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New Best Friend
The film takes place at the start of a new semester at exclusive Colby University nestled in the Carolina countryside. Near the campus, four young women prepare themselves for the final semester of their senior year.
In the dingy apartment she shares with her mother, Alicia Glazer (Mia Kirshner) organizes her school supplies. She is plain as well as poor.
In an exclusive row house on the other side of town, three beautiful and privileged young coeds start their day. Sensuous Hadley Weston (Meredith Monroe) luxuriates in a bubble bath with a margarita in one hand and her drug of choice in the other. Hadley’s junk food loving, bulimic roommate Julianne McIntyre (Rachel True) wolfs down a huge bowl of cereal and immediately runs in to the bathroom to throw it up. Oversexed Sydney Connors (Dominique Swain) slowly wakes up next to her boyfriend, Josh (Oliver Hudson), and some poor townie who is shocked to discover how she spent the night.
As the semester begins, Alicia and Hadley are paired to work on a sociology senior thesis project entitled, "Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way." At first rejected, Alicia realizes that she can’t complete the sociology class thesis without Hadley. Alicia goes to Hadley’s house and waits outside trying to get up enough nerve to crash the Valentine’s Day party going on inside. Hadley sees Alicia through the window and goes out to get her. Hadley, too, has come to the realization that they need each other to complete the project. As Alicia goes through the row house door, her world changes forever.
Finally accepted into Hadley’s clique, Alicia is introduced to a world of privilege, recreational drugs and dangerous thrills. But her attempts to become one of the group ultimately result in her hospitalization.
As the local sheriff, Artie Boner (Taye Diggs), tries to determine the chain of events that led to Alicia’s collapse, his investigation casts a shadow of responsibility over the untouchable, affluent young women.
TriStar Pictures presents NEW BEST FRIEND, a provocative drama about four college seniors struggling with choices that will affect the rest of their lives. Directed by Zoe Clarke-Williams (Men), NEW BEST FRIEND stars an ensemble of exciting new talent led by Meredith Monroe (Dawson’s Creek), Rachel True (The Craft, Half-Baked) Dominique Swain (Lolita, Face/Off) and Mia Kirshner (24, Not Another Teen Movie, Exotica). The film also stars Oliver Hudson (The Out-of-Towners), Scott Bairstow (Party of Five), Eric Michael Cole (Gia, White Squall), and Taye Diggs (Ally McBeal, House on Haunted Hill, How Stella Got Her Groove Back) as Sheriff Artie Bonner.
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Cary Elwes
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Cybill Shepherd
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Eddie Izzard
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Jennifer Tilly
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Kirsten Dunst
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Kirsten Dunst
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Quentin Tarintino
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Peter Bogdanovich
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THE CATS MEOW
So what really happened on that boat? With some of the most powerful people
of its time and a murder still unsolved, the cat's Meow attempts to uncover
the truth behind the urban legend.
From award-winning screenwriter Steven Peros and acclaimed director Peter Bogdanovich comes THE CATS MEOW, an extraordinary look at a fateful excursion of "fun and frolic" aboard William Randolph Hearst’s private yacht in November of 1924 that brought together some of the century’s best known personalities and resulted in a still-unsolved, hushed-up killing. As Hearst and his lover actress Marion Davies set sail from San Pedro Harbor early one Saturday morning. They host a small group that includes the brilliant but self-absorbed Charlie Chaplin, film pioneer Thomas Ince preoccupied with his recent financial setbacks, ambitious gossip columnist Louella Parsons, and the eccentric British Victorian novelist Elinor Gyln.
Everyone, it seems, has a secret agenda: Ince, whose pioneering work in defining the role of the film producer has been favorably compared to D.W. Griffith’s contributions to directing, is determined to seal a partnership with Heart’s Cosmopolitan Pictures despite W.R.’s seeming lack of interest; New York-based film critic Louella Parsons has her eye on a transfer to the west coast where she can cover the film industry more intimately: Ince’s lover, actress Margaret Livingston, no longer cares to keep their affair a secret; Hearst himself suspects that his paramour Davies has been unfaithful with the legendary comic Chaplin; and Chaplin indeed schemes to steal away the beautiful actress from the richest man in the world.
The boat sets off, and the first evening’s dinner gives way to frenetic dancing to the on-board jazz band, followed by a screening of Ms. Davies’ latest film. From there the late-night revelries shift to individual cabins for bootleg whiskey and other tempting, though illicit, nocturnal activities.
Meanwhile, Ince stokes Heart’s flames of jealousy and offers to "keep an eye on" Ms. Davies if the two men were to unite their filmmaking enterprises. At the same time, Elinor warns Marion away from the predatory advances of the womanizing Chaplin. Hearst is further incensed when a late-night wire comes in to report that a rival newspaper will publish an item romantically linking Chaplin and Davies.
The next day Hearst’s party guests are treated to an unusual display when their host fires a cannonball into the stomach of the brawny vaudevillian named "Mr. Cannonball." Meanwhile, lawyer George Thomas warns the increasingly desperate Ince not to turn over to Hearst a love letter to Marion that the producer stole from Chaplin’s cabin. That afternoon, as Margaret reveals to anyone who’ll listen that she is Thomas Ince’s lover, Marion pleads with Charlie to keep his distance, though they cannot deny their mutual attraction.
That night, Ince fuels Hearst’s jealousy into a bonfire. In an attempt to further ingratiate himself to close the partnership deal, he hands Hearst the crumpled love letter that he stole from Chaplin’s wastebasket. Later, as figures comes and go, trading whispered conversations in the shadows, the events of the last two days hurtle toward a dramatic moment of tragedy and a single gunshot echoes in the night. The events of that evening affect the lives of every celebrity on board the ship, and before the excursion is over, all will learn the painfully high price of their precarious success.
Cast:
Kirsten Dunst as Marion Davies
Edward Herrmann as William Randolph Hearst
Eddie Izzard asCharlie Chaplin
Cary Elwes as Thomas Ince
Jennifer Tilly as Louella Parsons
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