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Precisely, what is as 'ISA'? | What is an ISA?
What is an ISA?
Between now and the beginning of April is a crucial time for the nationâs savers.
What is an ISA?
Why? Because this is the window of opportunity left to cash in on our tax-free ISA allowances.
The tax advantages of these kinds of savings accounts make them hands-down the best way for most people to save.
But youâll need to know what an ISA is before you can understand the benefits.
So here is our five-minute guide to everything you need to know about ISAs.
What is an ISA?
Whatâs special about an ISA (which stands for an Individual Savings Account) is that it does not charge tax on the interest you earn. This is up to a certain annual limit which we will come to later.
In technical speak an ISA is a savings account which is held in a tax-free wrapper.
For higher-rate taxpayers, this means avoiding income tax at 40% on any savings interest, while for savers in the basic-rate tax band it provides a saving of 20%.
Those few paying additional rate tax will avoid tax on interest at 50% (though this will fall to 45% from the next tax year).
If you use the stocks and shares part of your ISA (which we will explain later) you will not have to pay Capital Gains Tax on your profits. When it comes to income tax, if you are a higher or an additional rate taxpayer, you will not have to pay those relative top slices of income tax on your dividends.
How much can I pay into an ISA?
For this tax year (up to April 5), the total ISA allowance per adult is £11,280.
You can only put up to £5,640 of this amount into a cash ISA, though.
The remaining £5,640 will have to be invested in an equity or stocks and shares, ISA.
From next tax year, the ISA allowance will increase to a total £11,520 of which £5,760 can be held in cash.
Junior ISAs, which replaced the Child Trust Fund in 2011, can hold up to £3,600 this tax year (going up to £3,720 next tax year) and the money can be split between cash and stocks and shares.
When and how can I invest?
Whether you want to use your full stocks and shares ISA allowance or just your cash allowance, you only have until April 5 to do either for the current 2012/2013 tax year.
You cannot roll it over to the next tax year, so it will be lost forever if you do not.
It is also worth noting that any money paid into your cash ISA and then withdrawn will still count towards your ISA allowance.
So if you paid the maximum £5,640 into your account and then withdraw £1,000, you will not be able to pay any more in before the end of the tax year due to this rule.
What different sorts of ISAs are available?
As long as you stay within the limits described above, you can open one cash ISA, and one stocks and shares ISA each tax year.
As indicated, only up to half of your allowance can be put into a cash ISA. Just like with standard savings accounts, you can choose to take an easy access ISA with a variable rate of interest, or lock in your money for a pre-set term at a (usually) more competitive fixed rate.
For qualifying children, parents can also invest in a Junior ISA that will be free of tax until the child reaches 18 and the money becomes theirs. Bear in mind these accounts are always held in the childâs name.
Do I have to split my money between cash and stocks and shares?
You do not have to split your ISA allowance between cash and other assets.
It is possible to invest the full £11,280 allowance in a stocks and shares ISA, within which you can choose the underlying investments â just like with a personal pension, for example.
Assets that can be held in a stocks and shares ISA include unit trusts, investment trusts, open ended investment companies, bonds, individual shares and exchange traded funds.
Remember, though, that while you can move money from a cash ISA into a stocks and shares ISA, you cannot transfer funds from an equity account to a cash one.
Can I switch to a better ISA if I already have one?
It is possible to transfer money invested in previous tax years between both cash and stocks and shares ISAs without losing the tax-free status.
However, you need to be careful not to physically withdraw the funds as this will result in you losing the tax breaks, just as you would if you withdrew a sum of money from the account.
Rather than closing your existing ISA and then looking to move the money into another account, you must therefore arrange a transfer with the provider to which you want to switch.
As not all accounts will accept transfers, this is something to bear in mind when comparing deals, as is the fact that some providers charge exit fees.
In the next few weeks, savings providers will be unveiling their menu of ISA deals as the new tax-year approaches. You can keep abreast of these and shop around for the best deals on MoneySupermarketâs ISA channel .
Please note: Any rates or deals mentioned in this article were available at the time of writing. Click on a highlighted product and apply direct.
| Individual Savings Account |
Which sign of the zodiac represents the period May 21st. to June 21st.? | What is an ISA?
What is an ISA?
Between now and the beginning of April is a crucial time for the nationâs savers.
What is an ISA?
Why? Because this is the window of opportunity left to cash in on our tax-free ISA allowances.
The tax advantages of these kinds of savings accounts make them hands-down the best way for most people to save.
But youâll need to know what an ISA is before you can understand the benefits.
So here is our five-minute guide to everything you need to know about ISAs.
What is an ISA?
Whatâs special about an ISA (which stands for an Individual Savings Account) is that it does not charge tax on the interest you earn. This is up to a certain annual limit which we will come to later.
In technical speak an ISA is a savings account which is held in a tax-free wrapper.
For higher-rate taxpayers, this means avoiding income tax at 40% on any savings interest, while for savers in the basic-rate tax band it provides a saving of 20%.
Those few paying additional rate tax will avoid tax on interest at 50% (though this will fall to 45% from the next tax year).
If you use the stocks and shares part of your ISA (which we will explain later) you will not have to pay Capital Gains Tax on your profits. When it comes to income tax, if you are a higher or an additional rate taxpayer, you will not have to pay those relative top slices of income tax on your dividends.
How much can I pay into an ISA?
For this tax year (up to April 5), the total ISA allowance per adult is £11,280.
You can only put up to £5,640 of this amount into a cash ISA, though.
The remaining £5,640 will have to be invested in an equity or stocks and shares, ISA.
From next tax year, the ISA allowance will increase to a total £11,520 of which £5,760 can be held in cash.
Junior ISAs, which replaced the Child Trust Fund in 2011, can hold up to £3,600 this tax year (going up to £3,720 next tax year) and the money can be split between cash and stocks and shares.
When and how can I invest?
Whether you want to use your full stocks and shares ISA allowance or just your cash allowance, you only have until April 5 to do either for the current 2012/2013 tax year.
You cannot roll it over to the next tax year, so it will be lost forever if you do not.
It is also worth noting that any money paid into your cash ISA and then withdrawn will still count towards your ISA allowance.
So if you paid the maximum £5,640 into your account and then withdraw £1,000, you will not be able to pay any more in before the end of the tax year due to this rule.
What different sorts of ISAs are available?
As long as you stay within the limits described above, you can open one cash ISA, and one stocks and shares ISA each tax year.
As indicated, only up to half of your allowance can be put into a cash ISA. Just like with standard savings accounts, you can choose to take an easy access ISA with a variable rate of interest, or lock in your money for a pre-set term at a (usually) more competitive fixed rate.
For qualifying children, parents can also invest in a Junior ISA that will be free of tax until the child reaches 18 and the money becomes theirs. Bear in mind these accounts are always held in the childâs name.
Do I have to split my money between cash and stocks and shares?
You do not have to split your ISA allowance between cash and other assets.
It is possible to invest the full £11,280 allowance in a stocks and shares ISA, within which you can choose the underlying investments â just like with a personal pension, for example.
Assets that can be held in a stocks and shares ISA include unit trusts, investment trusts, open ended investment companies, bonds, individual shares and exchange traded funds.
Remember, though, that while you can move money from a cash ISA into a stocks and shares ISA, you cannot transfer funds from an equity account to a cash one.
Can I switch to a better ISA if I already have one?
It is possible to transfer money invested in previous tax years between both cash and stocks and shares ISAs without losing the tax-free status.
However, you need to be careful not to physically withdraw the funds as this will result in you losing the tax breaks, just as you would if you withdrew a sum of money from the account.
Rather than closing your existing ISA and then looking to move the money into another account, you must therefore arrange a transfer with the provider to which you want to switch.
As not all accounts will accept transfers, this is something to bear in mind when comparing deals, as is the fact that some providers charge exit fees.
In the next few weeks, savings providers will be unveiling their menu of ISA deals as the new tax-year approaches. You can keep abreast of these and shop around for the best deals on MoneySupermarketâs ISA channel .
Please note: Any rates or deals mentioned in this article were available at the time of writing. Click on a highlighted product and apply direct.
| i don't know |
What is the name of Britain's largest National Park? | The Complete Guide To: Britain's national parks | The Independent
UK
The Complete Guide To: Britain's national parks
To mark the 60th anniversary of the legislation that provided protection to our most precious landscapes, Simon Calder celebrates the wealth of history and nature on our doorstep
Friday 14 August 2009 23:00 BST
Click to follow
The Complete Guide To: Britain's national parks
1/11
Alamy
Where should I start?
On the hill where the campaign for free access to Britain's wilderness began. In 1932, much of the UK's outdoors were out-of-bounds. It took the courage of thousands of people, traipsing from the Midlands industrial belt and the Lancashire mill towns to the raw heart of England, to open up the countryside. They took part in a "mass trespass" of Kinder Scout in Derbyshire, the highest point in the middle of Britain – standing 2,088 feet above sea level. One of the organisers was sentenced to six months in prison for his part, but eventually the case for access to the countryside was recognised with the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act of 1949. Two years later, Britain's first National Park, the Peak District, was created.
It started a trend: today about 10 per cent of Britain's land area is protected within the 14 National Parks (the 15th, the South Downs, is in the process of creation). Unlike in some countries, the land within the boundaries of each National Park is mostly in private hands. Restrictions on its use help preserve some of the remaining open space in this crowded country.
They get more than 100 million visitors each year – and the Peak District is said to be the second-most visited National Park in the world after Mount Fuji in Japan. Today, the Park offers scenery ranging from bleak hilltops to deep gorges, and from awesome to ornate. You can ascend Kinder Scout by taking the A57 Manchester-Sheffield road to the point where it meets the Pennine Way, the 267-mile long-distance footpath along the spine of northern England. Head south on the path. Flagstones assist the climb, but in a landscape flattened by aeons of lively weather, identifying the summit is tricky: search for the small triangle that marks the highest point. Then look at the surroundings: on a clear day the barren peak of the Peak District bestows a magnificent 360-degree view. To the east, valleys snake towards South Yorkshire, to the west Victorian railway viaducts direct your eye towards the towers of Manchester.
Descend from here via Jacob's Ladder to the softer, rounder landscapes of southern Derbyshire and the village of Edale – the end (or start) of the Pennine Way. At the Old Nag's Head Inn (01433 670291) and the Rambler Inn (01433 670268) you can find beer, bed and breakfast.
Something less demanding?
Southern softies can head for the low-rise National Parks nearest to London: the Broads in Norfolk and the New Forest.
The fine city of Norwich is the gateway to the Broads, which comprise a series of shallow artificial lakes. The Romans first cut peat for fuel; in the Middle Ages, local monasteries began to excavate the stuff as a profitable side-industry. As sea levels rose, the pits they dug began to flood. Despite the construction of dykes and windmills, the flooding continued and resulted in the Broads landscapes of today, with reed beds, woodland and grazing marshes – home to rare wildlife, such as the swallowtail butterfly. It remains very popular as a place to hire a boat to get out and explore the waterways.
The best place from which to survey the waterscape is St Helen's Church in Ranworth – known as "The Cathedral of the Broads". This 15th-century structure has the most perfectly preserved rood screen in the country, embellished with intricate pictures of the disciples, and a stone spiral staircase to the top of the tower from where you can see half of Norfolk. Close by, a boardwalk takes you through the reed beds to the edge of Ranworth Broad.
The Broads has an increasing number of indulgent places to stay, such as the Broad House Hotel (01603 783 567; broadhousehotel.co.uk ), a luxury boutique hotel located in a beautiful 18th-century Queen Anne residence alongside Wroxham Broad.
How new is the New Forest?
As a National Park, one of the latest, created in 2005. But the name is misleading: it is neither new nor particularly forested, and "Old Heath" is a more accurate description. Wild woodland was reduced to bare heathland by mesolithic man, who used primitive tools to clear the trees, tore the goodness from the earth and moved on, leaving thin soil and poor prospects. In 1079, William the Conqueror named the "Nova Foresta" as the first royal reserve. A parcel of land between Winchester and the coast was given over to His Majesty's pleasure and to supply fresh meat for the royal table. Today the New Forest is an ecological curiosity combining heaths and mires, woodland and pasture – and criss-crossed by paths that allow easy exploration on foot, by bike or on horseback on native New Forest ponies.
The hub of the National Park is Lyndhurst (023 8028 2269; thenewforest.co.uk for information). Don't miss Buckler's Hard, which once helped Britannia rule the waves. Two rows of cottages tumble down to the waterside, on either side of a broad green. The biggest dwelling, the Master Builder's House, belonged to Henry Adams – who was responsible for much of the fleet which won the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. His home is now a hotel (01590 616253), with 23 rooms and good views across the Beaulieu estuary.
Westward Ho?
This North Devon resort is not actually part of a protected area, but – along with places like Barnstaple, Chumleigh and Exeter, it is well placed for exploring England's two south-western National Parks, Exmoor and Dartmoor.
Exmoor is rare among English National Parks in that it has a long stretch of shoreline, part of the South West Coast Path. The ideal way to approach it is on the West Somerset Railway – which closed down in 1971, but was rescued by enthusiasts and now runs from Bishop's Lydeard, four miles west of Taunton, to the coast. The 15-mile hike from Minehead to Lynmouth and Lynton (the latter stands high above the former) is a demanding one-day hike that takes you through some of the finest coastal scenery in Britain. Horse-riding is a popular activity; beginners are expertly looked after at West Anstey Farm in Dulverton (01398 341354) and Doone Valley Stables outside V CLynton (01598 741278). From Lynmouth, the 102-mile Two Moors Way leads south to the higher and more desolate moorlands of Dartmoor.
"It is a great place, very sad and wild, dotted with the dwellings of prehistoric man, strange monoliths and huts and graves," wrote Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to his mother in a letter penned at the Duchy Hotel in Princetown. The year was 1901, and Sherlock Holmes' creator was researching The Hound of the Baskervilles – his celebrated mystery about a phantom hound and foul deeds.
Dartmoor's central settlement has not changed much since then. The moor, the mist, the walls of HM Prison and the huddled houses continue to make Princetown a study in grey. But the Duchy Hotel has become the High Moorlands Visitor Centre (01822 890414; dartmoor-npa.gov.uk ), which opens 10am-5pm daily (to 4pm from November to March). Here, you can separate the facts from the fiction and wander off safely to explore this slab of ancient rock rising from the county's soft fringes. Devon escaped the ice ages, and during the relatively warm millennium before the birth of Christ the uplands were densely forested. Plenty of evidence of early human habitation survives, chronicled by ancient stones slowly melting back into the dark Dartmoor granite (the stone used for Nelson's Column). Current risks to humanity here include live firing by the forces, and the fickle terrain and weather one-third of a mile above the English Riviera.
England's greenest and most pleasant land?
The North. Draw a line between York and Lancaster, and no fewer than four National Parks are located between here and the Scottish border.
The two Yorkshire parks feel quite different, yet they share a common thread: both have railway lines that reach places off-limits to cars. The western parts of the Yorkshire Dales National Park are served by the Settle and Carlisle Railway (part of the national network; settlecarlisle.co.uk ), while the North York Moors Railway (a heritage line with steam-hauled trains; nymr.co.uk ) cuts between Pickering and Whitby.
The Yorkshire Dales offers two challenging ways to explore the valleys that carve through the county. The first, for walkers, is our old friend the Pennine Way, which cuts south-north through the most spectacular landscapes, linking Malhamdale with the higher stretches of the River Greta on the County Durham border. It passes Hardraw Force – Britain's highest unbroken waterfall, which thunders over a lip of rock to plummet into a foaming pool. It's not Niagara, but don't miss it while you wander through the Dales. Access (£2) is via the ancient and jolly Green Dragon pub (01969 667392; greendragonhardraw.com ), which is also a good place to eat, drink and stay along the Pennine Way (try some Ribblehead Porter, the dark-brown beer from the Yorkshire Dales Brewing Company in Askrigg whose label depicts the arches of the magnificent railway span).
The other great Dale trail is for cyclists: the Yorkshire Dales Cycle Way, a 130-mile circuit best accessed in Skipton, a pretty town on the Park's southern edge with good rail links.
Moor of Yorkshire
The western side of the North York Moors National Park is best explored by bicycle, on the stretch of the Sustrans National Cycle Network Route 1 linking York with Middlesbrough. Once into the Park, you climb quickly (or, in my case, slowly – I was on a three-speed Brompton folding bicycle) through picturesque villages filled with flowers to bleak moorland.
The best places to stay are in the valleys that carve up this lunar landscape. One of the YHA's flagship hostels is the former village school in Lockton, a "Green Beacon" property which has everything from solar panels on the roof to composting toilets.
The North York Moors has a stirring stretch of coastline, and 20 miles north of Lockton on the A169, you find another great youth hostel. It comprises the former monks' quarters in the grounds of ruins of Whitby Abbey, and boasts remarkable architectural features – including the original wattle and daub, on show for the enlightenment of guests and visitors. More information on both properties from 0870 870 8808 or yha.org.uk .
Whitby is an excellent base for exploring the coast, including the fascinating smugglers' village of Robin Hood's Bay.
In the other direction, the North York Moors juts into Cumbria – home of the National Park regarded by many as England's loveliest.
A host of golden daffodils?
Environmental protection for the Lake District was canvassed as long ago as 1810 by William Wordsworth, who urged that the patch of (then) Cumberland and Westmoreland which he loved should become "national property, in which every man has a right". He was born on the coast of (present-day) Cumbria at Cockermouth, but later settled at Dove Cottage in Grasmere. He was an enthusiastic walker, thinking nothing of a 20-mile trek over the fells to Keswick. He composed poetry in his head during such journeys, and dictated the results to the ladies of the house on his return. Dove Cottage (015394 35544; wordsworth.org.uk ) is open to the public 9.30am-5.30pm daily, admission £6.50. Visitors can tour the rooms in which he lived, and also visit the modern museum that houses a collection of the poet's manuscripts and memorabilia.
Close by, Ambleside is a stop for Windermere Lake Cruises (01539 443360; windermere-lakecruises.co.uk ), which operates an excellent schedule of services every day except Christmas, linking Lakeside, Bowness and Waterhead near Ambleside. A ticket allowing unlimited travel for 24 hours costs £15.
Britain's finest park-within-a-National Park is just above Ambleside; nip up the lane between Barclay's Bank and the Market Hall, and you will reach Stock Ghyll Park, where a dramatic half-hour hike reveals a first-rate waterfall on a hillside that, in spring, is bedecked with daffodils.
The classic hike through the whole National Park is the Cumbria Way, a 68-mile walk across the heart of the Lake District, starting in Ulverston and ending in Carlisle. It grazes Coniston, scales Stake Pass and flanks Derwent Water.
Accommodation in the Lake District ranges from campsites to luxurious country-house hotels – such as the place where Beatrix Potter spent her holidays as a child. Lindeth Howe at Longtail Hill on Windermere was later bought by the writer for her mother, and is now a hotel set in six acres of private gardens (01539 445759; lindeth-howe.co.uk ).
At this time of year you won't be wandering as lonely as a cloud; to avoid adding to the chronic summer traffic congestion, use the 555 bus, which runs regularly between Keswick and Kendal, via Ambleside and Grasmere. It takes in much of the beauty of the area that so attracted Wordsworth and his pals. Some services are operated by open-top vehicles, giving a far better view than motorists enjoy (Cumbria Traveline: 0870 608 2 608; traveline.co.uk ).
For those who like the idea of travelling by road, but don't want to negotiate the steep mountain passes and narrow lanes themselves, Mountain Goat (015394 45161; mountain-goat.com ) can offer guided sightseeing trips by car or minibus.
England's final frontier?
Northumberland National Park (01434 605555; nnpa.org.uk ), best visited next month when the heather is flowering on the hills where England collides with Scotland. It encompasses the Cheviot Hills that rise north-west of Newcastle, ruined castles and Kielder Reservoir. But the main feature of the 405-square mile National Park is Hadrian's Wall, the only stone-built frontier in the history of the Roman Empire. This a necklace of stone, which stretches from the Solway Firth west of Carlisle to the aptly named Wallsend on the River Tyne in the east, was created in the second century to keep out the Caledonian "barbarians".
The most scenic surviving stretch is through Sycamore Gap and up on to Housesteads Crags. Housesteads is the best-known fort on Hadrian's Wall, and the most complete such Roman construction in Britain. You should also visit the Roman fort of Vindolanda, just south of Hadrian's Wall, which pre-dates the structure by 40 years and provides a fascinating glimpse of life for the men (and women) stationed at the bitter end of the Roman Empire.
Wild Wales
The Principality possesses the perfect pair of National Parks: in the north, lonely, stirring mountain landscapes; to the south, a corrugated coastline brimming with wildlife.
Although the core of Snowdonia National Park is crammed into a corner of Wales, pinched between the North and Cambrian coasts, from up high the crags seem to spin away endlessly, successively fainter ridges fading into the haze. Yet, just a mile or two away (and hundreds of feet lower), you can find mysterious gorges where only a fast-flowing brook sizzles through the serenity. You can also learn a new skill: at Plas y Brenin, the National Mountain Centre (01690 720214; pyb.co.uk ) all are welcome to limber up indoors in preparation for the great outdoors; a two-hour "taster" session in climbing and abseiling allows you to go from 0 to 40ft in 120 minutes with the help of expert tuition. Mountain biking and mountain leadership courses are also available.
Prettiest of all the villages in the Parc Cenedlaethol Eryri is Beddgelert, where the Colwyn and Glaswyn rivers merge, and which is newly connected to the West Highland Railway to Caernarfon. Here, the Sygun Fawr country-house hotel (01766 890258) is a classic of the genre: a handsome 17th-century manor house, offering 21st-century travellers comfort and excellent cuisine.
Pembrokeshire Coast National Park celebrates some of Britain's finest shoreline, wrapping around the south-west tip of Wales from Carmarthen Bay to Cardigan Bay (with a few interruptions for less idyllic fixtures such as the oil refinery at Milford Haven. Activities are, naturally, water-based, with surfing, sea-kayaking and coasteering on offer. If you prefer to keep your feet dry, and have a fortnight to spare, the 186-mile Pembrokeshire Coast Path will reveal almost all the delights of the Park – but for the very best, you have to board a small ferry from the tiny cove of Martin's Haven (01646 603110; dale-sailing.co.uk ) to an intercontinental hub for avian life: Skomer, a ragged diamond-shaped island measuring barely two miles by one, is home to an astonishing half-million breeding seabirds. Manx Shearwaters, guillemots, kittiwakes, razorbills and, most notably, puffins. After a few days here, you can empathise with the great travel writer Jan Morris, when she wrote "From Reykjavik to Ljubljana / Cheerful Cork to weird Tirana / No exotic route avails / To clear my homesick mind of Wales."
Scotland's national treasures
Scotland, due to its different laws on land use, came late to the National Park party. With the most dramatic land– and seascapes in Britain, and a far more sparse population than England, many would argue that much of the country should qualify for National Park status. This century, though, two specific areas have been designated: the Cairngorms, and Loch Lomond and the Trossachs.
The latter was the first National Park in Scotland, located within easy reach of the largest population centres. The gateway is a frankly tacky retail/tourism complex at Balloch, named Loch Lomond Shores (01389 721500; lochlomondshores.com ). But once you escape from here, and the busy A82 highway that runs along the west side of Loch Lomond, you can enjoy Britain's largest inland body of water in tranquillity.
The most rewarding activities are walking (the West Highland Way leads through the National Park), and canoeing: on the eastern side of the loch, at Balmaha. Lomond Adventure (01360 870218) hires out kayaks. This is a good base for exploration, not least because of the Oak Tree Inn (01360 870357; oak-tree-inn.co.uk ), which is a haven for active travellers. You can also take a noisier option: Loch Lomond Seaplanes (0870 242 1457; lochlomondseaplanes.com ) offers scenic flights over the region.
Callander is the best base for the forested hills and lochs of the Trossachs. In the months of September and October, the crowds evaporate but there is still the chance of good weather.
Hardy (and optimistic) winter-sports enthusiasts maintain that January and February are the ideal months in which to visit the Cairngorms of north-east Scotland, to take advantage of the best skiing facilities in the UK. The unappealing town of Aviemore is the gateway to the park, which spreads south-east from the Spey valley. Nine miles south-east is Cairngorm Mountain (01479 861261; cairngormmountain.com ), the closest Britain gets to an Alp, with a funicular climbing to the ski area.
During the summer, the Cairngorms National Park is good territory for "Munro-bagging", with a dozen 3,000ft-plus peaks within its borders.
More about:
| The Cairngorms |
What was Roy Thinnes' character name in 'The Invaders'? | National Parks in the UK | BritainVisitor - Travel Guide To Britain
National Parks in the UK
National Parks in the UK
List of National Parks in the UK
England
Peak District
The Peak District lies mainly within northern Derbyshire but is also covers parts of Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Yorkshire and Staffordshire. The Peak District, established in 1951, was the first national park to be designated as such in the United Kingdom. The landscape in the Peak District consists mainly of rounded hills and gritstone escarpments.
Hope Valley, Peak District National Park, Derbyshire
Lake District
The Lake District is a popular holiday destination due to the beauty of its lakes, forests and mountains . The park is famous for its associations with the nineteenth century poet, William Wordsworth. Located in the county of Cumbria, the park contains not only the highest mountain in England, Scafell Pike, but also the longest lake in England - Windermere Lake and its deepest lake - Wastwater.
Lake Scenery, The Lake District, North West England
Dartmoor
Dartmoor National Park is a 954 square kilometers wide expanse of moorland located in Devon, England. The exposed granite hilltops called tors are lovely to behold and provide habitats for moorland wildlife. This park includes the largest area of granite in England with nearly 625 square kilometers at the surface level.
Haytor, Dartmoor National Park, Devon
North York Moors
North York Moors National Park, situated in North Yorkshire, contains one of the largest areas of heather moorland in England. Established as a national park in 1952, it has become an attractive and enjoyable tourist destination. The park comprises over 1,400 miles of moorland, pine forests and rolling hills. Many kinds of wildlife such as badgers, deer and hawks can be found within the park.
Yorkshire Dales
Yorkshire Dales National Park was established in 1954 and is located in the upland area of Northern England. There is a collection of river valleys, heather moorland and rolling hills to be enjoyed. Moreover, extensive cave systems are present throughout the park, making it one of the most famous caving areas in the UK.
Exmoor
Exmoor National Park is a hilly open moorland located around west Somerset and north Devon. The park was originally an ancient royal hunting forest that was then donated and designated as a national park in 1954. The park includes some of the highest sea cliffs in England, which can reach up to 314 meters in height. The scenic rock headlands, ravines and waterfalls gained recognition as a Heritage Coast in 1991.
Exmoor National Park, Devon, England
Northumberland
Northumberland National Park is one of the least visited and least populated national parks in the UK. The park lies entirely within Northumberland and was established as a national park in 1956. 10,000 years of history can be explored within the park including sites such as Prehistoric monuments and Roman remains.
The Broads
The Broads are formed of a network of rivers and lakes located in the English counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. Since the 19th century, the park has been a popular boating holiday destination. Many kinds of visitors including artists, anglers and bird-watchers have been attracted to spending their holidays boating on the Broads. It has also been an important center for racing yachts since the 19th century.
New Forest
The New Forest is one of the largest remaining expanses of unenclosed grazing land in southeast England. The landscapes in the park consist of woodlands, heather-covered heaths, rivers, valley mires and historic villages. A wide variety of wildlife such as bats, roe deer and sand lizards live in the park.
South Downs
The South Downs National Park, the newest national park in England, became fully operational in 2011. The park covers an area of over 1,600 square kilometers stretching from Winchester in the west to Hampshire in the east. Rolling pastures, woodlands and river valleys are spread around the park for visitors to view and enjoy.
Scotland
Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park
Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park is located mainly around Loch Lomond, Scotland. It consists of several ranges of hills, out of which the most famous is called the Trossachs. The park was established in 2002 and became the first designated national park in Scotland. A great variety of wildlife can be discovered at the park such as otters, ospreys and water voles.
Loch Lomond, Scotland
Cairngorms National Park
Cairngorms National Park lies north east of Scotland and was designated as a national park in 2003. Being the largest national park in the United Kingdom, it is nearly two times larger than the Lake District. The park's spectacular landscapes are formed of tall mountain ranges and the surrounding hills.
Wales
Snowdonia
Snowdonia, located in the north of Wales, became the first designated national park in Wales. The northernmost part of the park is most popular with tourists because here rise the three tallest mountains in Wales including: Snowdon Massif, Glyderau and the Carneddau. The park was established in 1951 and derived the name, 'Snowdonia', from the mountain 'Snowdon Massif'.
Snowdonia National Park, Wales
Pembrokeshire Coast
Pembrokeshire Coast National Park was established as a national park in 1952. Located alongside the Pembrokeshire coast in west Wales, the park is made up of rocky cliffs, sandy beaches and wild inlands. Rare rock structures such as natural arches, stacks and sea caves have also been found within the park.
Brecon Beacons
The Brecon Beacons is a wide mountain range situated in south Wales. Established in 1957, it is the third established of the three national parks in Wales. A major part of the national park is a grassy Moorland where herds of Welsh ponies and sheep can be seen wandering about. Visitors have the opportunity to mountain bike, camp out, rock climb and explore caves.
| i don't know |
Which perfume house manufactures 'Escape'? | Escape Calvin Klein perfume - a fragrance for women 1991
2017
Desertedbeach
This was my signature scent between for several years in the early nineties. I adored it and I always felt it was a more grown up, big beast version of L'eau D'Issy - which I also wore and loved but the longevity was abysmal. Not so with this perfume. What a sillage monster! I had a very sexy lover at work during this time and he said he knew when I was in the building as I'd leave trails of my perfume all over the place. I must have ladled it on!
I always felt that this was a big ozonic perfume - it smelled of wide skies and blowy beaches to me. I picture this scent as a grand coastal panorama, all blues, greys and yellows with a strong sea breeze wafting the smell of the sea, the sand and the flowers in my direction.
I haven't worn it since then and my taste in perfumes has changed . But I have a sneaky sniff every now and then and I it is so evocative, such a scent of a time that it makes me smile and whisks the years away. I don't think I could wear it again. It is a perfume of my past. A lovely reminder of my youth.
Dec
2016
nitschevo
I emptied so many bottles of this during school and my teenage years. It was one of my more grown-up scents, I suppose. Other favorites during that time were Aqua di Gio, J'adore and L'Eau d'Issey.
Escape is the first of the so called trio (Sunflowers & L'Eau d'Issey being the other two). They do share similarities but are still quite different. To me Escape is a wonderful combination of warm & cold, lush & restrained. Not everyone is fond of the Calone note but after the first blast everything settles nicely and I am left with an aquatic rose, LOTV, woods and some fruit. I consider this to be one of the best offerings of CK. I also think that Escape smells best from afar, not when I press my nose against my skin. Maybe not the best scent for cuddling but whatever. I need another bottle!
Dec
2016
jellybeantree
This was my scent of the 90's . This and Gucci Envy where favorites! Oh man I loved it so much . Havent smellt it in years . I need to buy a bottle for nostalgia. Good times the 90's !
Dec
2016
amanda-m-lewis
I literally coveted this stuff when it came out in the 90s.. It was breathtaking, liking nothing i'd experienced before. The projection and sillage were awesome and you recognised it straightaway. It has always been an aquatic to me and I now have my very own bottle and wear it in the summer.
**Update. I am wearing it in the winter too and it's just great on dreary days.
Dec
2016
LaurenBacall
My first impression after not having touched this stuff in probably twenty years--trying to do too much. Comes across as wishy-washy in the end, and reminds me vaguely of cashmere left forgotten in a closet.
Nov
2016
slavka.filipova
I blindly buy this after friend told me about it, i smelled it from the bottle and made order and i really like/dislike this one. It's not bad but not my taste too. So maybe i'll give this to my mom if she likes it. It is long lasting for it's price but just nothing happens when i smell it. Maybe everyday scent i don't know yet.
for me this is 5/10
Oct
2016
Smellicious0000
Escape used to be a favourite perfume, but now not so much. The last bottle I bought turned me off. It was reduced price so now I'm thinking it may have been at the end of its shelf life. Nice to see there are still so many positive reviews. I might try it once more.
