Geoffrey Lewis

A look at the inspiration behind Thomas Kinkade's painting The Christmas Cottage, and how the artist was motivated to begin his career after discovering his mother was in danger of losing their family home. Necessity is the mother of invention. In the weeks leading up to Christmas 1977, Maryanne Kinkade has fallen behind in her mortgage payments and is about to lose her small house in Placerville, a town in California's gold country in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Her son Thom, who attends art school and is in his 20s, determines to make the transition from amateur to professional painter to help save the family's home. He seeks advice from an aging mentor. —<jhailey@hotmail.com> Inspired by true events. It's 1977, and college student and aspiring but struggling artist Thomas Kinkade, without his big city girlfriend Hope, is heading home to Placerville, CA with his younger brother Pat Kinkade for Christmas. Tom is expecting it to be a typical Placerville Christmas with their single mother, Maryanne Kinkade, being her community-minded, helpful self directing the children's choir for the Christmas pageant among other things, and all the town's eccentrics being their eccentric selves. But their Christmas may end up not being a very merry one when the boys inadvertently learn that the bank will foreclose on the mortgage at the end of the year, Maryanne not even having the money to make repairs on what is the crumbling family cottage. They later learn that the reason for the non-payment is that Maryanne lost her job in the town not drawing the tourists, Ernie, the major town booster, who is trying to market the town as the Christmas tree capital, including a planned prime time televised event. Especially with their father Bill Kinkade being a non-entity in their lives in he long ago having abandoned them in pursuing his adventurous life, both Tom and Pat want to do whatever they can to help Maryanne, Tom accepting a job, one he believes beneath him in wanting ultimately to be known as a serious artist, to paint a mural depicting Main Street at Christmas, the fee not even close to the money needed for the mortgage back payments. As the town marches on toward Christmas including Tom with this job, a combination of the change in focus of the mural as well as Maryanne helping Tom's artist mentor, Glen Wesman, as he seems to be slipping away both mentally and physically as he pines for his long lost love Nicole, may be the impetuses to turn the tide for all concerned. —Huggo

