January 2007 Soundtracks

Barbara Covett (Dame Judi Dench) is a veteran and cynical schoolteacher who is close to retirement. She is barely tolerated by her less brilliant and acerbic colleagues who know nothing about her private life which consists mainly of taking care of Portia, her aging cat, and spending countless hours alone. The only means she has found to take the edge off her desperate loneliness is writing in her journal. When Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett), a younger, attractive woman, joins the faculty as an art teacher, Barbara watches her from afar and has nothing but caustic things to say in her diary about her clothing and her care-free manner. Despite her disdain for this woman, Barbara finds herself reaching out to her. Sheba responds by inviting her to dinner at her house to meet Sheba's lecturer husband (Bill Nighy), who is twenty years her senior, and their two children, a sexy and rebellious 16-year-old daughter and a younger boy with Downs Syndrome. Instead of opening herself to these people, Barbara immediately sees them as competition to be beaten in the battle for Sheba's attention. Later, when Barbara discovers her new friend in a classroom having sex with Steven (Andrew Simpson), a 15-year-old from the school who has artistic talent; she realizes that knowledge of this secret gives her power over Sheba which she can use for her own purposes. Barbara promises to not tell anyone but insists that the affair must end immediately. Sheba says she will but finds herself drawn back to the boy again and again. Sheba seems uneasy with Barbara's friendship and is appalled when she discovers the older woman might have a sexual interest in her. The tenuous relationship between the two women reaches a crisis point when Barbara's cat is dying and she asks Sheba to go with her to the vet. She chooses to go with her family to see their son in a play instead. In revenge, Barbara sets in motion the scandal that will rock both their lives in ways they never imagined.

Ten-year-old Arthur has a lot on his plate: a real estate developer is about to snap up his grandma's home... and there's no way Arthur's going to hang around for his parents or grandparents to sort out the problem. Maybe the solution lies in his grandpa's treasure, which is hidden somewhere on the "other side" in the land of the Minimoys. The creatures that inhabit this world are just a tenth of an inch tall and live in perfect harmony with their environment.

Arthur ventures into this world of the Minimoys, where he meets Princess Selenia and her brother Betameche. Together they set off to look for the treasure that will save his grandma. An action-packed adventure ensues, full of pitfalls and intrigues, all the way up to the forbidden city ruled by the evil M the Malicious. Arthur's journey in the Minimoys universe reveals that sometimes the smallest heroes make the biggest difference.

The project explores the life of the author of such beloved children's books as "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" and her struggle for independence in Victorian England.

Academy Award winner Hilary Swank stars in an inspirational film, based on the true story of teacher Erin Gruwell and her students the Freedom Writers. This group of inner city, at risk students defied the odds to be heard, as Gruwell urges her class to tell their stories through journals writing. Given the ability to express themselves through words and not violence, the kids begin to see connections to eachother that they never knew existed.

When a young drug dealer by the name of Johnny Truelove kidnaps Zack Mazursky, the fifteen-year-old brother of a man in debt to him, things don't go according to plan. As he desperately tries to get the money owed to him, Johnny's crew looks after Zack. Though a hostage, Zack is enjoying the excitement of his situation, blissfully unaware of the despair of his parents, the rage of his brother and also of the fatal conclusion that awaits him.

Based on the life of Chris Gardner, a self-made millionaire, this untitled project will star Will Smith as a man who finds himself jobless and homeless at age 30, living in a San Francisco train station with his infant son. Determined to beat the odds, he finds work as a trainee at a brokerage and climbs the corporate ladder, eventually becoming partner and owner of his own Chicago-based firm.

Sixty-one years ago, U.S. and Japanese armies met on Iwo Jima. Decades later, several hundred letters are unearthed from that stark island's soil. The letters give faces and voices to the men who fought there, as well as the extraordinary general who led them, Tadamichi Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe). With little defense other than sheer will and the volcanic rock of the island itself, Gen. Kuribayashi's unprecedented tactics transform what was predicted to be a quick and bloody defeat into nearly 40 days of heroic and resourceful combat.

In an effort to explore an event that continues to resonate with both cultures, Clint Eastwood was haunted by the sense that making only one film, "Flags of Our Fathers", would be telling only half the story. With this unprecedented dual film project, shot back-to-back to be released in sequence, Eastwood seeks to reveal the battle of Iwo Jima--and, by implication, the war in the Pacific--as a clash not only of arms but of cultures.

A love story set in the 1920s about a young English couple (a doctor and a society girl) who marry hastily, relocate to Hong Kong where they betray each other easily, and find an unexpected chance at redemption and happiness while on a deadly journey into the heart of ancient China. Based on the novel by W. Somerset Maugham.

A single father, Monty, is a garage mechanic who lives in a poor neighborhood and struggles to make ends meet as he raises his three young daughters on his own. But when the courts award custody of his daughters to his corrupt, drug-dealing ex-wife, Monty desperately tries to win them back, enlisting the help of Julia, a beautiful--and hard-nosed--attorney he meets during his short stint as a chauffeur. While Monty and the Ivy-League-educated Julia couldn't be less alike, an unexpected romance blossoms--and it soon begins to feel like true love. But in order for their relationship to survive, the couple must reconcile their two very different worlds--and overcome the forces that threaten to tear Monty's family apart.

Ten years ago, in the remote mountains of Colorado, a young girl watched helplessly as her family was murdered by a pack of angry men for the secret they carried in their blood. She survived by running into the woods, and changing into something the hunters could never find--a wolf. Now, though she lives half a world away, Vivian Gandillon is still running. Living in relative safety in Bucharest, Vivian spends her days working at a chocolate shop and nights trawling the city's underground clubs, fending off the reckless antics of her cousin Rafe and his gang of delinquents he calls "The Five." Aiden Galvin is an artist researching Bucharest's ancient art and relics for his next graphic novel based on the mythology of the loup garoux--shapeshifters whose power to change effortlessly into the forms of both human and wolf was once considered holy among men. Wrestling demons of his own, Aiden hopes to explore the inner lives of these outsiders that he believes were persecuted to extinction--labeled monsters, murderers, werewolves. What he doesn't know is that the loup garoux are not only very real, they're far from extinct. During a chance encounter in an abandoned church celebrating the loup garoux, Aiden unknowingly comes face-to-face with the real thing, Vivian. Others may have secrets but none as extraordinary as hers, for Vivian is among the last of her kind, leading a tenuous existence under the protection and control of Gabriel, the powerful and enigmatic leader of one of the last packs of loup garoux on earth. After their brief exchange in the church, Aiden can't get Vivian out of his mind, nor can she forget him. He pursues her until she relents and begins to see him, but she can't bring herself to tell him the truth--and lives in fear of showing him what she really is. And what's worse: her future, and who she falls in love with, is already predetermined. To keep their kind from being hunted to extinction, Gabriel holds them to strict laws. One is that he must take a new bride every seven years, and Vivian has been prophesied to be his next.

After the sudden death of her fiancé, Gray Wheeler finds comfort in the company of his friends: lighthearted and comic Sam, hyper-responsible Dennis, and, oddly enough, his old childhood buddy Fritz, an irresponsible playboy whom she'd previously pegged as one of the least reliable people in the world. As secrets about her supposedly perfect fiancé emerge, Gray comes to see new sides of the men she thought she knew, and at the same time, finds herself drawn to the last man she ever expected to fall for.