Jul
2016
LavenderSky
I remember when CK Escape was released in 1991. I remember visiting the CK counter at Macy's to try it out. First sniff, I fell instantly in love with Escape's ocean breezy meets tropical garden scent. I couldn't believe a note profile with such wide range could create such a beautiful balance of fresh and airy while warm and sensual at the same time. Had to have it. I purchased the large bottle from Macy's on the spot. On my skin, the scent is neither bashful or bold, something more. It has an air of pleasure and indulgence that is uniquely sexy. The scent wore me perfectly on summer days into sultry summer nights. Escape rewarded me many compliments when I wore it. And I enjoying wearing it for many years. While shopping today, I wandered into a mall typical perfume shop. As I browsed for nothing in particular, I spotted a bottle of CK Escape behind the counter. I asked the salesperson to see the tester. She sprayed the scent onto a card and gave it to me. I smelled the scent and the memory of why I loved Escape in the first place, flooded back to me. The scent was just as divine as the day I discovered it. And honestly, right now I can't even remember why I stopped wearing it in the first place? Doesn't manner now anyways. As soon as I went home, I jumped online and grabbed a brand new 3.4 oz bottle for under $25 bucks (S&H included) from Ebay. So excited! Just in time for summer. I can't wait to ROCK one of my old school scents favs again ;)
Jun
2016
kates babyblue
THIS SMELL LOVELY TO ME FRESH AND LONG LASTING.IT ARRIVED VIA POSTAND I WAS GOING SHOPPING WITH MY BEST FRIEND.
SHE KEPT SAYING I WAS WONDERING WHAT THEY LOVELY SMELL WAS ALL DAY AND REALISED IT WAS ME.
.I LOVE THIS MAKE UP YOUR MIND.
Apr
2016
learnincurve
I *miss* the days of the big scent bombs. It's loud it's brassy, it's complicated, at times it's a jumbled mess and it's not ever going to apologise for being any of these things.
I could rant for quite some time about lazy modern designers dumping heavy vanilla in everything because it's easy and very cheap to produce.
Mar
2016
hagertygal
I have always considered this scent my unobtainable love. I want to wear it, love it's smell. Unfortunately, one spray is overkill for me. I get a headache and I can still smell it on myself without trying 8 hours later.
Mar
2016
elena.kurlaviciute
It took me a while to like this perfume. The smell was too mature for me at first. I had this bottle for about 4 years I think, and for most of that time it was just collecting dust. I guess I needed to do some growing up in a perfume world sense to appreciate this perfume. But once I decided that I like this perfume, I started to use it everyday :) It's a really nice honey-like scent! At least, that's what I got on my skin - honey note.
Mar
2016
Sailor Pluto
Grown up perfume with floral-herbal notes along and a touch of melon. Very sophisticated! May be a bit risky as a blind buy considering the old-school floral notes that may not appeal to all. I like wearing it for a fancy dinner!
Mar
2016
Krasnylips
I have tested the vintage version and after the cacophonic start I got a clear note of geranium. Agressive and bold like all Calvin Klein.
Feb
2016
Amararata
This is the first perfume I'd ever worn. My first grown up fragrance away from the cloying fruity, soapy and candy-like fragrances of childhood. It's the first fragrance of my high school and early university years.
There is a soft innocence about this scent of a strong female persona, which is highlighted by sandalwood. It is warm and silky and reminiscent of the kind of muse that is the first scent of autumn that melts right into your skin.
I've always had a love affair with this fragrance, the ingenue. However, now I thirst for more complexity and depth, something darker, shocking or well-travelled.
This is the scent made for countrygirls on the hillside, picking flowers. And there is a beauty about its implicit simplicity.
Feb
2016
Jmalone84
I have to be honest. I do find this cloying. It gives me a headache, as does L'eau d'Issey. But I totally get this fragrance.
This is completely transformed in the summer I must admit. It comes off very sweet and fresh in the summer, it smells like sweet dewy melon with a bunch of other fresh floral herbal notes. I imagine this might smell quite divine to some. I think I will wear this this summer, just away from my nose so it doesn't make me ill. Reminds me of the ocean, marine air and fruity cocktails. Very fresh.
Jan
2016
diego.lesgart
Iconic fragance! 80 s 90s CK creations were mastercopy, inventive, singular and newfangled fragances ... Escape for him and for her smell quanty and powefull ... glorious creation ...
Jan
2016
hippiechick13
As a huge Sunflowers fan when I was much, much younger, this strikes me as her grown up sister, or a sister scent that is a little more fresh and concise, as Sunflowers can cloy. I love it, don't get me wrong. But Escape I feel more comfortable wearing now.
I'm confused because I tried it about a year or so ago and just... yuck. It reminded me of Fancy Nights and cat pee... it was high pitched and nauseating and actually made me feel kind of sick. There was an undertone to it I didn't find but the top notes were so offensive it was a scrubber. I am assuming the bottle I tried was off?
I tried it a few nights ago on a whim at Chemist Warehouse and it was awesome. It was sweet, fresh, reminded me of my beloved Sunflowers and had this something to it that I just really liked. I got it the next night as it had scented my cardigan from the night before and still smelled so good. A great release from CK and next to Eternity Moment, probably their best.
Jan
2016
The_Entity
This, like contradiction is great for a hot day if you want to cool down, can smell the melon in this
Nov
2015
Frida77
To me, this is a nautical, not too feminine, quite strong scent. I wore it in my late teenages and I liked it then. It has a great longevity and it´s non offensive. Smells mature but also fits a teenager.
Oct
2015
Rain Cloud
Used to be my signature perfume in high school,university time. It's strong, sunny and sexy. Very unforgettable scent and I get alot of compliments.
Oct
2015
andalucia lover
I love the idea of this fragrance but it does not work with my body chemistry. I smell like copper pennies.
Sep
2015
Tiviia21
I absolutely love this fragrance. Whenever I wear it I get compliments. The peach,melon, plum, rose and sandalwood are very pronounced on my skin. I knew it was a signature candidate before I even sprayed it on. Also,the price makes it a great candidate for a signature scent; I picked up a 3.4 fl oz bottle for $28 from Perfumania.com.
The name is also perfect because it puts me in a whole other world. Whenever i'm wearing it I think of cool nights in Hawaii. It can be worn either day or night; it is fruity/floral enough for day but warm enough for nights.
BEWARE: It is a silage monster. 2-3 sprays anymore than that would be pushing it.
Sep
2015
jrhmakeupartistry
I truly have always had issues with Calvin Klein fragrances. They are far too aggressive for my taste: Euphoria, Obsession, Eternity...etc. etc. Too many notes fighting with each other, and I simply cannot wrap my head and my nose around Klein fragrances.
I am a no nonsense straight forward type of lady, and while I can appreciate a bold intense fragrance, I think if I wore those types of fragrances, I don't think I could even stand to be around myself; maybe that's one reason why I prefer cooler, calmer aquatic floral types of compositions. Escape has been around a long long time, and this is the only Klein fragrance that I truly like and wear. There's a little bit of everything in this fragrance that can appeal to a wider audience based on general preferences. With Escape, you get warm yet cool, crisp and juicy, salty but sweet. Even though this too is a complex blend of notes, it just works for me.
Aug
2015
Jmalone84
Smells almost exactly like L'eau D'Issey. If anyone in New Zealand wants a free bottle let me know, I never use it.
Aug
2015
AnnaT
Calvin Klein's frangrance is always difficult, except Eternity Moment i think. Eternity Moment is very florally, making it much easier to wear and suitable to all occasions, weather and season. I remember i were in horror when testing Eternity and Obssession about 10 years ago. I thought the bottles were off. i have learnt to love Eternity and use it since then.
Escape is a blind buy. i am in the hunt for 'older' perfume lately. I simply have too much perfum of 2010s that i need a break, and some surprise. And Escape is not expensive at all.
When i received the bottle and sprayed two cautious little sprays 1 on my wrist and 1 on the back of my neck, i thought the bottle was off (typical Calvin Klein there). But i had experience with Calvin Klein and so i waited. The first, say 30 minutes was really not nice. i constantly sniffed my wrist hoping the bad smell would go away. It did. The bad smell evolved into a very unpleasant plastic artifical smell. What kept me on my seat instead of in front of a washing sink was the lovely whiff of melon i got from my hair and the back of my neck whenever i moved around.
I went out to subject myself to high temperature for a while. I am very pleased to find that the unpleasant plastic artifical smell from the wrist had gone. The wrist smelled of lovely melon. The melon has been with me for several hours now. Who would hae thought melon (as top note) can last so long?
Although i only smell melon, i have no complaint and am only too glad to have find a way to enjoy another Calvin Klein.
Jul
2015
enigmaticessence
This is a loud white and yellow floral, slightly aquatic in feel. I notices a higher pitched similarity to Borghese's Il Bochio, but this might be even more fresh on your morning jog. No joke! It opens with a sharp, sour melon which dissipates and then comes back intermittently.
I love Il Bocbio - full, loud and womanly, with more green - but both of these can be quite overpowering in the same way as Giorgio Beverly Hills. Be Prepared! Out of the three I actually find this one the hardest to wear, but my skin does not usually like aquatics. Il Bochio is the more wearable and understandable of the three, but all stand on there own and are quite different from each other. You Must try them to get the whole, amazing picture.
Very good sillage and longevity. Best in hot weather.
Jul
2015
ShoppinQueen
I love the clear scent of Escape. And I cannot find any similarity to Sunflowers and to L'Eau D'Issey, which I don't like.
Jul
2015
fragrantperfumes
I bought this perfume years ago and had a phase wearing it. STRONG PERFUME. Probably the perfume I have the most trouble describing---on me anyways, it has such a kind of smoky smell that lingers forever---it has some sweetness, but the smoky effect is so strong it takes over everything and I can't distinguish anything beyond that. In my opinion, it's more for someone that is in a "daring" or "extraverted" mood.
Jun
2015
unlitcigar
If you read the main accords, you will understand this one is a hotchpotch. Total mess. It smells like a lot of wilting marigolds dumped to rot on the beach. On others it smells floral and inviting. But on me I don't get any other notes, it just smells like marigold tea, not floral but more like salty sweat, that's the smell. People compliment and ask me which scent is it. But I will pass this one as it does not satisfy my olfactory senses.
Jun
2015
Swamp Lily
I used to wear another version of this fragrance. I don't know if I was wearing the male version or whether the female version has been reformulated to a point where it is noticeably different. Overall this is more complex and floral, the other Escape was more fruity, fresh and oceanic and was my preferred Escape. Nevertheless I still love this fragrance, it's a summery garden of fruit trees and wild flowers overlooking the sea. The chemical smell of Sunflowers by Elizabeth Arden has got nothing on Escape. I just took a look at the stupid commercial. If I was influenced by perfume commercials I'd buy nothing!
Edit/Update: I tried the male Escape today and it is very masculine, so I am almost certain that the original fragrance I had has been reformulated, (as it seems, from reading reviews on here, are many fragrances). It's a pity because the original was more fresh and summery and the current fragrance could have been marketed as something new.
May
2015
czerwinski1
Super longevity and sillage! Very interesing fragrance. This one is fresh, but strong, clean and creamy, aquatic, fruity and floral. For my nose is a masterpiece.
Apr
2015
LaviniaMidnight
I bought Escape in 1992, sophomore year in college. It reminded me of the beach, salty air.. with a margarita or pina colada in my hand. It also was a time that we were shedding the decadence of the 80's and stripping down to essentials. I remember flannel shirts, my hair in a ponytail, and Nirvana when I smell Escape. I love the drydown, kind of a peachy sandalwood.
Jan
2015
Peta22
@claudiu.alexx, you said you're relatively new to perfumes so you may not be aware that perfumes can smell completely different on people with different skin chemistry to yours... The other thing to consider is that other people like different scents! For instance, I am not a fan of heavy floral scents but as a fragrance group, florals are probably the most popular. I also love fresh 'green tea' scents but one of the most popular green tea scents smells like bug spray on my skin whereas 1000's of other people adore it! The point is that while you are most definitely entitled to your opinion, it's pretty rude to categorise people who wear this as not caring about themselves just because YOU don't like it!
Anyway, I've just received Escape as a gift and although, after a quick sniff of the fragrance from the bottle, the top notes aren't really to my liking (smells a bit heady and floral to me) the notes listed sound promising. I'll be sure to give it a proper review once I've had a chance to wear it.
Dec
2014
nettoyant
claudiu.alexx, you seem to have a habit of not trying out perfumes before you buy them...then, you leave unhelpful "reviews" railing on about old people and the wonderful and helpful reviewers before you. I would take them over your comments any day.
In response: If you're new, you test, buy samples, buy pure oils of each scent so you know what melon or violets smell like in perfume.
how do you think insulting those who like something you don't is reasonable? No one minds a negative review but nothing is less helpful than a review which excludes a balanced and fair interpretation of a scent. All you do insult reviewers because they like something you don't like.
Perfumes are very personal, that's why there are many different types to chose from. Perfumes are NOT made for people of certain ages nor do certain types only appeal to a certain age group. As an example, if you look at the forums you'll find many older members loving Katy Perry perfumes, which are not marketed to poeple over 25. Many younger members love Chanel 5. So, reviewers dutifully stating their age for your benefit will help you in no way, shape or form.
Try more, learn, then leave a real review.
A bit of a review, it's a sweet, melony and rich classic. It's very warm and not aquatic like many melon scents. Been around for decades, it's not going anywhere much like Eternity and Obsession.
Dec
2014
Fluffyandpuffy
It is very sweet to start then I get the very strong fruit or melon that is alittle much until it calms down and that takes awhile. It does take you back in time alittle. I do like it though. Feels more summery to me but not an "old" smelling frag but you gotta like melon.
Dec
2014
Gabbygirl83
There is just something I like about it, on occasion, not an everyday perfume (in my opnion).
Dec
2014
Mellyhelly
I had this perfume many years ago and I loved it for about 2-3 months, then I gave it away because it tired my head, as it happens with virtually all CK scents, the few that I really liked.
It's a sweet floral scent with interesting edges, quite classy yet wearable in many occasion. Versatile for both casual and formal events and very longlasting!
It strongly smells of chamomille and gives a gentle aura.
Anyway after a while it becomes tedious on me.
Dec
2014
Fhaldara
I love Escape! It's fresh, clean and aquatic and very feminine. The fruity notes balance beautifully with the woody notes, and on me it has amazing longevity and sillage - I've still caught whiffs of it up to 2 days later!
Oct
2014
Michylaka
Ahhh the delightful aquatic, melon-fruity and rosey scent of Escape. My granddaughter who is five and I share a bottle as this is her favorite fragrance on my vanity. It takes me back to the early nineties before I was domesticated. I wore it quite a bit back then. It was and still is so very refreshing. Sunflowers is as well which I have too. This wears better on me however.
10/10
2014
stacey_nay
Huh. This reminds me so much of Elizabeth Arden's Sunflowers. This perfume came first so I'm not sure if Sunflowers is a direct rip-off or if this style of fragrance was just very en vogue at the time.
What a busy perfume pyramid! As much as I love the idea of a melon scent, I've started to get the sense they don't necessarily suit me or work well with my particular skin chemistry. On my skin, I get a sweet, ripe melon scent, followed up by some spicy notes and a background marine-type note of the ocean. Like Sunflowers, I get an unsettling fizzy baking soda scent in the background (I wonder if this is how my skin treats melon scents), but here it is very minimal to the point of almost being unnoticeable.
On my skin, sillage is moderate and it is moderately long lasting. I like Escape, but I don't think I'll buy a full bottle (I have a decant spray vial at the moment).
Oct
georgequeue
My mother was given a little flacon of this perfume back in 1998.
Escape For Women smells really sweet, but not too sweet to be unpleasantly dizzying; it actually smells delicious! There's an interesting boozy melon, wood, and spice blend in it that, to my untrained nose, gets powdery and floral as it dries down. Sillage and duration are -as far as the vintage juice goes- remarkable, and it was a really sexy and noticeable scent back in the 90s; I'd give it a 9/10.
Oct
2014
Nikkafragrance
Best fragrance by Calvin Klein. I am surprised that so many viewers clicked the dislike button.
Update: I wore Escape in the New years's eve and I realized one more time that this scent is just magical! It's not overpowering, but only two sprays on my clothes last for ages. What is really curious here is how after mixing so many completely different notes they get this clean, fresh and fluid scent? To me Escape is trully unique I can recongnise it among 100 others perfumes.
Sep
2014
theuntrainednose
Summary: For me, starts nice, but the melon note becomes overpowering after a while and I cannot tolerate it.
Smells nice. A little flowery but not sweet at all. Mainly a fresh flowery scent. The flowery part is very nice, reminds me of wild flowers and wild bushes.
However, there's some note on the fresh side of this fragrance that displeases me. Maybe it is the melon, which does not smell like those sweet, fragrant, melt in your mouth melons, but just as those unpleasant, too-green melons which are a disappointment.
For me, replacing the green melon note with carnation would have been perfect, as I seem to like the other notes together. As it is, I am not sure I can get over the green melon note to enjoy the rest.
Edited to add: The sillage was actually strong enough for the melon note to become overpowering and distracting while programming at work (had applied it on my left arm near the wrist). Had to scrub it twice with hand soap and apply scented lotion to make it disappear. It seems I cannot handle this melon note after all, which is a shame as the rest was very serene and pleasing to me.
Aug
2014
SilverZeru
I dont know any other perfume that has the same fragrance as Escape. It's strong woody and yet fresh and sweet at the same time. It lasts long as well. I used to love wearing it in winter spraying a little bit on my sweater, it would make my whole closet smelled lovely. I dont know if i would buy it now though only because i live in a hot and humid country now and the strong fragrance can overpower you in the heat. I also noticed that a lot of imitation perfume here also smell like Escape
Aug
2014
bronstein
Classic 1990s stuff, now on the market for almost a quarter century. They say that CK reformulated it, so I can only comment on what it has to say today. And this is interesting, because it appears like a logical progress from Obsession, like a step forward from the 1980s into the 1990s. Not so offensively voluptuous, more fruity, still 100% feminine. In retrospect this makes perfectly sense, because in the 1990s everything became "light".
Yet, this is miles away from the androgynous fragrances CK later would take on. Rather, it reminds me of girls in the early 1990s who still wore their mini skirts but swapped their stilettos for Dr. Martens boots. Moreover, in contrast to some other 1990s icons, this doesn't appear dated and may still be worn today - even by women who hadn't yet been born by 1991.
***
2014
Jacquelyn1
One of my favorites scents of all time. I don't get the fruity or floral notes on me and it is never powdery. It is a woody, somewhat spicy, sexy, sensual fragrance that is absolutely divine.
Had I not already had this, I would not have tried it based on the many reviews I have read here, accusing this glorious juice of being powdery and floral (which I do not like).
I always receive compliments from men when I wear this.
I'll never be without it.
Jul
2014
Opening-Note
This perfume is one that I love to wear with sweaters/dresses that I don't wash every time I wear them because it makes my closet smell great and it lingers on them for a long time-- usually long enough that I have to use it again the next time I wear that specific article of clothing. Escape has a very fresh, clean sort of fragrance, but it is also surprisingly strong. Great for day-to-day wear.
Jul
2014
beccalee79
This fragrance more than any other I own makes me feel so womanly and sexy. It's an amazing fragrance that I've found people either love or hate. I love it and will always have a bottle in my collection. It's a sillage monster so I would be carefull not to overspray etc..
Jun
2014
Tine1world
Once a few back back now, the sales assistant at the chemist queried? "What perfume is that you are wearing'? "Well". "It's Escape by Calvin Klein". I answered. "Oh" She replied. "I always wondered what that one smelled like"? "It's nice on you." She said.
That particular chemist does stock some hard to source fragrances. This one is away's on special there for around 25 Aussie dollars for 100 mills EDP.
I recall paying well over 80. Dollars AUS, when this one was launched back in the early 90's and I was just into my third decade here on earth.
I have three bottles of Escape, fear I might run out? One bottle I scored cheaply as a tester, no box or spray nozzle for 5 Aussie dollaroozies. A bargain.
I have said nothing about it's aroma though. It is in my educated opinion . Yep thought I would throw that one in. I am a retired High School Arts teacher.
"A CLASSIC".
Needless to say that I also have 'Sunflowers and copious amounts of L'Eau D'Issey. These fragrances having similar notes and similars smelling aroma's on my skin.
I'm MELON HEAD. Just like that episode on 'Friends' when Joey gets the turkey stuck on his head I envisage myself with my noggin stuck inside a melon. That's right Monica did too!
This fragrance is still being manufactured that I am most truly grateful for. Thank you Mr Klein.
Many reviewers here seem to hate the period in time known as the 90's and sadly belittle the decade for it's worthlessness. Mind you. The 90's are known to have been the most progressive artistic period in time, since we started caring and documenting our history.
'Escape' is a complicated and complex fragrance that is not for anyone it seems, it is or can be long lived and linear. The actual fragrance colour is quite deep and syrupy looking housed inside a round faceted flacon. 'Multifaceted'.I love this fragrance. I take breaks from it but I still love it. My affair with 'Escape' will never end.
I can detect hints of carnation, chamomile, peach and ever so soft musk and cedar. I agree with many here 'Escape' is about carefree sunny day's with a disposition to match.
Cheers T. Ps it can last well into the next day after application.
The site logged me out.
May
2014
guest_
Once a few back back now, the sales assistant at the chemist queried? "What perfume is that you are wearing'? "Well". "It's Escape by Calvin Klein". I answered. "Oh" She replied. "I always wondered what that one smelled like"? "It's nice on you." She said.
That particular chemist does stock some hard to source fragrances. This one is away's on special there for around 25 Aussie dollars for 100 mills EDP.
I recall paying well over 80. Dollars AUS, when this one was launched back in the early 90's and I was just into my third decade here on earth.
I have three bottles of Escape, fear I might run out? One bottle I scored cheaply as a tester, no box or spray nozzle for 5 Aussie dollaroozies. A bargain.
I have said nothing about it's aroma though. It is in my educated opinion . Yep thought I would throw that one in. I am a retired High School Arts teacher.
"A CLASSIC".
Needless to say that I also have 'Sunflowers and copious amounts of L'Eau D'Issey. These fragrances having similar notes and similars smelling aroma's on my skin.
I'm MELON HEAD. Just like that episode on 'Friends' when Joey gets the turkey stuck on his head I envisage myself with my noggin stuck inside a melon. That's right Monica did too!
This fragrance is still being manufactured that I am most truly grateful for. Thank you Mr Klein.
Many reviewers here seem to hate the period in time known as the 90's and sadly belittle the decade for it's worthlessness. Mind you. The 90's are known to have been the most progressive artistic period in time, since we started caring and documenting our history.
'Escape' is a complicated and complex fragrance that is not for anyone it seems, it is or can be long lived and linear. The actual fragrance colour is quite deep and syrupy looking housed inside a round faceted flacon. 'Multifaceted'.I love this fragrance. I take breaks from it but I still love it. My affair with 'Escape' will never end.
I can detect hints of carnation, chamomile, peach and ever so soft musk and cedar. I agree with many here 'Escape' is about carefree sunny day's with a disposition to match.
Cheers T. Ps it can last well into the next day after application.
May
2014
bonnie52
When will people learn that outright rude reviews are not the way to go? I remember wearing this in the 90's but can't remember exactly what it smelled like. I just remember I loved it! I may have to buy some more!
May
2014
LadyPilot
If I were to define the nineties in terms of scents, ESCAPE would definitely go in the first place. ETERNITY and EDEN would surely follow, as a juxtaposition to the eighties' icons such as Poison, Anais Anais or Gabiela Sabatini, just to mention a few. I used to hate Escape as a teenager, when half of my teachers and aunts started to smell like melon instead of smelling with good perfumes - that's how I felt about it at that time. The melon was overwhelming and ever-present. Now, looking back after over 20 years, I have all due respect to that melon mania and I'm able to perceive it as the icon of the era. It's unbelievable, but despite being a powder-spicy-vanilla lover I just got myself a bottle of Escape, for the sake of sentiment and experiment. It used to smell much better, more natural and fruitier in the late nineties (no wonder), but after half an hour the original charm emerges and you can appreciate Klein's creation at its fullest.
May
2014
Dawn Heather
My signature fragrance since it was introduced in 1991 and it has never failed to produce compliments on me. I only spritz once on the base of my neck from a good 18 inches because it is so powerful and it's still detectable enough that I receive compliments as much as 12 hours later. Over the years, many women have told me that they could never wear it because it doesn't smell good on them, but they loved it on me. Body chemistry and fragrance combinations are alwasy unique.
Apr
2014
Naughtyvenus
Yuck. After smelling this one, I wanted to ESCAPE the nasty nauseating smell of this perfume. One whif and I was sick to my stomach. I thought at first maybe I sniffed from a rancid tester so I then opened a gift set and smelled a freshly opened bottle and it was just as bad as the tester. I pray I never find myself in close quarters with someone who is wearing it. It's just as bad as TOMMY, if not worse
Feb
2014
scrappydoo
If I read the description of this perfume, I'd never have tried it. Coriander? Apple? Yuck. I normally hate anything too fruity and I really hate coriander. BUT I have loved this perfume for years, it's always the standby in my dressing room for sunny days and well, anyday I wish were a sunny day. It brings back old memories of carefree days before kids and mortgages. I can't count how many bottles of this I've been thru but it remains a loyal old friend.
Feb
2014
zzMaja
I used to love this perfume. It is a great spring or summer scent: light, fresh and outdoorsy. Great in a cool or warm breeze. Stays with you for hours. I swear I could actually smell the ocean breeze and the sandy beach when I wore this.
Feb
2014
eylan.mclaughlin
This perfume is absolutely wonderful. I have worn it the past two days and have received many compliments. I am not good at describing scents, but I do know this smells clean and wonderful. A little sweet as well. Its a perfect scent for a warm spring day with a slight breeze to blow the scent around you. Or a cool night to enhance the sweetness.
Feb
2014
pERfumista5
I see Escape at Marshall's all the time but I don't think twice about it because it's one of the first fragrances I ever wore so I've been over it for years & I forgot what it smelled like. Now, after reading the reviews on here, I decided to get it & see if it's as good as everyone says. Well, it is & I'm glad I have it again! It's so nostalgic for me(as well as Tribu) & the dry down is really nice.
Feb
2014
silvia d
Does anyone know where can i find this? my mom had a sample of it when i was younger; it rememebers me of late 90's
Jan
larali
Oh, the glorious 90s! Everyone in high school wore this and CK One.
Well, I like Escape. It is melon-peachy happy. One spritz on the neck does the trick, making me think of kites and rainbows and sunny days. On me, it turns very sheer and I get a lot of apple. I'll wear it on casual days.
Dec
2013
mhubbard
Today I am reading up on Escape to try to understand what perfume notes to avoid, as this fragrance is an intense turn-off. Despite the plethora of negative reviews here, I am not able to figure that out. This is a confusing mish mash of notes that do not work together and the effect is artificial and contrived, ie synthetic. While we know most perfumes are actually created in a lab, this is never a compliment. Could be the herbal/aromatic notes underneath that just don't match. All I know is that this is in my top ten of dislikes.
Nov
2013
VeeNVegas
Spicy, aquatic,very strong scent. It smells very masculine to me. Received this is a "lot" of perfumes I bought and was sure this was a man's cologne when I smelled it. Nothing feminine about it. I can't wear it and I'm a woman who has bought men's fragrances for myself.
Oct
2013
shasta
I used to judge this perfume because it smelled so appley and aquatic. But the drydown is really nice. It turns into a musky skin scent. Very reminiscent of coty wild musk. What's even better is that it's not as popular as it once was.
Oct
2013
shasta
The first thing you notice is the aquatic scent but never knew that the drydown is just like Coty Wild Musk. People will say and agree to anything. This smells nothing like Sunflowers. Two totally different fragrances. I do however own a bottle of coty musk and did a side by side comparison and asked two people if they did notice how similar they are. Will definitely put this in my rotation.
Oct
2013
nikkibom
This was the first fragrance that i 'craved' for. Was on a mission to get it - after smelling it on one of my customers. Was not until a year later that it was available in my country. By that time - every woman was wearing it - so it kinda lost its appeal!! It was this or ladies Cool Water that you could smell in every club toilet! I still think it is a great fragrance - first of it kind - later came Issey Miyake, remember!! It was the first Marine I think - along with Salvador Dali's Laguna!
Oct
2013
magdach7
there is something in this perfume I cannot understand - for the first 10 minutes it is disgusting just horrible and headache - making. and then something beautiful, just enchanting appears.... I cannot explain this phenomenon..... on one side it makes me sick, on the other it makes me undress in front of my husband ( I feel so sexy wearing it)
Sep
2013
iowagirl301
I used to wear this back in the late 90's & early 2000's because my boyfriend had bought it for me as a gift. In all truth I really could not stand the scent at all. I still don't care for it today. I'm not even sure what note in that I dislike or if it's just the way it blends together. So glad I moved on from this one.
Sep
2013
mashuda
Smells cheap. Sorry to all the ppl that like this. I tried, but my nose couldn't overcome the "economical' smell of this....... not something I expected from CK. I haven't come across one I don't like. Suppose there's always a first..... :/
Sep
2013
marwa.qoura
I remember a friend of mine used this in the 90's & I liked it very much but never tried it....I got a sample of it today and WOW, just WOW . This is the smell of love , for sure , sexy but not cheap , floral but not old fashioned , fruity but not sickley sweet , aquatic but not cold , woody but not boring ...Beautiful & I think it 's safe for ANY season , but as with all CK perfumes ;as much as the juice is wonderful , the bottle is ugly !
For those who fear fruity scents-sometimes - like me , I don't get this rotten smell we all dreadfully fear , the fruits just add
to its beauty , pretty safe if you want to try it :) I don't get melons in specific , just the pefect blend of everything .
Sep
2013
DoveGrayismyfavoritecolor
This can be unbelievably nauseating. Yet I still love it in all its floral foody wateriness. Much like the sickening smell and taste of wasabi that compels me to eat it after midnight on roast beef AND old sushi ...I return to this monster for a good whiff and a dose of allergic sickness.
Strange enough, this was a stunningly beautiful aroma on my dad (he wore this not the men's). Maybe the memories are what really seduce me but it really is a 1990s legend and those heroin-chic ads were killer.
On the right person, this is really lovely. If your chemistry can bring forth the moist flower notes in a complex way then it really is like a worldly Escape.
Aug
2013
Kim1980
My father bought me a minaturebox from Calvin Klein. In the beginning I disliked Escape. It had what I call a 'blond hair, blue eyes' smell. Because of a watery undertone. Watermelon I suppose. Later on lot's of woman where wearing this perfume. I started to get more used to it, but still found it nothing for me. Too overwhelming, nothing natural (I couldnt name any of the ingredients; a bit strange, I found it a bit cheep because of this combination) To be honest I start to like it a bit more, but I would never buy it.
Jul
2013
Alla89
It was a blind buy... and I still regret it. I tried to like it but I just can't. My bottle is still full... really weird cause I like all the ingredients in it, but not the combination.
Jun
2013
KATERINA LABROPOULOU
Very nice perfume as usual from Calvin Klein. Its strong though appropriate for summer or spring. Very aquatic and flowery too. Excellent sillage and longevity. The chamomile note is very strong in the beginning but later it settles down and the other notes arise. I would categorize this perfumes as very aromatic. Thanks CK.
May
2013
Nat205
I've really tried to like this one, but it gives me a headache! I like smelling it on other people. I'll keep it, though, in case I change my mind.
May
2013
Aina Harryna
I get it! My bf give me it. I love it so much..This smell more to floral! Long lasting!
May
2013
misspiggysupreme
This is one of the nastiest nauseating fragrances I have ever smelled. The escape name must come from the feeling you want to escape the stench of this foul smell.
May
2013
Aina Harryna
I love this scent after 30 minute. First note make me headache, It remind to my classmate. She always wear this perfume..I love it, but I cannot to wear it. It not suitable to me but I love this scent if someone wear it.
Apr
2013
Osusanna
There is a coty reformulation that I have. It's screechy for sure. When the drydown occurs it can be a nice fragrance and I actually like it but I feel like I could set off an asthma attack in someone for sure. The melon note is prominent and so is the aquatic feel. Too difficult to wear and not blended well enough for my taste. I'm reading other reviews out there and finding that the coty version is the screechy one whereas the original was quite nice.
