Billy Campbell Movies
Filmmaker Werner Herzog adds another real-life character to his growing pantheon of people who walk a fine line between visionary genius and madness in this documentary. Timothy Treadwell was a self-styled authority on bears who, starting in 1990, would spend as much time as possible each year in Alaska, camping out near a grizzly bear habitat. While Treadwell claimed to love the bears and felt as one with them, he had no formal training in their behavior, and while familiarizing himself with the creatures he would walk within a few feet of them with a video camera in hand. To many, Treadwell seemed part man of nature, part conjuror, and part self-promotion expert, but the part that guided his kinship with the bears failed him in 2003, when he and his girlfriend were killed in a grizzly attack. Treadwell shot hundreds of hours of footage of himself and the grizzlies, and Herzog has used this footage as the core of Grizzly Man, a documentary look at Treadwell's life and death, while also including interviews with people who knew him, animal experts, and scientists. Acclaimed British guitarist Richard Thompson composed and performed the film's musical score. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Timothy Treadwell, Amie Huguenard, (more)
Directed by Hoop Dreams producer Peter Gilbert, With All Deliberate Speed is a reflection on the state of civil rights in America 50 years after the May 17, 1954, unanimous Supreme Court ruling stating that the doctrine of "separate but equal" was inconsistent with the constitution of the United States. This documentary offers a glance into the lives of the unsung heroes in the struggle for America's desegregation. A series of intimate interviews, eyewitness accounts, and unique original footage helps to illustrate the stories of the teachers, students, lawyers, and judges whose commitment would have a profound effect on African-Americans for decades to come. Among the film's participants are the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall's son, Thurgood Marshall Jr., as well as the Reverend Joe Delaine, Barbara Johns, Vernon Jordan, and Julian Bond. ~ Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide
- 2002
Kevin Williamson, creator of the theatrical thriller Scream and the weekly teen-angst television series Dawson's Creek, brought elements of both these properties to the Twin Peaks-like TVer Glory Days. The series' 60-minute episodes focused primarily on 25-year-old Mike Dolan, author of a best-selling murder-mystery novel in which the characters were thinly disguised personifications of the people he grew up with in the small Pacific Northwest island community of Glory. When his creative batteries went dry, Mike returned home, to be met with hostility by his family members and former friends who didn't like being depicted (usually unsympathetically) in his novel. One disgruntled Glory citizen was Mike's childhood buddy Rudy Dunlop (Jay R. Ferguson), now the town's sheriff. Others included Mike's own bipolar mother Mitzi (Frances Fisher), his workaholic newspaper-editor sister Sara (Amy Stewart), and blowzy café owner Hazel Walker (Theresa Russell), who had once allegedly been "involved" with Mike's dad -- and whose literary counterpart was cast as the "murderer" in Mike's novel. The hero's only allies in town were coroner Ellie Sparks (Poppy Montgomery), who somehow managed to escape being caricatured in the novel, and Mike's 16-year-old sister Sam (Emily Van Camp), who fancied herself Glory's resident rebel. Inasmuch as the town was a hotbed of bizarre characters and quasi-supernatural events, it was only inevitable that murder would occasionally rear its ugly head, forcing Mike and Rudy to reluctantly collaborate as crime-solvers, with Ellie tagging along every inch of the way. Glory Days made its WB network bow on January 16, 2002. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