Parker (Ryan Phillippe) and Longbaugh (Benicio Del Toro) are two born troublemakers who travel anywhere they can to find or steal money any way they can. They realize that a pint of blood can get $50, and a shot of sperm can bring in $3000. So, they head to a fertility clinic. While at a sperm donation facility, they overhear a telephone conversation detailing a $1,000,000 payment to a surrogate mother for bearing the unborn baby of Hal Chidduck (Scott Wilson). They learn that Chidduck's wife is healthy but could not be bothered to carry her own child. The surrogate is always surrounded by bodyguards and is told when to do anything including eating and sleeping. They learn that Dr Allen Painter is attending to the surrogate. Parker and Longbaugh resolve to kidnap the pregnant surrogate, Robin (Juliette Lewis). Their attempts to kidnap Robin at her pregnancy clinic escalate into a shootout with her bodyguards, Jeffers (Taye Diggs) and Obecks (Nicky Katt). After the shootout, in which two other guards and bystanders are killed, the kidnappers escape with Robin and elude Jeffers and Obecks, who are arrested. During the shootout, Parker had a clear shot at both Jeffers and Obecks and decided not to take it, letting them know that he had the shot, and he let them live. As the fugitives' head South, Jeffers and Obecks are bailed out and returned to Chidduck by Joe Sarno (James Caan), a seasoned operative and close friend of Chidduck's. As Sarno begins coordinating Robin's rescue, Longbaugh contacts the surrogate's gynecologist, Dr. Allen Painter (Dylan Kussman), and orders him to a truck stop to examine Robin. Sarno was keeping Painter under observation and follows him as soon as he leaves his clinic. Painter explains that Robin is carrying the child of money launderer Hale Chidduck and his wife, Francesca (Kristin Lehman), who are rich. Painter says that Robin should have the baby within no later than 6 days. Longbaugh makes a deal with Painter that he would come to Mexico when they call him, to induce Robin's labor. After the examination, Painter returns to Chidduck and Painter is revealed to be Chidduck's son. Meanwhile Chidduck is under pressure not to pay the ransom as that would invite the Federal authorities to look into his books and that would be the end of his money laundering business. Joe advises Chidduck to surround the kidnappers and negotiate for Robin, in exchange for their lives. Longbaugh calls and demands a $15 million ransom for the safe return of Robin and the baby. Francesca is having an affair with Jeffers and overhears his and Obecks' plan to recover the baby but kill the kidnappers, Robin, and Painter. Jeffers and Obecks, tempted by the money, begin forming a plan to save the child, keep the $15 million for themselves, and kill everyone under the guise of paying off the kidnappers. As Longbaugh hangs up the telephone outside a Mexican motel, he is approached by Sarno, who offers to pay $1 million if they surrender the pregnant Robin and simply walk away. They commiserate about the state of their underworld professions, filled with characters who "want to be criminals more than they want to commit crimes", and guardedly go their separate ways, but Sarno leaves his associate Abner (Geoffrey Lewis) to watch the kidnappers. Longbaugh declines the offer and returns to his motel room, where Parker and Robin are playing cards. Robin reveals to Parker and Longbaugh that Francesca's embryo failed to implant, and Painter is actually the father of her child. Proceeding with the ransom plan, Jeffers and Obecks realize that Robin is Sarno's daughter. Sarno then returns to Chidduck's home to relay the events and plan the next step. Jeffers and Obecks realize that Sarno is a wild card in this affair, and Jeffers comes to realize that Robin is Sarno's daughter. Jeffers, Obecks and Painter leave to meet with the kidnappers, while Sarno departs separately with the $15 million ransom. At the motel, Parker is having second thoughts on the kidnapping. As he confers with Longbaugh outside the motel room, Robin takes the opportunity to seize a shotgun and barricade herself in the motel room after almost shooting Parker. As sirens are heard in the distance, Parker and Longbaugh hastily escape, and Robin emerges into the parking lot just as Mexican police officers arrive, followed by Jeffers, Obecks and Painter in another car. As Painter and the bodyguards try to persuade Robin to leave with them, the officers pull their guns and order everybody onto the ground. Suddenly, Parker and Longbaugh open fire from a nearby hilltop, igniting a fierce firefight that kills the two officers before Jeffers shoves Painter and Robin into his car and drives off, leaving the dead officers and a wounded Obecks in the motel parking lot. Parker and Longbaugh torture Obecks to gain Robin's location, while Jeffers confines Robin in the room of a secluded Mexican brothel and a mortally wounded Abner notifies Sarno. Jeffers forces Painter to perform a C-section to retrieve the baby, despite Robin's confession that the child was conceived between her and Painter and is not Chidduck's. During the operation, the heavily armed Parker and Longbaugh infiltrate the brothel and search for Robin. The ensuing ambush, which leaves Parker wounded, turns into another standoff, with Jeffers threatening to kill Painter and the baby before Painter kills Jeffers with a hidden gun. Outside the brothel, Sarno arrives with a group of bag men and the $15 million ransom, which they stack in the courtyard. Parker wants to kidnap Robin and Painter again, but Longbaugh, guilt-ridden after seeing her condition, responds: "She's had enough". Despite realizing that the $15 million is bait, Parker and Longbaugh charge headlong into an ambush. All of Sarno's men are killed in the ensuing gunfight. However, Sarno manages to shoot and cripple the already wounded Parker and Longbaugh, and then calls for an ambulance. As a child's cries break the silence, Painter emerges with Robin, newborn baby in her arms. Lying in a pool of blood, Parker and Longbaugh call out to Sarno, informing him that the baby is in fact Robin and Painter's, and thus Sarno's own grandson. Painter wonders aloud if this fact will influence Sarno to let them keep the child. Robin and her baby are then taken away in the ambulance with Painter, Sarno and the $15 million, leaving Parker and Longbaugh to bleed out. Miles away and days later, Chidduck's wife reveals that she's pregnant (possibly from Jeffers, with whom she was having an affair).