Apr
2013
fara.idola
I love this smell when my friend wear it, first note make me dizzy but second not it so wonderful..
Apr
2013
rochie
When this fragrance first came out I loved it. It was my signature. Now I have to spray elbows only, not too close to my nose, otherwise it gives me a headache. Shame because the top notes especially, are lovely and up-lifting.
Apr
2013
natural
a beautiful aquatic fruity-floral! Calvin Klein best frag IMO. Can't find any similarities between Escape and EA Sunflowers though...
Mar
icecube
Today I am escaping into the green woods of spring.
Straight away there are a white carpet of Lilly of the Walley. Some lovely jasmine trees at the side of the smal path.
I am taking a rest on a field full of chamomille.
Time for a fruity snack - peaches, apricots and some slices of melon - smells divine.
Feb
2013
djuzz.becuzz
Slightly spicy aquatic fruity floral. A quite linear scent, yet it smells slightly different on me everytime I wear it. Sometimes it reminds me strongly of Elizabeth Arden's 'Sunflowers' and other times it doesn't even come close... Must have to do with my bodychemistry. It's a nice scent, sillage and longevity are good as well.
Feb
2013
damewolf13
At the start, this fragrance is a delightful blend of melon and chamomile, with the delightfully fresh scent of East Coast wildflowers thrown in! After a few moments, you will catch the sweet aroma of apricot, and litchi, and then at the drydown, it will settle into a warm, mellow, rosy, amber, wildflower blend with a dash of aquatics thrown in.
This is a classic fragrance that has stood the test of time, and still brings a feminine warmth to any occasion where it is worn.
Sillage, and longevity are both amazing!
Jan
2013
NuocHoaDaisy
The top note is DEFINITELY fruity! It is quite floral with a touch of spice. I sprayed this on myself in a shop and it lasted for an outstanding three days. No joke. It has heavy sillage and can be smelt two feet away and it smells divine. I think it isn't at all a sophisticated fragrance and is best worn in the day. You will love this if you are drawn to fruity, melony or fresh fragrances. I can't wait to buy my own bottle.
Jan
2013
mi-jo.sayegh
This smells to me mostly of melon and chamomile with a bit of sweet peach thrown in, and while it does smell faintly like Sunflowers I would not compare the two.
I seem to remember this giving me a head ache back in the 90s (but I loved it anyhow) but the reformulated version does not, so while many people may dislike that it has changed it works out well for me.
Unfortunately, they brought it back, and now I just heard it is discontinued again (not sure how accurate that is but it has disappeared from all the shelves in my area)
It is most certainly an Aquatic, but I could not see myself wearing this in summer because this is almost a warm aquatic and it is much too strong.
I think this is the perfect scent for a winter day when you want to literally escape for a few hours (I seriously did not mean for that to be a cheesy reference to the name, it is just the only word I could think of and it fits perfectly)
Nov
2012
cimbo
ever since i was a teenager now i am 30 for me this perfume is a heaven. everyone i meet compliments me how fragrant i am. this perfume is very classy and quite long lasting.. love it so much :)
Nov
2012
iamjennyrobyn
I love this scent but it's just too overpowering at at times especially during lunch and if the temp is high, it gets a bit concentrated.
Nov
2012
ciobanu.andreea
I am glad that at least one company brought back a discontinued item, realizing that the people wanted it.I would be even happier if other companies reconsidered this idea, too.For me Escape is a winter and summer fragrance.For winter it is warm, deep and strong.For summer it is ocean fresh and lasting.It is amazing how the same notes can be so different in different seasons.
Anyway, i think it is a complete perfume,it has personality,freshness, sweetness and everlasting power.From all the CK fragrances, I would definitely buy this one.And since a small amount is enough to make you a diva,it is a good bargain quality-quantity-price.Thank you, Calvin Klein!Maybe the colour of the fragrance is a bit misleading.I would change it into a lighter yellow or transparent.
Nov
2012
suiteladybug
What a plesant, aquatic, melon, slightly powdery, floral scent that lasts and lasts. It is complex enough to keep me satisfied, but refreshing and relateable on a mass level. This is my favorite Calvin Klein scent. Really lovely.
Nov
2012
Mooniq
Escape to me is a perfect blend of nonsweet flowers, some mild and gentle nonsweet fruity notes and some warm, womanish woodsy notes. Its a scent with attitude and its a bit bold and edgy but at the same time soft, deep and wonderful. This is a parfum for us past 30+something, I think Escape is to adult and unsweet for teenager. Longlasting on my skin. Less is more, just 1 spray and you will smell good for several hours.
Escape är en perfekt blandning av osöta blommor, mjuka, milda och osöta fruktnoter och lite varma kvinnliga träiga noter i basen. Det är en doft med attityd, den är lite kraftig och lite "kantig" men samtidigt mjuk, djup och superhärlig. Detta är den doft för oss 30+nånting. Escape är nog för vuxen och osöt/mörk för tonåringar. Mycket hållbar på min hud. Lite är lagom, en sprejning får dig att dofta gott i många timmar.
Oct
2012
femmeasis
If you are wearing this nearby me i will need an urgent escape. Really sorry for all who love it but it's an award for the most poisonous fragrance ever in my life.
Oct
2012
CozyCat
I think this fragrance can easily be summed up in 4 words: PEACH + JASMINE + CHAMOMILE + AQUATIC. It's strong, sweet and clean, and yes, it's one monstrous aquatic perfume. The peaches are juicy and sweet (maybe even abit too sweet), the jasmine note is fresh and voluptuous. Huge, huge sillage if you're not careful. I discovered this scent a couple of years ago and loved it, but nowadays it gives me headaches for some reason, so I haven't been reaching for it much lately. I enjoy catching whiffs of it off of others, it smells sexy, fresh and super feminine...a summer fragrance with oomph, probably the most 'seductive' summer fragrance out there to date. If you can tolerate it well, this will make you stand out, in a good way, and no, it won't make you smell 'outdated' at all, a 20 year old could pull this off effortlessly. Just don't over-spray this one! Ever!
Oct
2012
Narciss
Back in the beginning of the 90's Escape was the most popular perfume. Whenever I smelled it on someone, it would just take my breath away. I really wanted to have one but instead I received the resembling Elizabeth Arden's "Sun flowers" as a gift, also being my first perfume. Four years ago I purchased a bottle. I received several nice compliments from both men and women. A colleague while entering my room sniffed and said "this rooms smells beautiful". On another occasion while I was headed to the airport the guy seated next to me in the bus complimented me. The best among all was when I was at a party a man that I just met told me that I was the most beautiful smelling women he had ever encountered. So overall I think this perfume suits my style and works with my body chemistry. Having said that, I repurchased the fragrance two years ago. But this time I felt as though it was too heavy or maybe I got bored of it. So I handed it over to my sister who liked it. Recently, during a meeting I recognized Escape on a lady. I don't know what it was but it just wasn't the same. It was extremely loud and without any character. But however, whenever I sniff it in the bottle it still smells divine and brings back memories.
Oct
2012
leogirl84
Not my favorite, since it gives me a bit of a headache and reminds me of the 80's when heavy, aldehydic scents were all the rage. It also for some reason leaves a chemical taste in my mouth. Maybe when I'm in my late 50's or something I'll try it again.
Oct
2012
opallara
No mistake about it, this perfume is beautiful. There are a lot of sweet and powdery fragrances out there.......this one is for those that don't like those kind of fragrance. It's very floral without being sweet, it's just sexy, with a slight rose tint to it. It has always been my "go to" sexy fragrance. And it lasts and lasts like you wouldn't believe!
Sep
2012
musictwig
I wore this for a long time. Everyone always knew exactly what it was! No mystery here.
Sep
2012
TanteSimone
This is one of the fragrances that smell divine on me. It has a lift, enough skin sweetness, and an elusive tobacco note that shows from time to time. Also, a little goes a long way.
I don't care if people say that I am stuck on the 90's. Will repurchase again and again.
Sep
2012
jesz
I smelled this faintly in a magazine sample and loved its soft rosy powdery aquatic vanilla scent. It was like a hug. When I got a bottle it smelled entirely different on me. It reacted acidically with my skin chemistry, and resembled notes of pine needles and lemon peel mixed with a whiff of alcohol. Some lucky women can wear it, and I will forever be sniffing your sillage.
Sep
2012
Sensoria
Didn't use Escape for a long time but I have started to use this perfume again, because I really wanted to smell again that I'm wearing perfume. It has been ages that people said to me : OH you smell nice, what perfume you are wearing? All the scents I bought lately, from different brands, have almost no sillage and longevity and I keep spraying and spraying. Don't know what happened with the ingredients they are using at this moment when making a perfume. When I'm telling this to the saleswoman they always say: Yeh maybe you don't smell it but others do. Well I tested it with friends and they even didn't notice when I was wearing perfume. I don't want to pay a lot for only some scented water. At the moment I'm wearing Escape and I'm enjoying that I can smell that I'm wearing perfume :)
Sep
2012
Aquilone19
I remember my grandmother used to have this and use it heavily; I find it strong and the fragrance just remains intact and never develops on the skin. Will buy one bottle, to keep grandma's scent around :)
Sep
2012
niecwiecio
Quite heavy, but not too heavy. Quite long lasting. It mostly reminds me of chamomile smell. It's good for summer evenings or autumn/winter.
Aug
2012
BV13
Im soo inlove with this perfume, it soo soft fruity flowery and sexy, the scent on me lasts for hours even if i spray just a small amount on my skin. I remember i used to have that poster(shirtless+girl w/wet hair) stuck on my wall back in college. :D
Jun
2012
sistertricked
I am hooked on this right now, there are 30 degrees C outside and I do need a refreshment. Fresh, not in a masculine way, with mellow fruits for delight and the feeling of ... Splash!!! Great sensation to spray it on! Acquatic!!! Fresh!!!! Mild herbs and summery fruit cocktail. It's like diving into pleasure, timeless!
Jun
2012
Suafeerak
Escape is one of those fragrance that is hard to forget.I had it about 13 years ago & was surprised to see it in a Marshall store last week I bought it without a thought just to try to get pleasant memories back.I think it's great & smell even better & fresher after a while & has great lasting power.
Jun
2012
armaniboy
Simply set a masterpiece.Back in the times when calvin Klein made statement fragrances-well this one is one of my all time favorites.So feminine, so sexy and fresh.It used to be very recognizable.Nowadays not so much-still every time i smell it im like...Beautiful!!Hard to find-mostly available-not to mention only available in EU.LOVE it.
Jun
2012
isilda
I would like to know can I buy "escape" from calvin klein, because in Europe...I can not find it and I love very much and I don't trust buying things in the internet. Please...someone help.
Jun
2012
mak.erot
I like melon, so i luv CK Escape. It's good for me and people around me, they like it too. Longevity about 6-8 hours on me who live in tropical country and sillage is monsters! Try it, and wish you luv it..
May
2012
KittenEyre
This was amazing when it first launched, it has such beautiful memories for me. I sprayed it today and was so disappointed . Like a different scent and it gave me such a headache..... What a shame ck
May
2012
thief of hearts
I dont understand all the negative reviews. This is one of the few headturners for me. Sexy and dirty. Mmm!
May
2012
perhapspersephone
Horrible. Just horrible. I was surprised to see so many different notes make up this scent. All I smell are flowers. Not nice flowers but overpowering, icky, yucky evil flowers. Then there are the flowers.... ugh! It will be a while before I try CK. AGAIN.
May
2012
stormyla
I really enjoyed this fragrance when it first came out. I believe that I used two or three large bottles of it. For me it was a good everyday to the office scent. It never seemed overpowering and didn't draw many comments either good or bad, but it gave me a very pleasant feeling.
Our relationship probably ended because something more attractive came along. I don't recall this as a scent that I'm likely to invest in again, but it was nice when I did.
May
2012
fath1ma
I've got many compliments with it. Looks like Escape is working well, very very well. Girl 9 year old to woman 45 years old said, "what perfume is it? Smells so good!"
This is always be in my draw.
Obviously a safe perfume. The strong perfumes are always great, spritz twice... not more. Wow! Everybody like it!
May
2012
perhapspersephone
I bought the mini. And my reaction to it was strong . GET IT OFF ME NOW!!! I didn't wear it long enough to try to pick out notes ( which I am not good at anyway ) . I just wanted it off.
I see it has a resemblence to Sunflowers which I also dislike. I can only say on me Escape reeks. I mean reeks !
You win some , you lose some.
Apr
2012
Fonna
After a quick sharp piercing note of alcohol, flash of pine then definitely sharp melon, followed rapidly by sharp marigold, followed rapidly to a nice floral jasmine/rose.
Just when you think it's over it exhasts itself fading rapidly into a wet sweet grass. The End.
And there you sit....eshausted on wet grass after the inebriated fruit and flower truck man speeds by, hits a pine tree and out jumps a ton of melons and flowers all over you, knocking you into the wet grass, and nobody comes to help. lol
I thought it would smell cleaner as I tried this on a few months ago and thought I liked it, but it must have been the men's cologne in the frosted bottle.
Well, it's going on the shelf here.
Apr
2012
cleo777
One of my friends wore this all the time in the 90's. My other friends and I abhorred it, but none of us wanted to hurt her feelings. Rotting seaweed, overripe fruit, wet wood mold, a hot mess! And not in a good way!
Mar
2012
mlpalazzo
Not a fan of this one. Bought it based on the notes.... at first squirt it smelled like chemicals and cigarettes. Very strange. My boyfriend agreed, then it practically disappeared after a few whiffs of a light floral smell. Didn't detect any fruit at all, sadly. Returned this one the next day.
In a word.... gross.
2012
marisacb
I used to wear this in high school. I loved it back then. I couldn't really find it easily for a while so I stopped wearing it. I recently found it at tj maxx and purchased it. At first I was so bummed because it was not at all what I remembered. Has some sort of overly strong stinky tree smell. Having already bought it I was determined to like it even though I really hated it. Thank God that with 5 or so minutes it turns into a super sweet smell, the smell I remembered loving. Yay! If I could only bi pass that first 5 minutes!
Feb
2011
DarkClarissa
I bought this for myself back when it first came out in the early 90's. Back then I was less discerning and tended to just buy a fragrance if I liked the advertising that went with it. So I bought into the idea of the beautiful couple in the sunshine.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Hmmmph! You see that it probably does smell divine on the right person's wrist, but not on mine. It was too fussy, too messy, too much of everything vying for attention. The spicy note ended up winning out and boy did it win out. My entire wardrobe seemed to stink of the stuff. I was so disappointed!
As Nuppu said, you either love it or hate it. Well I loved it, but my skin seemed to hate it. It was a real shame. On the right person though and it becomes the romantic holiday from heaven with the man of your dreams whisking you away on his private jet to that private beach paradise. So definitely test it, walk away and live with it for 24 hours, then if you still love it, buy it! :)
Dec
2011
KEW
Ironically, I bought this as my wedding perfume 10 years ago. I've recently got more into perfume (with the help of this fab site) and have been looking/sniffing out for a new/different perfum to love- without success. Very few perfume last on my skin- but Escape does. There isn't a note that stands out to me. It's not obviously floral or fruity. It has a touch of marine. Just different! Young, without being a teenie bopper smell. Suitable for day and eve- especiall summer's eve. I think I should give up my search and go back to wearing this more often!
Dec
2011
cheeks
This stuff is quite strong. I bought it but it didn't get much wear from me, so I gave it away to my mom (she loves all the sillage monsters). I would wear this one very rarely, because it has a tendency to induce migraines. It's too sweet (not sugary, but more an artificial sweet), and just cloying to my nose, I get a whole lot of peaches, and melons coming in second...it's quite a heavy fruity-aquatic. I understand where the 'detergent-like' comments are coming from. Nevertheless, it is a clean, 'fresh' scent like aquatic scents tend to be. It smells better after about an hour, you get some flowers coming through, and it actually ends up smelling quite nice and tolerable. All in all, it's quite unique, I do happen to enjoy aquatic scents, it's the first group of scents I was exposed to as a young girl in the 90's... but this one is just too strong and fruity for me. If you're looking for a sillage-monster for summer, Escape fits the bill perfectly! CK will always be the master of clean scents, this is one of his unique 'spin-offs' of 'the clean scent'.
Nov
2011
Abyss1001
Purchased this because the description said there was a note of apple in it...I thought, that might be interesting!... Well...bought the mini and guess what? My nose said "no apple"! LOL... Oh well...
Oct
olga1780
Loud and synthetic....just like Sunflowers!
If you would like something along the same lines but more rounded and natural smelling - go with Il Bacio by Borghese.
Sep
2011
soonflower
I have third bottle of this one and that means something, because I usually don't buy the same fragrance once again.
Escape is strong, I mean STRONG, unique.
Sometimes I think it's little synthetic, especially when I get a sniff from the bottle.
But on my skin it develops into something absolutely fantastic, rich, sunny with fresh waft. Works with my chemistry.
Everytime I wear I get compliments.
Sep
2011
Klee
LOUD!!! OFFENSIVE!!! CLOYING!!! It's Calvin Klein's Dior's Poison! Even though I hate Poison, I simply love Escape! For awhile it was my signature fragrance and I used to spray it violently. Stopped wearing it for 15 or so years. Recently re-discovered. I still love and if it offends people by its cloying marine scent....I don't really care. This is the only Calvin Klein I can wear. Obsession reminds me to much of a creepy person I used to know.
Aug
2011
Radchick
I wish I could smell what everyone else is smelling. On me, this smells like a man's cologne, and not a good one. It's heavy, wet and cold, not joyful or comforting at all. I generally like CK fragrances but this one just didn't like me.
Aug
2011
Siv55
Actually does remind me of a walk along the beach. Very marine indeed. And spicy/creamy. Quite similar to Elizabeth Arden Sunflowers. It smells very old-fashioned now (to me anyway) and I think is discontinued? Have read somewhere that it was reformulated into a boring white floral and lost the marine note, but I have used the testers from several shops, and it still smells marine to me. It's quite salty too.
Jun
2011
isabella211
this is just a classic, in my opinion. it's so pretty and feminine. it's truly unique and lasts forever. i never tire of it and am always jealous when i smell it on someone else (which is rare now a days...im 28 yrs old btw, in case you were wondering about the 'now a days' wording), even though i own it, because i feel like i should have worn it. and, let's face it, opinions aside, i have yet to meet a guy that doesn't like it. it's strange, but it makes them "stupid smile" at you, almost like you intoxicated them for a minute.
Jun
2011
Niunia
my choice for this season. Fresh, sweet and my husband likes it :) everyday frag for any outfit. had it long time ago and now it's back!
May
2011
panthere
Oh i adore this one. Its one of the few scents that i can say is like sunshine and happiness in a bottle.The only other ones similar with the same effect are EA Sunflowers and Clinique Aromatics.Strangly on my skin i don't seem to get an overtly aquatic feel. The notes which my skin prodominatly picks up are chamomile, marigold and moss with slight hints of fruits and vanilla.A beautiful summer scent,don't think it suits winter.
May
2011
goody2shoes
Oddly this perfume begins quite woody and gets more aquatic as it dries down! It's very pleasant from start to finish and MUCH more interesting than most aquatics because of that woody layer. It might pass as a chypre. In my book it is a sheer version of the old woody Accenti,of blessed memory. Escape is an all-day perfume, perfect for the office and for shopping and cafes. It's very Klein,redolent of restrained good taste,sophisticated and well mannered, but not outstandingly brilliant.
May
2011
sophisticated
wow!! i almost forgot about that one, there were times when this perfume was my one & only sweet escape, i used to buy it bottle after bottle till i finally got enough of it i guess, it's a classic
May
2011
Asmaa youssef
i love that rich fruity floral woody scent it is strong timeless and sexy with freshness way,special for date
May
2011
seatonica
Autumnal, mellow and woodsy - that is how I experience Escape. For me there is nothing marine. I do love it.
May
sofababe
Summer has definitely arrived. I'm wearing Escape so there can be no mistake.
I don't know why it is but this amazing frag smells the same no matter how long you wear it, camomile is predominent, backed up by marigold and hyacinth. Just enough sweetness is brought to the mix by the melon and lychee, and peach I think.
No matter how old I get (I'm 41 almost), CK scents remind me of the 90s. I had a set of minis in the late 90s containing CK One, Eternity, Obsession, Contradiction and Escape. There is still a similar product but they swapped Escape for Truth.
Escape smells of sunshine, simple as that.
Apr
2011
TankGirl
It is rare to find a summer fragrance with personality but Escape truly makes the difference.
Back in the day, I used to wear Escape in the Summer, Obsession at night and CK One when I didnt knew what to put on.
Escape is a very interesting perfume because it works really well with the skin heat.
A couple of months ago I used a vial of it in the wet english weather and made me a headache what made me think that they have ruined the composition. Today in the dry heat of this mediterrean spring, Escape is fresh, aquatic, floral, salty and deep. On my skin the predominant notes are chamomile and peach, actually it smells a little bit like iced tea. This amazing scent surrounds you during all day in a glamorous but simple way, in another words in a simple but pure kind of beauty. At night it gets warmer and cozier what makes it perfect for all day and all occasions.
I'm in love again by it, and I think that for who's tired of coconutty/suntanned type of scents, this can be a fantastic experience.
One of the best in the CK house and definatly a keeper.
Sillage: Monster, use it with carefully!
Longevity: It last and last and last..
Personality: I would say that the advert says it all...
9.5/10
2011
Norgirl
I loved this one when i was a teenager. but got alittle bord after a wild . smells very muche like Sunflower parfume
Feb
2011
TrinitySydney
I smell like a teenager when I wear this, but my best friend wears it beautifully. She always smells like she's just stepped out of the shower.
Jan
2011
stacyrenee
Escape... that is EXACTLY what I want to do when I'm near this scent, because it gives me the worst headache ever! There are so many notes together that they all get lost and it becomes a revolting stench. I'll never know why so many people loved it.
Nov
2010
nickinotnikki
I used to wear this in college in the late 90's and I loved it, I smelled it again recently and I don't know why, it smells horrible to me now, way too strong and old lady like to me and it gave me a headache.
Nov
2010
Rouu
takes me back to early 90th , was very popular around here in Egypt ! my nanny used to wear that,same time i used to hate that one :D , i was too young to realize that i dunt palate it , personally i dunt get along with aquatic fragrances that much , but that one is the worst ! outdated even with the bottle shaped ! nothing attractive about it , been inflated too much
i agree with rainydaze , why the hell men like that scent !?
very tactless with a strong detergent scent effaces any other affection on me , in short it makes me sick !
Sep
2010
nyoka
Awalk along the seashore.You sit for a picnick and all u have brought is fruit.Dead ripe,juicy,dripping with nectar fruit.Sitting on the sea shore,fruit and a gentle breeze blowing off the water.LOvely.
Aug
2010
PShank27
When I first sprayed this, it smelled very green. I am not a fan of green scents, so I thought I just wasted my money. But then it turned into a sweet yet fresh fragrance that's kind of addicting. It doesn't really smell aquatic or blue to me, but I can understand how it might to others. Definitely a strong perfume - so don't spray more than once - but I don't think it is overpowering. I feel like this is the sort of scent that would leave a pleasant trail behind you as you walk by, and maybe even turn some heads. It does smell a little dated, so I might just give it to my mom, but altogether a nice fragrance.
Aug
2010
thief of hearts
One of the very few women's scents that will turn my head in search of its wearer.
Jul
2010
templeofvenus
An old favourite of mine that will always have a place in my collection, smells like a sweet ocean breeze to me, very fresh yet very strong at the same time, its addictive.
Jun
2010
bwcw81
I have to agree with some ladies talking about how men attracted to this fragrance, in fact, I do, very much in deed. I remember every time my ex-girlfriend wearing this, I keep praising her how great she smell and keep chatting around the fragrance. I don't know why, but it just keep me distracted and feeling her sexiness!
This is a magic potion to attract men! Ladies....
Jun
2010
guest_Ang
One of my favorites. Full of life and very vibrant. Makes me think of sunny skies, fresh air, and a fruity cocktail. Refreshing. This scent smells wonderful on me. I get so many compliments. My bo loves it. It drives him crazy. Just love it!
Apr
2010
zvoncica
CK with all of his creations aims on young and modern population. Juice must successes to be unique and unusual. Yes unusual, this is the main characteristic of CKs ideas. Escape is as well like that. Unusual. Lets check what I mean when saying this...
Escape is street market in Bombay, loud, hot and crowded. The moment you start to smell peach and apple you realize there is garbage can right next to it and you re fearful to approach it. Repelled and nauseated.
Escape is rubber sandal on the tired trader feet, who traveled for a week on his camel across the desert. In the middle of the summer.
Escape is dirty, skinny, homeless cat. Sleeps at day and hunts by night on the streets of overpopulated cities. Battle for life or death. Natural selection.
The best way to use this perfume is to read instructions on the bottle which clearly say: Escape.
Mar
2010
sherapop
In an effort to escape from ETERNITY, I have now donned ESCAPE, another Calvin Klein creation from that same period, when the highest desideratum at the CK house appears to have been to produce perfumes that no one could ever confuse with anything that already was or would ever be.
And they succeeded, admirably, yet again with ESCAPE. Nothing on this planet or beyond--I venture to guess--smells quite like ESCAPE. In fact, nothing smells even remotely close to ESCAPE! This was my first truly blue fragrance: very, very aquatic and cool, and I am surprised at reviews which chacterize this scent as warm.
I loved in the nineties how one (okay, I) could have a handful of CK frags that covered every conceivable circumstance. And their marketers craftily cultivated a veritable cult following by offering purse-sized edps along with the full-sized bottles. In reality, the purse-sized edps proved to be entirely unnecessary (except for traveling), as the lasting power of all of the CK frags that I frequented was so excellent as to require only a single, small application per day. As a result, I still have purse sprays of these unreformulated CK classics, which happily have not morphed into noxious toxins (something which did happen, for example, to the last few mls in my bottle of AMARIGE).
The list of notes for ESCAPE is something to behold, and I have no idea how out of a double dose of oakmoss and a note that I usually can't stand (clove), an aquatic floral has been composed. A genuine example of leger-de main, I'd have to say. Yes, it has that characteristic CK synthetic edge, but somehow it just makes ESCAPE, like TRUTH, seem modern.
Will I wear ESCAPE again after today's blast from the past? Probably not often, and only once or twice in the summer. But I still like this one somewhat, so long as it's not overapplied. (As a general rule, CK edp--at least from the nineties--is more like perfume, and should be treated accordingly.)
To my mind, ESCAPE evokes such memories as the sand and the ocean at Venice beach, the chainsaw juggler, the mad turban-clad guru on rollerskates... A bit of craziness and laughter...
Feb
2010
ajbww
I used to really love Escape and i would wear it all the time as my signiture scent, but if i was to wear it again now it would give me a headace leading to migrane, it smells very strong and lasts a while..
Feb
2010
kristina_vili
Very strong scent,2 hours after I put it on my skin I had a headache,I dont like it
Jan
2010
soniamcalear
This is a "knock your socks off kind of scent!" I used to like it back in the eighties but I cannot stand it any longer because its so damn strong. Its a green sharp scent but too much, too overpowering like Georgio of Beverly Hills. I just have to say that it slays me when manufactures start messing with the original formulas to water it down and make it CHEAP, CHEAP, CHEAP and think a woman would not know the difference!!!! They did the same thing with Halston Classic. I can tell the difference big time!
Jan
2010
jigglyclefairypuff
Judging by the title I was expecting something 'beachy, breezy, balmy' but instead got a slurry of heady florals and synthetic fruity notes.
It isnt too bad, but it is a little nauseating after a while.
Jan
2010
guest_guest
There is no such thing as an perfume made by Calvin Klein. There is an huge corporation in charge of his perfumes as well as the vast majority of house perfumes today. And this corporation decides what will happen with perfumes. The usual road: make them cheaper, faster to manufacture and widely appealing. Result? Mediocre, boring chemicals. Welcome to corporate world!
Jan
instantjim
Very warm and smells a lot like wattle on me. Definitely not a summer fragrance!
EDIT - HMM I WILL HAVE TO MAKE SURE THAT I LOG OUT OF MY ACCOUNT, SO MY PESKY DAUGHTER DOESN'T SNEAKILY GIVE REVIEWS LIKE THIS ONE...
Dec
2009
guest_
THANK YOU "guest". I thought I would see if anyone else noticed the obvious change in Escape recently. It has dramatically changed it's formula. It no longer smells ANYTHING like it used to. I would always get compliments since 1991 this is the ONLY fragrance I wear. Now it is awful. I just wasted my money. I need to find someone who has stock piled the old formula Escape.
Nov
2009
guest_
Escape has recently changed their formula. They are using so much alcohol now in the product that after about an hour you can not smell it at all. So disappointed in Calvin Klein. The price is the same as always and it smell like knock-off cologne. Bought it at Belk's Department store and the last three or four times it hasn't smelled right......Definitely would not recommend! Take it from a 20 year customer.
Oct
2009
guest_Iris
I used to love Escape and was my signature perfume in the late 90s. However, just recently (within the last 3 years), I find the smell over powering. Yuck! Somehow, I prefer much lighter perfumes. It could be a body chemistry changed or as I've grown older, perhaps, I am now leaning towards lighter perfumes.
Sep
2009
SandraS
For me this smells of beach and sand... more of a deserted beach when no one is around and you can focus on the sea and the waves while walking barefooted on a soft sand.
With sunny day outside, being in the office is a trial. So I brought the beach with me today. Malegria is right about the seasalt keeping it fresh even when setled on skin. Great fragrance for casual wear is lasted all day!
Mar
2009
kayka
you don't know story about escape???? if you don't know, you should investigate about it... if you find out, i am sure, you will use it every day... and no one else :)))
Feb
2009
guest_katya
you don't know story about escape???? if you don't know, you should investigate about it... if you find out, i am sure, you will use it every day... and no one else :)))
Feb
2009
missk
I read some reviews before I tried Escape for Women, and I must say I was preparing myself for an overpoweringly strong, mature perfume. I should note straight off the bat that I'm 18 years of age and that I really enjoy this fragrance.
It's strong, yes, but not so strong that it would knock someone out upon first sniff. Sophisticated, warm and sensual is how I would describe Escape. I can see this perfume being worn any time, whether it be during the day, at night or even during a special occasion. It may be a perfume that smells very similar to a lot of other fragrances these days, but there's something about Escape that is intriguing and rather charming.
Update:
When I first tested this fragrance I had never noticed that Escape had a salty note. I was quite surprised to discover this as it did indeed remind me of the ocean. Seeing that all my memories associated with the beach are good ones, this will most definitely be top priority on my wishlist.
Second update:
Escape did not work well with my skin chemistry. Unfortunately I had to push this one aside.
Feb
2009
Malegria
I like the opening of this scent - bright, fruity, spicy, with a hint of my favorite marigold.The apple lingers for a long time! The base is somehow feels plain to me - it has a lots of sea salt,that`s the only one way I can explain all that freshness in the base, despite sandalwood and moss, amber and musk. The sea note overwhelms everything, may be with a little competition from vetiver.I am glad I only bought a 0,5 oz bottle cause I probably won`t wear it very often.
Jan
2009
PR
Although I've already written a review on Escape, but some recent events made me to update it for clarity
Though I like it a lot, but I think nowhere near the way my husband likes it. This fragrance brings my husband into some sort of ecstatic state, for sure. Usually I use 'Escape' when going and doing my own business,and when we go out together I hardly ever use this perfume for some reason...I wonder why..because when I do, I think the only thing he's talking about is how good I smell and whaat a wonderful fragrance I wear..and he's always in mood for it. Perhaps the lack of other subject in our conversations prevents me from abusing this perfume when he's around more often than once in five years. Think 'cat and sweaty socks/Valerian'; and I'm guessing that lady's Escape version is even more appealing for his nose's receptors. We both agree it can be unisex though.
It just wild wild wild with it, and this perfume gets the wildest appreciation u can possibly get from the type of the man he is, which is unstoppable chatter about perfume, and it looks like never ending love. sigh.
Jan
andreapaz2008
sexy, glamorous,special for nights and dates.
