| MovieSteve

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

2023-11-102014-07-11 by Steve

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 12 July Julius Caesar born, 100BC Most people have some inkling about the death of Julius Caesar – “et tu, Brute” etc – but he was born too, so it seems. In the year 100BC, on this day, to a family of patricians who already bore the cognomen Julia – descendants of the mythical Iulus (or so they liked to say) aka Ascanius, king of Alba Longa, son of Trojan hero Aeneas. Julius Caesar’s given name was Gaius, his family name Julius, the cognomen or family nickname Caesar – because one of his ancestors was born by caesarean section (from the … Read more

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

2023-10-302013-09-20 by Steve

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