cookie Posted January 11, 2018 Share Posted January 11, 2018 32 minutes ago, Xillix said: That's up to @cookie really. He's the one who has the theatres booked. Less than 20 is okay. Not for an extended run though, don't push your luck 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YM! Posted January 11, 2018 Share Posted January 11, 2018 21 minutes ago, cookie said: Less than 20 is okay. Not for an extended run though, don't push your luck It’s cool. I kinded want a HTTYD type feel for Spyro and a limited IMAX release might help. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xillix Posted January 11, 2018 Author Share Posted January 11, 2018 (edited) @cookie @YourMother the Edgelord Per my research there are 30 cities in the US and English-speaking Canada with more than one IMAX theatre. Would it be an acceptable compromise for Spyro to take one theatre in each of these cities? That way Voltron doesn't lose any significant geographical distribution. In case it matters the cities in question are spoilered here: Spoiler Phoenix, Arizona Los Angeles, California San Diego, California San Francisco, California San Jose, California Torrance, California Westminster, Colorado Washington, D.C. Miami, Florida Orlando, Florida Chicago, Illinois Indianapolis, Indiana Baton Rouge, Louisiana Las Vegas, Nevada Albuquerque, New Mexico New York City, New York Charlotte, North Carolina Columbus, Ohio Tulsa, Oklahoma Austin, Texas Dallas, Texas Houston, Texas San Antonio, Texas Seattle, Washington Calgary, Alberta Mississagua, Ontario Toronto, Ontario Greenfield Park, Quebec Motreal, Quebec Terrebonne, Quebec Edited January 11, 2018 by Xillix 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YM! Posted January 11, 2018 Share Posted January 11, 2018 5 minutes ago, Xillix said: @cookie @YourMother the Edgelord Per my research there are 30 cities in the US and English-speaking Canada with more than one IMAX theatre. Would it be an acceptable compromise for Spyro to take one theatre in each of these cities? That way Voltron doesn't lose any significant geographical distribution. In case it matters the cities in question are spoilered here: Hide contents Phoenix, Arizona Los Angeles, California San Diego, California San Francisco, California San Jose, California Torrance, California Westminster, Colorado Washington, D.C. Miami, Florida Orlando, Florida Chicago, Illinois Indianapolis, Indiana Baton Rouge, Louisiana Las Vegas, Nevada Albuquerque, New Mexico New York City, New York Charlotte, North Carolina Columbus, Ohio Tulsa, Oklahoma Austin, Texas Dallas, Texas Houston, Texas San Antonio, Texas Seattle, Washington Calgary, Alberta Mississagua, Ontario Toronto, Ontario Greenfield Park, Quebec Motreal, Quebec Terrebonne, Quebec I’d be cool with that. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cookie Posted January 11, 2018 Share Posted January 11, 2018 6 minutes ago, Xillix said: @cookie @YourMother the Edgelord Per my research there are 30 cities in the US and English-speaking Canada with more than one IMAX theatre. Would it be an acceptable compromise for Spyro to take one theatre in each of these cities? That way Voltron doesn't lose any significant geographical distribution. In case it matters the cities in question are spoilered here: Reveal hidden contents Phoenix, Arizona Los Angeles, California San Diego, California San Francisco, California San Jose, California Torrance, California Westminster, Colorado Washington, D.C. Miami, Florida Orlando, Florida Chicago, Illinois Indianapolis, Indiana Baton Rouge, Louisiana Las Vegas, Nevada Albuquerque, New Mexico New York City, New York Charlotte, North Carolina Columbus, Ohio Tulsa, Oklahoma Austin, Texas Dallas, Texas Houston, Texas San Antonio, Texas Seattle, Washington Calgary, Alberta Mississagua, Ontario Toronto, Ontario Greenfield Park, Quebec Motreal, Quebec Terrebonne, Quebec Over the holidays only and not the biggest ones! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xillix Posted January 11, 2018 Author Share Posted January 11, 2018 1 minute ago, cookie said: Over the holidays only and not the biggest ones! So like maybe December 21st thru January 1st? I just need to know what to put in the first post, haha! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cookie Posted January 11, 2018 Share Posted January 11, 2018 Just now, Xillix said: So like maybe December 21st thru January 1st? I just need to know what to put in the first post, haha! Si. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rorschach Posted January 12, 2018 Share Posted January 12, 2018 (edited) ANTHEM Based on the Novela by Ayn Rand Directed by Shane Acker Music by Deborah Lurie Genre: Dystopian Sci-Fi, Traditional 2D Animation Studio: Lager Pictures Release Date: August 17th, Y2 Theater Count: 2,459 MPAA Rating: PG-13 for Thematic Elements and Disturbing Imagery Runtime: 84 minutes Production Budget: $30 million Cast: Armie Hammer as Equality 7-2521, Lily James as Liberty 5-3000 (The Golden One), Colin Farrell as The Transgressor of the Unspeakable Word, Elijah Wood as International 4-8818, and Christopher Plummer as Collective 0-0009 (the leader of the head council) Plot: A youth named Equality 7-2521 (Armie Hammer), who has found a hidden tunnel and hides in it to write, knows his solitude violates all the laws of his society. Even though he does not feel guilt for his actions, he begs the forgiveness of the ruling Council. As he spends more time alone, he realizes that solitude suits him, and he begins to crave more and more time by himself. From his tunnel, Equality 7-2521 records episodes from his childhood. As a child, Equality 7-2521 wanted more than anything to be a scholar. He believed he was cursed with a terrific curiosity, which made him prefer some things to others and to prefer some people to others. He often fought with the boys at the Home of Students, and he was reprimanded by his teachers for being too smart and too tall. He tried to conform to the standard the others set, but no matter how hard he tried, he was smarter and quicker than they were. When the Council of Vocations assign him to be a street sweeper instead of a scholar, he was pleased because it meant he could atone for the sins he had committed. When he was ten, Equality 7-2521 saw the public execution of the Transgressor of the Unspeakable Word (Colin Farrell), who had discovered the word “I” and was burned to death in the town square as punishment for using the word. While he was burning, the Transgressor showed no pain but locked eyes with Equality 7-2521. Equality 7-2521 comes to believe that that moment anointed him as a disciple of the same crusade as the Transgressor. Equality 7-2521 begins to conduct experiments and shortly discovers electricity. After many weeks of work, he successfully builds a lightbulb from the materials he finds in his tunnel. He decides that he must share his invention with the world and resolves to present it to the World Council of Scholars when it convenes that year in his city. In the meantime, Equality 7-2521 has met the Golden One, a beautiful peasant girl who is proud and haughty. He knows it is wrong to do so, but he speaks to her when he gets the chance, and they immediately fall in love. One day, she offers him some water from her hands, and he drinks it, not understanding why this act makes him think of the Palace of Mating, where he and all other mature citizens are sent once a year to have sex. Before he can show the lightbulb to the World Council, Equality 7-2521 accidentally returns late to the Home of the Street Sweepers, where he lives. When he refuses to tell his Home Council where he has been, he is thrown into the Palace of Corrective Detention. There he is tortured, but he still refuses to tell where he has been, because he wants to keep the lightbulb a secret until he gets to show it to the World Council. He remains incarcerated until the World Council convenes, when he breaks out of the Palace of Corrective Detention and goes to the World Council, expecting to be exonerated and reconciled with his brothers. When Equality 7-2521 arrives and tells the World Council his story, however, the World Council rejects him out of fear and anger. It threatens to kill him and to get rid of his light bulb. He cannot abide having his lightbulb destroyed, so he grabs his invention and flees the city. He runs to the Uncharted Forest where he discovers that he is free at last to do as he pleases. A few days later, the Golden One appears. She has followed Equality 7-2521 into the woods. They vow to live together in peace and solitude. After they have been hiking for several days in the mountains, they find an abandoned house from the Unmentionable Times. The Golden One revels in the finery she finds in the house, and Equality 7-2521 consumes the library. He discovers the meaning of the word “I,” and he vows to protect his home and from there launch a new race of men who will believe in individualism and the never-ending supremacy of the ego. Edited January 14, 2018 by Rorschach 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rorschach Posted January 12, 2018 Share Posted January 12, 2018 @Xillix Changed the director and the genre for Anthem Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YM! Posted January 12, 2018 Share Posted January 12, 2018 Spyro Dragonheart is completed. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xillix Posted January 12, 2018 Author Share Posted January 12, 2018 1 hour ago, YourMother the Edgelord said: Spyro Dragonheart is completed. Could you edit in the bit about the 30 IMAX screens from December 21-January 1 to your post? Just so people making predictions will be able to see that info there too. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YM! Posted January 12, 2018 Share Posted January 12, 2018 Just now, Xillix said: Could you edit in the bit about the 30 IMAX screens from December 21-January 1 to your post? Just so people making predictions will be able to see that info there too. Okay. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ezen Baklattan Posted January 13, 2018 Share Posted January 13, 2018 BLOOD AND FUR 2: MAUL-MA MATER "Crazier. Bloodier. Probably not as good as the first." Director: Eli Craig Genre: Horror/Action/Comedy Date: October 26, Y2 Theater Count: 3,473 (limited IMAX release) MPAA Rating: R for strong graphic bloody violence and pervasive language throughout, alcohol, and drug use Runtime: 87min (1hr, 27min) Budget: $20 million CAST: The Students: Alexandra Shipp (Emily), Pete Davidson (Matt), Miles Teller (Frat President) The Anthros: Jillian Bell (Starley), Tyler Labine (Freddie) The Neos: Bill Hader (Leonard Wilson), Ari Graynor (Billie Ripley) Spoiler Emily and Matt are two Freshmen at Carpenter University, as classes are starting to get into gear. Emily had been making friends within her dormitory’s social justice program – both students live in the same hall, Caner Hall. Meanwhile, Matt has been successfully rushing a fraternity, one of the biggest in the nation with several rich and influential members, while beginning to make some solid friends, but he has to face one final test of hazing. He must run into an open dorm room of a stranger and completely trash the room. Indeed, they go into Caner hall, where a montage of chaos ensues. Emily, calling her parents via Skype in her room, cannot hear the carnage outside, until Matt is marked to make a mess out of Emily’s room. As he comes in, he hesitates, then after a pause, asks if he can hide in her closet. The frat president comes into her room, looking for Matt, but a ringing phone exposes him. They drag him away for failing the test, as Emily remarks about the banality of frat life. The students alert the RAs, who were busy stopping students from taken drugs. (One makes drugs herself, and if the students buy them off her it’s totally okay) Later, we see Matt wake up in the morning, tied up on the rooftop of a large university building, wearing nothing but underwear. A walkie talkie taped to his face reveals that he was put up on top of a hotel his father owns. The tape is easy to get out of, but the elevator is broken. He has to follow a trail out of the hotel to be accepted into the frat. Realizing he has to get out of there anyway, he begins to follow the trail, only to find a pack of familiar friends waiting in the middle of the path – the path goes through the large university banquet centers, and he faces embarrassment walking through the hotel half naked, especially in front of a large group of furries – Seattle Scales and Tails is meeting here for their convention. He then has to walk past the suite of a neo-nazi couple giving them a dirty look: Leonard and Billie, two of the most despicable political commentators today. His walk of shame ends right by students lining up to see him speak. Emily walks past Matt in the line, trying to find him after seeing a snapchat local story posted by one of the furries. She walks past Matt, acknowledging that the frat bros probably put him up to this. She can get him a change of clothes, but she is shooed away by the frat president. The frat president tells him that the last step is to stand outside, by the line, for 30 minutes, by which Leonard’s speech would begin. The wait is agonizing, while students get admitted, feeling weird about the furries. Feeling immense shame, Matt runs to the bathroom to put clothes on, as Emily walks away to get some coffee. Matt runs to put on clothes as Leonard gives a hilariously over the top bigoted speech, letting his partner chime in only occasionally. As Matt is putting on clothes in the bathroom, he hears gunshots. It turns out that Leonard had a secret agent out after him with a warrant for arrest of money laundering. Leonard dramatically has his personal squad of goons kill them. “Perks of being rich....Anyways, I know how you snowflakes are.” As students try to run, he reveals that he had locked the doors and hidden a jammer into the building, so that the students could not use their phones. “You are all trapped with me, and your SOC 100 extra credit is now my playground.” Emily runs back into the building, looking to see if Matt is okay, and he runs out of the bathroom in the commotion. They run around the building searching for help, eventually running into the furry convention, led by Starley and Freddie. They were in a loosely connected building, and the signal was repressed by the jammer quickly enough that they didn’t catch on. Emily asks for help, but feels that it’s beyond ridiculous to ask them. Starley feels it, but knows that they can’t pull a stunt like this again. Losing one of their best friends last year was hard enough. Emily tries to motivate them, realizing they were the heroes in the Starwood hotel bonanza last year – after some cheesy persuasion, they agree. We see a badass montage of Matt sending a facebook invite to fight some Nazis on campus, while the furries prepare their weapons. They walk down the building in a badass manner to find a way to open the door, but they are stopped quickly. Leonard, realizing that others were in the building, sends a few goons after them. Knowing that he had friends across town with lethal resources, he calls them forward. “Be good, you pesky little millennials. We’ll take care of this and then you can go free.” As the goons arrive, the fight enters a classroom, as Starley and Freddie get into a fight in a classroom, crushing ones’ head with a projector and throwing a desk at the other. The finishing blow for the latter is stabbing them with shards of glass from a window. As Leonard calls the goon, Emily optimistically says that they’re coming for his murderous ass. Matt asks her what the hell she’s doing. As Leonard cries crocodile tears, she’s even shocked in person over how bad-ass she sounds, eventually messing it up. “I’m going to make you real heckin dead!” she says, as the trapped students go from terror to confusion. Eventually, Leonard calls the police, claiming that the renegade heroes have murdered. They arrive, but turn out to be a band of corrupt cops, under the payroll of the cousin of the mistress of the best friend of Leonard. They’ll know the price soon for messing with progress. The furries have no choice but to split up to save the students. The next part of the film follows the violent fights that break out between the teams, including, but not limited to the following: · The police are able to shoot some of the furries, but one of them gets crushed by a chandelier in the banquet hall. · Emily manages to run towards a balcony, where the officer trips, and gets impaled by a sharp statue representing some kind of abstract art. · In the kitchen, where Matt is trying to avoid the situation altogether, he manages to trip an officer into a boiling pot, covering his head in piping hot water. He screams in pain, trying to kill him, as Matt continues to try and play coy. He eventually trips over a broomstick which creates a Rube Goldberg set up that sends a set of knives hurling into the heart and face of the officer. Matt takes a selfie with him and escapes. Eventually, they find a way to unlock the door, thanks to a locksmith who found the facebook event. However, he is shot as he is undoing the lock. Leonard appears, along with his secret assistant, the Frat President. He had promised a large payout to his fraternity if the event went successfully, and they could keep the student body silent about the killings. An epic fight breaks out between the frat bros and the furries, but the frat bros are able to be scared off as Emily manages to distract the remaining, conscious ones with an orgy happening in south campus allegedly. All but the president escape. The president and Matt get into a violent, crazy fight, while Emily finds a wooden paddle that fell out of the president’s pocket. She throws it to Matt, but the president catches it first. “I thought you’d run, you coward. You’re smarter than I thought, but that does mean I have to kill you. Sorry, mate.” The president begins to beat up Matt, ready to give a final blow, but the cop previously impaled falls from the statue and crushes the president. The president is trapped, as Matt says: “Your days of hazing and fraternal terror are over.” He whacks him in the head. Leonard escaped in the chaos, returning to the auditorium, where the furries manage to find an extra way in. They subdue Leonard and Billie as the others get the doors to let the students escape. Emily and Matt realize this crazy day could finally be over. However, the goons arrive to terrorize and attack the furries. Matt’s leg gets shot in the commotion, as Emily tries to deliver him to safety. Battle royale begins, as the officers and furries get into a wild, bloody fight. During the carnage, Matt and Emily share an awkward moment as they begin to realize that through this wild day, that they might want to hang out again as....more than friends. As they smile to each other, and the carnage worsens, Leonard finds them. Bloodied and hysterically furious, he begins to chase them through the halls, as he cannot let them escape in his final plea to glory. He used this as a ploy to defeat his biggest enemy: public college students. Billie, however, decides that she has had enough of her husband’s misogyny. She violently beats him up, eventually shooting at the stage. A spotlight falls to the ground, and Billie electrocutes him by kicking his head inside the light. While the furries kill the last of the goons, students report to the police what really happened, knowing the powerful frat can’t suppress the story. We then find out that a few years later, Emily and Matt are dating, and she is writing her senior thesis on the ethics of using violence against oppression. They decide to go on vacation downtown to celebrate her finishing up her senior thesis. They stay at the Starwood hotel and meet with Amy and Gavin from the first movie, sharing their experiences with the furries. As they kiss inside their room, we see in another room, a familiar face plotting revenge. “I’m a little shock, but.....I’m better. Let’s get back at these motherfuckers, Benson. Best regards....Vincent Haverford.” We then see him harness the electricity in the room, laughing evilly. THE END 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ezen Baklattan Posted January 13, 2018 Share Posted January 13, 2018 Paddles: The Video Game Story Genre: Documentary Director: James Swirsky and Lisanne Pajot Cast: Unknowns Date: July 6th Theaters: 8 - NY/CHI/LA (7/6), 62 (7/13), 247 (7/20), 1,068 (7/26), 1,625 (8/3) Rating: PG Runtime: 97min (1hr, 37min) Budget: $3 million This documentary features many interviews and archive footage. Two friends and technical experts, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, witnessed a special computer game called Spacewar at The University Of Utah in 1966. They were so inspired by what they saw, that they went on to create an arcade game out of it, which would be called Computer Space, released by Nutting Associates. However, the game recieved mixed results, as it had technology that many people may view to be overwhelming and difficult to play. They soon made their own company, Syzygy Engineering, with Allan Alcorn as their first designer. After a great deal of hard work, they were able to create something very special. Using a television set bought at Walgreen's, and some advance hardware, and a coin collecting mechanism, they created the first ever version of Pong. The game was released at a place called Andy Capp's Tavern, the same location of the ill-fated Computer Space. However, it turned out that Pong was a huge success, and much revenue was generated for the place by people who just wanted to play the game. Just as Pong was breaking out, the video game industry was starting to grow fast in the United States. The first video game home console, the Magnavox Odyssey, had been