Men feel attraction by this perfume because we look so powerful woman, all the world in our hands
Dec
2008
eskarina62
I think it's one of the loveliest smells Calvin Klein has invented - feels sexy on the skins of both young and old - has the message of a flower- beauty and a bit of sadness...
I have always worn it with pleasure but I think its smell develops particularly well in rainy weather.
lovely when the rains set in :-)
Nov
2008
Moszatka
This perfume was my best girlfriend's favourite in the 90's. Very aquatic and long lasting. It smells like peach with melon. I like it, but I haven't got yet.
Oct
2008
azuriiita
Its too strong, more fruity for my nose, and very common common common!!!... extremely easy to be recognize... nothing special... it's too harsh
Oct
2008
Lisa
Yo usé este perfume cuando recién salió al mercado, me parece un aroma cálido y para usarse en la tarde-noche en alguna ocasión especial.
El aroma dura bastante.
2008
Luciana
Es una fresca fragancia que se puede usar en verano y en primavera, para usarla todos los días. Es fácil reconovcerla.
Oct
2008
kiselina
In my opinion it is far from Floral-Aquatic. I don't smell anything aquatic in it. For me Escape is a sunny fragrance, rich of ripe fruits-peach, apricot, melon. Very strong and lasting, easy to recognize.
Sep
2008
PR
wha-at?? my jaw just dropped down when I've read that it has anything to do with the marine scent, oh,and it goes into floral aquatic group..had Escape for 6 or 5 years but never thought about it in that way...for me it is as marine and aquatic as a pirats' ship loaded with rum and strong alcochol, but in a good way.It has strong and warming smell, and I wear it when I have 'no nonsence' attitude, and it suits well on a busy and productive day.
Sep
2008
nattie6_6
I have a big bottle in my storage.. After reading all the good reviews I might want to take it out and give it a try, again.. Taste changes when you age..
Years ago I wanted some grown-up scent for my first job so I went out and got a big bottle of it.. I didn't know the "layers" of a fragrance back then just know this fragrance smells like some super sweet candy, and quite strong! I used only like 4ml.. I thought it was a bit too strong for everyday office use.
Sep
2008
Larisa
the onli calvin's parfume I did really like and enjoy for some time. it gave mi big nausea in my pregnancy although :)
Aug
2008
guest_
I get a lot of compliments when I wear Escape. I have been wearing this fragrance for years. I can't find another scent as nice as Escape. LOVE IT!
Aug
2008
guest_Olivia
It's what I fall back to ; when other scents get too complicated. Escape is very clean, its a breath of fresh air...
I get alot of compliments. It's not the latest fad. It's a hard to forget classic.
Jul
2008
Candra
In my opinion it smells really synthtetic. It didn't go well with my body chemistry. I remembered every time I used this perfume I got a headache.
Jul
2008
Nuppu
What to say about Escape? Strong, sunny, fruity, fresh. You either love it or hate it. Yes, it's smell all the way same from start to finish what is bad or too simple thing to somebody but if you like it, you get that mouthwatering, heady, peachy icetea fagrance that will give nice kickstart to a lousy morning or boost vacation in hot, humid tropical paradise.
Jun
Escape by Calvin Klein Eau de Parfum Spray 3.4 oz Body Lotion 6.7 oz for Women
This page contains information, reviews, perfume notes, pictures, new ads, vintage posters and videos about Calvin Klein Escape fragrance but we do not warrant the accuracy of information. Trademarks and logos belong to respected companies and manufacturers and are used solely to identify products and companies. If you have more information about Calvin Klein Escape, you can expand it by adding a personal perfume review. Fragrantica has a unique user-driven classification system and you may classify Escape by Calvin Klein. Click on the appropriate options on the fragrance classification form below the perfume picture. Also, you can find links to 3rd party websites/Internet stores, but Fragrantica has no access or control over those websites. We do not make guarantees nor accept responsibility for what you might find as a result of these links, or for any future consequences including but not limited to money loss. User reviews of Escape by Calvin Klein represent the views of the credited authors alone and do not reflect Fragrantica's views.
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In 1975 lord Lucan was convicted in his absence of murdering his children's nanny. What was her name? | Calvin Klein Escape | FragranceNet.com®
Calvin Klein Escape
For Men
Since 1991, Escape by Calvin Klein has been providing women with a fragrance that is perfect for that romantic evening under the stars. Its special mix of mandarin, plum, apple, rose and peach scents is combined with musk and sandalwood fragrances to create an intoxicating blend that is made to impress. Whether you wear it out to a romantic dinner or at home for a candlelit dinner for two, Escape is the right scent for an evening with that special someone.
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Add a touch of excitement to your everyday life with Escape by Calvin Klein. This thrilling men's cologne blends mandarin, apple, plum, peach, rose, and sandalwood to create a subtle yet distinctive scent. Introduced in 1993, Escape enhances your confidence and playfulness while imbuing every interaction with a sense of joy. Spray it on the pulse points on your neck and wrists before leaving for the office, and enjoy the sense of drama it brings to your entire day.
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1 - 5 (of 239 Reviews)
I haven't bought Calvin Klein Escape in a while, but this was a great price and it smells better than I remembered. I am so glad I bought it.
Written by MCD on November 28, 2016
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I haven't bought Calvin Klein Escape in a while, but this was a great price and it smells better than I remembered. I am so glad I bought it.
Written by MCD on November 28, 2016
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Love this purchase - its the authentic product that beats Mall prices any day!!
Written by Pinotchick on October 13, 2016
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Love EVERYTHING I have received from you. Escape is a special favorite of my niece and I always like to have some on hand for her b'day and just because. I do love fragrance and your prices are very good. I will be ordering again.
Written by Anonymous on September 01, 2016
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Escape by Calvin Klein - I love it, the scent is so sweet and last long. My friend noticed my smell and she liked it too. I can really recommend this product.
Written by Glo on August 25, 2016
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1 - 5 (of 239 Reviews)
| i don't know |
Who was on the throne immediately before Queen Victoria? | Queen Victoria - The UK's Longest Reigning Monarch
Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria
The Longest Ruling Monarch of the United Kingdom
Queen Victoria of Great Britain. Original Artist: By T H Maquire. (1852). (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
By Patricia Daniels, Contributing Writer
Updated July 26, 2016.
Who Was Queen Victoria?
Ascending to the throne at only 18 years old, Queen Victoria ruled the United Kingdom for nearly 64 years -- the longest of any British monarch. During her reign, Great Britain became a powerful industrial nation and boasted an empire that stretched across the globe.
Despite the early loss of her beloved husband, Queen Victoria provided a reassuring stability during much of the 19th century - an era of great social and technological change. The years of her reign are referred to as the Victorian Era.
Dates: May 24, 1819 - January 22, 1901
Reign: 1837 - 1901
Also Known As: Alexandrina Victoria of the House of Hanover; "the Grandmother of Europe"
The Girl Who Would Be Queen
Queen Victoria was born at Kensington Palace on May 24, 1819 to Edward, the Duke of Kent (and fourth son of King George III) and German Princess Victoire of Leiningen. Although Victoria was fifth in line to the throne - unlikely to become monarch - the duke feared that any future claim to the throne might be challenged if she were born abroad.
continue reading below our video
Profile of Queen Victoria
He ensured that his daughter was born on British soil, moving with his pregnant wife from Germany to England.
Christened Alexandrina Victoria at birth, the child came to be called Victoria. Despite being born into royalty, she did not grow up surrounded by wealth. Edward's spendthrift ways had left him with many debts.
The duke and duchess, in an attempt to reduce expenses, moved with their infant daughter to a modest home. Not long after the move, Edward became ill and died of pneumonia on January 23, 1820 (Victoria was just eight months old). Six days later, King George III died as well, thus making George IV King of England.
Victoria was now third in line to the throne behind her two uncles, who had failed to produce heirs.
Victoria's Less Than Royal Childhood
King George IV , whose only legitimate child had died in childbirth, was resentful of his brother's daughter. He begrudgingly allowed Victoria and her mother to move into an apartment at Kensington Palace, but would only approve a small allowance. The duchess’s brother, Prince Leopold (later King Leopold I of Belgium ), agreed to pay for Victoria's upbringing and education.
Tutors were hired to school Victoria in history, math, drawing, and languages. Raised by a German mother who spoke little English, Victoria spoke mostly German the first few years of her life, but readily learned both English and French.
In 1827, when Victoria was eight, her Uncle Frederick, the Duke of York, died, placing her one step closer to the throne.
A Scheming Pair
When newly widowed, Victoria's mother had turned for advice to John Conroy, a colleague of her late husband. In the years following the duke's death, the self-serving Conroy convinced the duchess that she should have herself declared Victoria's regent (an agent acting on behalf of an incapacitated or underage monarch) in the event that Victoria became queen while still a minor. In this way, Conroy - through the duchess - could essentially control the throne.
When King George IV (who loathed Conroy and the duchess) died in 1830, the pair believed they could easily persuade newly-crowned King William IV to name the duchess as Victoria's regent. But King William did not trust the duchess and refused her request. The duchess petitioned Parliament, winning approval as Victoria's sole regent in 1831.
The regency proved unnecessary. On June 20, 1837, a month after Victoria's eighteenth birthday, King William died, making Victoria queen of England.
The Young Queen
Weeks after assuming the throne, Queen Victoria moved to Buckingham Palace , where she began the business of ruling the nation. The young queen's composure and confidence impressed the prime minister and the Privy Council (a group of high government officials and advisers to a monarch).
The official coronation was held on June 28, 1838 amid great celebration. The public was enchanted by the new queen, who seemed more eager to please them than her predecessors had been. A scandalous incident, however, would soon sway public opinion against her.
The "Lady Flora affair," as it came to be known, was the product of the young queen's immaturity and lack of discretion. Victoria, among others, had noticed that her mother's lady-in-waiting, Flora Hastings - an unmarried woman - appeared to have a bulging abdomen. Queen Victoria jumped to the conclusion that Lady Flora was pregnant, and began to make comments about her to various members of her staff. The rumor circulated beyond palace walls.
Within months, Lady Flora was gravely ill. When she died of an apparent abdominal tumor, the queen was blamed for having started the rumors that had brought dishonor upon a dying woman. The public was outraged; many of her detractors actually booed the queen when she went out in public.
It would take an engagement and marriage for Queen Victoria to regain her reputation.
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert: Courtship and Marriage
Victoria's Uncle Leopold had long favored his German nephew Prince Albert - first cousin to Victoria - as the perfect candidate for marriage to the queen. When the prince and Victoria had met two years earlier, she had been impressed by Albert's looks and demeanor.
Upon meeting with him a second time in October 1839, Victoria seemed smitten. Within days, she proposed to him (protocol would not allow him to propose to her), and the engagement was announced.
Even before the wedding a debate arose as to what title Prince Albert should hold. Queen Victoria preferred "King Consort," so that Albert could rule by her side, but members of Parliament were opposed to giving that power to a foreigner.
Parliament decided to award the prince no rank or title whatsoever; he was simply made a British subject. Prince Albert was immensely disappointed, and the queen was furious, but could not oppose the decision.
The wedding was held on February 10, 1840 . Despite rainy weather, large crowds lined the streets to watch the procession from Buckingham Palace. Later, the crowd cheered as the newly-married couple rode past in their carriage.
The Royal Offspring
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert welcomed the birth of their first child, Princess Victoria in November 1840. However, the queen was not happy that she'd become pregnant so soon after the wedding, and often complained in her journal about the difficulties of motherhood.
Queen Victoria gave birth to a male heir, Albert ("Bertie"), a year later. Between 1843 and 1857, the queen had seven more children, completing her family of five daughters and four sons . All survived to adulthood, a rare outcome at a time when many children did not survive infancy.
The queen's fourth son, Leopold, born in 1853, was diagnosed at an early age with hemophilia , a genetically-transmitted bleeding disorder. He died in his thirties of the disease.
Through the marriages of Victoria's children, hemophilia later re-emerged in several European royal families, most notably in the son of Czar Nicholas II of Russia and his wife Alexandra (Victoria's granddaughter).
It was later determined that Queen Victoria and two of her daughters (as well as Alexandra) were carriers of the gene, which was passed on to their sons.
Prince Albert's Role
Prince Albert enjoyed being a father and found that having children had necessitated that he take on more responsibilities in the royal household. Queen Victoria increasingly relied upon him for advice, and he welcomed this new role. The prince was widely praised for organizing palace finances and eliminating wasteful spending.
Prince Albert earned the admiration of the British public following an assassination attempt upon the queen in 1840. When a gunman shot at the royal carriage, Albert acted quickly, pushing his wife to the carriage floor to avoid the bullet. (Queen Victoria would survive seven assassination attempts.)
After initial reservations about Albert's capabilities, Parliament appointed him regent in July 1840 during the queen's pregnancy. As regent, Prince Albert would be in charge of the heir if Queen Victoria were to die in childbirth, or otherwise. The prince was not awarded the title of "prince consort" until 1857.
War and Rebellion
The British became involved in the Crimean War from 1854 to 1856. Most of the fighting took place in Russian-held Crimea, where bitter cold and disease took as many lives as battle wounds.
The queen, lacking any power in military situations, felt compelled to help. She organized relief efforts, knitted socks and mittens, and visited soldiers in hospitals. In her official capacity, Queen Victoria wrote letters of condolence to war widows.
British presence in India stirred up a rebellion of Indian soldiers, called "sepoys," in 1857. The uprising resulted in the deaths of hundreds of European civilians. When the rebellion was finally subdued by British troops, all of India came under the control of the Crown of England.
Queen Victoria proudly referred to India as a "jewel of her crown." She was proclaimed Empress of India in 1877, when Parliament passed the Royal Titles Act.
The Death of Prince Albert
Queen Victoria endured the darkest year of her life in 1861, beginning with the death of her mother in March.
Later in the year, her oldest son, Bertie - first in line to the throne - created a scandal by becoming romantically involved with an actress. Prince Albert traveled to Cambridge to chastise his son, despite feeling weak and feverish. He returned to Windsor Castle, where his condition deteriorated over the next few weeks.
Prince Albert died on December 14, 1861 at age 42, from probable stomach cancer.
A widow at 42, the queen was devastated. Faced with her official duties as well as the care of her children, she felt incapable of carrying on. Queen Victoria became a recluse, avoiding public events and social engagements and even refusing foreign visitors.
Victoria's children suffered as well. They had lost their father; now their mother, too, seemed to abandon them in her grief. Some of the younger children became depressed and withdrawn, and Bertie became the object of his mother's anger.
The queen blamed the 21-year-old prince for his father's death. She felt that her son's misbehavior had compelled Prince Albert to make the trip to Cambridge, worsening his illness.
The public and Parliament began to lose patience with the queen, who neglected her duties and remained in mourning for more than three years.
Queen Victoria and John Brown
Desperate to help the grieving queen, the royal physician suggested that she go horseback riding to improve her health. He sent for the groom from the queen's stables in Scotland. John Brown arrived in early 1865.
The handsome 39 year old sported a kilt and had a straightforward, somewhat rough way of talking with the queen. She responded well to him and began venturing out in public for the first time in years.
Although it was clear that the queen was in better spirits since Brown's arrival, he was unpopular with both the queen's family and the public. Rumors abounded that the two were having an affair, but no proof has ever been found to support that notion.
John Brown remained the queen's servant until 1883, when he died of a streptococcal infection.
Later Years
Over the years, Queen Victoria regained her popularity by making more of an effort to attend public functions and by becoming involved in charitable causes. She kept close contact with an ever-changing roster of prime ministers, always ready with an opinion on the issues of the day.
The queen celebrated her Diamond Jubilee in 1897, marking sixty years as monarch. She was proud of the many jubilee biographies that were written about her, several of which described her as a virtuous woman who set a good example.
Queen Victoria died of a stroke on January 22, 1901 at the age of 81. Her eldest son, Albert, succeeded her as King Edward VII .
| William IV |
Two books of the Bible list the Ten Commandments.Exodus is one, which is the other? | Queen Victoria ascended to the throne in the UK: 1837
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Queen Victoria ascended to the throne in the UK: 1837
Victoria turned 18 on 24 May 1837. On 20 June 1837, she became Queen on the death of her uncle, King William IV who was childless. Her reign as the Queen lasted 63 years and 7 months, longer than that of any other British monarch before or since, and her reign is the longest of any female monarch in history. The Victorian era was a period of great industrial, political, scientific, and military progress within the United Kingdom.
In 1840 Victoria married her cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Victoria and Albert had 9 children and 42 grandchildren and many European monarchs and former monarchs have been descended from Victoria.
Victoria's Golden Jubilee in 1887 and her Diamond Jubilee in 1897 were celebrated with great enthusiasm. She remains the most commemorated British monarch in history, with statues to her erected throughout the former territories of the British Empire.
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On which motorway is 'Clacket Lane Service Station'? | Clacket Lane Services M25 - Motorway Services Information
Clacket Lane Services M25
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Where: between junctions J5-6 and from Clacket Lane
County: Surrey
Type: Separate facilities for each carriageway, with no link between them
Operator: RoadChef
Eat-In Food: McDonald's, Hot Food Co, Costa, Wild Bean Cafe
Takeaway Food / General: WHSmith
Other Non-Food Shops: FoneBitz, Cotton Traders
Picnic Area: yes
Children's Playground: Yes
Cash Machines in main building: Yes (transaction charge applies)
Parking Charges: Free for 2 hours after which time the following charges apply for up to 24 hours Cars £12 HGV £26 HGV with £10 food voucher £30 Caravans/Medium Goods Vehicles/large Motor Homes £26
Other Facilities/Information: Charging point for electric cars available
| M25 |
Which animal is mentioned most frequently in the Bible? | Clacket Lane Services M25 | Comments, complaints and reviews
Clacket Lane Services M25
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"From which Shakespeare play doesthe quotation, ""Lord what fools these mortals be"", come?" | Shakespeare Quotes - Famous Lines From Sonnets & Plays
Shakespeare Quotes
Famous Lines from the Plays and Sonnets
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
-Hamlet
There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
-Hamlet
Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince;
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
-Hamlet
When sorrows come, they come not single spies. But in battalions!
-Hamlet
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and, by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub.
For in this sleep of death what dreams may come….
-Hamlet
Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.
-Hamlet
God hath given you one face, and you make yourself another.
-Hamlet
Conscience doth make cowards of us all.
-Hamlet
One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.
-Hamlet
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
-Hamlet
This above all: to think own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
-Hamlet
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
-Henry V
Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.
-Romeo and Juliet
Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say goodnight till it be morrow.
-Romeo and Juliet
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
-Macbeth
Do you not know I am a woman? when I think, I must speak.
-As You Like It
I do love nothing in the world so well as you – is not that strange?
-Much Ado About Nothing
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
-A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever,-
One foot in sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never.
-Much Ado About Nothing
Let me be that I am and seek not to alter me.
-Much Ado About Nothing
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exists and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.
-As You Like It
The course of true love never did run smooth.
-A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
-Julius Caesar
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
-Julius Caesar
Men at some time are masters of their fates.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.
-Julius Caesar
O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-ey’d monster, which doth mock
The meat it feeds on.
-Othello
All that glisters is not gold;
Often have you heard that told:
Many a man his life hath sold
But my outside to behold:
Gilded tombs do worms enfold.
-The Merchant of Venice
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
-The Merchant of Venice
Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.
-Romeo and Juliet
Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.
-The Merry Wives of Windsor
Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.
-Romeo and Juliet
But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
-Romeo and Juliet
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
What’s done cannot be undone.
-Macbeth
Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble!
-Macbeth
Let not light see my black and deep desires.
-Macbeth
The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.
-As You Like It
Hell is empty and all the devils are here.
-The Tempest
Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them
-Twelfth Night
Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.
-All’s Well That Ends Well
If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
-Twelfth Night
The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.
-King Henry VI, Part Two
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
-The Tempest
What’s past is prologue.
-The Tempest
Me, poor man, my library
Was dukedom large enough.
| A Midsummer Night's Dream |
"Who wrote ""East is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet""" | SparkNotes: A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Important Quotations Explained
Important Quotations Explained
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
William Shakespeare
Act V, scenes i–epilogue
Key Facts
Ay me, for aught that I could ever read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth. . . .
Lysander speaks these lines to soothe Hermia when she despairs about the difficulties facing their love, specifically, that Egeus, her father, has forbidden them to marry and that Theseus has threatened her with death if she disobeys her father (I.i.132–134). Lysander tells Hermia that as long as there has been true love, there have been seemingly insurmountable difficulties to challenge it. He goes on to list a number of these difficulties, many of which later appear in the play: differences in birth or age (“misgrafted in respect of years”) and difficulties caused by friends or “war, death, or sickness,” which make love seem “swift as a shadow, short as any dream” (I.i.137, I.i.142–144). But, as Hermia comments, lovers must persevere, treating their difficulties as a price that must be paid for romantic bliss. As such, the above lines inaugurate the play’s exploration of the theme of love’s difficulties and presage what lies ahead for Lysander and Hermia: they will face great difficulties but will persevere and ultimately arrive at a happy ending.
2.
Through Athens I am thought as fair as she.
But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so.
He will not know what all but he do know.
And as he errs, doting on Hermia’s eyes,
So I, admiring of his qualities.
Things base and vile, holding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity.
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
Helena utters these lines as she comments on the irrational nature of love. They are extremely important to the play’s overall presentation of love as erratic, inexplicable, and exceptionally powerful (I.i.227–235). Distressed by the fact that her beloved Demetrius loves Hermia and not her, Helena says that though she is as beautiful as Hermia, Demetrius cannot see her beauty. Helena adds that she dotes on Demetrius (though not all of his qualities are admirable) in the same way that he dotes on Hermia. She believes that love has the power to transform “base and vile” qualities into “form and dignity”—that is, even ugliness and bad behavior can seem attractive to someone in love. This is the case, she argues, because “love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind”—love depends not on an objective assessment of appearance but rather on an individual perception of the beloved. These lines prefigure aspects of the play’s examination of love, such as Titania’s passion for the ass-headed Bottom, which epitomizes the transformation of the “base and vile” into “form and dignity.”
3.
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
Puck makes this declaration in his amazement at the ludicrous behavior of the young Athenians (III.ii.115). This line is one of the most famous in A Midsummer Night’s Dream for its pithy humor, but it is also thematically important: first, because it captures the exaggerated silliness of the lovers’ behavior; second, because it marks the contrast between the human lovers, completely absorbed in their emotions, and the magical fairies, impish and never too serious.
4.
I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about t’expound this dream. Methought I was—there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, and methought I had—but man is but a patched fool if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream. It shall be called ‘Bottom’s Dream’, because it hath no bottom.
Bottom makes this bombastic speech after he wakes up from his adventure with Titania; his human head restored, he believes that his experience as an ass-headed monster beloved by the beautiful fairy queen was merely a bizarre dream (IV.i.199–209). He remarks dramatically that his dream is beyond human comprehension; then, contradicting himself, he says that he will ask Quince to write a ballad about this dream. These lines are important partially because they offer humorous commentary on the theme of dreams throughout the play but also because they crystallize much of what is so lovable and amusing about Bottom. His overabundant self-confidence burbles out in his grandiose idea that although no one could possibly understand his dream, it is worthy of being immortalized in a poem. His tendency to make melodramatic rhetorical mistakes manifests itself plentifully, particularly in his comically mixed-up association of body parts and senses: he suggests that eyes can hear, ears see, hands taste, tongues think, and hearts speak.
5.
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Phyllis Primrose Pechey is better known as whom? | Rev Richard Pechey (with image, tweet) · yateley_history · Storify
No.1 Rev Richard F Pechey
Rev Pechey was Yateley's longest serving Vicar in the 20th century, retiring aged 73 at the end of World War 2. He had succeeded Rev A J Howell, taking his first christening at St Peter's on 7 July 1929. The child baptised was Brian Alan Harold Maybanks, son of Harold George & Gladys Myrtle Maybanks. Harold was a gardener, of The Garage, Firgrove Manor, Eversley.
When the Rev Pechey arrived in Yateley the Vicarage was on Vicarage Road. It's now called Glebe House. In the early 1930s he moved to the house at Church End then called St Peter’s Cottage. Now it's called The Old Vicarage. In 1933 Rev Pechey's wife, Mabel Rose Salisbury Pechey died aged 56. The sad loss of his wife may have prompted him to move to the smaller house near the church.
Richard Francis Pechey was born 28 Feb 1872 in Leytonstone the son of John Thomas Primrose Pechey, a corn merchant born in Biggleswade. In 1881 the 9 year old Richard was living in Fillebrook Road, Leyton with his father and mother, his 5 year old sister Adeline, his 4 year old brother Archibald Thomas, his mother's brother, and three servants: a cook, a nurse and a housemaid. By census day 1901 he was a clergyman living in Halifax, having just a few months before married Mabel Rose Salisbury Churchill. Mabel Rose was the daughter of Frederick Churchill, a surgeon of Cranley Gardens in Kensington. The family employed 6 servants including a butler.
Rev Pechey and his wife Mabel had five daughters: Mabel Primrose born in Nov 1901, Alice Katherine Primrose in 1903, Dorothy Primrose in 1905, Evelyn Mary Primrose (1912), and the youngest, Rosemary Valentine Primrose in 1918. The daughter always known as Bobby by family and friends was Evelyn Mary Primrose Pechey. Valerie Kerslake wrote about Bobby in her article [in the Parish Magazine] on the origins of the Primrose Club. It seems that all the primroses stemmed from the Pechey side of the family, and that Primrose Pechey was practically a double-barrelled surname.
The brother of Yateley's vicar was Archibald Thomas Pechey, author, playwright and lyricist. The most famous show with which he was associated as one of the lyricists was Maid of the Mountains, the second longest running show (after Chu Chin Chow) in the dark days of the First World War. Archibald Pechey was part author of Cinderella at the Hippodrome, and numerous other pantomimes. He wrote many crime novels under the nom de plume Mark Cross, right up till his death in 1961. His other pen name was Valentine (his mother's surname). If the Rev Richard Pechey was anything like his younger brother it is no wonder that he was "renowned for his sermons which filled the church pews."
That quote is from Doug Gibbs, son of the Yateley's schoolmaster at that time. Doug also tells me that two of Rev Pechey's "grown-up daughters were known for frolics and antics." I pressed him to give me some examples. Before he replied from Essex, I asked Muriel Brent. She sagely replied that "people liked to talk in those days." Doug wrote back giving me several examples of "frolics and antics" one of which occurred at the Yateley Carnival just before WW2. Bobby Pechey arrived at the judging area, just in front of the Dog & Partridge, "sitting on the bonnet of an Austin Seven waving a Union Jack and a Swastika flag." A strong contrast with her sterling efforts later in the war to keep the home fires burning....
Perhaps it was not surprising that Bobby and her sister were known for "frolics and antics" with an uncle connected with operetta and pantomime. But it will seem even less surprising when I tell you that their first cousin, the daughter of the author, playwright and lyricist was Phyllis Nan Soutain Primrose Pechey, better known to TV audiences as ITV's first celebrity chef, Fanny Craddock.
Peter Tipton, The Yateley Society, first published 3 Feb 2006, corrected 6 April 2014
| Fanny Cradock |
'Marcello', 'Musetta', and 'Mimi' are characters in which opera? | Cradock, Fanny, 1909-1994 - LC Linked Data Service | Library of Congress
Cradock, Fanny, 1909-1994
Pechey, Phyllis Nan Sortain, 1909-1994
Primrose-Pechey, Phyllis Nan Sortain, 1909-1994
Additional Information
Sources
found: Fabulous Fanny Cradock, 2007: p. 229 (died 27 Dec. 1994)
found: LC database, May 30, 2013 (hdg.: Cradock, Fanny, 1910- ; usage: Fanny Cradock [predominant form], Frances Dale)
found: Oxford dictionary of national biography, viewed May 30, 2013 (Cradock, Phyllis Nan Sortain (Fanny); b. Feb. 26, 1909, Leytonstone, Essex; daughter of Archibald Thomas Pechey and his wife, Bijou Sortain, née Hancock; by the time of her first marriage she had embellished her surname, giving it as "Primrose-Pechey"; m. Sidney Arthur Vernon Evans, Oct. 10, 1926 (d. a few days or months later); m. Arthur William Chapman, 1928; m. Gregory Leo Edmund Dye (or Holden-Dye), 1939; left him within a few weeks for Major John Cradock (m. 1977, d. 1987) d. Dec. 27, 1994, Hailsham, Sussex; television chef; called herself Frances Dale on the spine of the nine romantic novels she wrote [usage in LC copies of novels: Fanny Cradock] and in the by-line she enjoyed as fashion editor of the Sunday graphic; she and Johnny joined the Daily telegraph under the nom de plume Bon Viveur)
found: Wikipedia, viewed May 30, 2013 (under Fanny Cradock: Phyllis Nan Sortain Pechey, better known as Fanny Cradock; b. Feb. 26, 1909, Leytonstone, Essex; d. Dec. 27, 1994, Hailsham, East Sussex; unable to marry Johnnie Cradock because of her husband's refusal to get divorced, she changed her surname to Cradock by deed poll in 1942; wrote novels under the names Phyllis Cradock and Fanny Cradock; also wrote books under the name Frances Dale; wrote a column with Johnnie for the Daily telegraph under the pen name Bon Viveur)
notfound: Bon voyage, 1950: t.p. (Frances Dale)
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What was the name of Scott's ship on his ill- fated Antarctic expedition of 1910-12? | Wreck of Captain Scott's ship discovered off Greenland - Telegraph
Robert Falcon Scott
Wreck of Captain Scott's ship discovered off Greenland
The SS Terra Nova, which took Captain Scott on his ill-fated mission to the Antarctic, has been found by researchers 70 years after it was sunk.
Scott's ship the SS Terra Nova Photo: THE PONTING COLLECTION
Image 1 of 3
Standing, left to right: Captain Lawrence Oates, Captain Robert Falcon Scott, Petty Officer Edgar Evans; seated, left to right, Lieutenant Henry Bowers and Edward Wilson, at the South Pole
Image 1 of 3
The ship has laid on the sea bed under icy waters for 70 years Photo: Schmidt Ocean Institute
4:52PM BST 15 Aug 2012
The ship that took Captain Robert Falcon Scott on his ill-fated mission to the Antarctic 100 years ago has been discovered off the coast of Greenland.
The SS Terra Nova, built in Dundee in 1884, was found by a research company, Schmidt Ocean Institute, when they were testing new equipment on one of their vessels.
The discovery has amazed experts as the ship had lain on the sea bed under icy waters for 70 years.
Captain Scott and his team sailed it from Cardiff to the Antarctic in their quest to be the first people to reach the South Pole a century ago.
They disembarked in November 1911 for the 167-mile trek to the Pole and arrived in January 1912, only to find a Norwegian party led by Roald Amundsen had beaten them to it. Scott’s whole team died on the return trek.
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19 Jul 2012
The Terra Nova was afterwards bought by the Bowring Brothers and in 1913 it returned to the Antarctic to work in the Newfoundland seal fishery.
During the First World War it was used for coastal trading voyages and in 1942 was chartered by Newfoundland Base Contractors to carry supplies to base stations in Greenland.
But on September 13, 1943, the vessel was damaged by ice.
The US Coastguard rescued all 24 crew and then fired bullets into the ship’s side, sinking it just off the south-western tip of Greenland.
It remained there until the team from the institute began an exploration exercise in the north Atlantic.
While testing echo sounders from the institute's flagship vessel R/V Falkor, they discovered the wreck of the Terra Nova last month.
The wooden-hulled barque with one funnel and three masts was known to be in the general area but the exact location was unknown.
While inspecting an area of the sea bed, survey expert Jonathan Beaudoin, from the University of New Hampshire, noticed an unidentifiable feature.
He and a colleague, Leighton Rolley, compared it with other shapes on the sea bed and decided to carry out further investigation.
Using sophisticated technology, the boat-shaped object was measured and its 57m length matched the dimensions of the Terra Nova.
After analysing data from acoustic tests, the team sent down a camera for a closer look and the pictures showed a wooden wreck lying on the sea bed.
The camera footage also identified the funnel of the vessel next to the wreck.
The team compared the image of the funnel with historic photographs of the SS Terra Nova and their observations confirmed the identity of the ship.
