A successful talk show host leaves Los Angeles to reunite with his family in the Deep South.

What sounds like an excellent set-up for a movie turns out to be just another run of the mill, disappointingly mediocre comedy. Directed by Marc Forster (Finding Neverland, Stay) and starring Will Ferrell, Emma Thompson and Dustin Hoffman, Stranger Than Fiction takes the idea of a man facing his impending death at the whim of a British writer and instead of running with it, casually swaggers to a predictable finish.

Taken aback by his mother’s wedding announcement, a young man returns home in an effort to stop her from marrying his old high school gym teacher, a man who made high school hell for generations of students.

A simple-minded gardener named Chance has spent all his life in the Washington D.C. house of an old man. When the man dies, Chance is put out on the street with no knowledge of the world except what he has learned from television. After a run in with a limousine, he ends up a guest of a woman (Eve) and her husband Ben, an influential but sickly businessman. Now called Chauncey Gardner, Chance becomes friend and confidante to Ben, and an unlikely political insider. Written by Scott Renshaw {as.idc@forsythe.stanford.edu}

The chief spokesperson and lobbyist Nick Taylor is the Vice-President of the Academy of Tobacco Studies. He is talented in speaking and spins argument to defend the cigarette industry in the most difficult situations. His best friends are Polly Bailey that works in the Moderation Council in alcohol business, and Bobby Jay Bliss of the gun business own advisory group SAFETY. They frequently meet each other in a bar and they self-entitle the Mod Squad a.k.a. Merchants of Death, disputing which industry has killed more people. Nick’s greatest enemy is Vermont’s Senator Ortolan Finistirre, who defends in the Senate the use a skull and crossed bones in the cigarette packs. Nick’s son Joey Naylor lives with his mother, and has the chance to know his father in a business trip. When the ambitious reporter Heather Holloway betrays Nick disclosing confidences he had in bed with her, his life turns upside-down. But Nick is good in what he does for the mortgage. Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

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Dr. Evil uses a device he calls a “Time Machine” to travel back to 1969 and remove Austin Powers’ mojo. The sexually wounded swinger must travel back in time and, with the help of agent Felicity Shagwell, recover his vitality. Meanwhile, Dr. Evil’s personal life runs amok as he discovers love, continues to shun his son and develops a close relationship with himself. Well, actually, a clone 1/8 his size whom he dubs “Mini-Me”. The always time-baffled Dr. Evil begins his plan to put a gigantic cannon on the moon, thus turning it into a device called either “The Death Star” or “Alan Parson’s Project,” depending on which name is available. Written by Michael “Rabbit” Hutchison {rabhutch@spacestar.net}

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Stan Ross was a baseball superstar who turned his back on the game years ago when he finally hit 3,000 hits. Years later, he’s now a successful, self-made entrepreneur whose many businesses revolve around his title: Mr. 3000. But a clerical error has proven that Stan is just short three hits of his spectacular hit record. Now, with time on his side and the potential to be inducted in the Baseball Hall of Fame, Stan must return back to the game and get back his title. But things have changed with age, and as Stan finds out, it’s not too easy to get back into the game when he hasn’t played for years, and he’s nearing 50. Written by monkeykingma

Dr. David Gale, an advocate of eliminating the death penalty, is falsely accused of rape and murder. Once convicted, he ends up on death row in Texas himself, telling his story to a reporter through a series of flashbacks. Written by Jason Smith

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Do you ever feel like everyone but you is in on the joke? I didn’t feel that way with Wes Anderson’s other films – “Bottle Rocket,” “Rushmore,” or the amazing “Royal Tenenbaums.” Those films were clever but never condescending. Those I understood and basically stood in awe of. But from the title to the bizarre action sequences, “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” left me feeling like an outsider looking in.

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The daughter of an actor with a high-society woman, Domino Harvey, bored with her life, decides to join the team of Ed Mosley and becomes a bounty hunter. But she gets in trouble when the Mafia’s money is stolen from an armored truck, while Mosley and his crew are in action participating of a reality show produced by Mark Heiss. The situation becomes out of control when the sons of a rival mobster are kidnapped while FBI is monitoring the two gangs of mobsters. Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

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