released in the same year that Pong did, and the name of Syzygy Engineering, after realizing that the name was trademarked in California, was changed to simply Atari. In fact, before the 80s even rolled in, Atari had released many new games, including a home console version of Pong. However, trouble came in the late 70s. So many Pong clones were flooding the market, and it caused the video game market to become severely depressed. In the end, only Atari and Magnavox were the only standing companies left in the home gaming market, and even they were suffering great losses over this time period. However, this was revived by the release of the Atari 2600, a revolutionary new gaming console. It seemed that the game industry would give up so easily. We now go through a brief history of gaming up to today. After an even more severe home video game crash in 1983, the market for gaming revived itself, and we now have consoles such as the PS3 and the XBOX 360, and an insane variety of games. The glorious success of video games in modern society owes much to the three guys in the 1970s who developed a simple game involving a dot and two paddles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ethan Hunt Posted January 13, 2018 Share Posted January 13, 2018 (edited) Peter and the Starcatchers Director: Gary Ross Genre: fantasy/adventure Release date: December 25th Theater Count: 3,890 Budget: 160M Runtime: 119 minutes Rating: PG Cast: Tom Holland-Peter Darcy Rose Byrnes-Molly Ed Oxelbound- James Sophie Turner- Tinkerbell Sean Harris- Black Stache/Captain Hook Mark Ruffalo-Smee Plot: In this prequel to the story of Peter Pan, Peter and his ragtag group of orphans are placed on the leaky, poorly-run ship known as the "The Neverland," to be deposited on the island of Rundoon. Rundoon is governed by a barbaric king, whose acts of torture and abuse--such as the time he fed his father to his pet snake--are well-known throughout the empire. As the orphans travel the wide seas in a leaky vessel infested with rats, take abuse by the second-in-command, Slank, and are served meals that are still alive and moving, they are not sure if their fate under such a tyrant would be worse than their lot on "The Neverland," or perhaps an improvement. They look to Peter for help. As it happens, as the ship was loading these poor boys, a large trunk was placed in the hold of the vessel, and locked up tight. There is clearly something magical about this trunk--whoever touches it is healed, begins to sense of the beauty if the universe, and feels a profound sense of happiness and well-being. Peter is determined to find out what treasure this trunk holds, and in doing so he runs across Molly Aster, the only daughter of the man who is scheduled to be the ambassador on Rundoon, and who has--oddly enough--booked his passage separate from his daughter. Initially, Molly clearly knows more about the trunk than she will tell Peter, but she is forced to take him into her confidence as Black Stache, the most dangerous pirate on the high seas, successfully attacks first Molly's father's ship and then heads for "The Neverland." What the trunk holds is much more than simple treasure; the contents are so powerful as to be connected to the ongoing struggle between good and evil that pervades the universe. Peter and Molly valiantly try to fight off both Stache and their ship's own Slank from the trunk, but the battle for it takes a backseat as a violent storm whips up, and all the boys, Molly, Stache, and Slank wind up on an island inhabited by savages where visitors are promptly fed to a vicious beast in order to strongly discourage them from ever returning. " Thanks to Molly and Peter, the trunk of starstuff is safe, returned to the Starcatchers and Molly's living father. Peter however, in his surviving exposure to the starstuff, has gained the permanent ability to fly. It is also uncertain as to whether or not he will ever age. Peter learns he will be an outcast, and even though Molly will return to London, he decides to stay on the island, so he can be the person he "really is" and not "a circus sideshow". The orphan boys decide to remain with him, and Leonard Aster creates a fairy, which they name Tinker Bell, to protect Peter. Peter and the other orphan boys are soon taught by the natives how to build a house, and they learn to survive on the island, which Peter names "Never Land" after finding a plank that said "Never Land" from the ship that wrecked on its rocks as he watches Molly, and only Molly, on the ship containing a her, a few starcatchers, Leonard, and Alf sail back to England. Edited January 13, 2018 by Ethan Hunt 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4815162342 Posted January 13, 2018 Share Posted January 13, 2018 (edited) Assuming we have through the end of today to post second half films, this will be fully revised (or as revised as much as possible) by then: And The Band Played On Genre: Drama/Period Cast (In Alphabetical Order): Mathieu Amalric (Luc Montagnier), Josh Brolin (Robert Gallo), Adam Driver (Jim Curran), Jon Hamm (Don Francis), John Krasinski (Paul Popham), Jack Lowden (Gaetan Dugas), Bob Odenkirk (Larry Kramer), Chris Pine (Bill Kraus), Glen Powell (Cleve Jones), Zachary Quinto (Michael Gottlieb), Mark Ruffalo (Marcus Conant), Meryl Streep (Selma Dritz) Written and Directed By: Michael Mann Based on the Nonfiction Book by Randy Shilts Original Music by: James Newton Howard Release Date: 12/7 Theater Count: 5 Theaters, (36 Theaters on 12/14, 572 Theaters on 12/21, 1,414 Theaters on 12/28) (further expansions in January Year 3 in the event of awards buzz) Running Time: 184 Minutes Budget: $47 million MPAA Rating: R for strong language, drug content, partial nudity, and sexual content Premise: As the 1980s dawns, a collection of people scattered across the country struggle with the emergence of the AIDS pandemic. Plot Summary: Spoiler The film opens in October, 1987, with the debut of the AIDS Memorial Quilt on the National Mall in Washington D.C. Helping to oversee its placement and maintenance is Cleve Jones (Powell) and once it’s up he starts to walk among the quilts representing the lives of someone lost to AIDS. He reaches one (we don’t see it) and stares at it. The camera then zooms out to show hundreds and hundreds of quilts in a space larger than a football field. AND THE BAND PLAYED ON June, 1980. In Toronto, Gaetan Dugas (Lowden) is told by a doctor that he is suffering from a rare kind of skin cancer: Kaposi’s Sarcoma (KS), which is never found in healthy young or middle-aged adults. Dugas is briefly troubled but puts it out of his mind as he goes to work. He is a flight attendant. A couple weeks later in San Francisco is the large gay pride parade. In the lead-up to the parade we’re reintroduced to Cleve Jones and we see him interact with friends in the social and political arena of San Francisco, including Bill Kraus (Pine). Bill and Cleve work together in trying to get recognition for gay rights on a local and national level and have had an on-and-off relationship in the past. Also present in San Francisco is Dugas, who finds a man to spend the night with. The next day he returns to work and works a flight to New York City. Some weeks later, in NYC, we meet Larry Kramer (Odenkirk), a middle-aged writer who is frustrated with the stagnation of gay culture. His attempts to speak out about it has led him to be ostracized except by a small group of friends, the main one being Paul Popham (Krasinksi). Curiously enough, one of those friends was recently diagnosed with KS. At the same time, Bill is in NYC as a political representative for the 1980 Democratic National Convention, where he is working hard to get Ted Kennedy the nomination instead of Jimmy Carter. Though Bill and his fellow supporters are enthusiastic, Carter keeps the nomination. Elsewhere, a couple doctors consult on the fact that several patients have developed KS for no discernable reason. They find out that most of the patients have engaged in relationships with Gaetan Dugas, but they don’t see how it’s relevant. Back in San Francisco, Dr. Selma Dritz (Streep), the infectious disease specialist for SF’s Public Health Department, is growing concerned by the large spike in STD transmission in the city, especially in the gay community. Selma’s initial attempts to discuss some public health reforms with the Board of Supervisors are largely ignored. Her cool, clinical demeanor is at odds with the more emotional, political tenor of the San Francisco government. Down in LA, we meet Dr. Michael Gottlieb (Quinto), a new teacher at UCLA, who is confused by a patient’s symptoms. The patient is suffering from Pneumocystis Carinii Pneumonia (PCP), which is very rare and only attacks people with poor immune systems. Gottlieb does some tests and finds that the patient has no T-Helper cells in his blood. He brainstorms that some virus or disease is killing off those cells. His colleagues are amused at his interest and tell him it’s probably just some variant of some other disease that’ll get a name in a couple years. The results of the 1980 Presidential Election come in and Ronald Regan beats Jimmy Carter. Cleve and Bill are disheartened but resolve to continue their work to preserve gay rights in San Francisco and California. They spend the night together to console one another over the defeat. The following morning, together in bed, the two talk about the future, including their future. Both acknowledge that eventually the thing between the two of them will move on. Back in NYC, the friend of Larry’s who was suffering from KS dies from it just before Christmas, bringing down the group’s spirits. A few doctors in the city comparing stats on rare infections cropping up begin to speculate that some disease is starting to circulate in the city. They find that the rare infections are also surfacing in a hospital home to intravenous drug users. In San Francisco we meet Dr. Marcus Conant (Ruffalo), who with a couple other doctors find several KS cases in the Bay Area and hear from colleagues about other cases in NYC. Conant thinks that an unknown epidemic is now appearing in the country. 