Mr Rolley, a marine technician said: “The discovery of the lost SS Terra Nova, one of the most famous polar exploration vessels, was an exciting achievement.”
Brian Kelly, the education officer at the Discovery Point heritage museum in Dundee, said he was "amazed" by the discovery.
"It is remarkable that the Terra Nova has been found now, 100 years on from the race to the pole, the death of Scott and four of his crew, and in the year of various events to commemorate that occasion,” he said.
"She was severely damaged when she was sunk by the US Coastguard and the front of her hull is peeled back, suggesting that the structure may not be able to take any movement.
"She is also in very deep water, I think over 1,000ft.”
Because of the depth the ship was found at, its condition, and the cost of any salvage operation, it was unlikely the wreck would be recovered, he said.
| Terra Nova |
Which is the largest castle in Scotland? | Letters from Captain Scott's ill-fated polar expedition on display for the first time | Daily Mail Online
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Almost a century after Captain Scott and his team perished on a polar expedition, the final letter from their ill-fated adventure has been uncovered for the first time.
The moving message from Scott's closest comrade Sir Edward Wilson reveals that the party were resigned to their fate as the end approached.
'This looks like a finish to our undertaking,' Wilson wrote as the party attempted the return from the South Pole, 'for we are out of food and oil and not able to move for three days now on account of the blizzard.'
Enlarge
Brave to the last: The final moving letter written from Captain Scott's doomed South Pole expedition by Sir Edward Wilson
Stoic explorers: Lieutenant Bowers, Dr Edward Wilson and Mr Cherry-Garrard beside their sledge, just before starting on their doomed Antarctic journey
His letter to publisher Reginald Smith had remained undiscovered since 1913 until an archivist happened to inspect an old box of documents.
Addressed to 'my dear good friend and my dear Mr Smith', the communication shows a man who was stoic until the last.
Ill fated: Antarctic explorer Captain Robert Scott
Wilson wrote: 'We have had a long struggle against intense cold on very short fuel, and it has done us in.'
The story of the Terra Nova expedition is explored in a mixture of newly discovered and rarely seen letters, diaries and photographs of its members, in an exhibition at Cambridge University’s Polar Museum.
The exhibition tells the full story of the fateful expedition, not just through the famous journals and letters of Scott, Bowers, Evans, Oates and Wilson, who died on their way back from the Pole, but through other members of the ship’s crew and shore party.
Curator Kay Smith said: 'This really is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see these manuscripts exhibited together.
'Some of them are so fragile and valuable that they probably won’t go on display again for another hundred years.
'We’re not just talking about the ‘race to the pole’ here, we’re talking about an entire crew of men, each telling their own story in their own way - and perhaps a different story from those you’re already familiar with.'
Among items on display is the rarely seen second journal of Henry Robertson 'Birdie' Bowers who accompanied Scott to the Pole and died alongside him on the return journey.
This fragile volume has been repaired especially for the exhibition and the full text will be published for the first time, along with Bowers’ letters home, in a limited edition in mid-December.
Archivist Naomi Boneham said: 'This is not the journal of somebody who set out knowing they were going to die.
'As the expedition progresses, his notes become much less detailed as he concentrates on survival.
Sketch book: This book belonged to polar explorer Sir Edward Wilson, which goes on show at The Scott Polar Research Institute Museum at The University of Cambridge
Last letter: Captain Scott's last letter to his widow, left, is part of a new exhibition showcasing many rarely seen letters and artefacts from his expedition to the South Pole in 1912, right
Heroic adventurers: Wilson's letter reveals that the crew knew they were going to die as the end approached
'It becomes very focused on the distance travelled each day as that was vital to calculate how far they were from food supplies.'
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It includes a reference to Edgar Evans, the first to die, which reads: 'Bill legs still bad, also Edgar’s fingers.'
Also on display is Scott’s journal which includes Captain Oates’ famous parting comment: 'I’m just going outside and may be some time.'
Scott reflects on this: 'We all hope to meet the end in a similar spirit, and assuredly the end is not far.'
Alongside this is the seal skin sleeping bag used by Oates.
Polar journal: Naomi Boneham, archivist at The Scott Polar Research Institute Museum at The University of Cambridge, holds the journal of polar explorer Henry Bowers
Flashback to 1911: Captain Robert Falcon Scott pictured writing at a table in his quarters at the British base camp in Antarctica
THE ILL-FATED TERRA NOVA EXPEDITION (1910-1912)
Detail of a letter from Captain Scott describing the last time he saw Captain Oates, saying 'I'm just going outside and may be some time'
Captain Scott led the expedition, officially called the British Antarctic Expedition 1910, with the aim to be the first to reach the geographical South Pole.
But when his team of four companions got there on January 17, 1912, they found a Norwegian team led by Roald Amundsen had already arrived 33 days earlier.
Scott’s entire team died in March during their return from a combination of exhaustion, starvation and extreme cold.
Captain Scott was a Royal Navy officer and explorer from Devon, who had previously led the Discovery Expedition to the Antarctic from 1901-1904.
The exhibition highlights the 'Worst Journey in the World' - the winter journey to collect eggs from the Emperor penguin colony at Cape Crozier.
It also showcases the largely forgotten Northern Party - six men stranded for 21 months when the ship could not reach them through the heavy pack ice and forced to shelter from the brutal Antarctic winter in a cave dug into the snow.
Heather Lane, keeper of collections, said: 'In order to preserve naval discipline they drew an invisible line, demarcating the officers’ mess.
'There was a rule that if the other ranks heard something they should not have heard, they did not hear it. This rule was meticulously observed.'
Dr Wilson’s sketchbook including drawings of the tent belonging to Roald Amundsen - who beat Scott’s team to the pole - is also displayed.
Alongside the written material are items including the Christmas decorations made by the 33-strong show party, showing the realities of day-to-day life in the Antarctic.
The title of the exhibition - These Rough Notes - comes directly from Captain Scott’s message to the public written at the end of his journal, just prior to his death.
Dated March 29 1912, it reads: 'Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman.
'These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale, but surely, surely, a great rich country like ours will see that those who are dependent on us are properly provided for.'
Next to the journal is Scott’s last letter to his wife, which begins: 'Dear widow.'
The exhibition runs until May 5.
| i don't know |
What position is currently held by Peter Maxwell Davies? | Composer Peter Maxwell Davies dies aged 81 | Music | The Guardian
Composer Peter Maxwell Davies dies aged 81
The former master of the Queen’s music had been suffering from leukaemia for several years
Monday 14 March 2016 09.19 EDT
First published on Monday 14 March 2016 09.19 EDT
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This article is 11 months old
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies has died, aged 81. The Salford-born composer, universally known as Max, had been suffering from leukaemia for several years and died at his home in Orkney on 14 March.
A guide to Peter Maxwell Davies's music
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One of the foremost musicians of our time, Maxwell Davies was a fearless figurehead for the postwar avant garde. He made it his mission to connect with as many different audiences and performers as possible, writing music for children, for his Orkney community, as well as grand symphonies – 10 of them, concertos, string quartets, and music theatre works.
He was also an experienced conductor, holding the position of associate conductor/composer at both the BBC Philharmonic and Royal Philharmonic orchestras for 10 years, and guest conducting orchestras that included the San Francisco Symphony, Leipzig Gewandhaus and Philharmonia. He enjoyed a particularly close relationship with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra as composer laureate.
From 2004 to 2014 he was master of the Queen’s music, and was knighted in 1987. Last month he was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society’s gold medal – the highest accolade the society can bestow.
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Peter Maxwell Davies (left) conducts Welsh soprano Mary Thomas in a rehearsal for Revelation and Fall, February 1968. Photograph: Erich Auerbach/Getty Images
Maxwell Davies started composing as a teenager, and studied at the Royal Northern College of Music, where his fellow students included Harrison Birtwistle , John Ogdon and Alexander Goehr. He came to international prominence in the 1960s, most particularly with pieces such as Eight Songs for a Mad King and Revelation and Fall in which he created a new, shocking and exhilarating vision of music theatre.
In 1971 he moved to Orkney, the landscape and culture of which had a deep impact on his music; in 1977 he founded the annual St Magnus festival , which he continued to be involved with until the end of his life.
“From the earliest days organising things from a phone box on Hoy to his more recent role as the festival’s honorary president, Max has won the hearts of the Orkney community and been a significant part of many generations of musicians from the islands,” said Alasdair Nicolson, the festival’s artistic director .
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An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise
Maxwell Davies was passionately committed to the social responsibility of the composer and the concept of music as a social force. His third string quartet, written in 2003, was a defiant personal statement against the Iraq war; his 2010 opera, Kommilitonen! was a dramatisation of student protest movements in the 20th century and a call to arms for today’s young people.
The composer’s 1980 chamber opera The Lighthouse was performed at the Royal Opera House’s Linbury theatre in October 2015, with Maxwell Davies in attendance. “The dazzling score ... held our attention. Luminous and salty, it conveys the desolate, sea-battered mood, the cries of seabirds, the waves’ roar, equally as tellingly as Britten in Peter Grimes, but in an entirely different musical voice. Maxwell Davies was there to take a bow and hug his performers. His smiles were reward enough for all,” wrote Fiona Maddocks in the Observer.
Peter Maxwell Davies at 80: ‘The music knows things that I don’t’
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The previous year the ROH’s Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra had given the world premiere of Maxwell Davies’s 10th symphony. “A wonderful opportunity presented itself to me when I was asked to conduct [it], a piece that was as much bound up with Italy as Max’s native land. [He was] a dear and generous man with whom it was a joy to collaborate and an example of perseverance in the world of music and the arts,” said Pappano. Reviewing, the Guardian’s Andrew Clements admired the work’s vivid and vivacious writing. “It’s one of the most movingly personal of Davies’s recent scores, and a major new symphony,” he said.
Peter Maxwell Davies: strikingly original music composed at white heat
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Alan Davey , controller of Radio 3, said: “We have lost a musical giant, a major composer with a strong and unique voice through all parts of his extraordinary career, from his early avant garde musical theatre works to his symphonies and his work for children and young people. It is a sad loss to the world of music and we will remember him through his recordings and the glorious spirit that shines through his music.” Maxwell Davies’s works have featured in over 50 proms over five decades, of which nine were world premieres. “The link with the Proms was not just through his strikingly individual music, but also a shared vision of bringing classical music to wider audiences,” said David Pickard, Director, BBC Proms.
| Master of the Queen's Music |
In the TV comedy 'The Detectives', who played the part of 'Superintendent Frank Cottam'? | Peter Maxwell Davies, composer with royal ties, dies at 81 | Daily Mail Online
Peter Maxwell Davies, composer with royal ties, dies at 81
LONDON (AP) — Peter Maxwell Davies, an experimental, socially radical composer who served as Queen Elizabeth II's official master of music, has died. He was 81.
Davies' management company, Intermusica, said he died Monday of leukemia at his home in Scotland's Orkney islands.
One of Britain's best-known modern composers, Davies — Max to his friends — created around 300 works including concertos, 10 symphonies, the operas "Taverner" and "The Lighthouse," and music-theater piece "Eight Songs for a Mad King," about the current queen's troubled ancestor, George III.
FILE - This is a June 19, 1996 file photo of composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies posing for a photograph in London. Maxwell Davies, who served as Queen Elizabeth II's official master of music, has died at 81. Davies' management company, Intermusica, says he died Monday March 14, 2016 of leukemia at his home in Scotland's Orkney islands. One of Britain's best-known modern composers, Davies created some 300 works including symphonies, the operas "Taverner" and "The Lighthouse," and "Eight Songs for a Mad King," about the current queen's troubled ancestor, George III. (AP Photo, File)
His work could be bold and challenging or quietly lyrical. A strong environmentalist, Davies drew inspiration from the rugged, wind-swept Orkneys, where he lived for four decades — including several years in a cottage without electricity.
The composition "An Orkney Wedding, With Sunrise" became one of his most popular works, and in 1977 he founded Orkney's St. Magnus Festival, an annual arts event where many of his works were given their premieres.
He wove social and political themes into compositions including his 9th Symphony, which Davies said contained a military-style section reflecting his opposition to the "disastrous" invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. His 2011 opera "Kommilitonen!" was about student activism around the world.
Among his final works is children's opera "The Hogboon," which is due to have its world premiere in June under Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra.
Born in Manchester, northwest England, in 1934, Davies trained at Royal Manchester College of Music before further study in Italy and at Princeton University.
In addition to composing he conducted, for orchestras including the BBC Philharmonic, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the Royal Philharmonic.
With his anti-establishment views and avant-garde musical leanings, Davies was a surprise choice in 2004 as Master of the Queen's Music. The honorary position, founded in 1626, is traditionally conferred by the monarch on a musician of distinction.
The position has no fixed duties, although the Master may compose pieces for royal or state occasions. Davies held the post for a decade, and told the Daily Telegraph in 2010 that the role had made him moderate his anti-monarchist views.
"I have come to realize that there is a lot to be said for the monarchy," he said. "It represents continuity, tradition and stability."
In 2005, Davies received a police warning after officers found the body of a swan — a protected species — at his home. The composer said the bird had died after flying into a power line and he had used it for food; when police officers arrived, he offered them swan terrine.
"I think they were rather horrified," he told the BBC. But, he said, "I was brought up in the war and you don't waste food."
His friend Sally Groves, former creative director at Schott Music, said Davies had been "a remarkable composer who created music theatre works of searing power, great symphonies, intense chamber music; works of truly universal popularity."
Funeral details were not immediately available.
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Which body is on average, 150 million kilometres from the Sun? | What is an astronomical unit? | Space | EarthSky
What is an astronomical unit?
By Bruce McClure in Space | October 21, 2016
Astronomers use astronomical units – or AU – to describe solar system distances. Definition of AU here. Also, mean distances in AU to prominent solar system objects.
Artist’s concept of Earth and sun. One astronomical unit = the average distance between them. Image via NASA .
2017 EarthSky Lunar Calendar pre-sale…is happening NOW!
Astronomers like to list the distances to objects within our solar system (planets, dwarf planets, asteroids, comets, spacecraft, etc.) in terms of an astronomical unit. How far is that? Follow the links below to learn more about this basic distance unit in our solar system.
Definition of astronomical unit. For general reference, we can say that one astronomical unit (AU) represents the mean distance between the Earth and our sun. An AU is approximately 93 million miles (150 million km). It’s approximately 8 light-minutes.
More exactly, one astronomical unit (AU) = 92,955,807 miles (149,597,871 km).
Earth’s orbit around the sun isn’t a perfect circle. So Earth’s distance from the sun changes throughout the year. Astronomers give the Earth’s changing distance throughout the year relative to the astronomical unit, too. For instance, when the Earth is at perihelion – its nearest point to the sun for the year, in January – it’s about 0.983 AU from the sun. When our planet swings out to aphelion – its farthest point, in July – we’re about 1.017 AU away from the sun.
Distances from the sun of planets in our solar system, expressed in A.U. Graph via planetsforkids.org
Mean distance ( semi-major axis ) from sun to each planet, in AU.
Mercury: 0.387 AU
Source: Planetary Fact Sheet
If you want to find out the distances of the solar system planets from the Earth and sun right now, click here or here .
Artist’s concept of the dwarf planet Eris, whose distance from the sun varies from 38.255 to 97.661 au. Image via HubbleSite
Mean distance from sun to some dwarf planets, in AU.
Ceres: 2.767 AU
Eris: 67.958 AU
Sedna: 518.57 AU
Artist’s rendering of the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud, the distant icy realm of the solar system. Image via NASA
Mean distance to Kuiper Belt, farthest spacecraft, Oort Cloud, in AU.
Oort Cloud : 5,000 to 100,000 AU
Largest circle with yellow arrow indicates one light year from our sun. Smallest yellow sphere is one light-week. Larger yellow sphere is one light-month. Read more about this image at Wikimedia Commons.
Amount of distance in a light-year, in AU
One light-year = 63,240 AU
Bottom line: Astronomers like to list the distances to objects within our solar system (planets, dwarf planets, asteroids, comets, spacecraft, etc.) in terms of the astronomical unit, or AU. One astronomical unit is the approximate mean distance between the Earth and sun. It’s about 93 million miles (150 million km), or 8 light-minutes.
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Niamey is the capital of which country? | How do you measure the distance between Earth and the Sun? (Intermediate) - Curious About Astronomy? Ask an Astronomer
How do you measure the distance between Earth and the Sun? (Intermediate)
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How do astronomers calculate the distance of the Sun from the Earth, or the actual size of the Sun, or the speed of travel of Earth in its orbit around the Sun? Clearly, from an answer to one of these questions one can find out the answers to the others. But how do we find the first answer?
Short version: What we actually measure is the distance from the Earth to some other body, such as Venus. Then we use what we know about the relations between interplanetary distances to scale that to the Earth-Sun distance. Since 1961 , we have been able to use radar to measure interplanetary distances - we transmit a radar signal at another planet (or moon or asteroid ) and measure how long it takes for the radar echo to return. Before radar, astronomers had to rely on other (less direct) geometric methods .
In more detail:
The first step in measuring the distance between the Earth and the Sun is to find the relative distances between Earth and other planets. (For instance, what is the ratio of the Jupiter-Sun distance to the Earth-Sun distance?) So, let us say that the distance between Earth and the Sun is "a". Now, consider the orbit of Venus. To a first approximation, the orbits of Earth and Venus are perfect circles around the Sun, and the orbits are in the same plane.
Take a look at the diagram below (not to scale). From the representation of the orbit of Venus, it is clear that there are two places where the Sun-Venus-Earth angle is 90 degrees. At these points, the line joining Earth and Venus will be a tangent to the orbit of Venus. These two points indicate the greatest elongation of Venus and are the farthest from the Sun that Venus can appear in the sky. (More formally, these are the two points at which the angular separation between Venus and the Sun, as seen from Earth, reaches its maximum possible value.)
Another way to understand this is to look at the motion of Venus in the sky relative to the Sun: as Venus orbits the Sun, it gets further away from the Sun in the sky, reaches a maximum apparent separation from the Sun (corresponding to the greatest elongation), and then starts going towards the Sun again. This, by the way, is the reason why Venus is never visible in the evening sky for more than about three hours after sunset or in the morning sky more than three hours before sunrise.
Now, by making a series of observations of Venus in the sky, one can determine the point of greatest elongation. One can also measure the angle between the Sun and Venus in the sky at the point of greatest elongation. In the diagram, this angle will be the Sun-Earth-Venus angle marked as "e" in the right angled triangle. Now, using trigonometry, one can determine the distance between Earth and Venus in terms of the Earth-Sun distance:
(distance between Earth and Venus) = a × cos(e)
Similarly, with a little more trigonometry:
(distance between Venus and the Sun) = a × sin(e)
The greatest elongation of Venus is about 46 degrees, so by this reasoning, the Sun-Venus distance is about 72% of the Sun-Earth distance. Similar observations and calculations yield the relative distance between the Sun and Mercury. (However, Mars and the outer planets are more complicated.)
Historically, the first known person to use geometry to estimate the Earth-Sun distance was Aristarchus (c. 310-230 BC), in ancient Greece. He measured the angular separation of the Sun and the Moon when the Moon was half-illuminated to derive the distance between Earth and Sun in terms of the distance between the Earth and the Moon. His reasoning was correct, but his measurements were not. Aristarchus calculated that the Sun is about nineteen times farther than the Moon; it is actually about 390 times farther than the Moon.
Another ancient Greek astronomer, Eratosthenes (276-194 BC), estimated the distance between Earth and Sun to be either 4,080,000 stadia or 804,000,000 stadia . There is disagreement regarding the correct translation of Eratosthenes' value, and further disagreement over which length of a stadium was used by Eratosthenes. Various sources estimate that the length of a stadium (also called a stadion or stade), converted to modern units, is between 157 meters and 209 meters. Then 4,080,000 stades is less than 1% of the actual Earth-Sun distance, no matter which definition of a stade one chooses. However, 804,000,000 stadia is between 126 million and 168 million kilometers - a range which includes the actual Earth-Sun distance of (approximately) 150 million kilometers. So Eratosthenes may have found a fairly accurate value for the Earth-Sun distance (possibly with some luck), but we can't say for sure.
The first rigorous and accurate scientific measurement of the Earth-Sun distance was made by Cassini in 1672 by parallax measurements of Mars. He and another astronomer observed Mars from two places simultaneously. A century later, a series of observations of transits of Venus provided an even better estimate.
Since 1961 , the distance to Venus can be determined directly, by radar measurements, where a series of radio waves is transmitted from Earth and is received after it bounces off Venus and comes back to Earth. By measuring the time taken for the radar echo to come back, the distance can be calculated, since radio waves travel at the speed of light. Once this Earth-Venus distance is known, the distance between Earth and the Sun can be calculated.
As you have indicated, once the distance between Earth and Sun is known, one can calculate all the other parameters. We know that the Sun, as seen from Earth, has an angular diameter of about 0.5 degrees. Again, using trigonometry, the radius or diameter of the Sun can be calculated from the distance between Earth and Sun, a, as 2×Rsun = tan(0.5 degrees) × a. Also, since we know the time taken by the Earth to go once around the Sun (P = 1 year), and the distance traveled by the Earth in this process (approximately 2πa, since Earth's orbit is nearly circular), we can calculate the average orbital speed of Earth as v = (2πa)/P.
Anyway, the relevant numbers are:
Earth-Sun distance, a = roughly 150 million km, defined as one Astronomical Unit ( AU )
Radius of the Sun, Rsun = roughly 700,000 km
Orbital speed of Earth, v = roughly 30 km/s
References:
Jagadheep D. Pandian
Jagadheep built a new receiver for the Arecibo radio telescope that works between 6 and 8 GHz. He studies 6.7 GHz methanol masers in our Galaxy . These masers occur at sites where massive stars are being born. He got his Ph.D from Cornell in January 2007 and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Insitute for Radio Astronomy in Germany. After that, he worked at the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii as the Submillimeter Postdoctoral Fellow. Jagadheep is currently at the Indian Institute of Space Scence and Technology.
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In which month is Orangeman's Day? | Holidays: Orangemen's Day in Canada
Current location: Home page > Calendar > Holidays > Orangemen's Day in Canada
Orangemen's Day in Canada
Quick Facts
Orangemen's Day is a provincial holiday in Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada. It commemorates the Battle of the Boyne, which took place in 1690 outside Drogheda, now in the Republic of Ireland.
Local names
See list of observations below
Orangemen's Day commemorates the Battle of the Boyne, which took place in 1690 outside Drogheda, now in the Republic of Ireland. It is a provincial holiday in Newfoundland and Labrador on the Monday closest to July 12.
Orangemen's Day, which commemorates a battle that took place in Ireland in the 17th century, is a provincial holiday in Newfoundland and Labrador. ©iStockphoto.com/Mike Bentley
What do people do?
Orangemen's Day is generally celebrated by people with a Protestant Irish or Scottish background, particularly those who support the Orange Order. In some areas of Newfoundland and Labrador and Ontario, particularly Toronto, parades are organized by Lodges of the Orange Order. During these parades, members of the lodges and their families march along a pre-arranged route carrying banners showing the name of the lodge and symbols associated with the Orange Order.
Marching bands often accompany the parades. After the parades, the lodges may organize family celebrations, known as “Times”, which include picnics, communal meals or dancing. Many parades are held on a Saturday close to July 12, but in areas where many people work in the cod fishing industry, Orangemen's Day events may be held during the winter.
Public life
The Monday closest to July 12 is a provincial holiday in Newfoundland and Labrador. Provincial offices and some businesses and organizations may be closed or offer a limited service but post offices and many stores are open and public transport services operate to their usual schedules. There may be some local disruption to traffic around parades. Orangemen's Day is not a public holiday in other parts of Canada.
Background
The Battle of the Boyne in 1690 is seen as an important part of Ireland's history and pivotal in the power balance Protestants and Catholics in Great Britain and Ireland. Orangemen's Day is also celebrated in parts of the United Kingdom, especially in Northern Ireland.
By the end of the 19th century Orangemen's parades were commonplace in many Newfoundland communities. In the early days, Orangemen's Day was marked with large military parades, which lead to uneasy relationships between different religious groups and sectarian violence. Now Orangemen's Day celebrations are peaceful community celebrations suitable for all ages.
Symbols
An important symbol of Orangemen's Day is the color orange, which represents the monarchs in the House of Orange in general and William of Orange in particular. This color is seen on collarettes, banners and many other items. During the parades, men usually wear white shirts and gloves under dark suits and orange collarettes. Collarettes are narrow bands of cloth draped around the neck and fastened in front to form a “V” shape on the wearer's chest. They are decorated with symbols that represent the lodge, to which the wearer belongs, and the positions he holds and the awards he has received.
The banners carried during the parades also represent Orangemen's Day and the events in history that inspired the celebrations. In Canada many Orangemen's Day parade banners have an orange or blue background and the name of the lodge they represent. Many include some of the following images:
A cross.
| July |
What is the name of the container used to hold either 108 gallons of beer or 126 gallons of wine? | Christians and “Orangemen’s Day” (the 12th of July) – Contributions to the Debate | Gladys Ganiel
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Christians and “Orangemen’s Day” (the 12th of July) – Contributions to the Debate
By Gladys Ganiel on July 24, 2013 in Churches & Reconciliation , Dealing with the Past , Ecumenism , Evangelicalism , Irish Catholic Church , Irish politics , NI Politics , Orange Order , Peace Studies , Ulster Scots , Unionism , Victims
On my desk I have a calendar from Holy Cross Monastery in Rostrevor, Co. Down , which features photographs of the monks and the monastery throughout the year. In the month of July, the 12th is designated “Orangemen’s Day.” Given that most of the monks in Holy Cross are French, I assumed this was simply a quaint expression that reflected their background.
I had only ever heard the day referred to as the “12th of July” or the “Glorious 12th”, so I was surprised last week when I read in Newton Emerson’s Irish News column that the official name of the holiday is “Orangemen’s Day.” The monks had it right after all.
The monks in Holy Cross get a lot of things right, including their dedication to their vocation of ecumenism and reconciliation. (For those of you missing Fr Martin Magill’s regular Monday post detailing his “ecumenical tithing,” it was absent this week because he is on retreat at the monastery.)
Given Northern Ireland’s violent and divided past, and continuing sectarian present, I think all Christians living on this island should have a vocation of ecumenism and reconciliation. The lack of widespread or meaningful recognition of such a vocation has been apparent in some Christian responses to the rioting that once again erupted in the wake of the Belfast parade this past Orangemen’s Day.
You can read my “Christian Musings on the 12th of July” to get a sense of my disappointment in the way that a self-proclaimed Christian organisation like the Orange Order allows (or, arguably, encourages) violence around the most sacred day in its parading calendar.
Having said that, over the last couple of weeks there have been a number of constructive Christian contributions to discussions about the violence, the future of the Orange Order, and the role of Christians and churches in our current (supposedly) “post violence” transition. At the end of this blog, I’ll provide links to some of the examples I have found helpful.
Drawing on my reading of a range of these responses, and my ongoing reflections as an academic researching the churches and reconciliation, I want to highlight what I think are some of the most important points:
The “Institutional” Churches (especially the four largest denominations – Catholic, Presbyterian, Church of Ireland and Methodist) have not been visible and active promoters of reconciliation since the Good Friday Agreement. They therefore lack credibility when they try and “speak out”, even when they try and speak out together, over events like the rioting.
The prayer for peace in Belfast instigated by the Methodist Church and prayed in churches of various denominations throughout the land this past Sunday is in some ways admirable. But as a public performance or event it lacked “oomph” because of the steady erosion of the institutional churches’ credibility as peacemakers.
We need to ask whether the Churches, as “Institutions”, even have the Capacity to act as Agents of Reconciliation.
Most of the examples of positive Christian engagement in the wake of the rioting have been taken from small grassroots initiatives, operating under the radar of the institutional churches. For example, Fr Magill’s “Ecumenical Tithing” at West Kirk Presbyterian was discussed at least twice on the BBC, and this is a personal initiative on his part.
The greater effectiveness of small groups and individuals was also apparent during the Troubles, and in some ways it is a product of sociological processes: small organizations or groups of individuals working together have more freedom and flexibility than clumsy, divided institutions like denominations to “get things done.” In a discussion on BBC Radio Ulster’s Sunday Sequence on 21 July, Prof John Brewer from Queen’s intimated that the institutional churches could and should be doing more.
But I think Christians who are interested in reconciliation should be asking themselves if working through the institutional churches is in some ways a lost cause?
I’ve been disappointed during this time not to hear anything from the Irish Churches Peace Project, which got underway this year with substantial funding from the European Union. As far as I can tell, it doesn’t even have a website, meaning Christians who are interested can’t even check out what is going on, much less find out how they might get involved. Perhaps this project is operating quietly “behind the scenes”, but in the context of the past two weeks, that seems to me a bit like hiding your light under a bushel basket.
Parading, and other so-called “symbolic” issues like flags, Need to be set in a Wider Discussion about Dealing with the Past.
I made this point more extensively in a post on the Slugger O’Toole blog . I think our politicians have let us down in refusing to press forward more urgently with mechanisms for dealing with the past, especially in a context in which the Eames-Bradley Report sits gathering dust, its many creative suggestions unread or forgotten.
Christians, as people who (theoretically) believe in redemption, should be among those who are most aware of the importance of “dealing with the past,” whether that is in one’s personal life or as communities.
Christians have at their disposal a vast vocabulary for providing examples of forgiveness, hope and reconciliation. The future on this island is inevitably shared, whether we like it or not. The only decision, really, is how we choose to share it. Reluctantly and in our separate enclaves, or together as fellow citizens.
Christians Must Avoid Scapegoating. Given what’s happened around the Belfast parade, it’s easy to blame the Orange Order and/or “loyalists.” There certainly has been much condemnation of the violence, and when this happens it’s easy to find scapegoats who take the blame and help us avoid addressing the structural nature of sectarianism on this island.
That’s not to say there’s not a time and a place for criticism. For example, I was disappointed by the failure of representatives of the Presbyterian Church (Rev. Norman Hamilton and the current Moderator Rev. Rob Craig on successive weekends on Sunday Sequence) to criticize Rev. Mervyn Gibson, the prominent Orange Order spokesman in Belfast, for what have been at best unhelpful and at worst incendiary comments. In fairness to Hamilton and Craig a radio programme may not be the best place for this. But the end result is that representatives of Presbyterianism come off as wishy-washy about the role of one of their clergy, and by extension their church, in these particular events.
To me, it is almost always unhelpful to criticize your opponent or the “Other”, demanding that THEY repent. Self-criticism, of your tradition or your institutions, is the most constructive type of criticism in these situations. And there have been some missed opportunities for this by various church leaders over the past couple of weeks.
“Orangemen’s Day” is not the Problem.
In some ways the official name of the holiday, “Orangemen’s Day,” implies exclusion and even triumphalism. The connotations of defeat and subjugation associated with “the 12th” perhaps are not much better. But again, those of us living on this island can choose how we remember historical events and we can discuss with each other different interpretations of the past. There are a lot of Orangemen who say they want others to feel welcome to share in their day. As a first step, can we figure out how to have the discussions that could make that happen?
Christians and “Orangemen’s Day” (the 12th of July) – Contributions to the Debate
One Response to Christians and “Orangemen’s Day” (the 12th of July) – Contributions to the Debate
Ron Elsdon July 26, 2013 at 8:38 pm #
I’ve tried to make a small +ve suggestion in my piece to appear under the heading ‘Lifelines’ in next week’s Church of Ireland Gazette.
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Welcome to Building a Church Without Walls, a website for people who are excited about how Christianity is developing in the 21st Century. I am a Research Fellow in the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation and Social Justice at Queen's University Belfast. Check out the Institute's Master's programme , which has a stream on Religion and Peacebuilding.
