Synopsis:
Hard-rock icon Serj Tankian has a voice and esthetic that hit the music scene with a sound it had never heard before. He talks with us about his new orchestral project, Elect the Dead Symphony, his childhood in Beirut, his time with System of a Down, and his thoughts on the state of civilization.

Introduction:
With soft, soothing lilts rising to thundering, operatic crescendos before ripping into a blood-curdling roar, Serj Tankian’s vocals seem both at odds and in perfect sync with the brutal nature of hard rock and metal. The lead singer of System of a Down’s unorthodox approach to the genre gave us something we’d never heard before, and thrust the fans toward the brink of feral ecstasy. And now that Tankian has stepped away from the head-banging bedlam in favor of harp, cello, and viola, the audience that used to descend into the primal mosh now gazes wide-eyed at their luminary, and becomes a sea of great, big, goofy grins...
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Introduction:
Few top-shelf directors have a resume as eclectic as that of Chris Weitz. He and his older brother, Paul, wrote the screenplay to the 1998 feature, Antz, starring the voice of Woody Allen, at the dawn of computer-animated films. The project's success led to their helming of American Pie, the 1999 teen sex comedy that became a cultural touchstone. This led to their work on the Chris Rock-starring Down to Earth in 2001, and then to writing and directing About a Boy, featuring Hugh Grant and Rachel Weisz, the following year, which earned the brothers an Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay. Amid their directing and producing, Weitz co-starred in Chuck and Buck (2000), a bizarrely honest portrayal of sexuality and arrested development, which became a cult classic...
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Introduction:
Alice fell down the rabbit hole, Luke Skywalker met Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Harry Potter boarded the train. They faced challenges, met helpers, fought enemies, and grew into the heroes they were destined to be. Joseph Campbell found that cultures the world over have been telling the same story since the beginning of civilization. He called it "the hero's journey." The renowned scholar went on to suggest that this shared myth represents everyone's potential to change the way they live, find success and happiness, and share their rewards with others. "He realized that it was a blueprint for the way that a human life should be lived," explains Patrick Takaya Solomon, director of the new documentary, Finding Joe. "He found this pattern and realized that in the day-to-day living of it, it's about pursuing a goal, a passion, your bliss!"...
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Synopsis:
Roger Nygard searches humanity for the answers to the ultimate questions.

Introduction:
It's a liberating experience sitting down with Roger Nygard to chat about his new documentary, The Nature of Existence. The possibilities for discussion are literally endless. The man who brought us Trekkies and Trekkies 2 spent four years traveling the world interviewing over 100 subjects, including guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, string theory physicist Leonard Susskind, science fiction author Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game), Roman Archbishop Domenico D'Ambrosio, outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), Ultimate Christian Wrestler Rob Adonis, director Irvin Kershner (The Empire Strikes Back), Stonehenge Druid King Arthur Pendragon, and scores of others who tackled Nygard's 85 questions, which included: "What is our purpose?" "Is there a God?" "Can religion and science coexist?" "Is masturbation a sin?"
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Synopsis:
Paul J. Adams III is president of Providence St. Mel, a prep school in an inner-city neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago, which sends 100% of its graduates off to college.

Introduction:
On Central Boulevard across from Garfield Park, in a rough neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side, is a top-notch prep school. Amid an inner city riddled with violence and gangland rule, Providence St. Mel is a sealed-tight safety zone that boasts 29 consecutive years of sending 100% of its graduates off to four-year colleges, and over the last seven years, half of them have gone to first-tier and Ivy- League schools. The inception, survival, and growth of PSM as a college-preparatory institution is due primarily to the iron will of its founder, former principal, and current president, Paul J. Adams III.
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Synopsis:
Australian stuntman Nash Edgerton directs his first full-length feature, The Square.

Introduction:
When stuntman/director Nash Edgerton set out to make his first feature film, there was some expectation that he’d embark on an actionpacked cornucopia of fight scenes, car chases, and explosions. Instead, however, the Australian filmmaker constructed The Square, a tale of passion, murder, and the aftermath of bad decisions, wherein the excitement lies not in an inundation of sights and sounds, but in a slowly building sense of desperation and doom...
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Introduction:
There were bars and B girls and nickelodeons with dirty movies. There were freak shows with sideshow geeks biting the heads off chickens and crying for liquor late into the night. You could pay a dime for a twirl at a taxi dance hall or stop by the Burbank for a night of burlesque. Dozens of nationalities filled the streets and hotels, and the heady air of debauchery permeated everything. There were the notorious fires at the St. George Hotel, the suicides at the El Dorado, the serial killers who lived at the Cecil, and the grand opulence of the Alexandria. Main Street, downtown Los Angeles, 1940s.
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Introduction:
Our bodies haven't evolved much over the past 150,000 years, yet we've recently developed the ability to transmit our thoughts instantly across thousands of miles with a couple of hand motions. If we have a question we have split-second access to all of human knowledge, and if we're lonely we can reach out to a network of billions of minds. Technology is our evolution and the Internet is one of its quantum leaps. Filmmaker Tiffany Shlain has been marveling at this weaving together of humanity since the Internet's dawn in the mid-'90s, and her new film, Connected, is an ode to the age of interdependence. Shlain originally planned the documentary as a collaboration with her father, Dr. Leonard Shlain, a noted surgeon and author of books on the human mind. Yet when he was diagnosed with brain cancer, Shlain discovered a new perspective. The resulting work is an exploration of the vastness of our minds' reach and the importance of cherishing those closest to us...
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Synopsis:
All Time Low, pop punks who started rocking in Maryland in 9th grade, tear it up while staying in touch with their fans and their roots.

Introduction:
Red-eyed and poised to rock, the boys of All Time Low connect with us from Germany, where they’re gearing up to play the Backstage Club in Munich. On the heels of a two-day stint in Sweden, this is the pop punks’ third show on the Deutschland leg of their European tour, which climaxes in Berlin the following night -- and then they’re off to Amsterdam and the U.K. “We’re all on weird time schedules,” laughs frontman Alex Gaskarth. “None of us wakes up before three in the afternoon, and we don’t go to bed before six in the morning. The jetlag is definitely crushing us right now.”...
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Synopsis:
Mark Hartley's Not Quite Hollywood careens through the lawless era of Australian "Ozploitation" flicks.

Introduction:
“Take Mad Max as an example,” recounts director Mark Hartley. “On the first day of the shoot, Grant Page, the stunt coordinator, has got the lead actress on the back of his motorcycle on the way to the set. What they were doing the night before, I’ll leave up to your imagination. He’s driving down the road early in the morning, and a semi-trailer is coming towards them. The sun is blaring in the truck driver’s eyes and he doesn’t see them. So Grant has to swerve the bike on its side, and actually go underneath, between the wheels of the semi-trailer to save his life — and before he does that, he looks back and sees that his lead actress has got her head poked up. He elbows her in the face to get her to stick her head down, breaks her nose, they actually slide under the truck to safety, and then the bike comes to a halt and collapses on them and breaks Grant’s leg..."
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