1981 Back in LA, Gottlieb discovers more cases of PCP and depleted immune systems in the city. He realizes something important is going on, more than a coincidence, and starts to study up on suppressed immune systems and frames a paper on the mini-outbreak, which he begins to think is a new STD. He sends it to the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report for immediate publication. At the CDC, Dr. Jim Curran (Driver) is intrigued by the paper and decides it is something the CDC should start looking into. Curran goes to New York and meets with doctors who have patients suffering from PCP or KS. Though Curran is baffled, he agrees that the cause must be a STD or something similar, since all of the patients engaged in high-risk sexual behavior. At the CDC we now meet Dr. Don Francis (Hamm). Francis is something of a movie star at the CDC, having been one of the few epidemiologists who eliminated smallpox. Francis speculates that the disease is caused by an immune-system-suppressing virus with a long latency period, possibly even a retrovirus, a recently-discovered kind of virus. He, Curran, and other doctors discuss a draft paper being developed at the CDC about the growing occurrence of immunodeficiencies in San Francisco, New York, and other places. After some haranguing, and to Francis’ annoyance, the final report is sanitized and stripped of most of the interesting observations to avoid any political shit thrown from the left or the right. In San Francisco it is the time once again for the gay pride parade (1981), but a year’s difference shows a subdued crowd based on recent national political defeats. Bill is the center of attention at celebrations, as it is his birthday as well, though he tries to avoid some of the spotlight, but not before he gets some attempts at activism in. The following day, he spots an article in the local paper that references the recently released CDC report. Discussing it with Cleve over lunch, the two conclude that it is just anti-gay bias in the media. We see the two have new partners and they each spend time with them, though both seem a little distracted. Dugas arrives in New York fresh off a flight and carouses around the gay community’s social scene. Having heard about the KS cases in the city he sees doctors to see if they can tell him anything new. While waiting for a round of chemo, he bumps into Paul Popham on the street, who was a mutual acquaintance. Paul tells Dugas that a former lover of his is in the hospital with cancer. Dugas briefly checks in on the old flame and the encounter with the person wasting away shakes him, briefly. Curran assembles a team and they start to realize that the unknown disease is spread by blood as well, based on sicknesses in needle-using drug addicts. They make a note to watch for cases in hemophiliacs and blood transfusion recipients. They also fly in doctors from San Francisco, including Selma and Conant, to talk to them about the cases there. Afterwards Selma and Conant talk about how they could try to contain the spread of disease there. When he gets back to San Francisco, Conant and some other doctors create a special clinic to deal with the new string of infections. Curran however gets irritated by the response of some members of the team, who are content to take a slow, methodical, wait-and-see approach, more interested in the strange epidemic as an academic pursuit than a medical emergency. In New York Larry, curious about the epidemic, meets with one of the main local doctors, who says that without money not much can be done to do treatment and research. Larry is concerned about implications for the local community and when meeting with friends starts to set up with Paul plans to raise funds. At the meeting is the same local doctor, who tells the friends that this is the tip of the iceberg and things were likely to get a lot worse. Larry and the doctor’s suggestions are dismissed by some of the people as infringing on their social lifestyle, some of them irately criticizing them as “Uncle Toms.” Paul, through reluctant to get caught in the middle, agrees to help Larry get awareness out. Gottlieb is flown into Washington D.C. to go to the National Institute of Health (NIH). Gottlieb is frustrated that the main doctors there are mainly interested in the novelty of a resurgence of a rare cancer and think little of the connection between KS and other rare diseases popping up across the nation and the immune-system suppression in the patients. Gottlieb meets with Conant and while the two swap notes about their own experiences treating cases in California, both admit that the bureaucrats in charge of the NIH and the National Cancer Institute are likely giving the problem little attention because the victims are mostly gay men. When Gottlieb returns to LA, he meets with a couple colleagues and in going over cases in the city; they start to realize that there is a definitive connection between many of the victims in the major cities. Don Francis meets with Curran and suggests that blood banks nationwide have to be put on alert, since if the disease is blood-borne it will appear in blood transfusions. Curran agrees but says there is little he is allowed to do other than research current cases. The two share the opinion that the “big boys” in DC have little respect for the CDC, considering them mere shock troops in the trenches. Francis does some research of his own and finds that in the early 1970s there were recorded cases of virulent KS and other rare diseases in otherwise healthy individuals in Africa. Francis realizes that whatever the disease is, it probably originated in Africa as a virus. Meanwhile, Curran prepares a modest report on the current findings with a modest request for funding for further research and investigation, thinking a request for what he truly thinks is warranted will get immediately shot down. He does not get a response. In her office in San Francisco, Selma has a big blackboard pulled out of storage and based on her notes sketches out on the board all the connections, symptoms, and other characteristics of the epidemic. Walking other people in the Public Health Department through it, she gets them to concede that there is the potential for a true public health crisis. But her colleagues refuse to put out any alerts or bulletins until “the feds put out something first.” Selma briefly loses it, saying that if there is a transmissible disease with a latency period, countless people could already be infected, and they’re already too late. 1982 Cleve meets with Conant, who figures that Cleve as a political force in San Francisco can help build awareness. Cleve is at first dismissive but when Conant shows him several ill patients Cleve gets sick to his stomach and realizes there is a problem. Over dinner Conant convinces Cleve that whatever the disease is, it has already spread far further than it appears and can cross into the general world population. Cleve agrees to help Conant. Meanwhile, a few doctors in San Francisco and LA link a fair number of their victims to sexual contact with one man: Gaetan Dugas. One of the doctors is able to track him down in San Francisco and has Conant talk to Dugas. Dugas talks about his relationships and during the talk realizes that he may have passed his illness onto them, but says he probably got it from one of them instead. After the talk, Conant has some colleagues talk to some of the people Dugas mentioned being involved with. Some of them are suffering from the strange disease, and hadn’t seen Dugas since 1976. Conant realizes that there could have been asymptomatic people passing the disease around for over 5 years, meaning that a pool of asymptomatic people across the country is larger than anyone thought. He meets with Gottlieb to talk about the scale of the thing and Gottlieb says that people just aren’t listening to the warning signs so far and fears that in the future people like the two them will be blamed for not doing enough. Curran meets with some Congressmen to try and get budget money for his task force, but is only able to get a token amount. Francis is now an unofficial member of his team and the two hear from the results of investigations into the sick victims reveals that over 40% of them have either had sex with Dugas or have had sex with someone who had. The odds of it all being a coincidence are figured to be zero. The task force begins to refer to Dugas as Patient Zero, thinking he is the most likely candidate for having brought the disease to North America. Meanwhile Conant has managed to track down Dugas to interview him, and Dugas is defiant, insisting that if he has this new disease, it’s because someone else gave it to him. Conant pleads with Dugas to refrain from any risky behaviors, but the pleas fall on deaf ears. As Dugas leaves, Conant asks him how many more people have to get sick before he listens. Dugas replies “it’s not my fault” and leaves. Out on Long Island, Paul goes to a beach to empty the ashes of a deceased friend into the ocean. Another friend is with him, and Paul confides he thinks this won’t be last time he does something like this. Curran and Francis however feel uplifted when they are summoned to meet with Dr. Robert Gallo (Brolin), a bigshot at the NIH and Cancer Institute. Gallo says he’ll have his NIH virology lab start to example the blood of some sick patients to try and find the virus cause the problem. Gallo has discovered other retroviruses in the past and figures he can find this one soon enough. However, his initial thought is that the disease is linked to HTLV, a virus he discovered some years earlier that causes a slightly similar result for the immune system. Selma proposes to the San Francisco Public Health Department that some steps needed to be taken to slow down the spread of the disease in the city, such as closing the bathhouses, which are a breeding ground for STDs. She is told that as a civil liberties issue the government won’t touch them. At the same time, Bill is using his political status in San Francisco to try and bring more attention to the problem to the city government. Bill is also going through a rough time in his relationship with his boyfriend, who is having an affair. Rumors are also beginning to spread of a French-Canadian flight attendant going around having sex with people and afterwards showing his cancer lesions and telling those people they’re going to die. In Denver, Colorado, doctors there investigating a sick man suffering from apparently the same unknown malady figure out that the only possible mode of transmission was through a blood transfusion he received. When news of this and other infected transfusion recipients reaches Curran and his team, they conclude that this disease is hitting the same types of people as diseases like Hepatitis B, so it must be a virus. They also come up with a name for the disease, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS. Cleve, utilizing his contacts in the community, has set up an information hotline in the San Francisco area that can inform people about information concerning the mysterious epidemic as it comes up. He finds several eager volunteers to man phones, though all of them have no idea what to say to callers when prodded for information about the disease and what to do. “No one does” Cleve replies. In New York, Larry tries to set up a meeting with Mayor Ed Koch to try and discuss the development of AIDS in the city, but is rebuffed since Koch is campaigning for governor and wants to disassociate himself from gay advocates. After Koch loses the primary an aide of his tells Larry and some friends that Koch will start to give the problem attention. Larry’s friend Paul says that it seems too good to be true. The two have