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What was the name of the horse in Orewell's 'Animal Farm'? | SparkNotes: Animal Farm: Plot Overview
Plot Overview
Context
Character List
Old Major, a prize-winning boar, gathers the animals of the Manor Farm for a meeting in the big barn. He tells them of a dream he has had in which all animals live together with no human beings to oppress or control them. He tells the animals that they must work toward such a paradise and teaches them a song called “Beasts of England,” in which his dream vision is lyrically described. The animals greet Major’s vision with great enthusiasm. When he dies only three nights after the meeting, three younger pigs—Snowball, Napoleon, and Squealer—formulate his main principles into a philosophy called Animalism. Late one night, the animals manage to defeat the farmer Mr. Jones in a battle, running him off the land. They rename the property Animal Farm and dedicate themselves to achieving Major’s dream. The cart-horse Boxer devotes himself to the cause with particular zeal, committing his great strength to the prosperity of the farm and adopting as a personal maxim the affirmation “I will work harder.”
At first, Animal Farm prospers. Snowball works at teaching the animals to read, and Napoleon takes a group of young puppies to educate them in the principles of Animalism. When Mr. Jones reappears to take back his farm, the animals defeat him again, in what comes to be known as the Battle of the Cowshed, and take the farmer’s abandoned gun as a token of their victory. As time passes, however, Napoleon and Snowball increasingly quibble over the future of the farm, and they begin to struggle with each other for power and influence among the other animals. Snowball concocts a scheme to build an electricity-generating windmill, but Napoleon solidly opposes the plan. At the meeting to vote on whether to take up the project, Snowball gives a passionate speech. Although Napoleon gives only a brief retort, he then makes a strange noise, and nine attack dogs—the puppies that Napoleon had confiscated in order to “educate”—burst into the barn and chase Snowball from the farm. Napoleon assumes leadership of Animal Farm and declares that there will be no more meetings. From that point on, he asserts, the pigs alone will make all of the decisions—for the good of every animal.
Napoleon now quickly changes his mind about the windmill, and the animals, especially Boxer, devote their efforts to completing it. One day, after a storm, the animals find the windmill toppled. The human farmers in the area declare smugly that the animals made the walls too thin, but Napoleon claims that Snowball returned to the farm to sabotage the windmill. He stages a great purge, during which various animals who have allegedly participated in Snowball’s great conspiracy—meaning any animal who opposes Napoleon’s uncontested leadership—meet instant death at the teeth of the attack dogs. With his leadership unquestioned (Boxer has taken up a second maxim, “Napoleon is always right”), Napoleon begins expanding his powers, rewriting history to make Snowball a villain. Napoleon also begins to act more and more like a human being—sleeping in a bed, drinking whisky, and engaging in trade with neighboring farmers. The original Animalist principles strictly forbade such activities, but Squealer, Napoleon’s propagandist, justifies every action to the other animals, convincing them that Napoleon is a great leader and is making things better for everyone—despite the fact that the common animals are cold, hungry, and overworked.
Mr. Frederick, a neighboring farmer, cheats Napoleon in the purchase of some timber and then attacks the farm and dynamites the windmill, which had been rebuilt at great expense. After the demolition of the windmill, a pitched battle ensues, during which Boxer receives major wounds. The animals rout the farmers, but Boxer’s injuries weaken him. When he later falls while working on the windmill, he senses that his time has nearly come. One day, Boxer is nowhere to be found. According to Squealer, Boxer has died in peace after having been taken to the hospital, praising the Rebellion with his last breath. In actuality, Napoleon has sold his most loyal and long-suffering worker to a glue maker in order to get money for whisky.
Years pass on Animal Farm, and the pigs become more and more like human beings—walking upright, carrying whips, and wearing clothes. Eventually, the seven principles of Animalism, known as the Seven Commandments and inscribed on the side of the barn, become reduced to a single principle reading “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Napoleon entertains a human farmer named Mr. Pilkington at a dinner and declares his intent to ally himself with the human farmers against the laboring classes of both the human and animal communities. He also changes the name of Animal Farm back to the Manor Farm, claiming that this title is the “correct” one. Looking in at the party of elites through the farmhouse window, the common animals can no longer tell which are the pigs and which are the human beings.
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Who won a spectacular victory for the Tories in the Crewe and Nantwichby-election on May 22nd. (2008)? | Animal Farm | Symbolism Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia
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Napoleon - The main pig who emerges as the leader of Animal Farm after the Rebellion. Based on Joseph Stalin, Napoleon used military force (his nine loyal attack dogs) to intimidate the other animals and consolidate his power. In his supreme craftiness, Napoleon proves more treacherous than his counterpart, Snowball. Napoleon also symbolise's the evil character.
Snowball - The pig who challenges Napoleon for control of Animal Farm after the Rebellion. Based on Leon Trotsky, Snowball is intelligent, passionate, eloquent, and less subtle and devious than his counterpart, Napoleon. Snowball seems to win the loyalty of the other animals and cement his power.
Boxer - The black horse whose incredible strength, dedication, and loyalty play a key role in the early prosperity of Animal Farm and the later completion of the windmill. Quick to help but rather slow-witted, Boxer shows much devotion to Animal Farm's ideals but little ability to think about them independently. He naively trusts the pigs to make all his decisions for him. His two mottoes are “I will work harder” and “Napoleon is always right.” Boxer is later killed and his body parts sold. He represents the working class.
Squealer - The pig who spreads Napoleon's propaganda among the other animals. Squealer justifies the pigs' monopolisation of resources and spreads false statistics pointing to the farm's success. Orwell uses Squealer to explore the ways in which those in power often use rhetoric and language to twist the truth and gain and maintain social and political control.
Old Major - The prize-winning boar whose vision of a socialist utopia serves as the inspiration for the Rebellion. Three days after describing the vision and teaching the animals the song “Beasts of England,” Major dies, leaving Snowball and Napoleon to struggle for control of his legacy. Orwell based Major on both the German political economist Karl Marx and the Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin.
Clover - A good-hearted female cart-horse and Boxer's close friend. Clover often suspects the pigs of violating one or another of the Seven Commandments, but she repeatedly blames herself for dismembering the commandments.
Moses - The tame raven who spreads stories of Sugarcandy Mountain, the paradise to which animals supposedly go when they die. Moses plays only a small role in Animal Farm, but Orwell uses him to explore how communism exploits religion as something with which to pacify the oppressed.
Mollie - The vain, flighty mare who pulls Mr. Jones's carriage. Mollie craves the attention of human beings and loves being groomed and pampered. She has a difficult time with her new life on Animal Farm, as she misses wearing ribbons in her mane and eating sugar cubes. She represents the petite bourgeoisie (Lower Middle Class) that fled from Russia a few years after the Russian Revolution.
Benjamin - The long-lived donkey who refuses to feel inspired by the Rebellion. Benjamin firmly believes that life will remain unpleasant no matter who is in charge. Of all of the animals on the farm, he alone comprehends the changes that take place, but he seems either unwilling or unable to oppose the pigs. It's possible that Benjamin represents the intelligent citizens who saw what was happening, but knew that life would not improve under Stalin's rule.
Muriel - The white goat who reads the Seven Commandments to Clover whenever Clover suspects the pigs of violating their prohibitions.
Mr. Jones - The often drunk farmer who runs the Manor Farm before the animals stage their Rebellion and establish Animal Farm. Mr. Jones is an unkind master who indulges himself while his animals lack food; he thus represents Czar Nicholas II, whom the Russian Revolution ousted.
Mr. Frederick - The tough, shrewd operator of Pinchfield, a neighbouring farm. Based on Adolf Hitler, the ruler of Nazi Germany in the 1930's and 1940's, Mr. Frederick proves an untrustworthy neighbour.
Mr. Pilkington - The easygoing gentleman farmer who runs Foxwood, a neighbouring farm. Mr. Frederick's bitter enemy, Mr. Pilkington represents the capitalist governments of England and the United States.
Mr. Whymper - The human solicitor whom Napoleon hires to represent Animal Farm in human society. Mr. Whymper's entry into the Animal Farm community initiates contact between Animal Farm and human society, alarming the common animals. He represents the capitalists in the USSR, here only for money.
Jessie and Bluebell - Two dogs, each of whom gives birth early in the novel. Napoleon takes the puppies in order to “educate” them.
Minimus - The poet pig who writes verse about Napoleon and pens the banal patriotic song “Animal Farm, Animal Farm” to replace the earlier idealistic hymn “Beasts of England,” which Old Major passes on to the others.
Plot
Edit
Old Major (a prize-winning boar) gathers the animals of the Manor Farm for a meeting in the big barn. He tells them of a dream he has had in which all animals live together with no human beings to oppress or control them. He tells the animals that they must work toward such a paradise and teaches them a song called “Beasts of England,” in which his dream vision is lyrically described. The animals greet Major's vision with great enthusiasm. When he dies only three nights after the meeting, three younger pigs (Snowball, Napoleon, and Squealer) formulate his main principles into a philosophy called Animalism. Late one night, the animals manage to defeat the farmer Mr. Jones in a battle, running him off the land. They rename the property Animal Farm and dedicate themselves to achieving Major's dream. The cart-horse, Boxer, devotes himself to the cause with particular zeal, committing his great strength to the prosperity of the farm, and adopting as a personal maxim the affirmation “I will work harder.” At first, Animal Farm prospers. Snowball works at teaching the animals to read, and Napoleon takes a group of young puppies to educate them in the principles of Animalism. When Mr. Jones reappears to take back his farm, the animals defeat him again, in what comes to be known as the Battle of the Cowshed, and take the farmer's abandoned gun as a token of their victory. As time passes, however, Napoleon and Snowball increasingly quibble over the future of the farm, and they begin to struggle with each other for power and influence among the other animals. Snowball concocts a scheme to build an electricity-generating windmill, but Napoleon solidly opposes the plan. At the meeting to vote on whether to take up the project, Snowball gives a passionate speech. Although Napoleon gives only a brief retort, he then makes a strange noise, and nine attack dogs—the puppies that Napoleon had confiscated in order to “educate”—burst into the barn and chase Snowball from the farm. Napoleon assumes leadership of Animal Farm and declares that there will be no more meetings. From that point on, he asserts, the pigs alone will make all of the decisions—for the good of every animal. Napoleon now quickly changes his mind about the windmill, and the animals, especially Boxer, devote their efforts to completing it. One day, after a storm, the animals find the windmill toppled. The human farmers in the area declare smugly that the animals made the walls too thin, but Napoleon claims that Snowball returned to the farm to sabotage the windmill. He stages a great purge, during which various animals who have allegedly participated in Snowball's great conspiracy—meaning any animal who opposes Napoleon's uncontested leadership—meet instant death at the teeth of the attack dogs. With his leadership unquestioned (Boxer has taken up a second maxim, “Napoleon is always right”), Napoleon begins expanding his powers, rewriting history to make Snowball a villain. Napoleon also begins to act more and more like a human being—sleeping in a bed, drinking whisky, and engaging in trade with neighbouring farmers. The original Animalist principles strictly forbade such activities, but Squealer, Napoleon's propagandist, justifies every action to the other animals, convincing them that Napoleon is a great, tireless leader and is making things better for everyone—despite the fact that the common animals are cold, hungry, and overworked. Mr. Frederick, a neighbouring farmer, cheats Napoleon in the purchase of some timber and then attacks the farm and dynamites the windmill, which had been rebuilt at great expense. After the demolition of the windmill, a pitched battle ensues, during which Boxer receives major wounds. The animals rout the farmers, but Boxer's injuries weaken him. When he later falls while working on the windmill, he senses that his time has nearly come. One day, Boxer is nowhere to be found. According to Squealer, Boxer has died in peace after having been taken to the hospital, praising the Rebellion with his last breath. In actuality, Napoleon has sold his most loyal and long-suffering worker to a glue maker in order to get money for whisky. Years pass on Animal Farm, and the pigs become more and more like human beings—walking upright, carrying whips, and wearing clothes. Eventually, the seven principles of Animalism, known as the Seven Commandments and inscribed on the side of the barn, become reduced to a single principle reading “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Napoleon entertains a human farmer named Mr. Pilkington at a dinner and declares his intent to ally himself with the human farmers against the laboring classes of both the human and animal communities. He also changes the name of Animal Farm back to the Manor Farm, claiming that this title is the “correct” one. Looking in at the party of elites through the farmhouse window, the common animals can no longer tell which are the pigs and which are the human beings.
Symbolism
Edit
Humans: The humans stand for the people who exploit the weak. The gradual transformation of the pigs into human-like creatures represents the process by which the revolution's leaders became corrupted. Whether capitalist or communist in name, the underlying reality of many political systems.
Snowball: Snowball represents Leon Trotsky. Like Trotsky, Snowball is a smart, young speaker who dreams of making life better for all animals. One of the early leaders of the "October Revolution", Trotsky was banished from the Soviet Union. While abroad, he was repeatedly denounced as a traitor by his native country, and wild lies were invented to discredit him. Trotsky was eventually killed in Mexico by the Russian internal police.
Napoleon: Not as clever as Snowball, Napoleon is also cruel, selfish and corrupt. Napoleon is most clearly representative of Joseph Stalin, who, like Napoleon, ruled with an iron fist and killed all those who opposed him. On a deeper level, he represents the human weaknesses which eventually undermine even the best political intentions. In much the same way that Napoleon used the dogs, Squealer, and Moses to control animals, Stalin used the KGB and cleverly worded lies (called "propaganda") to control
Pigs: Orwell has chosen the pigs to represent the Communist Party loyalists. In the early years of the revolution they were concerned with the welfare of the common workers; as time passed, however, they began to take advantage of their role as leaders. By film's end, the ideals of the revolution have been sacrificed, and the pigs are indistinguishable from the farm's original masters.
Dogs: The dogs constitute the pigs' private army; the pigs used the dogs to maintain a climate of terror which silenced all opposition to their rule. The dogs remain completely loyal to Napoleon throughout the novel, much in the way that the KGB faithfully supported Lenin and Stalin.
Boxer and Clover: These strong, hard-working horses live by the words "I must work harder." Boxer and Clover represent the dedicated "proletariat," Karl Marx's term for the unskilled labor class. They are drawn to the rebellion because they think they will benefit most from its promises. It was the proletariat in Russian society who remained loyal to Stalin as they built up the Soviet Industrial machine. Eventually, they are betrayed by Stalin and the Communist party.
Moses: Whose name is reference to the prominent Biblical figure, is a symbol for religion and represents Orwell's view of the Church. Though Snowball and Napoleon oppose Moses' ideas, he is allowed to remain on the farm because he encourages hard work and submissive behaviour.
| i don't know |
The junction of the A66 and the A1 is colloquially known as what? | A66 - Roader's Digest: The SABRE Wiki
A66
A66
Scotch Corner - Workington
The A66 is a major trunk road in northern England, one of the main east-west links in the United Kingdom. The stretch through the Pennines between Appleby and Scotch Corner is one of the most scenic roads in England, but also prone to weather-related closures. The modern A66, from Workington to Teesside, is the result of several extensions, bypasses and significant movement of its terminal points, which are now in one case by 40 and 100 miles from where they were first located. It is the most southerly road to get close to being a complete coast-to-coast route, by virtue of its westward extension into Zone 5, and it is a primary route throughout its length.
We will first look at its original route, via a short musical tribute...
If you want to go to Cumbria
Travel my way, take the road that's best by far
Get your kicks on the A66.
It winds from Teesside to Workington.
More than one hundred miles when its done.
Get your kicks on the A66.
Well, you go past the 'Boro, into County Durham
Where Stockton's fair city looks mighty pretty.
You'll see Darlington, ah; A1(M), Scotch Corner
Bowes, Stainmore and Appleby-Westmorland;
Won't you get hip to this timely tip
When you make that trans-Pennine trip
Get your kicks on A-six-six
(with apologies to Bobby Troupe)
Contents
(Zone 1)
The A66 reached Hull in 1922
When road numbers were first allocated in the 1920s, the number A66 was given to a route largely following Roman roads across country from Hull, via York and Scotch Corner , to Penrith. In 1924 , the A1 was between Boroughbridge and Darlington to run via Scotch Corner instead of its original more easterly route (now largely the A167 ). This took over a large section of A66 south of Scotch Corner cutting the road in two and for obvious reasons the southern part became the A1079 ; parts have since become the A59 and B6265 (the TOTSO in Green Hammerton between the A59 and B6265 , before it was bypassed, was a legacy of the A66 having once been the main route here). North of Boroughbridge, the original A66 is now the A1 and A1(M) as far as Scotch Corner.
(Zone 6)
Before the M6 provided a fast way north, most Anglo-Scottish traffic avoided Shap summit on the A6 , and so Scotch Corner was the key location where traffic for the west of Scotland left the Great North Road to cut across the Pennines to reach the A6 at Penrith. This section of the A66 looks very fast on the map, but as with many Roman roads it is quite narrow in places. A recent BBC programme dubbed it "Britain's Worst Road" - beating both the M6 and the M25 , which was a little unfair. About two-thirds of it is dualled, including the whole of the transpennine section from Bowes to Brough, and it has bypasses for Greta Bridge, Bowes (with a limited access junction with the A67 , a road we shall meet again) Brough, (junction for the A685 to Kirkby Steven and the M6 at J38 ), Appleby-in-Westmorland, Temple Sowerby and Penrith. Much of this route is very remote - at Stainmore Summit, the boundary between Yorkshire and Westmorland, the parallel railway was the highest in England until it closed in the 1960s.
A66 near Penrith
Originally the western end of the A66 was on the A6 to the south of the centre of Penrith and this was what in previous centuries made the town an important stagecoach stop. In fact one of the streets close to, but not on, the former A66 route is called Old London Road. The now former route is now firstly a shortcut from the town centre to the A686 at Carleton Village, secondly a country lane connecting the A686 with a private school along which has a milestone along it saying Penrith 1 mile, Appleby 13 miles and lastly due to some downgrading in the early 1990s, probably to stop joyriders using the road (as it is quite a steep hill down from Carleton), the section that runs underneath the present A66 is now simply a footpath and farm track.
Something New...
(Zone 5)
A major upgrade to roads in the Northern Lake District took place in the early 1970s, in particular the route from Penrith to Cockermouth via Keswick, then known as the A594 . This was around the time that the parallel railway line was closed. In order to encourage drivers to reach the Keswick area by way of the M6 and the upgraded A594 , instead of the A591 via Ambleside, the A594 was renumbered as the A66.
From the M6 , the Penrith bypass continues as the new alignment of the A66, now anomalously numbered as it is in Zone 5 (having already crossed the A6 ) and dual carriageway as far as Penruddock. Notably, the two carriageways are often a short distance apart on this stretch, as the new eastbound carriageway is more heavily engineered than the original westbound one.
Keswick bypass
Beyond Penruddock, the A66 largely follows the old route of the A594 (which came from Penrith by way of the present B5288 ), to Troutbeck ( A5091 for Ullswater), Keswick and Cockermouth, but largely on new alignment, with bypasses for Threlkeld and Keswick. This section, under the slopes of Bencathra and Skiddaw, is the most spectacular part of the route. Beyond Keswick the A66 follows the River Derwent all the way to the sea, using the old railway line alongside Bassenthwaite Lake (the only body of water in the Lake District that actually has the word "Lake" in its name) and on to Cockermouth, which is also bypassed.
At Cockermouth the A66 parts company with the route of the A594 , which continues on its original route to Maryport (a fact which appears to have escaped the attention of whoever numbered the Leicester Inner Ring Road!) and joins the A595 , with which it multiplexes (on a new alignment) to Bridgefoot. From there it follows a new route, opened in 2002, bypassing Great Clifton and Stainburn which incorporates a shared centre overtaking lane for much of its length. The route terminates just short of the sea on the A596 in Workington town centre.
Workington is an industrial centre, for many years the home of the Leyland National and Leyland Titan buses, and a steelworks. Sadly all gone now. In 2002 it celebrated 125 years of manufacturing railway lines, although since 1974 the steel "blooms" from which they are rolled have been brought in from Teesside, at the other end of the A66, rather than made in the town.
The A597 and A596 both continue south of Workington to Distington, where they meet the A595 on its way to Whitehaven, but that's it for the A66!
Something Borrowed...
(Zone 1 again)
Near Middlesbrough
In the 1960s, some time after the A66 was truncated at its eastern end, it was extended back into Zone 1, largely following the route of the former A67 . It now starts at Grangetown, near Redcar (coincidentally a steel town, like Workington), at a junction with the A1053 Tees Dock Road), and follows a new alignment, dual carriageway and mainly grade separated, along the south bank of the Tees around Middlesbrough to a fully free-flow junction with the A19 . It then crosses the Tees to by-pass Stockton, where it meets the A135 (an Essex number: shouldn't it swap with the A176 ?).
Between Stockton and Darlington the A66 has closely followed the original route of the A67 (now itself rerouted further south), but just short of Darlington the original route goes straight on (as the A1150 ) whilst the A66 turns south on a single carriageway bypass, collecting the A67 (which runs parallel to the A66 from Stockton on a new route) to run in multiplex to the junction with the A167 . (Before the bypass existed, the A66, A67 and A68 all met in the centre of Darlington). The most direct route from Darlington to Bowes is by the A67 , but through traffic is directed on the A66, which now crosses back across the Tees...
Something Blue...
...and becomes a motorway! In fact the A66(M) is little more than a two-mile glorified slip road, merging into the A1(M) at the limited-access junction 57 with no intermediate junctions. A few miles further on is Scotch Corner, where the A1 multiplex ends, and the A66 turns west again, on its original route.
Tim (with thanks to M4 Man)
Links
| Scotch Corner |
In which conflict was the 'Battle of Solferino' in 1859? | Scotch Corner - Roader's Digest: The SABRE Wiki
Scotch Corner
Location Middleton Tyas County Yorkshire Highway Authority Highways England Junction Type Roundabout Interchange Roads Joined A1 , A66 , A6108 Junctions related to the A6108 Ripon Bypass Roundabout
Scotch Corner is a junction between the A1 , A66 and A6108 in Yorkshire, close to the village of Middleton Tyas and a few miles south of Darlington.
It plays host to a hotel and a service area , but little else. Despite this it is an important primary destination signed from many miles away including from the M6 and is one of the best known junctions in the country.
The reason for its fame and the name it takes is because this is the turning point for traffic wishing to go to Scotland. Those wanting to go to Glasgow would take the A66 West, but those for Edinburgh would continue on the A1 .
This was especially true before the construction of the M6 where HGV drivers would often use the A1 as far north as Scotch Corner in order to avoid having to negotiate the notorious A6 over Shap.
Contents
4 Layout
History
In 1922 this was a small junction on the A66 - with the A1 a couple of miles to the east. This had changed by 1924, when the A1 took the route via the junction.
The A1 in the vicinity of Scotch Corner was dualled in the 1950s or early 60s. The A66 junction became an at-grade roundabout. A short distance to the south there was a separate at-grade priority junction with the A6108 , with a gap in the central reservation. In 1971 an improvement was completed, which included diverting a one-mile stretch of the A1 eastward onto its present line, building the present elongated roundabout and the two bridges which carry it, and combining the A66 and A6108 junctions into one.
The pre-1971 alignment of the A1 is clearly discernible today in aerial photographs or large-scale maps, and includes the present northbound on-slip road (on the line of the former northbound carriageway), the present lorry park (on the line of the former southbound carriageway), most of the present dualled section of the A6108 , and a grassed strip to the south with hedges each side. To the north-west of the roundabout, the pre-dualling line of the A1 can also be seen.
The dualling of a section of the A66 immediately west of the junction was completed in 2007, with essentially no effect on the layout of the junction. In the same year, the six 36-year-old reinforced concrete piers of the two bridges, which were presumably in poor condition, were demolished and rebuilt in place. This perhaps indicates that the Highways Agency was content to retain the present geometry of the bridges for decades to come, even though it is incapable of accommodating a full D3M layout beneath.
Future
Scotch Corner falls within the Leeming to Barton section of the A1 , which is proposed to be generally upgraded to D3M standard, but reducing to D2M within this junction. This would mean little change within the junction, as the 1971 diversion has always had hard shoulders. The parallel local access road would combine with the A6108 at the south end of the junction.
The Leeming to Barton upgrade was covered by the same public inquiry as the Dishforth to Leeming section and it was originally expected that both sections would be built together. The inquiry reported in spring 2008 and recommended that Leeming-Barton be modified by the addition of further sections of parallel local access road. Construction therefore began in spring 2009 on Dishforth to Leeming only. It was stated that Leeming to Barton would follow in 2011 or 2012. By March 2010 the start of work had been put back to 2014. It may well be delayed again in one of the further rounds of public spending cuts expected in the next few years, or even cancelled.
Routes
| i don't know |
Rosemary Scallonis better known as whom? | Rosemary Scallon | ZoomInfo.com
Q. Tell me about the name "Dana."
EUobserver
www.euobserver.com [cached]
Rosemary Scallon speaks about the Irish referendum
These Tides is the only international magazine of its kind for eurorealists of all party denominations.
...
In this month's issue of These Tides, Rosemary Scallon, an Irish member of the European Parliament for the European People's Party and former winner of the 1970 Eurovision Song Contest, speaks about what happens now that the Irish public have rejected the Nice Treaty in a referendum.
Website [These Tides]
Printer friendly formatSend article link to a friend29.07.2001
EUobserver
www.euobs.com [cached]
Rosemary Scallon speaks about the Irish referendum
These Tides is the only international magazine of its kind for eurorealists of all party denominations.
...
In this month's issue of These Tides, Rosemary Scallon, an Irish member of the European Parliament for the European People's Party and former winner of the 1970 Eurovision Song Contest, speaks about what happens now that the Irish public have rejected the Nice Treaty in a referendum.
Website [These Tides]
Printer friendly formatSend article link to a friend29.07.2001
Fr. Ted Colleton - Interim, December 2000
continued to develop
her
career as a popular artist and gained particular recognition in the U.K., Europe and in the US.
Throughout the 70's and 80's
she
had a string of hits, was voted best female artist, best TV artist, hosted series on BBC and ITV and appeared on Top of the Pops with stars such as David Bowie, Queen and Marc Bolan as well as at several royal command performances.In the 1990's
she
moved to the US and hosted a television series on the EWTN cable network to over 75 million homes.
She
has met with Presidents Ford, Reagan Clinton and Bush and met and sung for the Pope on five occasions.In 1997 Dana was the first-ever independent candidate nominated to contest Ireland's presidential election.
She
shocked the political establishment by gaining 15% of the popular vote.Two years later, however,
she
was successful in being elected, against all the odds, as a Member of the European Parliament for Connacht / Ulster.From a childhood in the Bogside of Derry, through the maelstrom of international showbusiness, to the White House and the Vatican, to the European Parliament and all its political intrigue, Dana's story is truly astonishing.Indeed another chapter of Dana's career may have yet to be written, as there are rumours that
she
may contest the European elections in two years time.
Similar Profiles
| Dana |
Which Russian painter, who died in 1944, founded the 'Blau Reiter' group? | Clips9 Dana Fairytale Free Listen and Download Video
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| i don't know |
Which instrument used to be called a 'Sackbut'? | The Sacbut
The Sacbut
or here for same in mp3 format
However, for the lowest contratenor parts, and often for any contratenor part, to the shawm players one adds brass players who play very harmoniously, upon the kind of tuba which is called ..trompone in Italy and sacqueboute in France. When all these instruments are employed together, it is called the loud music.
Tinctoris, circa 1487
ein feste burg - three settings by Walther
(3rd setting at 1:43 includes sacbut)
Aridan Branle - dance tune
(includes sacbut on third verse)
Many names have been given to the Renaissance trombone, including sackbut (literally "push-pull"), saqueboute, shakbusshes, seykebuds, sakbuds, shakebuttes, shagbutts, and even shagbolts. It is uncertain when the sackbut first appeared, but by 1500 it is illustrated and mentioned regularly. Detailed information about the instrument is given by Praetorius, who also pictures four principal sizes: the alto, tenor, bass, and great bass. The tenor sackbut is the most useful size and it is this instrument which has evolved into the modern tenor trombone. In the early seventeenth century the sackbut was considered an instrument of the virtuoso performer. Praetorius mentions an Erhardus Borussus of Dresden who had a range of nearly four octaves (low A1 to g2) and was able to execute rapid coloraturas and jumps on his instrument just as is done on the viola bastarda and the cornett.
For outdoor music the top part of a sackbut ensemble was usually taken by a shawm, and for church music, by a cornett. The sackbut player should imitate the sound of the cornett, not the trumpet. Thus today's marching band trombone blasts have no place in the performance of early music. In spite of the instrument's wide range of dynamic and chromatic compass, and its ability to be played "in tune" (by slide adjustment), the sackbut did not become a regular member of the orchestra until the early nineteenth century.
The sackbut differs from today's trombone by its smaller bore, its bell which is less flared, and in the lack of a water key, slide lock, and tuning slide on the bell curve. Sackbuts could adjust tuning at the joint between the bell and slide.
The shallow brass mouthpiece was unplated. Decorated outer slide braces could telescope slightly to follow the imperfections of the inner slide. Leather pieces cushioned the slide when brought up to first postion. Since the human arm couldn't reach the longest positions on the bass and great bass sackbuts, they have an articulated handle on the slide to extend the reach.
| Trombone |
Who wrote the music for the ballet 'Petrushka'? | Sackbutt | Article about Sackbutt by The Free Dictionary
Sackbutt | Article about Sackbutt by The Free Dictionary
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Sackbutt
Also found in: Dictionary , Thesaurus , Wikipedia .
sackbut
(săk`bət), Renaissance name for the slide trombone, probably derived from the old French word sacqueboute, which means "pull-push." The instrument achieved its present form in the 15th cent., the only differences being a narrower bore and a smaller bell. These differences lent the sackbut, sometimes called a posuane, a less mellow tone than its modern counterpart.
sackbut
a medieval form of trombone
| i don't know |
Who wrote 'The Carpet People', 'Hogfather', 'The Last Continent', 'Men At Arms', and 'Mote'? | Terry Pratchett - BookSeries.org
Search
Order of Terry Pratchett Books
Terry Pratchett is the pseudonym for the novelist sir Terence David John Prachett who hails from Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, England. He was born in the year 1948 April 28 to David and Eileen Pratchett. Back in school he was a member of the debating society and wrote articles for the school magazine. This experience credited his education to the Beaconsfield library. He was mainly interested in astronomy during his early age though he lacked mathematics skills. He later developed interest for science fiction but later stopped when he got his first job. Terry started his career in 1968 when he wrote the book ‘Carpet book’ which was later followed by the science fiction novel ‘The dark side of the sun’ in the year 1976. He was a famous author who has written over 70 novels and was the top-selling author in the UK until 2005 with his books being translated into different languages. Terry got married to Lyn Purves in 1968 and was blessed with a daughter Rhianna Pratchett who is also a writer and was born in 1976.In 2007 Pratchett was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease which was responsible for his stroke earlier on in 2005. Pratchett died on March 12th, 2015.
Order of Bromeliad Trilogy
Science of Discworld IV: Judgment Day
2013
Terry wrote in the sci-fi and horror genres and later on focused on the fantasy genre. He was a writer of distinction which was mainly shown by his ability to write books for both adults and the young. Some of his notable works include Discworld, Good Omens and many others. Discworld is a book series that was written by Terry and it was a comic set on the fiction disc world which was a flat disc balanced on the backs of four elephants which stood on the backs of a giant turtle.
his novel contains themes that run through the series including the sub-genres of fantasy. This series is so interesting and did so well in the fiction novels world raising him to fame. Good omens was written by Terry Pratchet and Neil Geiman.It is a book that talks about the birth of the son of Satan and the coming of the end times.
TERRY PRATCHETT AWARDS
Pratchett won the British books awards fantasy and science fiction author of the year in the year 1994.in the year 1989 pratchet won the British science fiction award for his novel pyramid which was followed by best fantasy novel in 2008 for locals’ award in his books making money. He won the 2001 Carnegie medal for his recognition of the amazing Maurice and his educated rodents as the year’s best children book published in the United Kingdom from the British librarians. His novel night watch won the 2003 Prometheus award for best libertarian novel. The BBC conducted the big read to identify the best loved novel in the nation whereby Pratchett highest ranking novel Mort came number 65. Of the five discworld novesl that centre on the trainee witch tiffany aching won the annual locus for best year adult book in years 2004 2005 and 2007.
