Movie Trailers

• Directors:
• Producers: Robert Salerno
• Writers: Guillermo Arriaga
• Genres: Crime, Drama, Thriller
• Actors: Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Benicio del Toro, Melissa Leo, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Danny Huston

The story is told in a non-linear manner. The following is a linear, chronological summary of the plot:

Jack Jordan is a former convict who is using his new-found religious faith to recover from drug addiction and alcoholism. Paul Rivers is a mathematics professor with a fatal heart condition. Unless he receives a new heart from an organ donor, he will have less than one month to live. Paul’s wife wants him to donate his sperm so she can have his baby, even if he dies. The two are civil to one another, yet distant. Cristina Peck is also a recovering drug addict, and now lives a normal suburban life with a supportive husband and two children. She is a loving mother and active swimmer, who has left her days of drugs and booze behind. These three separate stories/characters become tied together one evening when Jack kills Cristina’s husband and children in a hit-and-run accident. Her husband’s heart is donated to Paul, who begins his recovery.

Cristina is devastated by the loss and returns to drugs (2C-B and ketamine) and alcohol. Paul is eager to begin normal life again, but he hesitantly agrees to his wife’s idea of surgery and artificial insemination as a last-ditch effort to get pregnant. During consultations with a doctor before the surgery, Paul learns that his wife had undergone an abortion after they had separated in the past. Angered, Paul ends the relationship. He becomes very inquisitive about whose heart he has. He learns from a private detective that the heart belonged to Cristina’s husband, and begins to follow the widowed Cristina around town.

…

Jack and Cristina rush Paul to the hospital. Jack tells the police that he shot Paul, but he is released. The conflict between Cristina and Jack remains unresolved (they meet in the waiting room after Paul’s death, but do not speak). Cristina learns in the hospital that she is pregnant. After Paul’s death, Cristina is seen tentatively preparing for the new child and Jack is shown returning home to his family.

• Directors: Lars von Trier
• Producers: Meta Louise Foldager
• Writers: Lars von Trier
• Genres: Drama, Horror
• Actors: Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg

An academic couple lose their young son while making love in the room next door. When the woman falls into a deep mental crisis, the man, who works as a therapist, decides to treat her himself. He will do this using exposure therapy, meaning that she should be exposed to her fears in order to overcome them. They travel to their cottage “Eden,” a location where the woman previously has been working on a thesis about witch-hunts, which appears to be a central factor of her fears. Soon after the treatment begins, the woman loses control of herself as what appears to be supernatural events start to occur.

• Directors: Todd Haynes
• Producers: Christine Vachon, Jeff Rosen
• Writers: Todd Haynes, Oren Moverman
• Genres: Biography, Drama, Music
• Actors: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, Ben Whishaw, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Julianne Moore, Peter Friedman

The film opens with Jude Quinn, played by Cate Blanchett (representing Dylan circa 1966)[3] walking on stage to perform at a concert, before cutting to him riding on a motorcycle and then crashing. The film then cuts to Quinn’s body on a mortuary slab and an autopsy begins. (This opening sequence refers to Bob Dylan’s motorcycle accident in July 1966).[4][5]

Woody Guthrie, an 11-year old African American boy played by Marcus Carl Franklin is seen carrying a guitar in a case labelled “This Machine Kills Fascists” as he travels the country, pursuing his dream of becoming a singer. (Folk singer Woody Guthrie had an identical label on his guitar.)[6] Woody befriends the African-American Arvin family, who give him food and hospitality and Woody in turn performs Bob Dylan’s 1965 song “Tombstone Blues”, accompanied by Richie Havens (as Old Man Arvin). At dinner, Mrs. Arvin advises Woody: “Live your own time, child, sing about your own time”.

Later that night, Woody leaves the Arvins’ home, leaving behind a note thanking them, and catches a ride on a train, where a group of thieves attempt to rob him. He jumps from the speeding train and dives into a river, where a white couple rescues him and takes him to a hospital before bringing him home. They receive a phone call from a juvenile correction center in Minnesota from which Woody had escaped. The phone call prompts Woody’s swift departure, and he takes a Greyhound bus to Greystone Park Hospital in New Jersey, where he visits the (real) Woody Guthrie. Woody leaves flowers at Guthrie’s bedside and plays his guitar. (Over the hospital sequence, Bob Dylan performs his song “Blind Willie McTell”).

…

The film ends with close-up footage of the real Bob Dylan playing his harmonica, a shot filmed by D. A. Pennebaker during Dylan’s 1966 World Tour.