Month: April 2014

Page One: Inside the New York Times

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The New York Times building on Eighth Avenue, New York

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 22 April Pravda first published, 1912 On this day in 1912 (in the Old Style Julian calendar, 5 May in the Gregorian calendar) communist newspaper Pravda was published for the first time. In fact it was first published in 1903 but today’s date marks its first publication in Russia – Vienna had previously been its home. The change of city also meant a change of tone, from being a paper generally interested in the arts to one concerned with politics, economics, workers movements and revolutionary change. It also became the official mouthpiece of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. When the … Read more

The Great Beauty

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Toni Servillo as Jep Gambardella in The Great Beauty

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 21 April Romulus founds Rome, 753BC On this day in 753BC, one of the great capitals of world civilisation was founded, or so the story goes. Rome, city of the Caesars, was founded by Romulus, who along with Remus was one of the twin sons of Rhea Silvia, daughter of Numitor, king of Alba Longa (present day Castel Gandolfo, where the Pope has his summer residence). The father of the twins was either Mars, the god of war, or possibly Hercules, the demi-god son of Zeus. Either way, Rhea Silvia’s sons become problematical for her once Numitor’s brother Amulius seizes power … Read more

Untouchable

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Driss shows Philippe the finer things in life in Untouchable

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 20 April Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech, 1968 On this day in 1968, the senior Conservative British politician Enoch Powell made a speech in which he alluded to Virgil’s Aenid – “As I look forward, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood’.” A Greek scholar who also spoke Urdu – Powell as an ambitious young man had set his sights on becoming the viceroy of India, only to find in later life that the Indians were coming to him – Powell was referring to the prospects for race … Read more

Wake in Fright

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Donald Pleasence and Gary Bond in Wake in Fright

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 19 April Captain James Cook espies Australia, 1770 On this day in 1770, the British captain James Cook’s ship Endeavour became the first recorded European vessel to catch sight of Australia. Cook had been commissioned to travel to the Pacific Ocean by the Royal Society, who were collecting data on the transit of Venus across the sun, during which the planet appears as a black dot against the solar disc. It is a rare occurrence and the Royal Society hoped the measurements Cook’s ship collected would add to the sum of scientific knowledge, as well as helping to calculate longitude, which … Read more

Double Indemnity

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Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 18 April Miklós Rózsa born, 1907 On this day in 1907, the celebrated and prolific film composer Miklós Rózsa was born, in Budapest, Hungary. His mother was a pianist and his father was a wealthy industrialist. Young Miklós was performing in public and composing at the age of eight. After studying in Leipzig, Germany, he moved to London, where fellow Hungarian, the producer Alexander Korda gave him his first film to score, 1937’s Knight without Armour. Rózsa went to Hollywood with Korda to work on The Thief of Bagdad, then went on to work on several Billy Wilder films, including Five … Read more

Argo

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John Goodman and Alan Arkin in Argo

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 17 April John McCarthy kidnapped, 1986 On this day in 1986, the British journalist John McCarthy was taken hostage in Lebanon. Like most of the hostages taken during the so-called Lebanon hostage crisis, which continued from 1982 to 1992, McCarthy was chosen not because of any particular political affiliation but because of the country he came from and because, as a journalist, he was easy to target. Aged 29 when it happened, he was working for WTN news when he was grabbed by Islamic Jihad, and spent the next five and a half years locked up. Every time the location of … Read more

Inglourious Basterds

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Brad Pitt in Inglourious Basterds

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 16 April Colditz liberated, 1945 On this day in 1945, the infamous Colditz Castle PoW camp was relieved by the US Army. Dating back nearly a thousand years, though extensively rebuilt in the 19th century, the castle had been a workhouse, a mental asylum and a sanitarium for the well-to-do before being pressed into service as a prison for high security captives during the Second World War – often people who had broken out of other prisons. Known as Oflag IV-C, it is the source of many myths and stirring stories about escape attempts during the Second World War. It was … Read more

Super Size Me

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Morgan Spurlock before and After in Super Size Me

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 15 April Ray Kroc opens the first McDonald’s, 1955 On this day in 1955, sanctioned by the McDonald brothers Richard and Maurice, Ray Kroc opened the first franchise of one of their McDonald’s hamburger restaurants, in Des Plaines, Illinois, USA. The ninth of a chain started by Richard and Maurice in 1948 in San Bernadino, California, the place was an immediate hit, taking hundreds of dollars in its first day. Kroc, a businessman by nature, itched to open more but the McDonalds weren’t particularly expansionist. So, in 1961, Kroc bought the entire company off them for $2.7 million and set about … Read more

Gravity

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Sandra Bullock in a space suit, Gravity

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 14 April Sputnik 2 falls from orbit, 1958 On this day in 1958, the second satellite to be launched into Earth orbit, Sputnik 2, fell back to earth. It had been launched on 3 November 1957 and was carrying Laika, a samoyed terrier cross chosen for her good nature – the first animal launched into space. Sputnik 2 carried enough food, water and air to keep Laika alive for ten days, but because of a malfunction, the temperature inside Sputnik 2 got too high (104ºF/40ºC) and Laika died after a few hours into the mission, from heat and stress. If she … Read more

14 April 2013-04-14

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Stacy Martin and Shia LaBeouf in Nymphomaniac

Out in the UK This Week Nymphomaniac Vol I (Artificial Eye, cert 18, Blu-ray/DVD/Digital) A middle aged man finds a woman beaten up in the street. Taking her back to his house – she doesn’t want the police involved – he coaxes her story out of her with nothing more than a bit of tea and sympathy. And so starts Lars Von Trier’s most “normal” film to date, effectively a Victorian bildungsroman in which one party (Charlotte Gainsbourg) relates the ping-ponging progress of her life, while the other party (Stellan Skarsgård) prompts more revelations with a “do tell me more”. Von Trier barely bothers to hide the structure and sets about acclimatising us … Read more