been working closely together, but cracks in their friendship are emerging, with frustration boiling over into arguments between the two regarding how to move forward. Fall, 1982, Bill is now an aide to Congressman Burton, who is sympathetic to the AIDS epidemic and agrees to fight for more money for the CDC and NIH task forces studying it. Though happy about the change, Bill is sad about his relationship having now fallen apart. He decides to leave relationships behind for now and focus on his political work. An AIDS discussion forum is organized at a national leadership conference for the gay community, with Cleve and Larry briefly meeting before a panel talk that is only sparsely attended. Later that night a private meeting with doctors and activists is held, with Curran being there, trying to solicit opinions as to how to build up awareness in the gay community. Few options are given and both Cleve and Larry get the impression that most people still aren’t taking things seriously. In Paris, France, several French doctors meet at the Pasteur Institute. The head of the group, Dr. Luc Montagnier (Amalric), says that he is now very interested in AIDS, since it has appeared in almost a dozen European countries as well, and his team will now try to find the virus itself. He and some other doctors think the virus different from what Gallo supposes and form a plan for locating it in victims. Meanwhile, Selma has found that least one infant in San Francisco has acquired AIDS and the only possible method is through a blood transfusion. After checking the records of the blood bank that supplied the blood, she finds that thirteen donors had submitted blood that was transfused into the baby. One of them was afterwards diagnosed with AIDS and died some months later. Selma is aghast at confirming that AIDS is indeed in the national blood bank system. She meets with the local blood bank and helps them in going over their records to see which donors may have contaminated the blood supply. However her attempts to spread the word nationally are met with denial. She also picks up where Conant left off in trying to reason with Dugas, fearing he is now deliberately trying to infect people out of spite. Dugas, angry, tells Selma that if the people he has sex with don’t know about AIDS by this point or take no precautions, that is their problem. By December 1982, Gallo is getting frustrated with his attempts to find the virus causing AIDS. Though he has found trace enzymes which indicate a retrovirus was present, his lab is unable to locate it. Though Curran pushes him to keep working, Gallo decides that too much time is being taken up by a single disease, even if it could be linked to HTLV. He has his staff stick the AIDS samples into freezers and stop working on them for now. Dugas has relocated to San Francisco full-time but is starting to experience animosity from people in the gay community who view him as responsible for many of their or their friends’ infections. A small group of people menace him and threaten to hurt him if he doesn’t leave the city. Meanwhile Bill learns that a very close friend of his has been diagnosed with AIDS and he starts to become fearful that he is infected as well. When news of additional cases connected to blood banks arise, Don Francis tries to push the CDC leadership into acting to start screening the blood banks. The CDC holds a meeting with blood bank leaders to discuss the issue, and the blood bank heads are reluctant to do much for financial reasons. With little accomplished, Francis proclaims at the meeting that the blood banks are going to continue to kill people to save a few dollars. In New York, in a meeting with Curran, a group of doctors confirm the first diagnosis of a woman to come down with AIDS via heterosexual behavior. On New Year’s Eve, Bill and Cleve bump into one another at a party. Both are single again and both are a little somber at the gathering. Bill tells Cleve that at some point they should start to work together on AIDS. They look at all the people celebrating and Bill comments that unless something is done, a lot of the people at this party won’t be around in a few years. “The music is about to stop, and there’s only a handful of chairs.” 1983 A French doctor working for Montagnier finds solid evidence that there is indeed a retrovirus as the root cause of AIDS, and it is not a variant of HTLV like Gallo’s people believed. Montagnier says they need to run many more tests to be sure and says they will have to send results to Gallo so he can work on them as well. However, a disaffected French scientist takes some samples with him on a trip and decides to give them to Gallo early. Bill is back in D.C. working for Burton but is running into walls trying to push for more funding for AIDS research. A visit from his mother who is proud of his political achievements cheers him up, but he fears that he will contract AIDS, if he doesn’t already have it. As it turns out for Larry, Koch’s promise was too good to be true as little is done in New York City to spread awareness or create a program to deal with AIDS sufferers. Angry, Larry writes a scathing newspaper article attacking the apathy and denial within and without the gay community. Kramer reflects that he’s known over twenty people who’ve died so far from AIDS and is certain the number will get much higher. His article kicks up a local political firestorm and Mayor Koch is forced to quickly organize a city task force to help combat the problem. Socially, Larry becomes even more ostracized by people who are reluctant to moderate their lifestyle. It also deepens the growing rift between him and Paul, who believes he is making headway, if slowly, via cautious, amiable expansion of a national awareness group. Larry’s article goes nationwide and it influences Conant in San Francisco to start thinking of ways to best contain the spread of AIDS to uninfected people. He and Selma met with a number of leaders of the San Francisco gay community to discuss public health strategies. An idea is floated to close the bathhouses but it is quickly booed down. Dugas has fled San Francisco and moved to Vancouver, Canada, where he is outspoken in denying he has AIDS and says at local forums on the subject that there is no proof AIDS is spread through sexual contact. At one he bumps into Paul, who compliments him on still being relatively healthy after all this time. The meeting is friendly at first, but Dugas eventually grows irritable and thinks the whole world is against him at this point. Bill and Cleve are working together on a public awareness campaign when Bill, nervous, shows Cleve a spot on his leg and is fearful it is a lesion. Cleve assures him it is nothing, but confides in Bill that his own lymph nodes have been slightly swollen. The following day, Bill receives a call that Congressman Burton has suddenly died. Burton’s widow however is going to run in a special election to fill the seat and is a shoo-in victory, and she wants Bill to stay on. In Paris, Montagnier runs tests on samples provided by Gallo’s lab and concludes that the retrovirus his people are close to finding is definitely not HTLV and calls his virus RUB. He speaks with Gallo over the phone and says he is going to publish a paper about his potential discovery, Gallo, a bit perturbed at the Frenchman’s claims, persuades Montagnier to, for now, say RUB is from the same family as HTLV. Gallo, aware that the French may get to the discovery first, decides to restart his lab’s work on AIDS so that he can find the responsible retrovirus first. The samples his lab uses turn out to be the samples given to him in January by the French scientist. It is unclear whether Gallo knows this or if it was an accident. Francis is now in Atlanta full time as the lab director for the CDC’s AIDS Task Force. Curran is a little annoyed that he has to share leadership duties with Francis, who joined the investigation later, but resolves to work with Francis as much as possible. In New York City, Larry gets into arguments with Paul and other community leaders about the need to continuously press the city government to do more about the AIDS epidemic. The result is that Larry is forced out of his position in the community leadership, with Paul’s assent. Larry feels betrayed by Paul and tells him that the other leaders will be too timid to do anything and thousands in the city will die because of it. We return to Gottlieb, whose research at UCLA has still gotten barely any money. After consulting with other researchers, he decides to bypass the university administration and ask for funding directly from the state legislature. He is warned that academia holds grudges. In May, a candlelight march is held in San Francisco to memorialize the local victims of AIDS so far. Cleve is present and is moved by the spectacle, but he also looks tired. He says to a friend that he feels like leaving the city behind for good. Bill meanwhile is getting exasperated since the AIDS discussion in the city is turning into a rabid political battle between groups vying for supremacy amongst the city liberals, with his political opponents labeling him a fascist for trying to curb risky behavior. Selma talks to city attorneys about the legal options for forcing bathhouse closures and learns that politically it is too unfeasible. She is outraged about people mixing politics with public health. In Paris, Montagnier is now convinced that the virus his people found is not linked to HTLV in any way, so he calls it LAV (lymphadenopathy-associated-virus). Most scientists at his institute want to defer any announcement until Gallo’s lab comes up with results. However after some further research Montagnier becomes confident enough to announce at a weekly meeting that he had indeed found a new retrovirus. During this period of time a lot of false, hysterical rumors about how AIDS is transmitted run through the country, causing a lot of normal people to panic or shun others out of fear they could catch the disease. In one instance, a jury in San Francisco refuses to deliberate because they think one of the members has AIDS. Conant has to come in and convince the judge that AIDS can’t be spread by sitting in the same room as someone else. Curran is now the unofficial AIDS ambassador of the CDC to local doctors and gives talks about the need for focused local efforts. A reporter at one talk trails Curran and asks him about funding at the CDC. Curran says it is fine but when the reporter insinuates otherwise Curran gets irritable and nearly assaults the reporter before leaving. Gottlieb is now in Naples, Italy, attending a European AIDS conference. He picks up some ideas on why most gay AIDS victims get KS as the primary infection whereas others get pneumonia or other diseases instead. He also meets with one of Montagnier’s subordinates and after a talk becomes convinced that the French team has in fact found the virus that causes AIDS. Gottlieb