Movies and TvShows featuring "artifice" theme.

Four tales unfold in Wes Anderson's anthology of short films adapted from Roald Dahl's beloved stories, "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar", "The Swan", "The Rat Catcher", and "Poison".

Henry Sugar, a gambler and bachelor, steals a book that allows him to see through objects and predict the future. He uses his abilities to win money at a casino but realizes he doesn't want the wealth. Instead, he throws the money into the streets of London and decides to use his powers for good. He travels the world, winning money and establishing hospitals and orphanages. Eventually, he dies, leaving behind a legacy of charity. His story is chronicled by Roald Dahl.

In India, an Englishman is bitten by a poisonous snake that slithers onto his stomach. His friend and a doctor must race against time to save his life.

In an English village, a reporter and a mechanic listen to a rat catcher who resembles a rat himself, as he explains his ingenious plan to outsmart the rats. While fascinated by his methods, they are also unsettled by him.

Peter Watson, a small brilliant boy, becomes the target of two large idiotic bullies who harass and essentially kidnap him. Peter's passion for studying wildlife, particularly birds, intensifies his torment when the bullies aim their gun at a beautiful swan.

Borrowing from an anthropological study initiated through the University of California in 1969, The Taste of The Name is a fantasia on universality. As a parallel to the elusive “umami” and its gradual scientific acceptance as a primary taste, we consider what is perceivable, knowable, and namable. Through the blue spectrum of various hermetic artifices, we are fed fables of Jules Verne's Nautilus and resurface in a virtual tanning bed, turning over in a slippery navigation of language.

In The Jungle, playfully and sorrowfully tells the tale of an unreliable narrator in a self imposed exile. Given a grant to study the equivalent of animal cries and whines in jungle flora our heroine has lived for 1, 612 days deep in an unnamed jungle. This jungle serves as an extended metaphor for excessive and continual growth and death and fear and sustenance; a metaphorical space of chaos in which the scientist finds solace and which stands in contrast to the human jungle of 'civilization'.

A magician desperately trying to perfect a trick as he fails to present it to others, slowly devolving into insanity.