Truth isn't just stranger than fiction
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at the Philadelphia Film Festival, it's usually better than fiction. "When you look at how the overall festival audience rates the top
movies, of the top 15
movies in any given year, you'll see 10 or 12 that are documentaries," said Ray Murray, director of the festival, which commences its 17th year tomorrow.
After a poor box-office showing for war-related
movies, how could a Hollywood studio possibly entice audiences into seeing the next one?
Freddie Prinze, Jr. and Taryn Manning star in Jack and Jill vs. the World, a love story for cynics by actress/writer/producer/director Vanessa Parise. The film opens April 11th. Parise’s films, by design, are more than pure escapist entertainment. She also endeavors to ensure her
movies are life-affirming, multi-dimensional and cognizant of the world’s foibles. In Jack and Jill vs. the World
, for instance, the main characters have a Manifesto (or Rules to Live By), believe in Fair Trade, are animal advocates, and face a genetic disease that occurs in one of every 3,900 live births
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all while launching into a romance that is passionate, e Parise graduated Magna Cum Laude in Biology from Harvard and was accepted into Harvard Medical School (as well as Stanford, Yale and Columbia, to name a few). But with her heart in acting from the age of five, she decided to turn down Harvard Med to follow her dreams of being an actress. She auditioned for and was accepted to the presti