decides to set up a conference in Utah the next February to deal with the pure science of AIDS and invites the French doctor to come. Francis has a meeting with Gallo and several other CDC doctors and beforehand is warned about Gallo’s legendary temper. The meeting starts off well but when one doctor mentions that he is conducting tests using antibodies provided by Gallo months ago, Gallo explodes in a rage about the doctor “going behind his back.” The meeting degenerates into Gallo berating the doctor profanely. Later, Francis drives Gallo to the Atlanta airport. Gallo is contrite over his behavior and Francis says they just need to communicate better with one another. After he drops Gallo off through, Francis has a look of concern. Bill and Cleve meet up once again at the annual pride parade in San Francisco. Both have been berated by some elements of the community for trying to be prudish, morality police with regards to sexual behavior and health issues, and both have grown frustrated. Neither of them have an idea on how to deal with such rigid irrationality. Cleve says he is going to leave town for a little while to take a break. The two hug and Cleve departs. Afterwards, Bill remarks to a friend he realizes that in theory, he may never see Cleve again if either of them turn out to be sick. In California the state legislature releases several million dollars of funds for AIDS research to university doctors, the success Gottlieb and other doctors wanted. However as Gottlieb and Conant soon learn, the university administrations still control the money and give out only a fraction, holding onto the rest as retribution for the doctors going behind the administration’s back. One friend of theirs is totally cut off from funding and is forced to resign. Larry is traveling in Europe when in Munich he visits the Dachau concentration camp and learns it opened in 1933, 6 years before WW2 began. Larry is stunned and draws a connection with his current fight, which he believes most people are willfully closing their eyes towards. Shaken, on a flight back to the U.S. with a friend he says that he is going to write a play that will make people finally care. When he gets home, he finds a letter about a memorial service for a recently-deceased friend. It is the 32nd person Larry knew who died from AIDS. Gallo’s promise to behave better is soon broken. When a doctor from his lab transfers to the CDC to start another branch of retrovirus research Gallo gets enraged. When his attempts to stop the transfer fail he contacts Francis and Curran and tells them that his lab will not cooperate anymore with the CDC’s research. Francis and Curran discuss this and believe Gallo is going overboard based on his own work which they think is incorrect. “He’s going to let his pride get in the way of beating this thing” Francis remarks. Montagnier is in Long Island, New York for a conference to present his team’s findings on LAV and is stunned by the amount of devotion given to promoting Gallo’s HTLV theory. Gallo is present and mocks Montagnier’s work, saying that it was sloppy and incorrect. Though most disbelieve his work, Montagnier hears from Francis that at the CDC there has been some independent corroboration of his work. Montagnier vents to his team about most American doctors treating Gallo as a god and supporting his theories, even though no evidence supports a single one of Gallo’s theories. The French are close to having a workable blood test ready. Conant visits Selma in her office and finds her to be worked to exhaustion. Selma on her blackboard has been keeping a running tally of known infections in the city. She compares it to the famous Lord Nelson’s “butcher’s bill” and wonders how high her blackboard will count in the end. Gallo agrees to receive some of Montagnier’s LAV samples and begins to work on them in conjunction with his HTLV research. Gallo is positive that AIDS is linked to a variant of HTLV he calls HTLV-III and berates any underling who suggests otherwise. He also spreads word that LAV was the result of contamination and American scientists shouldn’t trust the French results. He and his lab find some promising results in the HTLV-III tests, the tests that still stem from the samples brought over by the one French scientist. Dugas is still in Vancouver, having had to quit his job as his health is finally beginning to fail. Though he says he should be proud for surviving so long, he admits he is ready for it to be over. The lack of any consistent, focused effort by Congress or the executive branch to tackle AIDS is despairing Bill, who thinks that people are still focusing on the disease as a “gay problem,” even though many people have been infected in other social groups, and they’ll let people die because of that focus. Francis goes to a global AIDS conference in Geneva, Switzerland and is stunned that delegates from the Soviet Union and its allies deny having AIDS cases and say they’ll never have any. When he returns to the CDC, he and Curran meet with another doctor who has done research on the incubation period. The doctor says he has calculated that the mean incubation period is 5.5 years, with some people taking as long as 11 years to start showing symptoms. Francis and Curran are both horrified, since it means the current cases, a few thousand in the US, are really just the tiny tip of the iceberg. Conant, Selma, and Bill team up to try to persuade San Francisco’s Public Health Director to close down the bathhouses but the director is afraid the public backlash will be too much. Bill decides to go to a newspaper and leaks statistics about the massive health issues open bathhouses have caused. The resulting news article sends many local gay community leaders into a furor and they make it a civil liberties issue. Bill starts to find himself excluded from aspects of his former social circle. He tries to confide in Cleve but finds that a lot of the energy and fight has been drained from his friend the past several months. Larry has finished the first draft of his play. He titles it “The Normal Heart.” 1984 Gottlieb hosts his planned AIDS conference in Park City, Utah. Gallo and Montagnier are both present. First, Gallo talks to the conference about the HTLV family of viruses and implies he is near a discovery, but nothing more. He is therefore floored when Montagnier gets up and talks about conclusive links between LAV and AIDS. Gallo tries to pepper Montagnier with questions of doubt but the French doctor easily shrugs them off. The result is that the scientists leaving the conference say that the French had discovered the cause of AIDS a year ago. Gallo, infuriated by being upstaged, returns to his work with a vengeance, growing even angrier when he hears the CDC has confirmed Montagnier’s work. A month after Montagnier’s announcement Gallo believes he has found HTLV-III conclusively and confides it to Curran. Gallo shares as little info as possible, telling his colleagues that he wants to make sure he gets the credit he thinks he deserves. Francis and Curran try to convince Gallo to be more open since cooperation is the best way to solve the problem. Gallo is reluctant to do so and grows more irritated and suspicious of Francis. The bathhouse issue in San Francisco reaches even more of a uproar when some people try to make it a citywide referendum. Feeling overwhelmed by the political aspect, Selma decides it is time for her to retire. Bill and Cleve work together to convince the city supervisors to support closure, but Cleve is feeling unsure because of the political heat he is taking. Cleve, who has had skin rashes and a string of infections for months, decides to back out of the issue and not get involved. Bill fails to convince Cleve to come back and after an argument between the two turns ugly he tells Cleve he’ll never forgive him for this desertion. At the end of March, in Quebec City, Dugas is hospitalized. Few people visit. He suddenly passes away in the night with no one around. Francis tries to officiate negotiations between Gallo and Montagnier about a formal announcement, but is frustrated by Gallo’s behavior. Gallo tries to go behind Montagnier’s back to convince Francis of a joint-NCI/CDC announcement, but when Francis declines Gallo gets pissed. When Gallo subtly leaks news of his discovery to the media and it appears a story will run, Montagnier is enraged and threatens to kill Gallo if he does break the arrangement for a joint announcement. Francis and Curran try to persuade Gallo to not do that. The result is that when Gallo’s boss makes an official announcement, some credit is given to Montagnier’s team for their joint work, but the lion’s share of the credit goes to Gallo. Francis and Curran lament that the discovery of the virus has become a fight for fame, and Francis says that if Gallo had gotten interested sooner and stayed involved, he could have found the virus in 1982. The only bright spot is that Montagnier’s team is sending them a blood test to detect LAV in people’s blood. Selma officially retires from her position and is honored by Conant and other doctors at a warm retirement dinner. Though she is praised as being one of the leading officials in trying to treat the AIDS epidemic, afterwards she talks with Conant and says that she could no longer bear to keep tallying her “butcher’s bill” with no one giving her the tools to stop it. At the end of May, a nervous doctor tells a patient that he is suffering from KS. The patient is famous 1950s film actor Rock Hudson. The doctor refers Hudson to Gottlieb, who confides with Conant that it was only a matter of time before someone famous came down with AIDS. The feud between Gallo and Francis grows deeper when Francis and Curran ask for samples of HTLV-III to test against their LAV test results. Gallo refuses to provide more than a tiny amount and continues to deny that HTLV-III and LAV are the same virus. Gallo has his superiors put pressure on the CDC to have them follow his lead and threatens Francis with academic exile. The constant feuding takes its toll on Francis and he starts to suffer from exhaustion and anxiety. Cleve goes to a doctor with a shingles infection and is told that several other people with a similar infection have developed AIDS. Cleve then learns that one close friend from years ago is dead from AIDS and another has it and is dying. He starts to drown his fears in alcohol. Larry has finished writing The Normal Heart and before it goes into production tries to reconcile with his friend Paul, but Paul rebuffs him. Paul shortly afterward receives news from a doctor that blood he donated a couple years ago for a different study has been tested and he is positive for the virus causing AIDS. Gottlieb meets with a doctor on Montagnier’s team. The doctor says that the Pasteur Institute has worked on an anti-viral drug that can reduce the AIDS virus in a person’s body. Gottlieb is thrilled but his attempts to get drug companies to