Giovonnie Samuels Movies

Assigned the thankless task of teaching freshman English at a gang-infested Long Beach, CA high school, a 23-year-old teacher resorts to unconventional means of breaking through to her hardened students in director Richard LaGravenese's adaptation of Erin Gruwell's best-seller The Freedom Writer's Diaries: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them. Her students had been written off, and her chances of succeeding scoffed at, but Erin Gruwell (Hilary Swank) wasn't about to go down without a fight. Long Beach is a place where a new war is waged with each passing day, and when the hardened students who walk those dangerous hallways sense an outsider attempting to understand their plight, their cynical resentment threatens to keep a deadly cycle in motion. Despite the initially hostile reaction she receives in the classroom, Gruwell uses the writings of Anne Frank and Zlata's Diary: A Child's Life in Sarajevo to teach her students not only the basis of the English language, but compassion and tolerance as well. Later, when the time comes to tell their own tales in a project specially designed to explore the daily violence that the majority of students have grown numb to, the barriers that had once stood so strong gradually begin to crumble. When the only chance for survival is to befriend the person who was once your mortal enemy, the world is opened to a whole new realm of possibilities. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

The third TV cartoon series created by Bill Cosby, the half-hour Fatherhood had less in common with its animated predecessors Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids and Little Bill than with the live-action sitcom The Cosby Show. The stories revolved around the Bindlebeep family, headed by Dr. Arthur Bindlebeep and his librarian wife Norma. Arthur was a strictly by-the-book parent with firm and unswerving views about child rearing and discipline, while Norma was a bit more relaxed and pliable. The Bindlebeep youngsters Angie, Roy, and Katherine were basically good, but they still weren't entirely problem-free. A typical situation would find the kids trying to figure out how to explain bad grades, broken toys, or rule infractions to their dad without incurring his wrath -- and the solution was generally "let's tell mom first!" Often as not, however, Walter and Norma became more understanding of their children's transgressions when they unintentionally got into trouble themselves. The series used a delicate blend of cell animation and CGI, and was particularly successful in "individualizing" its characters by giving each one a unique design. Fatherhood was added to the Nickelodeon "Nick at Nite" schedule on June 20, 2004. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi