of a Musical Picture – Saul Chaplin, Johnny Green, Irwin Kostal, and Sid Ramin
Academy Award for Sound – Fred Hynes (Todd-AO SSD), and Gordon Sawyer (Samuel Goldwyn SSD)

Nominations

Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium – Ernest Lehman

It is very rare that an American President gets impeached, and leaving aside the case of Bill Clinton (who was almost thrown out for lying about Monica Lewinsky), Richard Nixon was the US President who would most certainly have been the one who was impeached if he had not resigned. As it is, at the of his resignation, he was a most polarizing figure in the nation, one who a large section of the population hated, and whose own men had started to resign rather than follow through on his orders.
This was a movie that was hard to make. Oliver Stone had 2 other projects in mind, but they fell through, and he then decided to make a biopic about the Former President, and it gained impetus since Nixon had died in 1994. The studio was hesitant in making the movie (commercially, they were justified in the end since the movie never made its budget in its hall releases), and given that the character being portrayed was one who was almost drummed out from the Presidency, there was always going to be a set of people who would not be happy with the scenes from the movie. And so it proved, since Nixon’s family heavily criticized the movie, and many critics also panned the movie (and as always, some other critics praised the movie).

The movie was nominated for 5 Oscars,
Best Actor in a Leading Role (Anthony Hopkins),
Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Joan Allen),
Best Music,
Original Dramatic Score and Best Writing,
Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen

Richard Nixon was a complex personality. He did a lot for the United States, it was in his terms that the United States finally withdrew from the mess in Vietnam (although he also tried to succeed militarily, but finally gave up that strategy as flawed), he was the proponent of the immensely strategic opening up to China, it was during his term that a lot of the civil rights desegregation was enforced and the US became a lot less racially separated, he was the President under whom all the successful lunar missions took place. And yet, he was the President who was finally done under due to the arrogance of trying to believe that he was above the law when his involvement in the efforts to break-into the Democratic 1972 convention and then to try and brazen his way out of the investigations into the same incident. He eventually quit when it was clear that he was frozen out. He did a lot more after he resigned in terms of becoming a respected elder statesman, but in the end, Richard Nixon will be remembered for Watergate, the only President of the United States who resigned. And Anthony Hopkins did a great portrayal of this role.

Bonnie and Clyde [Bonnie Parker (October 1, 1910 – May 23, 1934) and Clyde Barrow (March 24, 1909 – May 23, 1934)] were extremely famous outlaws, robbers, traveling through the United States from place to place in the Central United States, becoming notorious all over the country. During the time of the Great Depression, they were seen as having great appeal, and a legend has developed around them. Part of the controversy around them also rests in whether Bonnie was actually a full member of the gang, or had ever even fired a gun as part of the gang. She was with the gang ever since she fell in love with Clyde after meeting him in 1930, and died along with Clyde in a shootout with a posse of 6 officers from a combined force of Texas and Louisiana officers in a remote location, a desolate road near their Bienville Parish, Louisiana hideout. This was expected to happen ever since Clyde made a move against the Texas Department of Corrections in 1934 and engineered a breakout called the “Eastham Breakout” of 1934. Clyde managed to get the following to escape from the prison, Henry Methvin, Raymond Hamilton, and a few others. However, during this breakout, the killing of a prison officer by another escapee brought down the end of Clyde. He was marked as a hunted man, with the mission of the both the Texas and Federal Governments being to hunt down Clyde. In the next few days, Clyde was also involved in the deaths of 3 more police officers, ending the romantic feelings of the public towards him.

Bonnie and Clyde was a movie released in 1967, and a very famous movie at that, starring as the lead (and doomed pair), Warren Beatty and Faye Dunway. The film was directed by Arthur Penn, with screenplay by David Newman and Robert Benton. The movie also took a lead in enabling Hollywood to present more elements of sex and violence in movies. The movie also won 2 Oscar awards for “Best Supporting Actress” (Estelle Parsons) and “Best Cinematography” (Burnett Guffey). The movie is a greatly simplified version of the actual story of Bonny and Clyde, not detailing their full extent of the gang, the many crimes committed by the gang and so on. Even the person who betrayed them and led the police posse to them (and to their deaths) as depicted in the movie was a combination of multiple people. The movie deviated from the actual story to the extent that the family of the Texas Ranger who killed them, Frank Hamer, sued the movie makers (he was portrayed in the movie as having been caught by Bonnie and Clyde earlier and humiliated while he actually encountered them only in the final shoot out).
The producers of the movie, the studio Warner Bros – Seven Arts were not terribly impressed by the movie and did not have high hopes of success. As a result, they made producer Warren Beatty very wealthy (they offered him 40% of the gross instead of a fee, and the when the movie made $70 million, Beatty stood to benefit).
The movie is about the short life of Bonnie and Clyde, after they met and became the core of a crime gang. They recruited more relatives, including Clyde’s brother and his slow wife, with a quick-to-start feud opening up between Bonnie and Clyde’s sister-in-law Blanche. The gang starts increasing their operations to include robbing banks, and starts getting pursued by the police and other law enforcement agents. After the gang humiliate Frank Hamer, he retaliates by relentlessly pursuing the gang, turning them one by one against the gang, eventually reaching Bonnie and Clyde and killing them in a hail of bullets.