start working on a similar drug are rebuffed since the companies see little money in it. Gottlieb also refers Hudson to a clinic in Paris using the Pasteur Institute’s drug. Francis is running into marital and family problems due to his heavy workload and the strain it places on him personally. He and his wife argue somewhat and it bleeds over into his work, with him and Curran butting heads more frequently. The result is that Francis in talks with a superior says he is thinking about transferring to a new job to salvage his life. In early October Bill goes to Conant to check on the results of a biopsy done on a spot on his thigh. Conant sadly confirms that it is KS, Bill likely has AIDS. Bill is devastated and attempts by Conant and friends of his to say that it isn’t an immediate death sentence does little to help. Later that night, Bill’s closest friends gather with him at his house and try to reminisce about the high points in their lives. Bill is still mournful because he was one of the first people to alter his behavior once the sickness first started appearing and it didn’t matter. Cleve soon hears about the diagnosis and wants to make amends with Bill, but is told by Bill’s friends that Bill won’t see him. Cleve is saddened by this and he turns to drink even more. Bill hears about the French anti-viral studies and thinks about going to Paris to enter the studies. Gottlieb travels to Paris and meets with Montagnier. We learn that the French drug in the short-term did clear up Rock Hudson’s system, but the former actor left thinking he was cured, when all the drug does is delay AIDS’ onset. Gottlieb is impressed by Montagnier’s focus on the scientific issues, but Montagnier is still bitter over Gallo’s actions and says that if he knew that if saving people’s lives required being a politician and a salesman he probably would have found a different line of work. 1985 Cleve has fallen into depression and tries to talk with his mother about it. He gets some understanding, but decides he should leave San Francisco to relieve his stress. At about the same time, Bill leaves for Paris to enter into a trial for the Pasteur Institute’s anti-viral drug. He is told that the drug is not a cure, and that there is no guarantee it will effectively slow or stop the virus in his particular case. Bill remains optimistic. Later that month, Conant’s advocacy over the years catches up with him when the university administrators tell him he should resign as the director of the San Francisco research facility. Conant knows that this is payback for getting direct legislative funding. Tired of the political battles, Conant agrees to resign. Francis at the CDC pushes for a comprehensive research and treatment program that contrasts with Curran’s ultimate willingness to just do the best with the tools he is given. Gallo does some behind-the-scenes politicking to sink Francis’ proposal and Francis is told by CDC bosses to do as little as possible while appearing to do a lot. Francis is outraged and is told that if he doesn’t like it he can transfer to a new position in California. Francis decides to take the job opportunity, even though Curran tells him that it’s essentially exile so he can’t cause more “trouble.” Gallo gloats about Francis being marginalized but it’s soon his turn to feel pressure when Montagnier presents evidence showing that not only are LAV and HTLV-III the same virus, they have only a 1% variation in their gene sequence. The journalists in attendance realize that this means the two viruses came from the exact same source and start to hurl questions asking if Gallo stole his sample from the French (and the viewers will remember that he did use a sample provided by a French doctor, though whether it is intentional is left ambiguous). Montagnier remains diplomatic, but privately gloats at Gallo’s embarrassment. We see Larry watching rehearsals of The Normal Heart, which is close to debuting. A few people who have gotten advance looks call it brilliant and Larry is proud, and hopes the play might accomplish what his activism couldn’t. Bill receives visitors in France will he undergoes treatment. With his friend Sharon he travels to Lourdes, both being lapsed Catholics. During the visit to the cathedral there Bill experiences a spiritual reawakening. He feels more at peace. Conant is now working purely as a private practice doctor. His receptionist finally stops coming to work because of sickness and Conant, concerned, has him checked out and diagnoses the man with PCP. Though the man doesn’t want treatment, Conant persuades him to check into a hospital. One day Conant drops by the hospital ward to share some good news and finds instead that the man has just passed away. Conant goes outside and after four years of working on the epidemic breaks down into tears for the first time. An effective AIDS antibody test is developed though there is controversy about how widespread it should be used. Francis tries to persuade people to have as widespread testing as possible and that people who are infected should only have sex with people who are also infected, and that people who are uninfected should only have sex with people known to be uninfected. Though he means it as pure medical common sense, many take it the wrong way and proclaim as trying to separate gays and AIDS victims into quarantined pools. Curran, who agrees with Francis, is given a chance by a reporter to back up his colleague, but instead says that Francis is only speaking for himself. Francis, feeling betrayed, talks to Curran about this and Curran says that Gallo is doing everything to make sure people think Francis is irrelevant. Curran doesn’t want Francis’ advocacy inadvertently terminating the administration’s willingness to even give a modicum of support. Francis understands, but leaves disappointed in his colleague. Within a week, Francis has cleared out his office to take a new posting. On his last day, he walks by Curran without giving him a glance. Curran looks like he wants to say something, hesitates, and then goes back to work. Larry’s play The Normal Heart debuts in April to almost unanimous praise from critics. When the first performance ends everyone in the audience stands for a prolonged applause. He invites Paul to a performance, trying to reconcile again, but Paul is still bitter and refuses to go. Paul meanwhile is diagnosed with KS. Larry is shaken by the news, but otherwise feels like he is finally making the headway he’d hoped he could have made years earlier. In May, Cleve is in Hawaii, thinking that if he were to come down with AIDS he wanted to die away from the place that caused him stress. However his health is normal, though his drinking is now out of control. Eventually he realizes that he can’t just bury himself in alcohol and decides to attend an AA meeting, hoping he can restore his life. Bill meanwhile is getting lower in spirits since while the treatments worked at first, his KS lesions have returned and in larger numbers. When Sharon returns for another visit, they talk and Bill says he wants to return home, since if he dies he wants it to be around people he knows. In July, Rock Hudson suffers a serious relapse in his health and is told by Gottlieb that he also has a form of lymphoma now. Hudson decides to try and return to Paris for more treatment, but collapses shortly after arriving there. News reports speculate that Hudson has AIDS, uncovering his history as a closeted gay man, and the hospital he is staying in in Paris wants him out. Eventually Hudson, tired, decides to return home to LA. In Hawaii, Cleve is now sober but reluctant to return home, but the news of Hudson’s illness inspires him to return to San Francisco, since now this is something the country can’t hide from. Once back in LA Hudson immediately goes to the UCLA hospital where Gottlieb asks him if he wants a statement put out. Hudson says he can, so Gottlieb has the hospital assemble a media announcement. There, he releases a statement that Rock Hudson is being treated for complications resulting from AIDS. The assembled media goes ballistic. Watching from a TV screen, Bill remarks to no one in particular “and now they care.” Two Years Later Spring, 1987. Gottlieb is denied tenure yet again by UCLA. Gottlieb is told that he will never be forgiven for going behind the backs of university officials, and that he will never get tenure and other universities will be told not to hire him. Gottlieb sees no other option but to resign. One day he meets Conant for drinks and the two reminisce about their earlier discussion years ago about their future. While they weren’t blamed for not doing enough, in a way their troubles happened because they “cared too much.” Cleve is organizing an upcoming protest in Washington D.C. to coincide with an AIDS conference to be held there. Cleve is in good health, though now officially diagnosed as HIV-positive, and he has the passion and fire of politics back in him. He and a few friends think of an idea for a way to memorialize the victims, a quilt. Paul is near death from AIDS complications and requests Larry come see him. Larry does so and the two finally reconcile, with Larry apologizing for his abrasiveness and Paul telling Larry to keep fighting. The experience, though sad, is affirming for Larry. The Third International Conference on AIDS is held in Washington D.C. A dinner is held to honor international efforts to combat the AIDS pandemic. Gottlieb is one of the main figures at the dinner and he hands out two awards that honor Gallo and Montagnier as co-discoverers of the virus causing AIDS, now called HIV. The crowd applauds both men, who warily regard one another. Later, the two end up having a short chat where Gallo admits in private that Montagnier did find HIV first. Montagnier is a bit put off and says Gallo is only admitting it because now he officially has the glory he wanted. Montagnier says that history will tell who deserves it. The following morning, Don Francis gives a presentation at the conference. Afterwards he is approached by a member of the World Health Organization. The member says they want to hire him for a field position in Africa to fight infectious diseases. Francis agrees, knowing this is a chance for him to make a difference once again. That evening, a major protest is held in front of the White House, belittling the presidency’s slow and weak efforts over the years to fight AIDS. Cleve is one of the protest leaders and he helps lead the protest chants. A shot of Cleve leading the protest then dissolves into the shot from the film’s beginning of him looking at one of the quilts in the October 1987 AIDS Memorial Quilt display. We finally see the quilt he is looking at: It shows pictures of Bill Kraus. The film flashbacks to the beginning of January 1986, with Bill having returned home from Paris, the anti-viral treatments no longer effective. Terribly ill, he is convinced to go to a hospital. Conant arranges