Movies tagged as "based on autobiography"

American Splendor [2003, USA ] starting from $1.99

Ordinary life is pretty complex stuff.

Genres: Biography, Comedy, Drama Actors: Chris Ambrose, Joey Krajcar, Josh Hutcherson, Cameron Carter, Daniel Tay, Mary Faktor, Paul Giamatti, Harvey Pekar, Larry John Meyers, Vivienne Benesch, Barbara Brown, Earl Billings, Danny Hoch, James Urbaniak Directors: Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini, Download: DVD   DivX   PDA   Harvey Pekar is file clerk at the local VA hospital. His interactions with his co-workers offer some relief from the monotony, and their discussions encompass everything from music to the decline of American culture to new flavors of jellybeans and life itself. At home, Harvey fills his days with reading, writing and listening to jazz. His apartment is filled with thousands of books and LPs, and he regularly scours Cleveland's thrift stores and garage sales for more, savoring the rare joy of a 25-cent find. It is at one of these junk sales that Harvey meets Robert Crumb, a greeting card artist and music enthusiast. When, years later, Crumb finds international success for his underground comics, the idea that comic books can be a valid art form for adults inspires Harvey to write his own brand of comic book. An admirer of naturalist writers like Theodore Dreiser, Harvey makes his American Splendor a truthful, unsentimental record of his working-class life, a warts-and-all self portrait. First published in 1976, the comic earns Harvey cult fame throughout the 1980s and eventually leads him to the sardonic Joyce Barber, a partner in a Delaware comic book store who end ups being Harvey's true soul mate as they experience the bizarre byproducts of Harvey's cult celebrity stature.

Last Emperor, The [1987, China, UK, France, Italy ] starting from $1.99

He was the Lord of Ten Thousand Years, the absolute monarch of China. He was born to rule a world of ancient tradition. Nothing prepared him for our world of change.

Genres: Biography, Drama, History Actors: John Lone, Joan Chen, Peter O'Toole, Ruocheng Ying, , Dennis Dun, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Maggie Han, Ric Young, Vivian Wu, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Jade Go, Fumihiko Ikeda, Richard Vuu, Tsou Tijger Directors: Bernardo Bertolucci, Download: DVD   DivX   PDA   A dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the Emperors of China, from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City, the object of worship by half a billion people; through his abdication, his decline and dissolute lifestyle; his exploitation by the invading Japanese, and finally to his obscure existence as just another peasant worker in the People's Republic.

Pianist, The [2002, UK, Germany, Poland, France ] starting from $1.99

Music was his passion. Survival was his masterpiece.

Genres: Biography, Drama, Music, War Actors: Adrien Brody, , Frank Finlay, Maureen Lipman, Emilia Fox, Ed Stoppard, Julia Rayner, Jessica Kate Meyer, Michal Zebrowski, Wanja Mues, Richard Ridings, Nomi Sharron, Anthony Milner, Lucy Skeaping, Roddy Skeaping Directors: Roman Polanski, Download: DVD   DivX   PDA   The true story of Wladyslaw Szpilman who, in the 1930s, was known as the most accomplished piano player in all of Poland, if not Europe. At the outbreak of the Second World War, however, Szpilman becomes subject to the anti-Jewish laws imposed by the conquering Germans. By the start of the 1940s, Szpilman has seen his world go from piano concert halls to the Jewish Ghetto of Warsaw and then must suffer the tragedy of his family deported to a death camp, while Szpilman is conscripted into a forced German Labor Compound. At last deciding to escape, Szpilman goes into hiding as a Jewish refugee where he is witness to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943 and the Warsaw City Revolt in August/October 1944.