Air Movies

The director of more than fifty films and producer of over 300 more, prolific B-movie maven Roger Corman is profiled in this biographical documentary from filmmaker Alex Stapleton. From Little Shop of Horrors to Rock and Roll High School, the documentary explores the wide variety of films that encompass Corman's prolific and enduring career. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

After making a striking directorial debut with her screen adaptation of The Virgin Suicides, Sofia Coppola offers a story of love and friendship blooming under unlikely circumstances in this comedy drama. Bob Harris (Bill Murray) is a well-known American actor whose career has gone into a tailspin; needing work, he takes a very large fee to appear in a commercial for Japanese whiskey to be shot in Tokyo. Feeling no small degree of culture shock in Japan, Bob spends most of his non-working hours at his hotel, where he meets Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) at the bar. Twentysomething Charlotte is married to John (Giovanni Ribisi), a successful photographer who is in Tokyo on an assignment, leaving her to while away her time while he works. Beyond their shared bemusement and confusion with the sights and sounds of contemporary Tokyo, Bob and Charlotte share a similar dissatisfaction with their lives; the spark has gone out of Bob's marriage, and he's become disillusioned with his career. Meanwhile, Charlotte is puzzled with how much John has changed in their two years of marriage, while she's been unable to launch a creative career of her own. Bob and Charlotte become fast friends, and as they explore Tokyo, they begin to wonder if their sudden friendship might be growing into something more. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

French retro-dance-pop twosome Air launched their first world tour in 1998, following the international critical success of their debut album Moon Safari. Air: Eating, Sleeping, Waiting and Playing is an hour-long documentary on the band's road trip -- playing shows and facing often uncomprehending journalists in New York, London, and Paris; the home video release also includes four music videos the band created in collaboration with director Mike Mills (who also helmed the documentary), and the DVD edition includes an alternate version of "December" that was recorded in London with an orchestral arrangement by David Whitaker. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Beginning on September 29, 1998, as a "teen angst" romantic drama, the weekly, 60-minute WB series Felicity evolved into a "young adult angst" affair by the time the series ran its course on May 22, 2002. Each of the series' four seasons represented a different year in the college life of its heroine, dewey-eyed Felicity Porter (Keri Russell). Enrolling at the University of New York in Greenwich Village so that she could be near her high-school crush Ben Covington (Scott Speedman), Felicity soon discovered that Ben wasn't interested in her -- at least not at first -- but she decided to remain in school anyway. Just as Felicity fluctuated between a pre-med and an art major during her stay at U. of N.Y., so too did her romantic inclinations shift between Ben and her dorm advisor Noel Crane (Scott Foley), with both men falling in and out of love with Felicity at regular intervals, and she with them. During the series' first and last seasons, Felicity would report on her progress -- scholastic and otherwise -- in audiocassette letters sent to her old and never-seen friend Sally (whose voice was supplied by Janeane Garofolo).

Other series regulars included Felicity's rather odd roommate Meghan Rotundi (Amanda Foreman), who may or may not have been into witchcraft; her best friend Julie Emrick (Amy Jo Johnson), who after several failed romances, one with Ben, dropped out of school -- and the series -- at the beginning of season three; another friend and classmate Elena Tyler (Tangi Miller), a girl of humble means who was attending college on a scholarship, and whose boyfriend, Tracy (Donald Faison), refused to have sex with her until marriage (he eventually "gave in," but wedding bells never rang); Ben's naïvely optomistic roommate Sean Blumberg (Greg Grunberg), he of the thousand-and-one "get rich quick" schemes and ultimately Noel's partner in an independent web-design firm -- not to mention the husband of the spooky Meghan; Javier Quintata (Ian Gomez), Felicity's gay boss at Dean & DeLuca, a campus café; Zoe Webb (Sarah Jane Morris), whom Noel weds at the end of season four; Lauren (Lisa Edelstein), young mistress of Ben's father, who ultimately bears Ben a child. Outside of the series' outrageous "double surprise" finale, which is right up there on the jaw-dropping meter with the last episodes of St. Elsewhere and Newhart, Felicity is best remembered for the shock delivered to its fans at the beginning of season two, in which star Keri Russell showed up with a new, very short haircut forsaking the long tresses that had become her trademark. With one stroke of the shears, both the series and its star became the darlings of the tabloid crowd -- and, of course, Felicity enjoyed the best ratings it ever had throughout its four-year history. ~ Rovi