Set in the American Old West, the story is a first-person account by a wisecracking gambler Bret Maverick (Mel Gibson), of his misadventures on the way to a major five-card draw poker tournament being held on the paddle steamer Lauren Belle. Besides wanting to win the poker championship for the money, he also wants to prove, once and for all, that he is "the best". Maverick rides into the fictional town of Crystal River intending to collect money owed to him, as he is $3,000 short of the poker tournament entry fee of $25,000. His efforts to make up this $3,000 provide some plot motivation, as well as diversions caused by, and in the company of, three people he encounters at a poker game at Crystal River: an antagonist named Angel (Alfred Molina), a young con-artist calling herself Mrs Annabelle Bransford (Jodie Foster), and legendary lawman Marshal Zane Cooper (James Garner). The first two are also rival poker players. Maverick, Bransford and Cooper share a stagecoach. They narrowly escape a fatal plunge into a ravine after their elderly driver suddenly dies. During their journey they agree to help a wagon train of migrant evangelist settlers who have been waylaid by ruffians. The settlers offer Maverick a percentage of the recovered money they desperately need to start their mission, while one spinster missionary suggests marriage to Cooper, but both men turn down the offers. They are also headed-off by a troop of Indians led by Joseph (Graham Greene). Unknown to his companions, Joseph and Maverick are good friends, and Maverick allows himself to be "captured." Joseph is another one of his unreliable debtors, and Maverick tries to collect the $1,000 that Joseph owes him. In and around his tribal grounds they collaborate on a scheme to swindle a Russian Grand Duke. Still seething over his loss in the Crystal River game, Angel receives a telegram instructing him to stop Maverick from reaching the Poker game at Lauren Belle, and has also learned that Maverick had conned him in Crystal River. Angel catches up with Maverick after he has left Joseph's tribe, beats him up and attempts to hang him. Despite being tied to both a tree and to his horse, Maverick escapes and reaches the poker game, which is taking place on a paddle steamer. Bransford and Angel have also reached the game, and Cooper has been engaged to oversee its security. Still $2,000 short, he makes his way to the Lauren Belle and finds Bransford, who is still $4,000 short herself. Spotting the Archduke aboard, Maverick poses as a Bureau of Indian Affairs agent investigating the shooting of Indians for game, conning the Archduke out of $6,000 to cover his and Bransford's entry. Commodore Duvall welcomes the competitors to the tournament, with Cooper overseeing the security of the game and the $500,000 prize money and watching for any cheaters, who will be summarily thrown overboard if discovered. After the others are eliminated, the four finalists are Maverick, Bransford, Angel, and Commodore Duvall (James Coburn), the boat's owner and the tournament organizer. Prior to this game, Maverick and Bransford have a tryst in his quarters. Maverick almost fails to reach the final table by the 5:00 AM deadline, having had his stateroom door chained shut (by an unknown person) after a short tryst with Bransford. He manages to climb outside the steamer to reach the table on time. The game proceeds, with Bransford the first eliminated, and shortly thereafter a "fixed" hand is dealt to the three remaining players. The Commodore is given four 8s and Angel is given a low straight flush, whilst Maverick has the 10, jack, queen and king of spades. The Commodore and Angel each bet "all in". Maverick observes the dealer bottom-dealing to the others, protests the conduct of the hand, and eventually accepts one card dealt by Angel and calls without checking the card. It turns out to be the ace of spades, giving Maverick an unbeatable royal flush and the championship. An enraged Angel draws his gun, but he and his stooges in the audience are gunned down by Cooper and Maverick. Three plot twists follow Maverick's win. First, Cooper steals the $500,000 prize money instead of presenting it to Maverick. Second, it is revealed that the Commodore and Cooper were secretly in cahoots on the theft and that Angel had actually been working for the Commodore. Third, the Commodore betrays Cooper, but before he can shoot him, Maverick ambushes the two around a campfire and steals back the money, leaving them a single gun to settle their affairs. The gun turns out to be unloaded, and Cooper beats up the Commodore, then sets out to take revenge on Maverick. Later, Maverick is relaxing in a bath-house when Cooper finds him, and drops the facade to reveal that he is in fact Maverick's father. The real conspiracy was in fact between the two of them. However, Bransford enters the bath-house and robs Cooper and Maverick (whose relationship she had surmised from their similar mannerisms). After she escapes, Maverick reveals she only got away with half of the money, as Maverick had hidden the rest in his boots. Maverick and his father smile as he comments that it will be a lot of fun getting the rest of the money back from her.