TERRY PRATCHETT BOOKS TO MOVIES:
His novel Tracker was adapted as a series in stop motion animation for Thames television by cosgroove hall films in 1992. In 1995 Johnnie and the dead was made into a TV serial on ITV for children ITV. In 1996 Cosgrove hall for channel four adapted Wyrd sisters and soul music as animated cartoon series. Screenplays illustrated for this were published in 1996 and 1997 respectively. BBC one aired a three part adaption of Johnnie and the bomb in January 2006. Going postal third adaption was aired at the third of May 2010. Hog fathers’ two part feature length version starring David Jason and the voice of Ian Richardson was first aired in sky one United Kingdom in December 2006 and ION television in 2007. Better still terry Williams planned to adapt good omens novel for in 1999 interview with empire magazine but it faced finance constraints since 2007.
BEST TERRY PRATCHETT BOOKS:
Usually here we list a few selection books from an author but in this case yeah – just read the Discworld series.
| Terry Pratchett |
Richmond in Yorkshire, lies on which river? | nation.lk ::: - Creator of Discworld
Creator of Discworld
(0 votes)
Sir Terry Pratchett, renowned fantasy author, dies aged 66
Sir Terry Pratchett, fantasy author and creator of the Discworld series, has died aged 66, eight years after being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. "The world has lost one of its brightest, sharpest minds," said Larry Finlay of his publishers Transworld. The author died at home, surrounded by his family, "with his cat sleeping on his bed", he added. Sir Terry wrote more than 70 books during his career and completed his final book last summer.
The English fantasy author, Terry D J (David John) Pratchett was born on April 28, 1948 in the town of Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire. His was educated at High Wycombe Technical High School.
He wrote is first story when he was thirteen years old (1961) and with the money that he made from selling this he was able to buy his first typewriter. In 1971, Pratchett had his first novel published; it was called The Carpet People.
Terry Pratchett is best known for the fantasy novels that make up the Discworld series. This series now comprises of more than forty books and is a humorous and at times satirical work set on a disc-shaped world that is carried on the backs of four giant elephants. The first book of the Discworld series was entitled The Colour Of Magic. The Colour Of Magic was published in 1983 but he continued to work until 1987 when he was able to become a full-time author.
Terry Pratchett was awarded the OBE (The Most Excellent Order Of The British Empire, Officer) in 1998 for his services to literature. Terry Pratchett has also received honorary doctorates from the Universities of Warwick, Portsmouth, Bath and Bristol. He has sold over 40 million books worldwide and these have been translated into thirty-three different languages. He is second only to JK Rowling in terms of book sales in the United Kingdom.
It is believed that one percent of all the books sold in England are penned by Pratchett. His books have been translated into 36 languages and have sold over 60 million copies.
Sir Terry Pratchett was made a knight in the New Year Honors list (2008). He received the honor for services to literature.
Bibliography
Sourcery: The Illustrated Screenplay, Gollancz
Nation, Doubleday
2007- The Wit and Wisdom of Discworld, Doubleday
The Illustrated Wee Free Men, illustrated by Stephen Player, Doubleday
Terry Pratchett's Hogfather: The Illustrated Screenplay, Gollancz
Making Money, Doubleday
Enlightenment, with Stephen Briggs, Gollancz
2006 - Wintersmith, Doubleday
2005 - Where's My Cow?, Doubleday
Thud!, Doubleday
Darwin's Watch: The Science of Discworld III, with Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart, Ebury Press
2004 - Going Postal, Doubleday
A Hat Full of Sky, Doubleday
2003 - The Wee Free Men, Doubleday
Monstrous Regiment,
Doubleday
2002 - The Science of Discworld II: The Globe, with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen, Ebury Press
Night Watch, Doubleday
2001 - Thief of Time, Doubleday
The Last Hero, Gollancz
The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, Doubleday
2000 - The Truth, Doubleday
Discworld, with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen, Ebury Press
The Fifth Elephant, Doubleday
Nanny Ogg's Cookbook, with recipes by Tina Hannan and
Stephen Briggs, illustrated by Paul Kidby, Doubleday
1998 - The Last Continent, Doubleday
Carpe Jugulum, Doubleday
1996 - The Pratchett Portfolio, illustrated by Paul Kidby, Gollancz
Johnny and the Bomb,
| i don't know |
Which English soccer team are nicknamed 'The Hornets'? | Premier League Nicknames, The Complete List
#14 Norwich City
Nickname: Canaries
You don’t come across too many canaries in sports. And Norwich actually uses the animal on its crest, something Watford is still trying to figure out.
#13 Swansea City
Nickname: Swans
The swans will be carrying the weight of a nation on their shoulders (do swans have shoulders?) as they are the only Welsh representative this season.
#12 Sunderland
Nickname: Black Cats
Black cats are synonymous with creepy and scary things, so it’s a very fitting name for Sunderland.
#11 Manchester City
Nickname: Citizens
A play on the club’s official name, it’s unique but not used enough to be higher on the list.
#10 West Bromwich Albion
Nickname: Baggies
According to the club historian , back in the day when there were only two entrances to West Brom’s stadium, the gatekeepers could be seen walking beside the pitch to the office near midfield with bags of money. That’s a pretty cool story.
#9 Manchester United
Nickname: Red Devils
Perhaps a bit generic and lacking history, but “Red Devils” just seems to fit for Manchester United, a club that you truly either love or hate.
#8 Everton
Nickname: Toffees
Origins go back to a local toffee shop that was located near the Queen’s Head Hotel, where the football club was formed. Since then, a “Toffee Lady” has thrown out Everton mints to supporters before each game. As a fan of history and sweets, I appreciate this nickname.
#7 Southampton
Nickname: Saints
The club originally began as a church football team and now play in St. Mary’s Stadium, so “Saints” was always going to be the nickname. It’s also cool to hear 30,000 fans sing When the Saints Go Marching In.
#6 Stoke City
Nickname: Potters
Stoke City gets its nickname from a once thriving pottery industry in the very early days of the Britain’s industrial revolution.
#5 Aston Villa
Nickname: Villains
It has been a rough few seasons for Aston Villa and another relegation battle seems to be on the cards. But the ability to play on the club’s official name with something that sounds so antagonizing is quite unique.
イングランド、アストン・ヴィラのコレオ！ #soccerchoreo #tifo RT @Ultramaniatics : Villa Park today Aston Villa vs Manchester United 14/08 pic.twitter.com/TpjucS21GJ
#4 West Ham United
Nickname: Hammers
At first glance, “Hammers” just seems to be a play on West Ham. However, the nickname actually goes back to the early days of the club when it was known as Thames Ironworks and made up of men in the shipbuilding industry.
#3 Arsenal
Nickname: Gunners
The club was formed by workers from London’s Royal Arsenal, an arms manufacturer and storage facility dating back to the late 1600s, providing supporters with a nickname that is both very cool and historically rich.
#2 Newcastle United
Nickname: Magpies
A magpie is a bird from the crow family that is generally black and white in color, just like the home jerseys for Newcastle United. Ironically, magpies are regarded as one of the most intelligent animal species in the world. So maybe this nickname isn’t so fitting for a club that suffers from chronic chaos, but it’s distinctive and fun nonetheless.
#1 Bournemouth
Nickname: Cherries
Topping this list might be Bournemouth’s only moment of Premier League glory this year. There are a couple of theories about the “Cherries” nickname. One says it’s a reference to the red jerseys the club has always worn. Another suggests that the club’s original stadium was located near a large cherry orchard. Either way, “Cherries” just seems right for Bournemouth – innocent, unique, and in need of a miracle to survive the winter. As the supporters say, “up the Cherries!”
| Watford |
In the Falklands War, which ship was the flagship of the Royal Navy Task Force? | Official Website of the Hornets | Watford Football Club
09:00 AM - 20 Jan 2017
⚽️🎉 It's Friday & #watfordfc are back in @premierleague action tomorrow when they travel to @afcbournemouth 🍒… https://t.co/S3Cf2bv8kd
09:00 AM - 20 Jan 2017
01:08 AM - 20 Jan 2017
Mauro Zárate cerca de llegar al #WatfordFC 🐝. #Fichajes https://t.co/j2XmAk2Fy6
01:08 AM - 20 Jan 2017
Watford FC Blog @WatfordFCBlog
19:50 PM - 19 Jan 2017
The Zarate deal seems to be getting closer. Heard some promising things about him, but will judge him when I see him play. #WatfordFC
19:50 PM - 19 Jan 2017
Watford FC Blog @WatfordFCBlog
19:49 PM - 19 Jan 2017
Hope Gomes is fit enough to play on Saturday. Not 100% sold on Pantilimon really if I'm being honest. #WatfordFC
19:49 PM - 19 Jan 2017
Watford Ladies FC @watfordladiesfc
19:35 PM - 19 Jan 2017
RT @donnybelles: NEWS: Our @WomensFACup tie with @Watfordladiesfc will be played at @RMFC1919 Full story 👉🏻👉🏻https://t.co/EqTbohBziU http…
19:35 PM - 19 Jan 2017
| i don't know |
Catherine Zeta Jones has a million pound per year contract with which cosmetics company? | Catherine Zeta-Jones - Biography - IMDb
5' 7" (1.7 m)
Mini Bio (1)
Catherine Zeta-Jones was born September 25, 1969 in Swansea, West Glamorgan, Wales, UK. She is the daughter of Patricia (Fair) and David James "Dai" Jones, who formerly owned a candy factory. Her father is of Welsh descent and her mother is of English, Irish, and Welsh ancestry. Her brothers are David Jones (born 1967), a development executive, and Lyndon Jones (born 1972), who works at her production company.
Catherine showed an interest early on in entertainment. She starred on stage in "Annie", "Bugsy Malone" and "The Pajama Game". At age 15, she had the lead in the British revival of "42nd Street". She was originally cast as the second understudy for the lead role in the musical but when the star and first understudy became sick the night the play's producer was in the audience, she was given the lead for the rest of the musical's production. She first made a name for herself in the early 1990s when she starred in the Yorkshire Television comedy/drama series The Darling Buds of May (1991). The series was a success and made her one of the United Kingdom's most popular television actresses.
She subsequently played supporting roles in several films including Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (1992), the miniseries Catherine the Great (1996) and a larger role as the seductive Sala in The Phantom (1996) before landing her breakthrough role playing the fiery Elena opposite Anthony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas in The Mask of Zorro (1998). She starred in many big-budget blockbusters like Entrapment (1999), The Haunting (1999) and Traffic (2000), for which many believed she was robbed of an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress. She won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress as murderous vaudevillian Velma Kelly in the musical comedy Chicago (2002). She then appeared opposite George Clooney in Intolerable Cruelty (2003), Ocean's Twelve (2004) and reprised her starring role in the sequel The Legend of Zorro (2005).
In November 2000, she married actor Michael Douglas . She gave birth to their son Dylan Michael in August 2000 followed by daughter, Carys, in April 2003. She was awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2010 Queen's Birthday Honours List for her services to drama.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: [email protected]
Spouse (1)
( 18 November 2000 - present) (2 children)
Trade Mark (4)
Sister-in-law of Joel Douglas , Peter Douglas and the late Eric Douglas .
Her character in Traffic (2000) was changed to a pregnant woman, because Zeta-Jones herself was pregnant at the time with her son, Dylan.
Speaks English, French, Spanish and Welsh.
Her father is of Welsh ancestry, and her mother is of Irish, English, and Welsh ancestry.
She portrayed Palene, the beautiful Thracian prophetess and woman of Spartacus, in Jeff Wayne's 1992 musical version of "Spartacus". The role of Spartacus was played by her future father-in-law, Kirk Douglas , in Stanley Kubrick 's motion picture Spartacus (1960).
In the June 1998 of Yahoo! Internet magazine, she was listed as the number one actress being searched on Yahoo!.
A traditional Welsh choir sang at her wedding.
Her wedding ring includes a Celtic motif and was bought in a Welsh town called Aberystwyth.
As a child, she was exposed to a virus that gave her breathing difficulties. This required a tracheotomy surgery, which ultimately left a surgical scar on her neck.
Is an avid fan of musicals, particularly the ones she saw as a child: Mary Poppins (1964) and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968).
On December 11, 2003, she was a hostess, together with husband Michael Douglas , at the 2003 annual Nobel Peace Price Concert in Oslo Spectrum in Oslo, Norway.
Celebrity spokesperson for Elizabeth Arden Cosmetics.
Was born in Swansea but grew up in the small seaside town of Mumbles in Wales.
Her production company is Milkwood Films, named after the play "Under Milkwood" by Welsh writer Dylan Thomas . She and Thomas are both from the same Welsh town, Swansea.
Her friend, singer Bonnie Tyler , sang at her wedding. Both Zeta-Jones and Tyler come from the same region of Wales.
She released the singles "For All Time" in 1989, "In the Arms of Love" and "I Can't Help Myself" in 1995 and a duet with David Essex , "True Love Ways", which was her only chart single. It appeared at #38 in the UK Top 75 singles chart in 1994.
Ranked #50 on VH1's "100 Hottest Hotties".
(October 21, 2004) Filed lawsuit against the Spice House, "Reno's Friendliest Topless Cabaret" for the unauthorized use of her photo on its website.
On an awards show, speaking of her role of Velma Kelly in the movie Chicago (2002), she stated that while it was as exciting, it was almost as painful as giving birth to her son.
In 1992, the Columbia single "For All Time" peaked at #36 in the UK charts; In 1995, she spent a week on the UK chart at #72 with "In the Arms of Love".
Ranked #68 in FHM magazine's "100 Sexiest Women in the World 2005" special supplement.
Ranked #82 in FHM magazine's "100 Sexiest Women in the World 2006" special supplement.
Was once engaged to Angus Macfadyen .
Was considered for the role of Jane Smith in Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), which went to Angelina Jolie .
Was originally approached to play Roxie Hart in Chicago (2002), but wanted to play Velma Kelly because of the song "All That Jazz". Renée Zellweger ended up winning the role of Roxie Hart.
In 2004, she began a two year $20 million contract as the spokeswoman of T-Mobile.
Turned down the role of Claudia Nardi in the musical Nine (2009) when Rob Marshall refused to expand the role for the film. Nicole Kidman was later cast instead.
Was considered for the role of Satine in the musical Moulin Rouge! (2001) but Nicole Kidman , who went on to receive a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance, was cast instead.
Born at 2:40 PM (MET).
The 2009 Sunday Times estimates her and husband Michael Douglas ' net worth at $278 million.
She was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 2010 Queen's Birthday Honours List for her services to drama.
Won a Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical in 2010 for her portrayal of Desiree in "A Little Night Music".
Was seven months pregnant with her son Dylan when she completed filming on Traffic (2000).
Returned to work four months after giving birth to her son Dylan in order to begin filming America's Sweethearts (2001).
Admitted herself into Silver Hills Hospital in New Canaan, Connecticut on April 6, 2011 for a five-day treatment of her Bipolar II Disorder before leaving the hospital on April 11, 2011.
Her wedding dress was designed by Christian Lacroix .
Met her husband, Michael Douglas , at the Deauville Film Festival in September 1998, while she was promoting her upcoming film, The Mask of Zorro (1998).
She moved to London, England, from Wales, at age 15.
She acquired her first actor's guild card at age 15.
When she was 14, former Monkees star Micky Dolenz was touring Britain in a musical that required the participation of local teens in each city it visited. She auditioned for the Welsh version of the show and won a chorus spot. She so impressed the producers that they whisked her off to London to star in a production of "The Pyjama Game".
She began singing and dancing at the age of four, largely as a result of her involvement with the local Catholic congregation's amateur performing troupe. She began acting at age 11, playing the lean in a production of "Annie", and at age 13, starred in a West End production of the musical "Bugsy Malone".
Before moving to Los Angeles, California, she had a house in Fulham, London, England.
Her birth name is Catherine Jones, but she took her grandmother's name (on her father's side) because there were many other Catherine Jones, especially in her school class.
Listed on Ask men.com as one of the 99 "most desirable" women (2002 #57) (2001 #5) (2003 #36).
The British press gave her the nickname "Catherine Zeta, The Maneater" due to her busy love life at the time.
Attended Dumbarton House School in Swansea, Wales.
In the 1980s, her parents won £100.000 at the game of Bingo and moved to St. Andrews Drive in Mayals, uptown Swansea.
Ranked #11 on Rateitall.com as one of people's favorite actresses. [April 2005]
Likes listening to soul music. Is a huge fan of Gladys Knight . She also likes Elvis Presley and Van Morrison . Every Sunday morning for 15 years, her father woke her up to Elvis Presley singing "American Trilogy" or Van Morrison's "Moondance".
Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas took legal action against stalker Dawnette Knight, who was accused of sending violent letters to the couple that contained graphic threats on Zeta-Jones's life. Testifying, Zeta-Jones said the threats left her so shaken she feared a nervous breakdown. Knight claimed she had been in love with Douglas and admitted to the offenses, which took place between October 2003 and May 2004. She was sentenced to three years in prison.
(April 20, 2013) Entered a rehabilitation facility to treat her bipolar disorder.
Gave birth to her 1st child at age 30, a son Dylan Michael Douglas on August 8, 2000. Child's father is her fiancé (now husband), Michael Douglas .
(November 18, 2000) Married her boyfriend of 20 months and father of her 3-month-old son Dylan Michael Douglas following a 11-month-long engagement.
Gave birth to her 2nd child at age 33, a daughter Carys Zeta Douglas on April 20, 2003. Child's father is her husband, Michael Douglas .
Friends with Pam Ferris and Bonnie Tyler , the latter of whom attended her wedding.
Was separated from her husband of 12 years Michael Douglas . [May 2013]
Was on the winning European team of "The All Star Cup", a celebrity version of golf's Ryder Cup. Michael Douglas was on the losing American team. [August 2005]
Is one of 6 actresses to have been pregnant at the time of winning the Academy Award; the others are Eva Marie Saint , Patricia Neal , Meryl Streep , Rachel Weisz and Natalie Portman . Neal is the only to have not accepted her award in person as a result of her pregnancy. Zeta-Jones was 8 months pregnant with her daughter Carys when she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Chicago (2002).
Was the 122nd actress to receive an Academy Award; she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Chicago (2002) at The 75th Annual Academy Awards (2003) on March 23, 2003.
Hundreds of actresses were interviewed for Mariette on The Darling Buds of May (1991) before Jones was cast in the role at age 22. Much of her career had been in musical theatre up till then, but playing Mariette was her big break. Jones was inexperienced with television, and very nervous in the beginning; David Jason advised her to keep her eyes still while doing dialogue in close-up, something he used to do.
Is one of 13 actresses who won their Best Supporting Actress Oscars in a movie that also won the Best Picture Oscar (she won for Chicago (2002)). The others are Hattie McDaniel for Gone with the Wind (1939), Teresa Wright for Mrs. Miniver (1942), Celeste Holm for Gentleman's Agreement (1947), Mercedes McCambridge for All the King's Men (1949), Donna Reed for From Here to Eternity (1953), Eva Marie Saint for On the Waterfront (1954), Rita Moreno for West Side Story (1961), Meryl Streep for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), Juliette Binoche for The English Patient (1996), Judi Dench for Shakespeare in Love (1998), Jennifer Connelly for A Beautiful Mind (2001) and Lupita Nyong'o for 12 Years a Slave (2013).
In 2011, she invited David Jason , her former co-star from The Darling Buds of May (1991), to a rented house in Richmond to have Sunday lunch with her and husband Michael Douglas .
Her voice in Les 1001 nuits (1990) was dubbed.
Zeta-Jones performed the song "I Move On" from Chicago (2002) with co-star Queen Latifah at the Oscars in 2003.
At the Oscars 2013, during the "Celebration of Musicals of the Last Decade", she performed "All That Jazz" from Chicago (2002).
Personal Quotes (24)
I used to go around looking as frumpy as possible because it was inconceivable you could be attractive as well as be smart. It wasn't until I started being myself, the way I like to turn out to meet people, that I started to get any work.
I like women who look like women. I hated grunge. No one's more feminist than me, but you don't have to look as if you don't give a - you know. You can be smart, bright and attractive aesthetically to others - and to yourself.
In Wales it's brilliant. I go to the pub and see everybody who I went to school with. And everybody goes "So what you doing now?". And I go, "Oh, I'm doing a film with Antonio Banderas and Anthony Hopkins ." And they go, "Ooh, good." And that's it.
After Scottish actor Sean Connery presented her with the Oscar: A Scotsman giving a Welsh girl an Oscar - oh my God!
After The Mask of Zorro (1998), people spoke Spanish to me for ages. I'm Welsh but that movie instantly gave me a new ethnicity.
For marriage to be a success, every woman and every man should have her and his own bathroom. The end.
[on her duel/strip scene from The Mask of Zorro (1998)]: I kept thinking "Thank God, I have long hair in this movie.".
[on The Mask of Zorro (1998)] This film holds a lot of meaning to me, both professionally and personally. I actually met my husband when I was promoting the film in Deauville, France, and it was such an amazing time for me, being completely unknown, really, in America or in Mexico, where I shot the first one. It's a very important film for me and it's very close to my heart.
I wish I was born in that era: by dancing with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly , going to work at the studio dressed in beautiful pants, head scarves and sunglasses.
[on landing the role of Velma Kelly in Chicago (2002)] Did I want this role? That's like saying did I want to wake up in the morning wanting to breathe!
I do think I'm lucky I met Michael. Not just Michael Douglas the actor and producer with two Oscars on the shelf, but Michael Douglas , the love of my life. I really do think it was meant to happen.
I like to feel sexy. I know my husband thinks I'm sexy. I think he is too. But I don't go out half-naked with 'sex' written across my back.
[on what makes a man irresistable] Humor and that wonderful word called 'charisma'. You cannot translate it. I can't nail it on the head, other than to just say that I'm completely over the top about my husband.
Yes, I was in love with my husband at first sight and still am. We have the most solid relationship.
[on the Internet and its fascination with celebrities and pornography] I don't go into the triple-X sites. I'm certainly not going to pay money to see myself naked, when I can just go into the bathroom and whip it off for free.
I'm more insecure than I ever let anyone know, sometimes you protect yourself with this kind of armor that people see more than they see you.
I was a chorus girl. That's all I ever wanted - to be onstage. I would queue up for auditions and then change my costume or put on a different leotard and audition again. It might take me two tries, but I always got the job. I figured out what they wanted.
[on playing Desiree Armfeldt in "A Little Night Music" on Broadway in 2010]: There's no jazzy hands, no high kicks, no fishnet stockings, but really that's what excited me. With most musicals you have to fill in the gaps, but here you have what's already a beautiful Chekhovian play, and the music is a bonus. The characterization is everything. It's not one of those shows where you can dig about three inches and come out the other end. You can keep digging and digging and digging.
[on singing "Send in the Clowns" in "A Little Night Music" on Broadway in 2010]: As an actor what do you do? You try to make it your own. It was never supposed to be a big song. It's very intimate, about a woman being told that she's not going to be with the love of her life. How are you supposed to sing when you're that deflated?
[on playing Desiree Armfeldt in "A Little Night Music" on Broadway in 2010]: I'd read the phone book with the people here, people of this caliber. I feel at this point in my life I'm in my second chapter. You have to be quite frank with yourself. There's that wonderful curve, and then this is the way it is: the second act. It's great that now I can go back to my roots but in a completely different way.
[on being awarded the CBE in June 2010] As a British subject, I feel incredibly proud, at the same time it is overwhelming and humbling. And my mum and dad are delighted beyond belief.
I didn't even think about movies where I came from. I wanted to be on the stage. When I was 10, I did Annie in the West End. I did Bugsy Malone when I was 11 and 12. And then at 16, David Merrick saw me in 42nd Street. I took over the lead and he cast me. I was there for two and a half years. Right now, these young kids are going crazy. I never had that because I had a work ethic. I had to turn up and be there six nights a week.
[1996] I could never see myself living in Hollywood unless I really had to, it's not really my kind of place.
Being happy is the real key to beauty. It shows from the inside out. Everything else is a bonus.
Salary (3)
| Elizabeth Arden |
Into which river did a US airliner crash land in January of this year (2009)? | Catherine Zeta Douglas (Jones) - Genealogy
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Swansea, West Glamorgan, Wales, United Kingdom
Immediate Family:
Mother of <private> Douglas and <private> Douglas
Sister of <private> Jones and <private> Jones
Managed by:
Sep 25 1969 - Swansea, Wales
Parents:
<Private> Jones, <Private> Jones (born Fair)
Siblings:
David Jones, Patricia Jones (born Fair)
Siblings:
Catherine Zeta Jones - Wikipedia
After starring in a number of United Kingdom and United States television films and small roles in films, Catherine Zeta-Jones came to prominence with roles in Hollywood movies such as the 1998 action film
The Mask of Zorro and the 1999 crime thriller film Entrapment. Her breakthrough role was in the 2000 film Traffic, for which she earned her first Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture.
She subsequently starred as Velma Kelly in the 2002 film adaptation of the musical Chicago, a critical and commercial success, and received an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. Later, she appeared in the 2003 romantic comedy film Intolerable Cruelty and 2004 crime comedy film Ocean's Twelve. Zeta-Jones landed the lead famale role in the 2005 sequel of the 1998 film, The Legend of Zorro. She also starred in the 2008 biopic romantic thriller Death Defying Acts. In 2010, she won the Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical for her portrayal of Desiree in A Little Night Music.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001876/bio Biography for Catherine Zeta-Jones More at IMDbPro » ad feedbackDate of Birth 25 September 1969, Swansea, West Glamorgan, Wales, UK
Birth Name Catherine Jones
Height 5' 6½" (1.69 m)
Mini Biography Catherine Zeta-Jones was born on 25 September 1969, in Swansea, West Glamorgan, Wales, UK, the daughter of Dai Jones, who formerly worked for a candy factory, and Pat Jones. Her brother David Jones (b. 1967) is a development executive and brother Lyndon Jones (b.1972) works at her production company. Catherine showed an interest early on in entertainment. She starred on stage in "Annie", "Bugsy Malone" and "The Pajama Game". At 15 she had the lead in the British revival of "42nd Street". She was originally cast as the second understudy for the lead role in the musical but when the star and first understudy became sick the night the play's producer was in the audience, she was given the lead for the rest of the musical's production. She first made a name for herself in the early 1990s when she starred in the Yorkshire Television comedy/drama series "The Darling Buds of May" (1991). The show was a smash hit and made her one of the United Kingdom's most popular television actresses. She subsequently played supporting roles in several films including Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (1992), the miniseries Catherine the Great (1996) (TV) and a larger part as the seductive Sala in The Phantom (1996) before landing her breakthrough role playing the fiery Elena opposite Anthony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas in The Mask of Zorro (1998). She starred in many big-budget blockbusters like Entrapment (1999), The Haunting (1999) and Traffic (2000), for which many believed she was robbed of an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress. In November 2000 she married actor Michael Douglas. She gave birth to their son Dylan Michael in August 2000.
IMDb Mini Biography By: [email protected]
Spouse Michael Douglas (18 November 2000 - present) 2 children
Trivia Is a trained singer and dancer.
Her father was the manager of a candy factory.
Became engaged to Michael Douglas in Aspen, Colorado. [31 December 1999]
Chosen one of 1998's Most Beautiful People by People Magazine.
Her first child with fiance Michael Douglas, a boy named Dylan Michael was born on 8 August 2000 about 6 p.m. at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The baby weighed in at 7 pounds and seven ounces and measured 21-1/2 inches.
Sister of David A. Jones, an executive at Initial Entertainment group, the company that co-financed Traffic (2000).
Named after her grandmothers: Catherine Fair on her mother's side, and Zeta Jones on her fathers.
Catherine and husband Michael Douglas share the same birthday, 25 years apart. He was born 25 September 1944; she was born 25 September 1969.
Daughter-in-law of Kirk Douglas and Diana Douglas.
Stepmother of Cameron Douglas.
Sister-in-law of Joel Douglas, Peter Douglas and the late Eric Douglas.
Her character in Traffic (2000) was changed to a pregnant woman, because Zeta-Jones herself was pregnant at the time with her son, Dylan.
Speaks Welsh fluently.
Mother is Irish, father is Welsh.
She portrayed Palene, the beautiful Thracian prophetess and woman of Spartacus, in Jeff Wayne's 1992 musical version of "Spartacus." The role of Spartacus was played by her future father-in-law, Kirk Douglas, in Stanley Kubrick's motion picture Spartacus (1960).
In the June 1998 of Yahoo! Internet magazine, she was listed as the number one actress being searched on Yahoo!.
Gave birth to her first daughter, named Carys Zeta Douglas, early Easter morning in New Jersey (April 20, 2003).
A traditional Welsh choir sang at her wedding.
Her wedding ring includes a Celtic motif and was bought in a Welsh town called Aberystwyth.
As a child, she was exposed to a virus that gave her breathing difficulties. This required a tracheotomy surgery, which ultimately left a surgical scar on her neck.
Is an avid fan of musicals, particularly the ones she saw as a child: Mary Poppins (1964) and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968).
Thursday December 11 2003 she was a hostess, together with husband Michael Douglas, at the 2003 annual Nobel Peace Price Concert in Oslo Spectrum in Oslo, Norway.
Ocean's Twelve (2004) reunited her with previous colleagues Steven Soderbergh, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts and Don Cheadle.
She is a spokesperson for Elizabeth Arden Cosmetics.
Was born in Swansea but grew up in the small seaside town of Mumbles in Wales.
Her production company is Milkwood Films, named after the play "Under Milkwood" by Welsh writer Dylan Thomas. She and Thomas are both from the same Welsh town, Swansea.
Her friend, singer Bonnie Tyler, sang at her wedding. Both Zeta-Jones and Tyler come from the same region of Wales.
She released the singles "For All Time" in 1989, "In the Arms of Love" and "I Can't Help Myself" in 1995 and a duet with David Essex, "True Love Ways", which was her only chart single. It appeared at #38 in the UK Top 75 singles chart in 1994.
Ranked #50 on VH1's "100 Hottest Hotties".
21 October 2004 - Filed lawsuit against the Spice House, "Reno's Friendliest Topless Cabaret" for the unauthorized use of her photo on its website.
On an awards show, speaking of her role of Velma Kelly in the movie Chicago (2002), she stated that while it was as exciting, it was almost as painful as giving birth to her son.
In 1992 the Columbia single 'For All Time' peaked at #36 in the UK charts; In 1995 she spent a week on the UK chart at #72 with 'In the Arms of Love'.
Ranked #68 in FHM's "100 Sexiest Women in the World 2005" special supplement.
Ranked #82 in FHM's "100 Sexiest Women in the World 2006" special supplement.
Was once engaged to Angus Macfadyen.
Was considered for the role of Jane Smith in Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005).
Was originally approached to play "Roxie" in Chicago (2002), but wanted to play Velma Kelly because of the song "All That Jazz". Renée Zellweger ended up winning the role of Roxie.
In 2004, she began a two year $20 million contract as the spokeswoman of T-Mobile.
Turned down the role of Claudia Nardi in the musical Nine (2009) when Rob Marshall refused to expand the part for the film. Nicole Kidman was later cast instead.
Was in consideration for the part of Satine in Moulin Rouge! (2001) but Nicole Kidman, who went on to receive a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance, was cast instead.
Born at 2:40 PM (MET).
The 2009 Sunday Times estimates her and husband Michael Douglas' net worth at $278 million.
Was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the Queen's 2010 Birthday Honours List for her services to drama.
Won a Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical in 2010 for her portrayal of Desiree in A Little Night Music.
Was seven months pregnant with her son Dylan when she completed filming on Traffic (2000).
Returned to work four months after giving birth to her son Dylan in order to begin filming America's Sweethearts (2001).
Admitted herself into Silver Hills Hospital in New Canaan, Connecticut on April 6, 2011 for a five-day treatment of her Bipolar II Disorder before leaving the hospital on April 11, 2011.
Signed a per-nuptial agreement whereby she will receive $3,000,000 for every year of marriage if her husband cheats on her.
Her wedding dress was designed by Christian Lacroix.
Met her husband at Deville's Film Festival in September 1998, while she was promoting her upcoming film 'The Mask of Zorro'.
Catherine moved to London, from Wales, at age 15.
Acquired her first actor's guild card at the age of 15.
When she was 14, former Monkees star Mickey Dolenz was touring Britain in a musical that required the participation of local teens in each city it visited. She auditioned for the Welsh version of the show and won a chorus spot. She so impressed the producers that they whisked her off to London to star in a production of The Pyjama Game.
