Film of the Day
The Apple
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 28 November Navy Day, Iran Today is Navy Day in Iran. It’s the day every year when Iranians remember Operation Morvarid, a tactical strike against the Iraqi Navy in 1980, which resulted in much of the Iraqi Navy being destroyed. The Iranians, using American built F-4 Phantoms and F-5 Tiger aircraft, attacked Iraqi airfields, while a task force of the Iranian navy attacked Iraqi oil terminals, and two missile boats blocked the ports of Al Faw and Umm Qasr and started heavy shelling. Careful planning, lightning deployment, plenty of back-up and the strategic defence of all units involved in the attack … Read more
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 4 November Genie the feral child found, 1970 On this day in 1970, the child known as Genie was discovered in Los Angeles, California, USA. Aged around 13, she had spent her life tied to a child’s toilet or tied up in a crib, unable to move except her hands and feet. Brought up by a progressively blind mother in thrall to a mentally ill and violent husband, Genie had been fed on nothing but soft or baby food since birth. Genie was the fourth child born to the couple. The first two had died – one of pneumonia from being … Read more
Far from the Madding Crowd
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 11 January Thomas Hardy dies, 1928 On this day in 1928, the novelist and poet Thomas Hardy died. He was 87 and this Victorian writer had survived into and almost through the age of the formal modernist, such as Joyce, with whom he had little in common, though he was an informing influence on writers with a more earthy, carnal and rural inclination, such as DH Lawrence. Hardy had trained as an architect in the 1860s but didn’t enjoy life in London and as soon as he became established enough he moved back to the West Country (Somerset, then Dorset) where … Read more
Bobby
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 20 November Robert Kennedy born, 1925 On this day in 1925, Robert Kennedy was born. The seventh child and third son of Joseph Kennedy Sr – who had made a fortune out of brokering deals with Hollywood studios and then importing whisky into post-Prohibition America – Robert was, like his father, not particularly academic but, having been gifted a good education by his socially and politically ambitious father, made it to Harvard, then went on to law school. Thanks to the manoeuvring of his father, Robert rose quickly, working first at the US Department of Justice, then for scourge-of-the-communists Joe McCarthy, … Read more
Moon
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 13 November Nasa finds “significant” water on the Moon, 2009 On this day in 2009, Nasa reported that it had found “significant” amounts of water on the Moon. The word “significant” is significant, since scientists had already discovered water on the Moon, but it seemed to be locked in mineral grains – so-called magmatic water, which comes from deep within the Moon’s interior. The 13 November announcement reported the findings of an experiment which crashed a 2,200kg rocket stage, followed by a probe containing a near-infrared spectrometer, into a crater at the Moon’s south pole, where it was hoped ice would … Read more
Sid and Nancy
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 12 October Sid Vicious arrested, 1978 On this day in 1978, Sid Vicious, the former bassist with the punk rock band The Sex Pistols, was arrested for the murder of his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen. The two of them had been staying at the Chelsea Hotel. Vicious had woken up, groggy from a night of heroin-taking, to find his girlfriend dead from a knife wound. “I stabbed her but I never meant to kill her,” he later told police, though he also claimed that she had fallen onto the knife. Vicious, born John Simon Ritchie, was 21 and just over three months … Read more
How I Ended This Summer
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 7 May Vladimir Putin becomes Russian president, 2000 On this day in 2000, former KGB lieutenant Vladimir Putin was elected President of Russia. He had resigned from the KGB on the second day of the attempted KGB coup against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991 – “I immediately decided which side I was on” he later said. From there he went into an administrative career working for the Saint Petersburg mayor’s office, where he was responsible for organising foreign investment. In 1996 he moved to Moscow, where he became responsible for transferring the former assets of the Soviet Union to … Read more
The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T.
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 2 March Dr Seuss born, 1904 On this day in 1904, Theodor Geisel, author and illustrator, was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. He started to sign himself Seuss (his mother’s maiden name) while at Dartmouth College, where he was editor of the humour magazine Jack-O-Lantern. He’d been found guilty of the sin of drinking gin and in order to keep working on the mag after being barred from this extra-curricular activity started using a pseudonym. Having completed his Ivy League education he went to Oxford, in the UK, where he intended to study English. But he gave it up to concentrate on … Read more
City of God
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 1 March Rio De Janeiro founded, 1565 On this day in 1565, the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro was founded. The city’s full name was decided as São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro – in honour of the Portuguese king, Sebastian I, whose patron saint was also a Sebastian, and because it sat on the January River – so named because it had been discovered in 1 January 1502. After gold and diamonds were found in the area, Rio became a major centre of export and the Portuguese moved their Americas administrative centre there in 1763. It became important for … Read more
Frida
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 31 January Leon Trotsky exiled, 1929 On this day in 1929, Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, aka Leon Trotsky, was exiled from the country he had helped create. A member of the victorious Bolsheviks in the revolution of 1917 (having earlier switched allegiance from the Mensheviks), Trotsky rose quickly through the party, proving himself decisively in the civil war against the Mensheviks in 1918. Ideologically he was loosely aligned with Lenin, believed in mass democracy, permanent revolution and internationalism and was opposed to the “socialism in one country” of Stalin. Trotsky found his ideas and those of the Left Opposition increasingly marginalised in … Read more
The Notorious Bettie Page
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 11 December Bettie Page dies, 2008 On this day in 2008, a woman who had devoted the bulk of her life to Christian causes died, aged 85. But for a while in her 1950s heyday, Bettie Page had been “Queen of Pinups”. She left behind a legacy and a look that can be seen all over contemporary culture, from Beyoncé, Katy Perry and Dita von Teese on down, to wherever cute girls play cute. A bright girl at school, and a member of the debating team, she was married and divorced by the age of 24, then set off to find … Read more
Awesome; I Fuckin’ Shot That!
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 4 May Adam Yauch dies, 2012 On this day in 2012, Adam Yauch, one of the Beastie Boys, died, aged 47. He had formed the Beastie Boys in high school in 1981. The band was originally a punk band but, losing two members, original members Yauch and Adam Horovitz gained a third, Michael Diamond, and switched to hip hop in 1984, taking on hip hop names en route – MCA, Ad-Rock and Mike D respectively. A string of singles followed, then came a tour with Madonna, before the band released their debut album Licensed to Ill, which was a monster hit … Read more
