Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood

Film of the Day

Charles Hawtrey in Carry On Nurse

Carry On Nurse

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 5 July UK National Health Service created, 1948 On this day in 1948, Britain’s National Health Service came into being. Based on the recommendations of 1942’s Beveridge Report, which proposed “comprehensive health and rehabilitation services for prevention and cure of disease” it was designed to be funded through taxation and free at the point of delivery. It is in essence a health insurance  and provision system administered and run by the government. It ran as a unified system in the UK until 1998, when its various functions were devolved to the regional “national” governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Total … Read more
Mads Mikkelsen (centre) in Valhalla Rising

Valhalla Rising

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 25 September The Battle of Stamford Bridge, 1066 On this day in 1066, an Anglo Saxon army led by King Harold Godwinson went into battle against a Norwegian army led by Harald Hardrada. The English (ie Anglo Saxon) army numbered about 15,000, the invading army around 9,000. As the numbers suggest, the English won, though at a cost of at least five thousand men (estimates put the losses on the other side at around six thousand, or two thirds of the army). Why does this battle matter? For a start it marks the last time the Anglo Saxons would win anything … Read more
Lola Créton and Clément Métayer in Something in the Air

Something in the Air

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 30 May Charles de Gaulle dissolves the National Assembly, 1968 On this day in 1968, French President Charles de Gaulle, in the face of increasing street protests against his government and his personal style, dissolved parliament. The previous day he had fled the country, telling his prime minister, Georges Pompidou, “I am the past, you are the future. I embrace you.” No one knew where he had gone. With strikes breaking out all over the country and running battles taking place on the streets of Paris, revolution was in the air. Government officials were burning documents and ministers were arming themselves … Read more
Emilio Estevez and Harry Dean Stanton in Repo Man

Repo Man

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 4 February Radium synthesised, 1936 The element radium had been discovered by Marie Sklodowska-Curie and her husband Pierre in 1898. They had taken a ton of pitchblende and from it separated out a tenth of a gram of radium chloride. From that, by 1910, Marie Curie had managed to isolate pure radium, along the way coining the word “radioactivity”. Sources for this useful metal (it was what made luminous watch faces and instrument dials glow) were scarce and when the Austrian government banned further export of silver-mine tailings, the search was on to find other radioactive elements, and to produce radium … Read more
A spirit walks the forest in Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 23 October Chulalongkorn Day, Thailand Every year on 23 October in Thailand, the country celebrates Chulalongkorn day. It is named after Phra bat Somdet Phra Poraminthra Maha Chulalongkorn Phra Chunla Chom Klao Chao Yu Hua also known as Rama V, who was the fifth monarch of Siam. Chulalongkorn was driven by a desire to be an actual ruler of his country, rather than a puppet dangling on the end of various aristocratic intrigues. In fact even his ascension to the throne of his country, aged 15, was at least in part down to aristocratic chicanery, since his father’s instructions on his … Read more
Malcolm McDowell and Mirella D'Angelo cavort in Caligula

Caligula

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 24 January Caligula assassinated, AD41 On this day in AD41, or 41BCE, the Roman emperor Caligula was assassinated. His name was in fact Gaius Augustus Germanicus and Caligula was his nickname – meaning “soldier’s little boot” – picked up while he was a child accompanying his general father on campaigns. Caligula arrived as ruler of Rome by a tortuous, intrigue-filled and bloody route and worked hard once in power to increase the autocratic power of the emperor. This did not sit well with those who still saw Rome as a republic. Nor did Caligula’s spending of huge amounts of money on … Read more
Rooney Mara and Channing Tatum in Side Effects

Side Effects

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 19 February Damages for thalidomide children, 1968 On this day in 1968, the High Court in the UK presided over a settlement to 62 children born with deformities caused by the drug thalidomide. Thalidomide had been first marketed in 1957 in West Germany as a sedative and was later sold over the counter as a cure for morning sickness in pregnant women. Within months there was a huge increase in the number of babies born with missing and deformed limbs, deformed eyes, bowels, and hearts. Around 40% of these children died. The story repeated itself in the UK, Australia and New … Read more
Aggeliki Papoulia in Alps

Alps (aka Alpeis)

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 3 August Jesse Owens wins the 100 metres, 1936 On this day in 1936, Jesse Owens won the 100 metres at a race meeting hosted by Adolf Hitler, a man who believed the black man was inferior to the white man. It was one of four gold medals Owens won at the Berlin Olympic Games of 1936, and it put the hat on a great year for Owens. He’d set three world records in less than an hour the previous year at the Big Ten track meeting, which has since been called “the greatest 45 minutes in sport”. Hitler did not … Read more
Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood

The Adventures of Robin Hood

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 15 June King John “signs” Magna Carta, 1215 On this day in 1215, the king of England put his seal to Magna Carta (the Great Charter) at Runnymede, near Windsor, England. It is in effect a bill of rights, one forced on the king by feudal barons unhappy with the levels of taxation, John’s abysmal record when it came to fighting wars and his supine relationship to the Pope. Designed as part of a powerplay to unseat the king, it proposes limits to the power of the king, making that power more contractual in nature, and denies the king the power … Read more
Louise Bourgoin in The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 31 May Ramesses II becomes pharaoh of Egypt, 1279BC On this day in 1279BC, the king often called Ramesses (or Rameses, or Ramses) the Great, became pharaoh of Egypt. Known as Ozymandias by the Greeks, the pharaoh most remembered by history was a great military campaigner and a great builder of cities, temples and monuments. He became pharaoh in his late teens and ruled for the following 66 years. The Egyptian army consisted of about 100,000 men, and he used it to wage war against the Hittites and Nubians, routed the Sherden sea pirates who were harrying ships on the Mediterranean … Read more
Richard Burton in The Spy Who Came In from the Cold

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 19 December Birth of Leonid Brezhnev, 1906 On this day in 1906, the very last old-school leader of the USSR was born. Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev was born into Tsarist Russia, the son of workers. Thanks to an education at a technical school he became a metallurgist, joined Komsomol (the Communist youth movement) and started to make his way in the party, becoming a political commissar in a tank factory by the age of 30, and eventually party secretary in Dnipropetrovsk, a Ukrainian city intimately connected to the arms industry. As a result of Stalin’s purges in the late 1930s, Brezhnev advanced … Read more
Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles in Ray

Ray

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 23 September Birth of Ray Charles, 1930 On this day in 1930, Ray Charles was born. Six times married, the father of 12 children, Charles also found time to help create what is now known as soul music, a fusion of gospel, jazz and blues, a prime example being his song Georgia. Sighted at birth, Charles started losing his vision when he was five and was completely blind by the age of seven, thanks to glaucoma. Charles was playing in bars in his early teenage years, by the time he was 19 he was having his first hits. Ten years later, … Read more

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