Film of the Day
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 12 January Caves of Nerja discovered, 1959 On this day in 1959, the Caves of Nerja were discovered. Or rediscovered. Stretching for about 5 kilometres close to the town of Nerja, Malaga, Spain, the system was entered by five friends who decided to follow a flock of bats into a locally well known small opening in the ground. This led to a narrow passage. And this led to a huge cavernous grotto now known as the Cascade Room. With the lights they had available they were able to make out the enormity of their find. They pressed on, accompanied by the … Read more
The Road: A Story of Life & Death
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 25 April Red Hat Day Today is Red Hat Day. It is celebrated by members of the Red Hat Society, membership of which is open to any woman aged 50 or over. It was started in 1997 when Sue Ellen Cooper of Orange County, California, USA, gave a friend of hers a distinctive red bowler hat as a 55th birthday present, along with a copy of the poem Warning, by Jenny Joseph. Its opening lines are “When I am an old woman I shall wear purple/With a red hat that doesn’t go and doesn’t suit me.” The hat, colour scheme and … 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
Theatre of Blood
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 21 May Sam Jaffe born, 1901 On this day in 1901, one of the great characters of Hollywood was born, in Harlem, New York. Sam Jaffe, not to be confused with the actor of the same name, dropped out of high school and, thanks to his brother-in-law being a producer, got a job as an office boy at Paramount. He rose quickly and by 22 was production manager on films directed by such luminaries as Lubitsch, Von Sternberg and Mamoulian. Having dated Clara Bow and saved Paramount studios financially by inventing the “night for day” system of shooting – which used … Read more
Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 26 December USSR formally dissolved, 1991 And suddenly, on this day in 1991, the Soviet Union suddenly simply ceased to exist. No nuclear bombing by the USA, no internal revolutionary rupture, it just shut up shop. The previous day President Mikhail Gorbachev had unfussily declared his office extinct and handed over the launch codes of the USSR’s nuclear weapons to Boris Yeltsin, the President of Russia. It was the logical final step of the process of glasnost (literally: openness) and perestroika (restructuring) initiated by Gorbachev in 1985, which had led to the increase of nationalist movements in Warsaw Pact states. This … Read more
Los Angeles Plays Itself
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 04 September Founding of Los Angeles, 1781 On this day in 1781 a group of 44 people (plus four soldiers) known as the Pobladores founded the “city” of Los Angeles. Or as it was known then El Peublo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles sobre el Río Porciúncula (the Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels on the Porciuncula River) – California (or Las Californias) being still part of the Spanish empire in those days. The group comprised 11 men, 11 women and 22 children, and were a racially mixed bunch who had been recruited with difficulty in … 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
The Song Remains the Same
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 13 July Live Aid, 1985 On this day in 1985, some of the world’s most popular music acts got together at Wembley Stadium, London, UK, and John F Kennedy Stadium, Philadelphia, USA. Live Aid was a spin-off from the single Do They Know It’s Christmas, a song co-written by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure after Geldof had seen footage of the 1984 famine in Ethiopia. Expected to make around £70,000, the single in fact made around £8 million. The shows, in summer the following year, were designed to capitalise on what seemed to be the public’s happiness to dig deep if … Read more
Since Otar Left
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 15 August Cave city of Vardzia consecrated, 1185 On this day in 1185, the cave monastery of Vardzia, on the slopes of the Erusheti Mountain in Southern Georgia, was consecrated by Queen Tamar of Georgia. Building on the site, about 19 tiers high, had started a couple of years earlier, but excavation shows that people had been living there since the Bronze Age. Tamar was a warrior queen and dedicated the site to the Virgin Mary after successes against the Muslim invader. Because of its height and its construction in the rock, the site was held to be as impregnable “as … Read more
The American
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 6 May George Clooney born, 1961 On this day in 1961, George Timothy Clooney was born in Lexington, Kentucky. Raised a Catholic in a showbiz family (father a news anchor, aunt singer Rosemary Clooney, mother a beauty queen), George was a bright student. He was also adept at sport and at one point wanted to become a professional baseball player. Instead he studied broadcast journalism, taking small roles as an extra on TV to make a bit of money on the side, turning up in shows such as Centennial and The Golden Girls before getting a semi-regular gig on the sitcom … Read more
If Not Us, Who?
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 5 September Kidnapping of Hanns-Martin Schleyer, 1977 On this day in 1977, the West German businessman Hanns-Martin Schleyer – a former SS officer who had risen to post-war prominence in the country’s employers organisation – was kidnapped in Cologne by the militant urban guerrilla group Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang, as part of what became know as the German Autumn. His kidnappers were hoping to use him, at least partly, as collateral to force the government to release jailed members of their gang, including prominent faces Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin. While the gang moved Schleyer around, from … Read more
The Lion in Winter
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 03 September Richard I of England crowned at Westminster, 1189 On this day in 1189 one of the most famous English kings was crowned in Westminster Abbey in London. Known as the Lionheart, because of his great courage in battle, he is often viewed romantically, especially if seen through the prism of the Robin Hood stories, in which his half brother John always gets the bad guy role and Richard is the paragon of virtue. Richard spoke French, not English (he was also the Duke of Normandy, Aquitaine, Nantes, Anjou, Gascony and so on – the idea of monarchy and nation being … Read more