for his medical care. Bill is at peace, but regrets that he could have done more even sooner. That night, Cleve, hearing Bill is back in town, finally works up the courage to visit his former friend. He arrives late at night and bumps into Conant, who has stayed late to do a check on Bill. A friend of Bill’s staying overnight tries to wake him for Conant and Cleve but to no success, so Conant checks Bill’s pulse and finds none. Conant sighs and with a nod from the friend pulls the bedsheet over Bill’s body. Cleve looks devastated. The film holds a shot of Cleve and Conant standing by the bed before fading to black. Before the credits roll we learn some historical information about the later lives of many of the people involved, as well as information about the current status of the AIDS pandemic and its’ affect on countless communities. We also learn one final thing: In 2008, Luc Montagnier was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work in discovering HIV. Robert Gallo was not recognized. Edited January 14, 2018 by 4815162342 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hiccup23 Posted January 13, 2018 Share Posted January 13, 2018 Flying Spaghetti Monster the Great and Holy Date- December 7th, Y2 Genre- Mockumentary Rating- R Theaters- 2,824 theaters Budget- 25 million Running Time- 85 minutes or 1 hour and 25 minutes Studio- O$corp Pictures Director- Larry Charles Actors and Actress- Flying Spaghetti Monster- Sacha Baron Cohen Plot: In Flying Spaghetti Monster the Great and Holy, the Flying Spaghetti Monster goes on trial to earn his godhood among a council of deities that includes Jehovah, the Buddha, Ganesh, Cthulhu, and Morgan Freeman. He is interviewed for an exclusive episode of the celebrity talk show "In the Monster's Studio" to discuss his relationship with Godzilla and other famous monsters. He rears his head at an archeological dig in a desert wasteland and dines with a horde of food demons in Hell. He rescues pirates, authors, and prisoners from the cold hand of death, while banishing obnoxious children to suffering and starvation. He is a just god, but only if you compliment his vodka sauce. He shows reporters his island volcanic home. Instead of lava, vodka pours out and males/female strippers are abundant across the island. The film is filled with spoofs and jokes about society and religion. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rorschach Posted January 13, 2018 Share Posted January 13, 2018 (edited) Flower Eyes and Needle Teeth Director: David Robert Mitchell Music by Graeme Revell Genre: Neo-Noir Horror Film Studio: Lager Picutures Release Date: September 14th Theater Count: 3,230 MPAA Rating: R for Strong Stylized Violence and Language Runtime: 94 minutes Budget: $25 million Cast: Ansel Elgort, Kaya Scodelario, Jemaine Clement, Dan Stevens Note: The majority of the film is shot in black and white. The creatures in the film are all colored while everything around them has the color sucked out. Plot: Spoiler Axel (Ansel Elgort), a twenty-year-old college dropout, recently lost his mother in a car crash. Living alone in a small apartment, he struggles to make ends meet with his bills. Axel enters a state of depression and contemplates suicide as a likely option. One day, as he watches the President give a speech on television, he notices a few horrific creatures standing behind the President's podium, watching the President intensely, grinning maliciously. The creature's appearance is of a lizard but with a slightly more colorful skin color. Axel is horrified at the sight. He tries turning the TV off and on but the creatures still appear as their smiles grow wider with each attempt to turn it off. We see a montage of Axel trying to go about his daily life but he increasingly begins to notice more of the creatures infiltrating his life. He is stalked for several city blocks by a hooded creature and is almost killed by it. Axel manages to get away. He sees many of the creatures loitering the streets, working in the pharmaceutical that supplies him his pills, and watching him through passing cars. Axel becomes terrified, staying in his house 24/7 and refusing to take his pills (out of fear that the creatures may have poisoned it with something). One night, Axel has a dream that a shadowy figure is sitting in his room. It is revealed to be one of the creatures who smiles and holds up a knife. Before the creature does anything to him, Axel wakes up from his nightmare, sweating and terrified. The pills he had been taking slowly wear off in his body as he enters a deeper depression than ever before. Slowly, Axel begins to grow a hatred towards the creatures and stops contemplating suicide. He realizes that the creatures have been infiltrating society for centuries and that only he (and a few select others?) is the only one who can see them. Axel finds a new purpose in his life: to hunt down and kill all of the creatures. Axel begins by killing a neighbor of his (Jemaine Clement), who Axel had recently discovered was a creature. The two scuffle with one another but Axel is able to drive a switchblade into the creature's throat. Axel abandons his apartment, taking most of his possessions with him. He begins living throughout the different areas of the city. He also buys several new weapons to kill the creatures: a revolver, a machete, a shotgun, and knives of different sizes. Axel constructs a crudely made Reaper mask, saying that it will give him a face to go with his character. He begins to kill several of the creatures. After his tenth kill, the local news begins branding him as “The Back-Alley Butcher”. Axel watches the news (one of the news anchors is played Dan Stevens) and revels in the fear that some of the creatures disguised as a news anchor show when reading off the news. Axel continues his killing spree and manages to constantly evade the authorities while doing so. The time period of his murders is referred to by the news outlets as “The Summer of Blood”. Axel begins to stay awake nearly 24/7, which begins to take a turn on his overall health. One day, as he is gutting a creature disguised as a lawyer (who had freed several child molesters from imprisonment), Axel is shot in the shoulder by one of the lawyer’s bodyguards. Wounded and losing a ton of blood, Axel is forced to flee the scene. Axel realizes it is only a matter of time before the authorities, who now have his DNA from the crime scene, find him and try to end his life. Axel hides in a nearby bar where he strikes up a conversation with a bartender (played by Kaya Scodelario). The two talk about city life and Axel reveals his secret to her. The two continue to have a conversation, where the bartender becomes reasonably uncomfortable with her situation. She goes to the back room and calls in the authorities. When she goes back out, Axel tells her that he doesn’t blame her for doing what she did and tells her to leave while she can. The bartender hurriedly packs her stuff to flee the bar as Axel begins to write his final words on his phone. He states that even though the majority of his life was nothing but pain and suffering, he is glad that he found purpose in his last few months alive. He writes that whatever creature finds this message on his phone after he is dead should be fearful. Axel states that he hopes other people out there who can see what he sees have the courage to stand up to the creatures long after he is gone. As he narrates this, we see footage of the police cars surrounding the street near the bar as onlookers converse with another. Axel takes a shot of whiskey and preps his weapons as the police surround the bar. The final shot shows Axel with his back towards the camera as the police break down the door and he pumps his shotgun, ready for his final stand. Edited January 14, 2018 by Rorschach 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YM! Posted January 13, 2018 Share Posted January 13, 2018 On 1/9/2018 at 8:36 PM, YourMother the Edgelord said: Supersonic Release Date: August 24th Genre: Action/Superhero/Sci-Fi Format: 3D and IMAX 3D Director: Joss Whedon Budget: $105M Runtime: 135 Minutes Rating: PG-13 for strong sci-fi action violence Plot: Reveal hidden contents The streets of Harlem are quiet at a cold dark night. Nothing is heard but the sound of a TV on. Young Don Weathers, his pregnant mother and his little sister are about to go to bed. In his room, Don looks out the window to see his dad speeding down the road. Don’s dad car blazes down the street on his way home avoiding an opposing gang member. Bullets blast and skid marks checker the pavement. A single bullet hits the wheel of Don’s Dad car causing it to spin out of control into an alleyway. Don sneaks out of the house to follow his dad. Before his dad could stumble out, Don’s Dad is shot dead. Witnessing this, Don is heartbroken and runs home, unnoticed. 10 years later, Don Weathers, is a young African American/Indian teen from Harlem, motivated by the loss of his father, becoming a gifted child prodigy who goes to Techno High, the most wealthy and science advanced school in New York but is looked down on by the majority of his classmates for being poor. On top of that, he lives a secret double life as a cat burglar in order to help provide for his single, struggling mother and younger siblings. Don gets selected by his principal for a competition to make a new invention. The winner of said competition gets $1,000,000 and a full ride scholarship to Harvard. Don is ecstatic at the opportunity and gets to work, going to the local junkyard to use and buy scraps from cars, video games, phones, laptops and other electronic items and metals like iron. However his gauntlets don’t work and lacks the ability to hold together. Don later on his way to the junkyard finds a mysterious black box and brings it home with him, intending to use it as a design element. After running some more tests, Sneaking out late at night In 2015, a young Don Weathers, a street smart but insanely gifted African-American/Indian teen from Harlem, enrolls into Techno High, a school for childhood prodigies. Throughout, his Junior year, he becomes the top student and popular. However one night while waiting for his dad to come home, he witnesses his murder by opposing gang members from his dad’s rival gang. Flash foward to 2017, Don becomes somewhat depressed, still mourning for the loss of his father. He becomes socially isolated and his grades are barely passable. His home life is even worse, his mom can barely pay the bills and Don’s tuition. The principal of Techno High offers to enroll him in a robotics competition that can give him both a full ride scholarship and enough money to keep his family a Moved to Y3. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YM! Posted January 13, 2018 Share Posted January 13, 2018 And Treasure Planet is done. Going to do a final review of Spyro, Crash and Planet. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