Twin brothers are separated when their parents are murdered but 25 years later they re-unite in order to avenge their parents' death. Jean Claude Van Damme plays a dual role as Alex and Chad, twins separated at the death of their parents. Chad is raised by a family retainer in Paris, Alex becomes a petty crook in Hong Kong. Seeing a picture of Alex, Chad rejoins him and convinces him that his rival in Hong Kong is also the man who killed their parents. Alex is suspicious of Chad, especially when it comes to his girlfriend. —John Vogel <jlvogel@comcast.net> In Hong Kong, American businessman Paul Wagner, his wife Katherine Wagner, and their 6 month old twin sons Chad and Alex are watching a parade. When the parade ends, Paul and his business partner Nigel Griffith, who run Griffith-Wagner Enterprises, step up to a podium and dedicate the Victoria Harbour Tunnel, which is an underwater tunnel that connects Hong Kong Island to the mainland. That night, Paul, Katherine, and the twins are on their way home when Paul notices a carload of Chinese men following them. Paul uses his CB radio to alert his friend Frank Avery to the situation. Paul and Katherine arrive home with the twins a few minutes later, and see that waiting for them is a gang of Chinese men led by a musclebound assassin named Moon. Moon and his men shoot both Paul and Katherine dead, and plan to kill the twins -- until Frank shows up and kills all of Moon's henchmen, but Frank gets shot while Moon escapes. Chad and Alex end up separated. 25 years later, Chad is a martial arts expert and aerobics trainer in Los Angeles. Frank raised Chad in Paris, France after the murders. Frank talks Chad into going to Hong Kong with him. Frank has decided that it's time to get the twins together and get revenge, and reclaim what's rightfully theirs. They board an airplane to Hong Kong. Hours later, they arrive in Hong Kong. On that night, they go to a Mah Jongg Parlor and go inside. Chad is approached by a blond haired woman who obviously thinks he's someone else, then a man who looks like Chad knocks Chad out cold. The man is Alex, and the woman is Alex's fiancée Danielle Wilde, who thought Chad was Alex. She, Chad, and Alex are all surprised to be told by Frank that Chad and Alex are brothers. Alex and Danielle have a hard time believing it. Frank explains that Paul supervised the construction of the Victoria Harbour Tunnel. Halfway into the project, Paul encountered financial problems, so he pulled in Nigel Griffith as an equity partner. Nigel got his money from a secret loan, courtesy of Hong Kong drug kingpin Raymond Zhang. When the tunnel was completed, and Paul's expertise was no longer needed, Nigel and Raymond had Paul and Katherine murdered by Moon's hit team. Chad and Alex were supposed to die, too, so they could not come back and claim what's rightfully theirs, what Nigel and Raymond stole from Paul, which was his business and the tunnel. Alex reluctantly believes Frank about this story, but Danielle continues to refuse to believe it. Alex, Chad, and Frank head out on Alex's boat. A few minutes after setting off, Alex's boat is approached by another boat. Alex allows three Chinese men aboard to look over a couple of cars that are on Alex's boat. As this is going on, two police boats approach. Alex throws the three Chinese men overboard, then while Alex heads to the boat's steering wheel, Chad and Frank send the cars overboard and blow the cars up. It seems that Alex is a smuggler. Later, Frank, Chad, Alex, and Danielle are at a restaurant, where Alex tells Chad and Frank that Danielle has been an employee of Nigel's company for the past 5 years. That's why Danielle refuses to believe Nigel's part in Paul and Katherine's murders. Chad takes a taxi cab out to the hotel where he and Frank have been staying, but before he can go inside, he is approached by a group of Chinese men who think he's Alex. Moon forces Chad into a car with Raymond, and taken to a boat yard. Raymond wants Alex's help in smuggling drugs, and he mistakenly has Moon place Chad in a cargo container and beat Chad up, trying to convince Alex to give in. Chad is then locked up in the container, taken downtown, and dumped out onto a street. After Chad is treated for his injuries, he and Alex decide that it's time to work together against Nigel and Raymond. —Todd Baldridge

Beautiful young women who work at the offices of a phone-sex company are being stalked by a psychopathic killer. Suite Nothings, is a sleazy L.A. phone *fantasy* hot-line...in other words a phone-sex service, voiced by failed models, in which callers get to divulge their fantasies over the phone. Among them is Bobo, an individual whose twisted sense of humor, is matched only by his warped mental state. Dressed in an eerily comical mask of all things a clown, he begins murderous vendetta against these hot-line workers. As a body-count in this city steadily increases, this so-called ringmaster in his own personal circus of fear and fatal pain, who makes his victims walk a tightrope of sheer terror moments before he brutally ends their lives. Bobo is going to prove why no one should talk to strangers...especially when they are as strange and insane as he is.

