Dick Hyman's Century of Jazz Piano takes you from ragtime to Gershwin to the Duke onto Monk and finally unstructured free improvisation styles and etudes
Music
Documentary highlighting the development of the screenplay into a film with the desired cast. It also describes the closeness among Italian families, which comes from the kitchen, and how a real Italian father is the source of believability for the film.
Band Leader
CW Briggs is a veteran insurance investigator, with many successes. Betty Ann Fitzgerald is a new employee in the company he works for, with the task of reorganizing the office. They don't like each other - or at least that's what they think. During a night out with the rest of the office employees, they go to watch Voltan, a magician who secretly hypnotizes both of them.
Music
In the 1930s, jazz guitarist Emmet Ray idolizes Django Reinhardt, faces gangsters and falls in love with a mute woman.
Music
Conductor
A New York girl sets her father up with a beautiful woman in a shaky marriage while her half sister gets engaged.
Music Arranger
A New York girl sets her father up with a beautiful woman in a shaky marriage while her half sister gets engaged.
Original Music Composer
When Lenny and his wife, Amanda, adopt a baby, Lenny realizes that his son is a genius and becomes obsessed with finding the boy's biological mother in hopes that she will be brilliant too. But when he learns that Max's mother is Linda Ash, a kindhearted prostitute and porn star, Lenny is determined to reform her immoral lifestyle. A Greek chorus chimes in to relate the plot to Greek mythology in this quirky comedy.
Conductor
After young playwright, David Shayne obtains funding for his play from gangster Nick Valenti, Nick's girlfriend Olive miraculously lands the role of a psychiatrist—but not only is she a bimbo who could never pass for a psychiatrist—she's a dreadful actress. David puts up with the leading man who is a compulsive eater, the grand dame who wants her part jazzed up, and Olive's interfering hitman/bodyguard—but, eventually he must decide whether art or life is more important.
Music Arranger
After young playwright, David Shayne obtains funding for his play from gangster Nick Valenti, Nick's girlfriend Olive miraculously lands the role of a psychiatrist—but not only is she a bimbo who could never pass for a psychiatrist—she's a dreadful actress. David puts up with the leading man who is a compulsive eater, the grand dame who wants her part jazzed up, and Olive's interfering hitman/bodyguard—but, eventually he must decide whether art or life is more important.
Original Music Composer
When Naomi, a young refugee from Nazi-occupied Paris, moves into Alan Silverman’s building in New York, he does his best to avoid her. But despite Naomi's strange behavior and the language barrier, they slowly develop a deep and touching friendship.
Original Music Composer
Three life-long friends work the bars in 1980s Atlantic City performing the songs of the 1960s girl groups.
Music
Vladimir Nabokov, widely considered one of the world's greatest writers, was also a remarkable professor at Cornell University. Here, Plummer portrays the witty Nabokov, providing an entertaining and insightful lecture upon "Metamorphosis," Kafka's bizarre story about a man who wakes up one morning to discover he has turned into a giant bug.
Original Music Composer
No sooner does Italian-American widow Loretta accept a marriage proposal from her doltish boyfriend, Johnny, than she finds herself falling for his younger brother, Ronny. She tries to resist, but Ronny lost his hand in an accident he blames on his brother, and has no scruples about aggressively pursuing her while Johnny is out of the country. As Loretta falls deeper in love, she comes to learn that she's not the only one in her family with a secret romance.
Original Music Composer
In the 1930's an aging film producer and his much younger wife live separate lives. Whenever a young starlet catches the husband's eye, he eventually manipulates her onto his casting couch. Natica Jackson (Michelle Pfeiffer) is a Hollywood star who is far from innocent, but she finds herself falling in love with a married man who has several children.
Original Music Composer
Eddie is a down-on-his-luck bar pianist who has just been fired from another job. Desperate for work, he finds a school looking for a leader for its hopelessly incompetent marching band. Somehow, Eddie has to whip these kids into shape in time for the big band competition. Can he get them to march without tripping over their own feet, let alone win the contest?
Music Supervisor
The Narrator tells us how the radio influenced his childhood in the days before TV. In the New York City of the late 1930s to the New Year's Eve 1944, this coming-of-age tale mixes the narrator's experiences with contemporary anecdotes and urban legends of the radio stars.
Original Music Composer
An English girl comes to America to join her American husband in a Pennsylvania coal town in the late 1950's. She faces the ire of her new mother-in-law, a former Hungarian with different ideas about the life and culture that her son should have.
Original Music Composer
Cecilia is a waitress in New Jersey, living a dreary life during the Great Depression. Her only escape from her mundane reality is the movie theatre. After losing her job, Cecilia goes to see 'The Purple Rose of Cairo' in hopes of raising her spirits, where she watches dashing archaeologist Tom Baxter time and again.
Music Supervisor
A hapless talent manager named Danny Rose, by helping a client, gets dragged into a love triangle involving the mob. His story is told in flashback, an anecdote shared amongst a group of comedians over lunch at New York's Carnegie Deli. Rose's one-man talent agency represents countless incompetent entertainers, including a one-legged tap dancer, and one slightly talented one: washed-up lounge singer Lou Canova (Nick Apollo Forte), whose career is on the rebound.
Original Music Composer
Fictional documentary about the life of human chameleon Leonard Zelig, a man who becomes a celebrity in the 1920s due to his ability to look and act like whoever is around him. Clever editing places Zelig in real newsreel footage of Woodrow Wilson, Babe Ruth, and others.
Music
Two brothers take over the family seafood business, and battle each other for control of the company - and their father's attention.
Music
A small town becomes gripped by an ethical debate when the community discovers a moody, egotistical scientist is experimenting with DNA and the creation of new life.
Original Music Composer
Chronicles the life of a young New Orleans prostitute and her co-workers.
Music
Family members face hard decisions about the care of their elderly father who needs constant care and can no longer safely live alone, which particularly affects the eldest son's life, placing his impending marriage in jeopardy.
Original Music Composer
Bernice, a shy young woman, leaves her safe home to go visit her flapper cousin. When her cousin tries to teach Bernice how to be much more modern, Bernice gives her much more than she bargained for.