Steve

4

2026-09-172014-07-16 by Steve

The infamous "drunken-vodka-breasts" sequence from 4

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 17 July Czar Nicholas II and family executed, 1918 On this day in 1918, the former ruler of Russia, Nicholas Romanov, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias, having had a disastrous reign during which he had presided over the collapse of his once-great country, was shot and killed, along with his family. He had abdicated the year before, after a series of military defeats and revolutions, culminating in the February Revolution of 1917. For a while his family had lived under house arrest but in comparative luxury, though rations had increasingly been tightened and servants had been dispensed with as the … Read more

The Hi-Lo Country

2023-10-272014-07-15 by Steve

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 16 July Potsdam Conference, 1945 On this day in 1945, Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill and Harry Truman arrived in Potsdam, where they were over the next two weeks to decide the shape of the world in the wake of the Second World War. The three powers had met before, at Yalta, in 1945 while the war was still coming to an end, when Franklin Roosevelt was still alive, and before then in Tehran in 1943, when it had started to look like the Allies might be triumphant. Germany had surrendered nine weeks before Potsdam, and the conference largely was about Germany’s … Read more

An Ordinary Execution

2023-10-272014-07-14 by Steve

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 15 July John Ball hanged, drawn and quartered, 1381 On this day in 1381, a charismatic priest called John Ball was killed publicly in front of the monarch of England, Richard II. Ball had been a “hedge” priest, roaming the countryside, unattached to a parish, a “Lollard” who believed the Church to be corrupt. In prison in Maidstone at the time of 1381’s Peasants’ Revolt – a rebellion against too much taxation, villeinage (ie slavery), corvée (obligatory unpaid labour) and the new laws making it illegal to refuse work on the grounds that the pay was too low (the Black Death had … Read more

14 July 2014-07-14

2022-11-132014-07-13 by Steve

Out in the UK This Week Under the Skin (StudioCanal, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD/digital) Brian Glazer’s most attention-grabbing film since Sexy Beast is another experiment in genre – this time he’s playing with the idea that audiences know so much about alien invasions that he can tell a story with barely any spoken dialogue, characterisation or much in the way of sets or SFX and we’ll all still get it. So those who think Scarlett Johansson can’t act – she can – will be relieved with her portrayal of the nearly silent but deadly sexy alien who’s driving around Glasgow in a van and inveigling lonely single guys back to her lair, where she takes her … Read more

Rabbit-Proof Fence

2023-10-272014-07-13 by Steve

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 14 July Nazi eugenics law passed, 1933 On this day in 1933, in Germany, the Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring (Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses) was put onto the statute books. It allowed for the compulsory sterilisation of anyone whose genetic disorders might be passed on to their children. Disorders originally included manic-depressive insanity and alcoholism, as well as more usual hereditary conditions, but were eventually widened out to include homosexuality, idleness and dissidence. Genetic health was decided in a series of courts set up expressly for the purpose, with the Nazis taking their cues from the work … Read more

The Song Remains the Same

2023-10-272014-07-12 by Steve

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 13 July Live Aid, 1985 On this day in 1985, some of the world’s most popular music acts got together at Wembley Stadium, London, UK, and John F Kennedy Stadium, Philadelphia, USA. Live Aid was a spin-off from the single Do They Know It’s Christmas, a song co-written by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure after Geldof had seen footage of the 1984 famine in Ethiopia. Expected to make around £70,000, the single in fact made around £8 million. The shows, in summer the following year, were designed to capitalise on what seemed to be the public’s happiness to dig deep if … Read more

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

2023-11-102014-07-11 by Steve

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 12 July Julius Caesar born, 100BC Most people have some inkling about the death of Julius Caesar – “et tu, Brute” etc – but he was born too, so it seems. In the year 100BC, on this day, to a family of patricians who already bore the cognomen Julia – descendants of the mythical Iulus (or so they liked to say) aka Ascanius, king of Alba Longa, son of Trojan hero Aeneas. Julius Caesar’s given name was Gaius, his family name Julius, the cognomen or family nickname Caesar – because one of his ancestors was born by caesarean section (from the … Read more

Grbavica – Land of My Dreams

2023-10-272014-07-10 by Steve

Luna Mijovic and Mirjana Karanovic in Grabavica: Land of My Dreams

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 11 July The Srebrenica massacre, 1995 On this day in 1995, the killing began of more than 8,000 Bosniaks (ie Bosnian Muslims) in Srebrenica as part of the ongoing Bosnian War. They were killed by the Bosnian Serb Army under the command of General Ratko Mladic. At the time the enclave of Srebrenica was under the safekeeping of a United Nations Protection Force. But the Serbs were well organised, well armed and motivated by what they saw as the loss of territory vital to any continuing hopes of an independent Serbia. And, having blockaded the town for months, on 6 July … Read more

The Tower

2023-10-272014-07-09 by Steve

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 10 July London burns, 1212 Ask any British schoolkid about the Great Fire of London and 1666 is the date they have ready before the question has even been finished. But if you’d asked a schoolchild of 1665 about the Great Fire of London, they’d have offered you one of two dates – either 1135 or 1212. Fires on both of those dates started near London Bridge, built of wood at the time of the 1135 fire and only just rebuilt in stone when the second fire started on 10 July 1212, south of the river in Southwark. The 1212 fire … Read more

The Hunter

2023-10-272014-07-08 by Steve

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 9 July Queen Victoria creates Australia, 1900 On this day in 1900, the world’s sixth largest country was created by the Empress of India, Queen Victoria. It had of course existed since it broke away from Gondwana around 150-180 million years ago, and had been inhabited by various groups of indigenous “Australians” for at least 40,000 years. And collectively the landmass had been called Australia, or a variant on it, since before it had even been discovered – the Terra Australis Incognita (Unknown Land of the South) of legend. But Australia had never existed as a political entity. Starting out initially … Read more