Donal Lardner Ward

Royal Tenenbaum and his wife Etheline had three children and then they separated. All three children are extraordinary --- all geniuses. Virtually all memory of the brilliance of the young Tenenbaums was subsequently erased by two decades of betrayal, failure, and disaster. Most of this was generally considered to be their father's fault. "The Royal Tenenbaums" is the story of the family's sudden, unexpected reunion one recent winter.

The Suburbans, a one-hit-wonder new wave band from the '80s, reunite at their bassist's wedding, where a promising young record executive sees the ensemble perform. When she encourages them to launch a revival, the group must weigh their dreams of fame and fortune against the reality of their relatively quiet domestic lives.

A radical student is adopted by a group of young New Yorkers, serves as a catalyst to alter his and their lives. Gathering in a Manhattan apartment, the group of friends meet to discuss social mobility, Fourier's socialism and play bridge in their cocoon of upper-class society - until they are joined by a man with a critical view of their way of life.

Two Manhattan slackers want to make a movie about their lives. One drives a cab, the other tends bar; neither has a clue how to make a movie. Things look up when real-life actors Phoebe Cates and Martha Plimpton agree to star in the project.

A decade and a half after their seminal indie film launched meteoric filmmaking careers, Splick and Jason find themselves staring at their own individual, pre-midlife crises. Having not spoken to one another since a late-nineties falling out, they're each grappling with the challenges of stalled careers and relationships, as the hands of time creep ominously past forty-o'clock. Splick's most recent TV show, centered around his character's perverse relationship with dessert foods, is unceremoniously cancelled by the network, forcing a return to his childhood bedroom at his mother's apartment in New York. Frustrated by a barrage of comments about the "good," "funny," movies he used to make with his old partner, Jason, Splick determines to seek him out and attempt a reunion.

The emotional effects of an extramarital relationship between Noah, a New York City schoolteacher and budding novelist with a wife of twenty years and four children and Alison, a young waitress and wife from Montauk at the end of Long Island, trying to piece her life back together in the wake of a tragedy.