Steve

4 November 2013-11-04

2022-11-222013-11-01 by Steve

James Franco, Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson, Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel and Danny McBride in This Is the End

Out in the UK This Week This Is the End (Sony, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD) Armageddon, aka The Rapture, arrives at a big Hollywood party thrown by James Franco in an in-jokey comedy whose USP is that everyone involved plays a version of themselves. The big names are Jonah Hill, Seth Rogen and James Franco (natch), with Jay Baruchel as our entry point, playing the sort of Jay Baruchel who is slightly intimidated by the bigger stars. Cameos are the big thing there – Rihanna pops in for a minute, Michael Cera has fun with his image as a total dude being fellated and rimmed simultaneously by a pair of babes while doing a … Read more

South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut

2023-10-302013-11-01 by Steve

Saddam Hussein and Satan get cosy in South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 2 November Lady Chatterley Trial verdict, 1960 On this day in 1960, a jury in the trial of Regina versus Penguin Books found the UK publisher not guilt of obscenity. The trial against DH Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover was brought under the provision of the Obscene Publications Act, which had only come into force the previous year and was intended to more clearly mark off pornography from works of artistic and scientific merit. And so the trial hinged on whether Lawrence’s 1928 novel did indeed possess artistic merit, or whether its litany of rude words and rude acts would tend … Read more

Das Boot

2023-10-302013-10-31 by Steve

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 1 November Death of Jacques Piccard, 2008 On this day in 2008, Jacques Piccard, one of the pioneers of really deep deep-sea exploration, died, aged 86. The son of Auguste Piccard, a balloonist who had ascended higher than any other human in the early 1930s, Jacques initially started out working on bathyscaphes as a favour to help out his father, who had switched from high altitude to the depths. Together, between 1948 and 1955 they built three bathyscaphes. But Jacques was only a hobbyist – by day he was a professor of economics. It was only after governments started to become … Read more

North by Northwest

2023-10-302013-10-30 by Steve

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 31 October Mount Rushmore completed, 1941 On this day in 1941, the sculpture of four US presidents – George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln – was finished on a granite face near Keystone, South Dakota. Sculpted from a mountain known to the Lakota Sioux as the Six Grandfathers, the depiction of the four presidents was masterminded by Gutzon Borglum and carved (after dynamiting to remove the big stuff) by up to 400 workers, each head measuring around 60 feet (18 metres). The gigantic frieze was conceived and created for reasons of promoting tourism, rather than overarching patriotism, and … Read more

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

2023-10-302013-10-29 by Steve

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 30 October The Bridge over the Bosphorus completed, 1973 It is one of the polite fictions of what used to be called the civilised world that Europe is a continent. Looked at objectively, with space goggles on, the continent is more properly Eurasia, Europe getting special treatment because of its historical importance. One of the “border” points of Europe has always been the Black Sea, the point where it empties out into the Mediterranean being one of the great dividing lines between Europe and Asia (the Urals, Ural River, Caspian and Caucasus Mountains forming the rest of the dividing line). Thus … Read more

Smash & Grab: The Story of the Pink Panthers

2023-10-302013-10-28 by Steve

Chief Inspector Yan Glassey and the hanging Pink Panther in his office

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 29 October Star of India stolen, 1964 On this day in 1964, the famous Star of India gemstone was stolen from the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Though not the biggest gem in the world, this blue-green 563.35 carat (112.67g) golfball-sized sapphire is one of the most famous, thanks in large part to its distinctive markings – a star on either side of the stone. The robbery was simplicity itself. During the day the thieves unlocked a bathroom window and used it to climb back into the museum later at night – the burglar alarm system wasn’t working … Read more

L’argent

2023-10-302013-10-27 by Steve

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 28 October Black Monday, 1929 On this day in 1929, the Dow Jones index fell by 13% in a day. After nine years of an exuberantly rising market, during which time the index had risen tenfold, some economists had started predicting an end to boom and bust – “stock prices have risen to what looks like a permanently high plateau” said Yale’s Irving Fisher at the time. Theoretical neoclassical economists notwithstanding, the New York market tumbled on 18 September 1929. Two days later in London the flamboyant entrepreneur Clarence Hatry confessed to fraud and forgery, having propped up his underfinanced companies … Read more

Viva Riva!

2022-11-222013-10-26 by Steve

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 27 October Creation of Zaire, 1971 On this day in 1971, Zaire was created, and continued in existence until 1997. Previously the country had been called the Congo Free State, the Belgian Congo, Congo-Léopoldville and Congo-Kinshasa. It would later become the Democratic Republic of the Congo (not to be confused with the Republic of the Congo, its neighbour). Whatever its name, it is the second largest country in Africa, with 250 ethnic groups speaking over 700 local languages, hence the importance of French as a lingua franca. The country’s name was changed from Republic of Congo-Léopoldville by Mobutu Sese Seko (born … Read more

Headhunters

2023-10-302013-10-25 by Steve

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 26 October Norway becomes independent, 1905 On this day in 1905, Norway became independent from Sweden. An independent country during the Viking and post-Viking era, Norway’s power declined after 1265, with the Black Death and competition from the North European trading and economic union the Hanseatic League forcing it out of its eminent position. In 1380 it was absorbed into a union with Denmark which stayed in place for four centuries (the country was formally dissolved in 1536, then re-established in 1660, though it continued to recognise itself as being Norwegian, and had standalone institutions and laws). Remarkably, this union was … Read more

28 October 2013-10-28

2022-11-222013-10-24 by Steve

July Delpy and Ethan Hawke in Before Midnight

Out in the UK This Week Before Midnight (Sony, cert 15, DVD) After Before Sunrise (1995) and Before Sunset (2004), this is round three for cinema’s most romantic couple, as played by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. They’re now married with two kids and living in France, but we catch up with them holidaying in Greece where they have the time and space to do what they do best – talk – while we get to watch and wonder. In round one he met her on a train journey through Europe and they fell for each other. The film’s USP was the way Delpy and Hawke’s characters interacted – they talked the … Read more