Film of the Day
Duck Soup
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 2 October Groucho Mark born, 1890 On this day in 1890, Julius Henry Marx, one of the 20th century’s most distinctive comedians was born, in New York City. He started off in a vaudeville singing troupe with various members of the family, including his mother at one point. When pure singing didn’t work for them, the Marx brothers started to include comedy in their act, losing non family members on the way and eventually settling down to be the four brothers, Julius, Adolph, Leonard and Milton (aka Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Gummo). Gummo decided to leave and Zeppo, considered the funniest … Read more
The Yacoubian Building
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 6 October Anwar Sadat assassinated, 1981 On this day in 1981, the 62-year-old president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat, was assassinated by an army officer. Hit 37 times, Sadat was dealt the fatal blow by a ricochet bullet. In his 11 years as president he had gone to war against Israel, resulting in the return of the Sinai peninsula to Egypt, then surprised many by formally recognising Israel, the first country to do so from the Arab world (though call an Egyptian an Arab and see what they say). Sadat also broke with his predecessor, Nasser, by instituting a multi-party system of … Read more
What War May Bring
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 31 December President Truman declares the Second World War over, 1946 On this day in 1946, the US President declared that hostilities had come to an end in the Second World War. Whether this means that the war itself ended on that day depends on your terms. The war in Europe ended on VE day (8 May 1945). Some suggest that the war ended with the defeat of Japan and the signing of an armistice, with VJ day (14 August 1945). Still others reckon the war can’t be termed over until the signing of the peace treaty with Japan (1951). And … Read more
Jack Johnson
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 28 September Death of Miles Davis, 1991 On this day in 1991, Miles Davis died. By his own estimation the Juilliard educated trumpeter, band leader and composer changed music “five or six times”. Whether that is true or not, he was there when bebop was being invented, and the same went for hard bop, orchestral jazz, modal jazz, jazz-rock and techno-funk, the last of which he tossed off almost as an afterthought, having come out of retirement after spending the late 1970s indulging his two addictions – drugs and sex. His 1959 album Kind of Blue is the best selling jazz … Read more
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 21 September Publication of The Hobbit, 1937 On this day in 1937, George Allen & Unwin first published a children’s story by John Ronald Ruel Tolkien, the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College, Oxford. It was called The Hobbit: or There and Back Again, and had grown out of pipesmoke gatherings of an informal literary group of Oxford academics called the Inklings, who met at a pub on Tuesday mornings. Perhaps as a reaction against the modernist experimentation of writers such as James Joyce, the Inklings favoured strong narratives and fantasy, both of which are present by the … Read more
The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 29 March First batch of Coca Cola made, 1886 On this day in 1886, Colonel John Pemberton made his first batch of Coca-Cola. It was a non-alcoholic version of his popular Pemberton’s French Wine Coca and he introduced it because Atlanta, where he was based, had just announced the prohibition of alcohol. Pemberton’s French Wine Coca contained alcohol mixed with psychoactive coca, caffeine-containing kola nut and the aromatic aphrodisiac damiana. Pemberton had originally formulated it as a way of weaning himself off an addiction to morphine he’d picked up after being injured in the Civil War. Like the European Vin Mariani, … Read more
Bamboozled
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 6 February The first minstrel show, 1843 On this day in 1843, the Virginia Minstrels led by Dan Emmett became the first full-length black minstrel show in the USA. They’d tested and previewed the show at other venues but it was on 6 February that the show opened at the Bowery Amphitheater, New York. The show had a three-act structure – four guys sitting in a semi-circle, singing songs, telling jokes and just generally being entertaining; followed by a front-of-curtain variety segment; finishing off with a spoof/skit/satire piece. Minstrelsy goes back as far as you care to look – to the … Read more
Page One: Inside the New York Times
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 22 April Pravda first published, 1912 On this day in 1912 (in the Old Style Julian calendar, 5 May in the Gregorian calendar) communist newspaper Pravda was published for the first time. In fact it was first published in 1903 but today’s date marks its first publication in Russia – Vienna had previously been its home. The change of city also meant a change of tone, from being a paper generally interested in the arts to one concerned with politics, economics, workers movements and revolutionary change. It also became the official mouthpiece of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. When the … Read more
Monster
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 9 October Aileen Wuornos executed, 2002 On this day in 2002, the serial killer Aileen Wuornos was killed by lethal injection in Florida. She had been found guilty on six counts of first degree murder. Her father, who she never met, was a schizophrenic who was convicted of sex crimes against children. Aileen’s mother abandoned her and her brother, leaving them to be brought up by her grandfather. Which sounds cosy until we learn that at 13 Aileen was pregnant after having been raped by one of her grandfather’s friends. At 15 she was homeless, and started earning a living as … Read more
Shorts
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 13 June Kat Dennings born, 1986 On this day in 1986, Katherine Litwack was born in Philadelphia to a scientist father and a speech therapist/poet mother. Home-schooled, she graduated high school aged 14, four years after her first acting role in a commercial. By age 13 she’d turned up in an episode of Sex and the City, then had supporting roles in films of increasing weight until she got her own starring role in Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, alongside Michael Cera. Bright and feisty, since then she’s specialised in the sort of girl who can go from geek to goddess … Read more
The Wicker Man
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 21 December The Southern Solstice Today is the Southern solstice. If you are in the northern hemisphere, it marks the point at which the sun rises least above the horizon. If you are in the southern hemisphere, it is midsummer, longest day of the year. And correspondingly the shortest in the north. Towards the equator the effect is minimal, with day and night length tending to match each other the whole year through. But in London, where I am writing this, it means the sun will come up a handful of minutes after 8am and set just before 4pm. Tomorrow, the … Read more
Séraphine
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 13 May Julian of Norwich’s visions, 1373 On this day in 1373, a woman who lived in Norwich recovered from an unspecified illness during which she had started seeing visions of Jesus Christ. The illness had been serious and she had not been expected to survive. As a result of making the unexpected recovery the woman became an anchoress (ie a hermit who lived in a cell attached – anchored – to a church). No one knows what her name was, but because the church she was anchored to was called St Julian’s, she became known as Julian of Norwich. She … Read more
