Film of the Day
Touch of Evil
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 10 May Rock around the Clock released, 1954 On this day in 1954, Bill Haley and His Comets released the single Rock around the Clock. It wasn’t the first rock and roll record – that was probably Rocket 88 by Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm (though the label credited Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats, Brenston being Turner’s sax player) – and it was only moderately successful, hitting number 23 on the Billboard chart before dropping out completely after one week. Written in 1952 by Max Freedman and James Myers, it was first recorded by Sonny Dae and His Knights. Haley’s … Read more
Inland Empire
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 9 February Carole King born, 1942 On this day in 1942, the singer/songwriter Carole King was born, as Carole Klein, in New York. A prodigious talent who was playing piano at four, she had formed her own band in high school. Writing songs from her early teens, she was a professional while still in college, where one of her ex boyfriends, Neil Sedaka wrote the hit Oh Carol for her in 1959. It was however Jerry Goffin she married and went into songwriting partnership with. Together they wrote Take Good Care of My Baby, Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow and … Read more
O’Horten
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 27 June Stratford Martyrs burned, 1556 On this day in 1556, one group of Christians burned another group of Christians at the stake, for being Protestants, in London, England. Eleven of them were men, two women (one of them pregnant), and all had been found guilty of heresy. Drawn from the skilled labouring classes – brewers, weaver, tailors and the like – the unlucky 13 had been brought in from the surrounding counties of Essex and Hertfordshire to London where they stood trial in an ecclesiastical court presided over by Doctor Darbyshire, representing the Bishop of London, Edmund Bonner (known as … Read more
Midnight Cowboy
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 24 March Robert Koch announces discovery of the cause of TB, 1882 On this day in 1882, Robert Koch announced that he had worked out what was causing tuberculosis, a disease so devastating that it went by several names – phthisis and consumption were also common. Until Koch started his research, it was widely believed that TB was a hereditary disease. But though Koch had observed that TB would often spread through families, its epidemiology was not uniform – poorer families tended to get it more than richer ones. We now know that TB is caused by a slow-growing bacterium, mycobacterium … Read more
George Washington
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 14 December George Washington dies, 1799 On this day in 1799, George Washington died. George Washington was the first president of the USA, a commander in chief of the army in the war of independence and was also one of the Founding Fathers, the group who signed the Declaration of Independence, launched the new country into a revolutionary war, and then drafted the Constitution. His presidency was marked by attempts to promote the federal government and national institutions, to get taxation on a fair basis, to avoid wars in foreign lands, to pay down the national debt and to use the … Read more
Borat
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 13 October Sacha Baron Cohen born, 1971 On this day in 1971, Sacha Noam Baron Cohen was born in London, England. While studying history at Christ’s College, Cambridge, Baron Cohen started to appear on stage in productions by the university’s Amateur Dramatic Club, whose past members include the actors Rachel Weisz and Ian McKellen and the director Richard Eyre. After leaving university, Baron Cohen worked as a model and as a presenter on local TV stations, before developing a character called Kristo, a gormless TV reporter (and forerunner of Borat). By 2002 he had developed the Super Greg character, a useless … Read more
Wag the Dog
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 26 January President Clinton denies “sexual relations” with Monica Lewinsky, 1998 On this day in 1998, a serving president of the United States responded to allegations that he had had sex with a woman other than his wife. “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Monica Lewinsky” said Bill Clinton at the end of a White House press conference, with his wife standing beside him. Unfortunately for Clinton, there had been what most people would call a sexual relationship, and Lewinsky had a blue dress stained with the president’s semen to prove it. Later in the year, boxed into … Read more
Scarface
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 11 September Brian De Palma born, 1940 On this day in 1940, Brian De Palma was born. De Palma is one of the key figures in the New Hollywood group that stormed the citadel in the 1970s. If 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde marked the beginning, 1977’s Star Wars saw the beginning of the end for the golden ten-year run of the New Hollywood gang, after which 1940s Hollywood certainties seemed to re-establish themselves and the selling of spin-off action figures became too lucrative to ignore. In that short sweet flowering, the careers of Scorsese, Coppola, Bogdanovich, Spielberg, Lucas, Rafelson and Schrader … Read more
Man Bites Dog
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 4 October Belgium is created, 1830 On this day in 1830, the state and kingdom of Belgium was created, after a revolution against the rule of King William I which saw the southern, mostly Catholic, significantly French-speaking states break away from the largely protestant, significantly Flemish-speaking United Kingdom of the Netherlands. Though ostensibly linguistic and religious in origin, the revolution was in fact fuelled by economics – the “Belgian” territories were more populous though far poorer, more rural, less well represented in government, than the northern “Dutch” territories. On being granted independence by the Treaty of London in 1830, the Belgian … Read more
Elf
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 17 December Saturnalia first celebrated, 497BC On this day in 497BC, the Romans consecrated the new Temple of Saturn and celebrated the feast of Saturnalia for the first time. Saturn was believed to be the god who had ruled in the golden age, when labour could be carried out without back-breaking work, when human beings were not plagued by iniquitous social division. The festival was celebrated with a sacrifice, feasting, partying and gift-giving and continued from 17 to the 23 December. It was a time of free speech and role reversal, of dressing up and hats, of masks and other disguises. … Read more
Last Train Home
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 8 November Chinese engineers divert the Yangtze river, 1997 On this day in 1997, Chinese engineers diverted the Yangtze River, China’s longest, in order to clear the way for construction of the world’s biggest dam. The Three Gorges Dam was designed to announce the return of China as a player on the world stage – 185 metres high, two kilometres wide, costing $23 billion, able to withstand an earthquake of 7 on the Richter scale, generating the power of 15 nuclear power stations, a tamer of the Yangtze’s catastrophic floods. The project was not just huge in engineering terms but had … Read more
The War Game
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 21 November Einstein publishes his mass/energy equation, 1905 On this day in 1905, his annus mirabilis, Albert Einstein published a paper in the Annalen Der Physik (Annals of Physics). Together with his earlier three papers that year, on Photoelectric Effect, Brownian motion and Special Relativity, his 1905 papers laid the foundation of modern physics. The November paper’s title was Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content? In it Einstein suggested that mass and energy were the same thing, expressing the relationship between the two thus: “If a body gives off the energy in the form of radiation, … Read more
