Month: June 2014

Gone with the Wind

by
Vivien Leigh and Hattie McDaniel in Gone with the Wind

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 22 June David O Selznick dies, 1965 On this day in 1965, one of the great names of Hollywood’s golden era died. David O (the O meant nothing at all) had been born into a movie family in 1902 and arrived in Hollywood in time for the talkie era, in 1926. By 1931, having worked at MGM and Paramount, he was head of production at RKO, 1933’s King Kong being one of his big successes. He moved back to MGM where he oversaw a series of prestige productions, including Anna Karenina and A Tale of Two Cities. In 1936 he had … Read more

16 June 2014-06-16

by
Zoe Kazan and Jake Johnson in The Pretty One

Out in the UK This Week The Invisible Woman (Lionsgate, cert 12, Blu-ray/DVD) Ralph Fiennes directs and stars in a film ostensibly about the secret mistress of Charles Dickens. In fact it’s about Dickens himself. The Invisible Biopic, perhaps. Either way, Felicity Jones is Ellen Ternan, the actress who became Dickens’s lover while Ralph Fiennes plays Dickens, as perhaps one of the first true celebs of the media age, mobbed wherever he went, thanks to his appearance in daily newspapers, read avidly by the newly literate working classes. Both actors are as good as you’d hope (Jones, brilliant, Fiennes actually better than I expected), there’s a wealth of period detail, reminding us, for … Read more

23 June 2014-06-23

by
Yaroslav Zhalnin as Yuri Gagarin in Gagarin: First in Space

Out in the UK This Week Her (EV, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD) The film about the guy who falls in love with his computer’s operating system. Yes, that one, with Joaquin Phoenix as the guy, Scarlett Johansson as the voice of the OS. Spike Jonze takes this premise and has quite a lot of fun with it, working through logically how a man might fall in love with a machine: because he’s lonely, because phone sex with a computer is like phone sex with a human, because computers, like, rule our lives. And he also brilliantly details a world where this sort of event might not instantly book you a place at the funny farm. … Read more

The Human Centipede

by
Dieter Laser in The Human Centipede

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 21 June Josef Mengele’s remains identified, 1985 On this day in 1985 it was finally ascertained that remains exhumed from a grave in Brazil were those of Josef Mengele. Later DNA testing in 1992 confirmed this original identification from dental records. Mengele had died after suffering a stroke and drowning while swimming in the coastal resort of Bertioga. He was 67 and had been living in South America ever since fleeing the concentration camp Auschwitz at the end of the Second World War, where his experiments on inmates had earned him the nickname the “Angel of Death”. Mengele’s special field of … Read more

Sucker Punch

by
Emily Browning as Baby Doll in Sucker Punch

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 20 June The Beatles’ Yesterday and Today Butcher cover, 1966 On this day in 1966, the Beatles released their eleventh US release, Yesterday and Today, a compilation of tracks from the three most recent British albums – Help!, Rubber Soul and Revolver (not yet released). The record became infamous because of its cover, shot by Robert Whitaker earlier that year, which depicted the band dressed in butchers’ aprons draped with pieces of meat and various parts of plastic dolls. In terms of conceptual art, it was ahead of its time (it’s in Damian Hirst and the Chapman brothers territory) and the … Read more

The King’s Speech

by
Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush in The King's Speech

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 19 June Wallis Simpson born, 1896 On this day in 1896, Bessie Wallis Warfield was born in Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania. Her father died of tuberculosis when she was only a few months old and she was supported by various members of her father’s family, until her mother remarried, though it was her father’s brother who paid for her to attend Maryland’s most expensive girls school. Bright, ambitious and always well dressed, Wallis was popular and in 1916 she married a US Navy aviator, Earl Winfield Spencer Jr. An alcoholic and womaniser, her husband and Wallis had an on-off relationship with … Read more

Napoleon

by
Albert Dieudonné as Napoleon

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 18 June The battle of Waterloo, 1815 On this day in 1815, the battle of Waterloo was fought, in what is now Belgium. On one side was a French army under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte, on the other the forces of the Seventh Coalition – Austria, Prussia, Russia and the UK – but most notably Prussia and the UK, under the command of the Duke of Wellington. The battle marks the end of Napoleon’s adventure in Europe, which had seen him expand the natural borders of France into Belgium, Holland, Italy and Germany, conquer and rule another set of nations … Read more

Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same

by
Zoinx (Susan Ziegler) and Jane (Lisa Haas)

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 17 June Statue of Liberty arrives in New York, 1885 On this day in 1885, the Statue of Liberty, designed and made in France, arrived in New York. Depicting the Roman goddess of freedom Libertas, the statue was made in pieces, the first completed bits being the head and torch arm, and then shipped in crates to the USA, where the Americans had already built a pedestal in anticipation of its arrival. Its sculptor, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, had originally started work in the late 1860s on a gigantic torch-bearing statue designed to stand at the northern entrance to the Suez Canal. … Read more

Splice

by
Come to mummy: Sarah Polley and offspring in Splice

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 16 June Lord Byron and house guests read Fantasmagoriana, 1816 While on holiday in Switzerland in 1816, Lord Byron and his house guests grew sick of the weather of the “year without a summer”, as 1816 came to be known. Volcanic activity on the other side of the world and the historically low solar activity were precipitating famine in Europe, flooding in Asia and other weather catastrophes. But for this party it meant excessive rain, gloom and little to do. To entertain each other, they started reading a collection of German and French gothic stories called Fantasmagoriana. Published only three years … Read more

The Adventures of Robin Hood

by
Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 15 June King John “signs” Magna Carta, 1215 On this day in 1215, the king of England put his seal to Magna Carta (the Great Charter) at Runnymede, near Windsor, England. It is in effect a bill of rights, one forced on the king by feudal barons unhappy with the levels of taxation, John’s abysmal record when it came to fighting wars and his supine relationship to the Pope. Designed as part of a powerplay to unseat the king, it proposes limits to the power of the king, making that power more contractual in nature, and denies the king the power … Read more