Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood

Film of the Day

Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen

The Queen

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 8 February Elizabeth II proclaimed queen of UK, 1952 On this day in 1952, Elizabeth II was proclaimed queen of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. She had actually become queen two days earlier, on the death of her father, George VI, which she heard about while on a tour of Kenya. Proclamations were read out starting the next day. But according to time zone or geographical location, some parts of the new queen’s realm had not completed the formalities until the day after that. In keeping with protocol, the queen took different titles in different jurisdictions; in some she was … Read more
Shailene Woodley, George Clooney, Amara Miller and Nick Krause

The Descendants

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 21 August Hawaii becomes 50th US state, 1959 Today marks the day when, in 1959, Hawaii became a part of the United States. It came about as a result of revolution which unseated the local Republican party, which had been in power in an almost unbroken run since the country had become a constitutional monarchy in 1887 (though that didn’t last long – it was shortly after annexed by the US in 1898 and became a Territory). The Republicans had close ties to a number of companies known as the Big Five, originally sugar plantation owners and processors, whose oligarchic power … Read more
Oprah and Forest Whitaker

The Butler

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 7 March Police attack Alabama marchers, 1965 On this day in 1965, a day that subsequently became known as Bloody Sunday, state troopers attacked civil rights demonstrators outside the town of Selma, Alabama. Between 500 and 600 demonstrators were marching to protest against the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a black man who had been shot by a policeman after a previous civil rights march on 18 February. Any grouping of more than three civil rights campaigners had been declared illegal by a judge, and the local governor, George Wallace, went on to declare the march a threat to public safety. … Read more
Zahary Baharov and Tanya Ilieva in Zift

Zift

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 22 September The Bulgarian Declaration of Independence, 1908 On this day in 1908, Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria declared his country to be independent of the Ottoman empire and a full country in its own right. Only a few years earlier Bulgaria had de facto absorbed the Ottoman province of East Rumelia as the Turkish empire, which had held so much power in the Balkans, started to lose its grip, particularly following the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, which Turkey lost. The independence of Bulgaria was to some extent the logical progression of 1878’s Congress of Berlin, a grand border-drawing exercise carried out … Read more
Bård Owe in O'Horten

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
The Hobbyhorse: Way of the Morris

Way of the Morris

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 8 May First commemorative period of silence proposed, 1919 On this day in 1919, Edward George Honey, an Australian former soldier and journalist, first proposed the idea of a silence to honour the dead of the Great War. He was living in London at the time, and suggested it in a letter written to the London Evening News. Honey mooted a five minute silence, to commune with “the Glorious Dead who won us peace”, having been upset by the sight of people dancing in the streets on Armistice Day in 1918. Honey’s idea was either taken up by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick, or … Read more
Jack Lemmon in The China Syndrome

The China Syndrome

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 10 October Nuclear plant Windscale catches fire, 1957 On this day in 1957, the nuclear plant at Windscale in North West England caught fire. Hastily conceived and built after the Second World War, Windscale was originally part of Britain’s attempt to build a nuclear bomb. At this point there was very little nuclear expertise in the world and Britain was definitely not in the vanguard. So the plant was poorly designed and badly maintained, leading to a fire in Pile 1 which burned away for 48 hours before anyone realised what was going on. No one knew what to do. Do … Read more
"Say hello to my little friend": Al Pacino in Scarface

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
Naomi Watts and Ed Norton in The Painted Veil

The Painted Veil

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 19 November World Toilet Day Since 2001, 19 November has been World Toilet Day, as decreed by the World Toilet Organization. Considering that certain social groupings in the English-speaking world can barely bring themselves to use the word “toilet” in its most common sense, preferring “lavatory”, “loo” “bathroom” “restroom” or whatever, World Toilet Day’s 2012 slogan, “I give a shit, do you?” is your proverbial breath of fresh, if faintly scented, air. Kicking into limbo the argument that “toilet” is itself a euphemism – that way madness lies – World Toilet Day has a very simple agenda: to eliminate the taboo … Read more
Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity

Double Indemnity

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 18 April Miklós Rózsa born, 1907 On this day in 1907, the celebrated and prolific film composer Miklós Rózsa was born, in Budapest, Hungary. His mother was a pianist and his father was a wealthy industrialist. Young Miklós was performing in public and composing at the age of eight. After studying in Leipzig, Germany, he moved to London, where fellow Hungarian, the producer Alexander Korda gave him his first film to score, 1937’s Knight without Armour. Rózsa went to Hollywood with Korda to work on The Thief of Bagdad, then went on to work on several Billy Wilder films, including Five … Read more
Brendan Gleeson plays Martin Cahill in The General

The General

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 12 February Art thieves steal Munch’s The Scream, 1994 On this day in 1994, thieves broke into the National Gallery, Oslo, and stole the Edvard Munch painting The Scream. It is actually one of a number of so-named works of art, there being four different Screams in a variety of media, plus a number of lithographic prints struck by Munch himself. The one stolen on the night in question was in tempera on cardboard and was in a less secure part of the gallery – it had been moved as part of celebrations held to mark the opening of the winter … Read more
Rudy Youngblood as Jaguar Paw in Apocalypto

Apocalypto

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 16 November Pizarro captures Atahualpa at the Battle of Cajamarca, 1532 On this day in 1532, a Spanish expedition led by Francisco Pizarro, whose purpose was expressly to conquer the Inca Empire of South America, captured the Inca Emperor, Atahualpa. As Pizarro arrived in the region, Atahualpa had been waging a civil war against his brother Huáscar. Atahualpa’s generals had just defeated him, killed him and his family and seized his capital, Cuzco. Accompanied by 80,000 troops, Atahualpa was en route for Cuzco to survey the spoils of war. He was resting in the city of Cajamarca when he learned that … Read more

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