The San Fernando Valley adventures of trucker turned prize-fighter Philo Beddoe and his pet orangutan Clyde. Philo Beddoe (Clint Eastwood) is an easy-going trucker and a great fist-fighter. With two friends, Orville (Geoffrey Lewis), who promotes prize-fights for him, and Clyde (Manis the Orangutan), the orangutan he won on a bet, he roams the San Fernando Valley in search of cold beer, country music, and the occasional punch-up. But he is floored by country and western singer Lynn Halsey-Taylor (Sondra Locke), who gives him the slip when she realizes he's getting too serious. Phil, Clyde, and Orville set off in pursuit, pestered by bikers. —David Wark <dwark@automail.com>

The English gentleman known as Horse, returns to the American west to save his adopted Indian tribe from extinction. In the 1840s, trappers with government backing push the Yellow Hands Sioux off their sacred land; they retreat into an apocalyptic spirituality, passively waiting for supernatural wrath to descend on their usurpers. Meanwhile, in England, Lord John Morgan feels his spirit weaken, so he returns to America to live again with the Yellow Hand. Finding them dispirited, he invigorates them as well as himself through self-imposed torture and other rituals. Once he convinces the clan to take direct action, Horse must devise a strategy to take the trappers' fort. The clan's women and boys take on special assignments to aid the assault to regain the sacred land. —<jhailey@hotmail.com>

After WW1, an ex-pilot takes up barn-storming and chance-meets a former German ace fighter pilot with whom he co-stars in Hollywood war movies depicting aerial dog-fights. A biplane pilot who had missed flying in WWI takes up barnstorming and later a movie career in his quest for the glory he had missed, eventually getting a chance to prove himself in a film depicting the dogfights in the Great War. —Keith Loh <loh@sfu.ca> Waldo Pepper was a World War I flight trainer. Waldo believes the honor of the best WWI fighter pilot goes to German Ernst Kessler, although Waldo's flight commander Newt believes that if Waldo had entered the war earlier and had got the flight time, he would have proved himself to be the best. In the post-war era, Waldo, self-coined as the "Great Waldo Pepper", has like many war pilots resorted to barnstorming to make a living. Instead of the penny-ante flights he provides to adoring fans, Waldo wants to join Dillhoefer's flying circus. Dillhoefer will only let him join if he can prove he can perform a death defying feat that his audiences crave to see. He decides to join forces with sometimes rival pilot, Axel Olsson, to come up with such a stunt. Another possibility, with the help of plane designer Ezra Stiles, his girlfriend Maude's brother, is to complete the first ever outside loop. But when the defying part of death defying comes close to not happening, Waldo's livelihood is jeopardized. He may have to reinvent himself if that livelihood is no longer a possibility. An unexpected source may allow Waldo to show if he really was and is the greatest. —Huggo 1926. Aircraft, in the form of joyrides for cash, air shows, stunt flying and movies on the air battles of WW1, have taken off as a form of entertainment. One pilot cashing in on the trend is Waldo Pepper, a WW1 fighter pilot who now travels around, taking up people for short flights for cash. He regards himself as the second greatest pilot alive. The best? German WW1 ace Ernst Kessler. Pepper and Kessler's paths will cross in the death-defying, high-risk hurly burly that is flying in the 1920s. —grantss

With the help of an irreverent young sidekick, a bank robber gets his old gang back together to organize a daring new heist. Seven years after a daring bank robbery involving an anti-tank gun used to blow open a vault, the robbery team temporarily puts aside their mutual suspicions to repeat the crime after they are unable to find the loot from the original heist, hidden behind a school chalkboard. The hardened artilleryman and his flippant, irresponsible young sidekick are the two wild cards in the deck of jokers.

A stranger is hired to protect a town from three outlaws about to be released from prison. But the townsfolk second-guess their hire when he begins to take advantage of them.

Several young draft dodgers head West to their deaths in this fatalistic reworking of OLIVER TWIST set in 1863 America - Jeff Bridges as the Artful Dodger, Barry Brown as Oliver, and David Huddleston as a sort of Fagin.

A group of Green Berets return from Viet Nam and go on a cross country road trip which will result in a shocking conclusion.