She began singing and dancing at the age of four, largely as a result of her involvement with the local Catholic congregation's amateur performing troupe. She began acting at age 11, playing the lean in a production of Annie and at 13 starred in a West End production of the musical Bugsy Malone.
Before moving to LA, she had a house in Fulham, London.
Her birth name is Catherine Jones, but she took her grandmother's name (on her father's side) because there were many others Catherine Jones, especially in her school class.
Listed on AskMen.com as one of the 99 hottest women (2002 #57) (2001 #5) (2003 #36).
The British press gave her the nickname "Catherine Zeta, The Maneater" due to her busy love life at the time.
Fluent in Welsh, French, English and Spanish.
Attended Dumbarton House School in Swansea.
In the 1980's, her parents won £100.000 at the game of Bingo and moved to St. Andrews Drive in Mayals, uptown Swansea.
Was originally approached to play "Roxie" in Chicago, but wanted to play Velma Kelly because of the song "All That Jazz". Renee Zellwegger ended up winning the role of Roxie.
Ranks #11 on Rateitall.com as one of people's favorite actresses. [April 2005]
Likes listening to soul music. Is a big fan of Gladys Knight. She also likes Elvis Presley and Van Morrison. Every Sunday morning for 15 years, her father woke her up to Elvis Presley singing "American Trilogy" or Van Morrison's "Moondance".
Personal Quotes I used to go around looking as frumpy as possible because it was inconceivable you could be attractive as well as be smart. It wasn't until I started being myself, the way I like to turn out to meet people, that I started to get any work.
I like women who look like women. I hated grunge. No one's more feminist than me, but you don't have to look as if you don't give a - you know. You can be smart, bright, and attractive aesthetically to others - and to yourself.
In Wales it's brilliant. I go to the pub and see everybody who I went to school with. And everybody goes "So what you doing now?" And I go, "Oh, I'm doing a film with Antonio Banderas and Anthony Hopkins". And they go, "Ooh, good". And that's it.
After Scottish actor Sean Connery presented her with the Oscar: A Scotsman giving a Welsh girl an Oscar - oh my God!.
After The Mask of Zorro (1998), people spoke Spanish to me for ages. I'm Welsh but that movie instantly gave me a new ethnicity.
For marriage to be a success, every woman and every man should have her and his own bathroom. The end.
[on her duel/strip scene from The Mask of Zorro (1998)]: I kept thinking 'Thank God I have long hair in this movie'.
This film holds a lot of meaning to me, both professionally and personally. I actually met my husband when I was promoting the film in Deauville, France, and it was such an amazing time for me, being completely unknown, really, in America or in Mexico, where I shot the first one. It's a very important film for me and it's very close to my heart. [on The Mask of Zorro (1998)].
I wish I was born in that era: by dancing with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, going to work at the studio dressed in beautiful pants, head scarves, and sunglasses.
"Did I want this role? That's like saying did I want to wake up in the morning wanting to breath!" on landing the part of Velma Kelly in Chicago.
I do think I'm lucky I met Michael. Not just Michael Douglas the actor and producer with two Oscars on the shelf, but Michael Douglas, the love of my life. I really do think it was meant to happen.
I like to feel sexy. I know my husband thinks I'm sexy. I think he is too. But I don't go out half-naked with 'sex' written across my back.
Humor and that wonderful word called 'charisma.' You cannot translate it. I can't nail it on the head, other than to just say that I'm completely over the top about my husband. - on what makes a man irresistible.
Yes, I was in love with my husband at first sight and still am. We have the most solid relationship.
I don't go into the triple-X sites. I'm certainly not going to pay money to see myself naked, when I can just go into the bathroom and whip it off for free. -speaking on the Internet and its fascination with celebrities and porno.
I'm more insecure than I ever let anyone know, sometimes you protect yourself with this kind of armor that people see more than they see you.
I was a chorus girl. That's all I ever wanted - to be onstage. I would queue up for auditions and then change my costume or put on a different leotard and audition again. It might take me two tries, but I always got the job. I figured out what they wanted.
[on playing Desiree Armfeldt in "A Little Night Music" on Broadway in 2010]: There's no jazzy hands, no high kicks, no fishnet stockings, but really that's what excited me. With most musicals you have to fill in the gaps, but here you have what's already a beautiful Chekhovian play, and the music is a bonus. The characterization is everything. It's not one of those shows where you can dig about three inches and come out the other end. You can keep digging and digging and digging.
[on singing "Send in the Clowns" in "A Little Night Music" on Broadway in 2010]: As an actor what do you do? You try to make it your own. It was never supposed to be a big song. It's very intimate, about a woman being told that she's not going to be with the love of her life. How are you supposed to sing when you're that deflated?
[on playing Desiree Armfeldt in "A Little Night Music" on Broadway in 2010]: I'd read the phone book with the people here, people of this caliber. I feel at this point in my life I'm in my second chapter. You have to be quite frank with yourself. There's that wonderful curve, and then this is the way it is: the second act. It's great that now I can go back to my roots but in a completely different way.
[on being awarded the CBE in June 2010] As a British subject, I feel incredibly proud, at the same time it is overwhelming and humbling. And my mum and dad are delighted beyond belief.
I didn't even think about movies where I came from. I wanted to be on the stage. When I was 10, I did Annie in the West End. I did Bugsy Malone when I was 11 and 12. And then at 16, David Merrick saw me in 42nd Street. I took over the lead and he cast me. I was there for two and a half years. Right now, these young kids are going crazy. I never had that because I had a work ethic. I had to turn up and be there six nights a week.
Salary Traffic (2000) $3,000,000 Chicago (2002) $8,000,000.
Where Are They Now (August 2005) Was on the winning European team of 'The All Star Cup' a celebrity version of golf's Ryder Cup. Michael Douglas was on the losing American Team.
(January 2010) Starring as Desiree in Broadway's comedy "A Little Night Music" with 'Angela Landsbury' directed by Trevor Nunn.
(June 2010) Mayfair, London, England
| i don't know |
What was the former name of 'The Spice Girls'? | Spice Girls | Spice Girls Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia
Edit
Auditions In the mid-1990s, father-and-son management team Bob and Chris Herbert together with their financier Chic Murphey placed an advertisement in The Stage for auditions for a girl group, which was suppose to respond and compete with the boy bands that dominated the early 1990s. This prompted hundreds of girls to audition which was whittled down to five girls that included Melanie Brown , Melanie Laccohee , Lianne Morgan , Michelle Stephenson and Suzanne Tinker .
Line-Up Changes
Edit
The line-up changed when Melanie Laccohee was offered to sing solo and replaced with Victoria Beckham and because of the bomb scare on the London tube that caused Suzanne Tinker to unable to arrive at the last set of auditions, subsequently causing Geri Halliwell to replace her. The group was then given the name Touch, and moved into a house together in Maidenhead, Berkshire, (owned by Murphy) where they were subsidised by Heart Management and each was claiming unemployment benefit. However, Lianne Morgan was taken off the group as the management felt that she was more suited as a solo, which she then was replaced by Melanie Chisholm .
With the original line up, they started to work on demos and dance routines, which Stephenson didn't like. She considered it as "very, very young pop" included the song We're Gonna Make It Happen , a song that was never officially released, but footage of the girls performing it can be seen in their 2008 documentary. It soon became apparent that Stephenson did not have the drive and belief that the rest of the group had, so the decision was made to fire her from the group. She was to be replaced by Abigail Kis , who was too young and had personal commitments causing her to quit the band, so they were led to invite eighteen-year-old Emma Bunton at the suggestion of vocal coach Pepe Lemer. Bunton instantly impressed the Herberts and was invited to meet the group in July, who welcomed her with open arms after feeling an instant connection with the other girls.
Beginnings
Edit
During an aerobics lesson, Geri came up with a name "Spice" for the band, which Emma commented on how it fit in the band saying, "Because we are all really different", additionally they had already wrote a song named Sugar and Spice . However, an Amerian artist had already had that name so they added "Girls" at the end, finally forming the band that would grow to be loved by fans called the "Spice Girls".
Later on, each member of the Spice k Girls all were given notable nicknames by Top of the Pops magazine that described and gave them their individual persona: Victoria Adams who was nicknamed Posh Spice, Melanie Brown nicknamed Scary Spice, Emma Bunton who was Baby Spice, Melanie Chisholm , Sporty Spice, and Geri Halliwell Ginger Spice.
Taking Control
Edit
Things turned into another direction as the group felt insecure with the lack of a contract and were fustrated with the direction Heart Management was steering them. In October, armed with a catalogue of demos and dance routines, the group began touring management agencies.They persuaded Bob Herbert to set up a showcase performance for the group in front of industry writers, producers and A&R men in December at the Nomis Studios in Shepherd Bush where they received an "overwhelmingly positive" reaction. Due to the large interest in the group, the Herberts quickly set about creating a binding contract for the group. Encouraged by the reaction they had received at the Nomis showcase, the five girls delayed signing contracts on the legal advice from, amongst others, Victoria's father Tony Adams.
1995
Edit
In March, because of the group's frustration at their management's unwillingness to listen to their visions and ideas, they parted from Heart Management. In order to ensure they kept control of their own work, the group allegedly stole the master recordings of their discography from the management offices. That same day the Spice Girls tracked down Sheffield-based producer Eliot Kennedy , who had been present at the showcase, and persuaded him to work with them. The group was introduced to record producers Absolute , who in turn brought them to the attention of Simon Fuller of 19 Entertainment . The girls began a relationship with Fuller and finally signed with him in March 1995. During the summer of that year the group toured record labels in London and Los Angeles with Fuller and finally signed a deal with Virgin Records in September, and the girls were given £500,000 advance. From this point up to the summer of 1996 the girls continued to write and record tracks for their debut album while extensively touring the west coast of the United States, where they had signed a publishing deal with Windswept Pacific.
1996
Main Article: Spice and Merchandising
In June, Wannabe is released as a single,and peaks at the number 1 spot in the UK Singles Charts. The song proved to be a global hit, hitting number 1 in 31 countries and becoming not only the biggest selling debut single by an all-female group but also the biggest-selling single by an all-female group of all time.
Riding a wave of publicity and hype, the group released their next singles in UK and Europe; in October Say You'll Be There was released topping the charts at number one for two weeks. In December 2 Become 1 was released, becoming their first Christmas Number 1 and selling 430,000 copies in its first week which made it the fastest selling single of the year. The two tracks continued the group's remarkable sales by topping the charts in over fifty-three countries and solidifying the group's reputation as the biggest pop act in the world.
In November, the Spice Girls released their debut album Spice in Europe. The success was unprecedented and drew comparisons to Beatlemania due to the sheer volume of interest in the group. In seven weeks Spice had sold 1.8 million copies in Britain alone, making the Spice Girls the fastest selling British act since the Beatles.
That same month the Spice Girls attracted a crowd of 500,000 when they switched on the Christmas lights in Oxford Street, London. At the same time, Simon Fuller started to set up million pound sponsorship deals for the Spice Girls with Pepsi, Walkers, Impulse, Cadbury’s and Polaroid.
1997
Edit
In January, the group released Wannabe in the United States. The single also proved to be a catalyst in helping the Spice Girls break into the notoriously difficult U.S. market when it debuted on the Hot 100 Chart at number 11. Wannabe reached number one in the US for four weeks. In February, Spice was release in U.S., became the biggest-selling album of 1997, peaking at number one.
In March, a double A-side of Mama / Who Do You Think You Are was released in Europe, the last from Spice, which once again saw them at number one, making the Spice Girls the first group in history to have four consecutive number one hits in the UK. Girl Power! , The Spice Girls' first book and manifesto was launched later that same month at the Virgin Megastore. In April, Spice: the Official Video Volume One is released.
In May, Spiceworld: The Movie was announced by the Spice Girls at the Cannes Film Festival. The group also performed their first live British show, for the Royalty of Great Britain. At the show, they breached royal protocol when Mel B and then Geri Halliwell planted kisses on Prince Charles' cheeks and pinched his bottom, causing controversy.
Global Domination and Spicemania
Main Article: Spiceworld
In October, the Spice Girls released the first single from Spiceworld, Spice Up Your Life . This entered in the UK charts at number one making it the girls' fifth consecutive number one hit single. That same month, Simon Fuller took the Spice Girls east to perform their first live major concert in Istanbul, Turkey. Later, the Girls traveled to South Africa to meet Nelson Mandela, during the height of their career.
In November, the Spice Girls released their second album, Spiceworld . The album was a global best seller as it set a new record for the fastest-selling album when it shipped seven million copies over the course of two weeks. Gaining favourable reviews, the album went on to sell over 10 million copies in Europe, Canada, and the United States combined, and 20 million copies worldwide. Criticised in the United-States for releasing the album just nine months after their debut there, and suffering from over-exposure at home, the Spice Girls began to experience a media backlash. The group was criticised for the number of sponsorship deals signed – over twenty in total – and they began to witness diminishing international chart positions. Nevertheless, the Spice Girls remained the biggest-selling pop group of both 1997 and 1998.
Self-Management
Edit
On November 7, the girls performed Spice Up Your Life in the 1997 MTV Europe Music Awards and won awards for Best Group. After this performance, the Spice Girls made the decision to take over the running of the group themselves, and fired their manager Simon Fuller . The firing was front page news around the world. Many commentators speculated that Fuller had been the true mastermind behind the group, and that this was the moment when the band lost their impetus and direction. According to their various autobiographies, it was mainly Geri and Melanie B who pushed for Fuller’s dismissal, claiming that he had become too controlling by restricting their personal and artistic freedom. The group quickly found the burden of managing themselves time consuming, so they assigned various responsibilities to each member of the group: Melanie B . was responsible for tour control; Geri Halliwell for sponsorship; Emma Bunton for personnel, schedule, and charities; Victoria Adams for merchandising and finance; and Melanie C for the record company, singles, and formats. They later built their own team, headed by Nancy Phillips, to deal with their affairs. Two of the Spice Girls, Emma Bunton and Victoria Adams, later returned to Fuller's stable once it was clear that the impetus behind the group was starting to disappear.
1998
Main Article: Spiceworld (tour) and (album)
In December 1997, the second single from Spiceworld, Too Much , was released. This became the second Christmas number one for the group and the sixth consecutive number one hit single in the UK. In February 1998, the Spice Girls won a special award for overseas success at the 1998 Brit Awards, for sales of 32 million albums worldwide, That night, the girls performed their next single, Stop . This was their only track not to hit number one in Britain (it entered and peaked at number two).
In early 1998 the Spice Girls embarked upon the world tour that Fuller had set up for them covering Europe and North America. The Spiceworld tour kicked off in Dublin, Ireland on 24 February 1998 before moving on to mainland Europe and then returning to Britain for two gigs at Wembley Arena and Twelve gigs at Birmingham’s NEC Arena. Performing to 150,000 fans over the course of the tour. It was here that recordings were made for a planned live album. Despite masters of the recording being made, the idea was eventually dropped. Later that year, the Spice Girls were invited to sing on the official England World Cup song "How Does It Feel (To Be on Top of the World)". This was their last song recorded with Geri's vocals, until 2007.
Halliwell's Departure
Edit
On May 31, Geri announced her departure from the Spice Girls after many rumours cropped up about her disappearance from the group in interviews, which the girls were fully unaware about her status at the time. A statement was released by the Spice Girls sent a statement to the offices of their solicitors in central London at 1400 BST:
"We are upset and saddended by Geri's departure, but we are very supportive in whatever she wants to do. The Spice Girls are here to stay, see ya at the stadiums. We are sorry to all of our fans for having to go through all this. All our love Victoria, Emma, Mel B, Mel C, friendship never ends. One final thing if I can add, and that's there is no problems with the American tour going ahead as planned."
The four remaining girls were adamant though that the group would carry on and that their approaching North American tour would continue as normal; however, Halliwell's departure threw most of the group's plans into disarray. It was cited as the reason the planned live album was cancelled. It also meant that most of the material the girls had recorded throughout the first half of 1998 at Dublin's Windmill Lane Studios with long-time collaborators Richard Stannard and Matt Rowe was eventually scrapped. A rumoured animated venture by Disney also failed to materialise.
1999
Edit
The Spice Girls performed again at the 2000 BRIT Awards, and it was announced that they had received the Outstanding Achievement in Music Award. Despite being at the event, Halliwell did not join her former bandmates on stage.
In November 2000 the group released Forever . Sporting a new edgier R&B sound, the album received a lukewarm response and achieved only a fraction of the success of its two best-selling predecessors, selling three million copies.
Solo Careers
Edit
Further planned single releases off the album never materialised. Promo singles of Tell Me Why, Weekend Love, and If You Wanna Have Some Fun came into circulation, but to fans' dismay the Forever project was abandoned as the girls each began to concentrate on solo careers.
2007- 2008
Main Article: Second Reunion
In September 2009, rumours emerged of a second Spice Girls reunion after Brown, Chisholm, Halliwell and Bunton were photographed having a meal together in London. Victoria Beckham was absent from the night due to her work schedule. Brown then mused about the possibilities of another tour on her Twitter .
In mid-October, Melanie C denied on GMTV all rumours about a possible reunion with Spice Girls, explaining that it is not feasible to have a comeback at the moment. In the same month, Brown admited in a Colombian interview that she is planning to get together with the groups' former members for a reality show, stating that she was looking for "girls" inspired in the Spice Girls.
2012
Edit
In 2010, Judy Craymer teamed up with the Spice Girls and Simon Fuller to start developing a Spice Girls musical entitled "Viva Forever".The musical was written by British comedian Jennifer Saunders. Although the girls will not be in the show, they will influence the show's cast and production choices in a story which uses their music but bears no relation to their personal story; similar to that of ABBA 's music in Mamma Mia!. The show opened on December 12, 2012, and all of the Spice Girls were present at the first performance. "Viva Forever" closed on June 29, 2013 due to low ticket sales.
On August 12, 2012 the Spice Girls performed as a quintet for the last time at the London 2012 Olympics Closing Ceremony. This was the last Spice Girls concert to feature Victoria Beckham and Mel C.
2016 - present
Edit
In 2016 Mel B, Emma Bunton, and Geri Halliwell reunited for the 20th anniversary of The Spice Girls debut album and are working on new music. Their fourth album and tour are expected to be released in 2017. Former Spice Girls members Victoria Beckham and Mel C opted to not take part in the reunion to focus on their own careers. During an interview with James Corden on "Late Late Show" Mel B announced that The Spice Girls will go on tour again for the 20th anniversary of their debut album. Victoria Beckham and Mel C gave Mel B, Emma, and Geir their blessing to reunite and go on tour without them. The Spice Girls are working on releasing a new single. The Spice Girls new single "Song For Her" was leaked on YouTube.
Albums
| Somatosensory system |
What name was given to the act which bans Roman Catholics from the throne? | Spice Girls | Spice Girls Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia
Edit
Auditions In the mid-1990s, father-and-son management team Bob and Chris Herbert together with their financier Chic Murphey placed an advertisement in The Stage for auditions for a girl group, which was suppose to respond and compete with the boy bands that dominated the early 1990s. This prompted hundreds of girls to audition which was whittled down to five girls that included Melanie Brown , Melanie Laccohee , Lianne Morgan , Michelle Stephenson and Suzanne Tinker .
Line-Up Changes
Edit
The line-up changed when Melanie Laccohee was offered to sing solo and replaced with Victoria Beckham and because of the bomb scare on the London tube that caused Suzanne Tinker to unable to arrive at the last set of auditions, subsequently causing Geri Halliwell to replace her. The group was then given the name Touch, and moved into a house together in Maidenhead, Berkshire, (owned by Murphy) where they were subsidised by Heart Management and each was claiming unemployment benefit. However, Lianne Morgan was taken off the group as the management felt that she was more suited as a solo, which she then was replaced by Melanie Chisholm .
With the original line up, they started to work on demos and dance routines, which Stephenson didn't like. She considered it as "very, very young pop" included the song We're Gonna Make It Happen , a song that was never officially released, but footage of the girls performing it can be seen in their 2008 documentary. It soon became apparent that Stephenson did not have the drive and belief that the rest of the group had, so the decision was made to fire her from the group. She was to be replaced by Abigail Kis , who was too young and had personal commitments causing her to quit the band, so they were led to invite eighteen-year-old Emma Bunton at the suggestion of vocal coach Pepe Lemer. Bunton instantly impressed the Herberts and was invited to meet the group in July, who welcomed her with open arms after feeling an instant connection with the other girls.
Beginnings
Edit
During an aerobics lesson, Geri came up with a name "Spice" for the band, which Emma commented on how it fit in the band saying, "Because we are all really different", additionally they had already wrote a song named Sugar and Spice . However, an Amerian artist had already had that name so they added "Girls" at the end, finally forming the band that would grow to be loved by fans called the "Spice Girls".
Later on, each member of the Spice k Girls all were given notable nicknames by Top of the Pops magazine that described and gave them their individual persona: Victoria Adams who was nicknamed Posh Spice, Melanie Brown nicknamed Scary Spice, Emma Bunton who was Baby Spice, Melanie Chisholm , Sporty Spice, and Geri Halliwell Ginger Spice.
Taking Control
Edit
Things turned into another direction as the group felt insecure with the lack of a contract and were fustrated with the direction Heart Management was steering them. In October, armed with a catalogue of demos and dance routines, the group began touring management agencies.They persuaded Bob Herbert to set up a showcase performance for the group in front of industry writers, producers and A&R men in December at the Nomis Studios in Shepherd Bush where they received an "overwhelmingly positive" reaction. Due to the large interest in the group, the Herberts quickly set about creating a binding contract for the group. Encouraged by the reaction they had received at the Nomis showcase, the five girls delayed signing contracts on the legal advice from, amongst others, Victoria's father Tony Adams.
1995
Edit
In March, because of the group's frustration at their management's unwillingness to listen to their visions and ideas, they parted from Heart Management. In order to ensure they kept control of their own work, the group allegedly stole the master recordings of their discography from the management offices. That same day the Spice Girls tracked down Sheffield-based producer Eliot Kennedy , who had been present at the showcase, and persuaded him to work with them. The group was introduced to record producers Absolute , who in turn brought them to the attention of Simon Fuller of 19 Entertainment . The girls began a relationship with Fuller and finally signed with him in March 1995. During the summer of that year the group toured record labels in London and Los Angeles with Fuller and finally signed a deal with Virgin Records in September, and the girls were given £500,000 advance. From this point up to the summer of 1996 the girls continued to write and record tracks for their debut album while extensively touring the west coast of the United States, where they had signed a publishing deal with Windswept Pacific.
1996
Main Article: Spice and Merchandising
In June, Wannabe is released as a single,and peaks at the number 1 spot in the UK Singles Charts. The song proved to be a global hit, hitting number 1 in 31 countries and becoming not only the biggest selling debut single by an all-female group but also the biggest-selling single by an all-female group of all time.
Riding a wave of publicity and hype, the group released their next singles in UK and Europe; in October Say You'll Be There was released topping the charts at number one for two weeks. In December 2 Become 1 was released, becoming their first Christmas Number 1 and selling 430,000 copies in its first week which made it the fastest selling single of the year. The two tracks continued the group's remarkable sales by topping the charts in over fifty-three countries and solidifying the group's reputation as the biggest pop act in the world.
In November, the Spice Girls released their debut album Spice in Europe. The success was unprecedented and drew comparisons to Beatlemania due to the sheer volume of interest in the group. In seven weeks Spice had sold 1.8 million copies in Britain alone, making the Spice Girls the fastest selling British act since the Beatles.
That same month the Spice Girls attracted a crowd of 500,000 when they switched on the Christmas lights in Oxford Street, London. At the same time, Simon Fuller started to set up million pound sponsorship deals for the Spice Girls with Pepsi, Walkers, Impulse, Cadbury’s and Polaroid.
1997
Edit
In January, the group released Wannabe in the United States. The single also proved to be a catalyst in helping the Spice Girls break into the notoriously difficult U.S. market when it debuted on the Hot 100 Chart at number 11. Wannabe reached number one in the US for four weeks. In February, Spice was release in U.S., became the biggest-selling album of 1997, peaking at number one.
In March, a double A-side of Mama / Who Do You Think You Are was released in Europe, the last from Spice, which once again saw them at number one, making the Spice Girls the first group in history to have four consecutive number one hits in the UK. Girl Power! , The Spice Girls' first book and manifesto was launched later that same month at the Virgin Megastore. In April, Spice: the Official Video Volume One is released.
In May, Spiceworld: The Movie was announced by the Spice Girls at the Cannes Film Festival. The group also performed their first live British show, for the Royalty of Great Britain. At the show, they breached royal protocol when Mel B and then Geri Halliwell planted kisses on Prince Charles' cheeks and pinched his bottom, causing controversy.
Global Domination and Spicemania
Main Article: Spiceworld
In October, the Spice Girls released the first single from Spiceworld, Spice Up Your Life . This entered in the UK charts at number one making it the girls' fifth consecutive number one hit single. That same month, Simon Fuller took the Spice Girls east to perform their first live major concert in Istanbul, Turkey. Later, the Girls traveled to South Africa to meet Nelson Mandela, during the height of their career.
In November, the Spice Girls released their second album, Spiceworld . The album was a global best seller as it set a new record for the fastest-selling album when it shipped seven million copies over the course of two weeks. Gaining favourable reviews, the album went on to sell over 10 million copies in Europe, Canada, and the United States combined, and 20 million copies worldwide. Criticised in the United-States for releasing the album just nine months after their debut there, and suffering from over-exposure at home, the Spice Girls began to experience a media backlash. The group was criticised for the number of sponsorship deals signed – over twenty in total – and they began to witness diminishing international chart positions. Nevertheless, the Spice Girls remained the biggest-selling pop group of both 1997 and 1998.
Self-Management
Edit
On November 7, the girls performed Spice Up Your Life in the 1997 MTV Europe Music Awards and won awards for Best Group. After this performance, the Spice Girls made the decision to take over the running of the group themselves, and fired their manager Simon Fuller . The firing was front page news around the world. Many commentators speculated that Fuller had been the true mastermind behind the group, and that this was the moment when the band lost their impetus and direction. According to their various autobiographies, it was mainly Geri and Melanie B who pushed for Fuller’s dismissal, claiming that he had become too controlling by restricting their personal and artistic freedom. The group quickly found the burden of managing themselves time consuming, so they assigned various responsibilities to each member of the group: Melanie B . was responsible for tour control; Geri Halliwell for sponsorship; Emma Bunton for personnel, schedule, and charities; Victoria Adams for merchandising and finance; and Melanie C for the record company, singles, and formats. They later built their own team, headed by Nancy Phillips, to deal with their affairs. Two of the Spice Girls, Emma Bunton and Victoria Adams, later returned to Fuller's stable once it was clear that the impetus behind the group was starting to disappear.
1998
Main Article: Spiceworld (tour) and (album)
In December 1997, the second single from Spiceworld, Too Much , was released. This became the second Christmas number one for the group and the sixth consecutive number one hit single in the UK. In February 1998, the Spice Girls won a special award for overseas success at the 1998 Brit Awards, for sales of 32 million albums worldwide, That night, the girls performed their next single, Stop . This was their only track not to hit number one in Britain (it entered and peaked at number two).
In early 1998 the Spice Girls embarked upon the world tour that Fuller had set up for them covering Europe and North America. The Spiceworld tour kicked off in Dublin, Ireland on 24 February 1998 before moving on to mainland Europe and then returning to Britain for two gigs at Wembley Arena and Twelve gigs at Birmingham’s NEC Arena. Performing to 150,000 fans over the course of the tour. It was here that recordings were made for a planned live album. Despite masters of the recording being made, the idea was eventually dropped. Later that year, the Spice Girls were invited to sing on the official England World Cup song "How Does It Feel (To Be on Top of the World)". This was their last song recorded with Geri's vocals, until 2007.
Halliwell's Departure
Edit
On May 31, Geri announced her departure from the Spice Girls after many rumours cropped up about her disappearance from the group in interviews, which the girls were fully unaware about her status at the time. A statement was released by the Spice Girls sent a statement to the offices of their solicitors in central London at 1400 BST:
"We are upset and saddended by Geri's departure, but we are very supportive in whatever she wants to do. The Spice Girls are here to stay, see ya at the stadiums. We are sorry to all of our fans for having to go through all this. All our love Victoria, Emma, Mel B, Mel C, friendship never ends. One final thing if I can add, and that's there is no problems with the American tour going ahead as planned."
The four remaining girls were adamant though that the group would carry on and that their approaching North American tour would continue as normal; however, Halliwell's departure threw most of the group's plans into disarray. It was cited as the reason the planned live album was cancelled. It also meant that most of the material the girls had recorded throughout the first half of 1998 at Dublin's Windmill Lane Studios with long-time collaborators Richard Stannard and Matt Rowe was eventually scrapped. A rumoured animated venture by Disney also failed to materialise.
1999
Edit
The Spice Girls performed again at the 2000 BRIT Awards, and it was announced that they had received the Outstanding Achievement in Music Award. Despite being at the event, Halliwell did not join her former bandmates on stage.
In November 2000 the group released Forever . Sporting a new edgier R&B sound, the album received a lukewarm response and achieved only a fraction of the success of its two best-selling predecessors, selling three million copies.
Solo Careers
Edit
Further planned single releases off the album never materialised. Promo singles of Tell Me Why, Weekend Love, and If You Wanna Have Some Fun came into circulation, but to fans' dismay the Forever project was abandoned as the girls each began to concentrate on solo careers.
2007- 2008
Main Article: Second Reunion
In September 2009, rumours emerged of a second Spice Girls reunion after Brown, Chisholm, Halliwell and Bunton were photographed having a meal together in London. Victoria Beckham was absent from the night due to her work schedule. Brown then mused about the possibilities of another tour on her Twitter .
In mid-October, Melanie C denied on GMTV all rumours about a possible reunion with Spice Girls, explaining that it is not feasible to have a comeback at the moment. In the same month, Brown admited in a Colombian interview that she is planning to get together with the groups' former members for a reality show, stating that she was looking for "girls" inspired in the Spice Girls.
2012
Edit
In 2010, Judy Craymer teamed up with the Spice Girls and Simon Fuller to start developing a Spice Girls musical entitled "Viva Forever".The musical was written by British comedian Jennifer Saunders. Although the girls will not be in the show, they will influence the show's cast and production choices in a story which uses their music but bears no relation to their personal story; similar to that of ABBA 's music in Mamma Mia!. The show opened on December 12, 2012, and all of the Spice Girls were present at the first performance. "Viva Forever" closed on June 29, 2013 due to low ticket sales.
On August 12, 2012 the Spice Girls performed as a quintet for the last time at the London 2012 Olympics Closing Ceremony. This was the last Spice Girls concert to feature Victoria Beckham and Mel C.
2016 - present
Edit
In 2016 Mel B, Emma Bunton, and Geri Halliwell reunited for the 20th anniversary of The Spice Girls debut album and are working on new music. Their fourth album and tour are expected to be released in 2017. Former Spice Girls members Victoria Beckham and Mel C opted to not take part in the reunion to focus on their own careers. During an interview with James Corden on "Late Late Show" Mel B announced that The Spice Girls will go on tour again for the 20th anniversary of their debut album. Victoria Beckham and Mel C gave Mel B, Emma, and Geir their blessing to reunite and go on tour without them. The Spice Girls are working on releasing a new single. The Spice Girls new single "Song For Her" was leaked on YouTube.
Albums
| i don't know |
Television advertising-which product was 'Made To Make Your Mouth Water'? | UK television adverts 1955-1985
Blue Bird – Blue Bird – Blue Bird Liquorice Rolls.
Blue Riband
I’ve got those — can’t get enough of those Blue Riband blues,
Blue Riband’s the chocolate wafer biscuit I always choose,
When my woman treats me right,
She buys me Blue Riband wafer biscuits, crisp and light,
I’ve got those — can’t get enough of those Bl-u-u-u-e….
Oh! thank you!
Voice-over: Buy Blue Riband — the biscuit to beat the blues.
Bounty (1)
I’d rather have a Bounty.
Bounty brings you tender coconut.
The taste of paradise!
They came in search of paradise.
Bounty (2): 1984
You know I’m waiting,
Just anticipating
Things I may never possess,
While I’m without them
Try a little tenderness …
Bounty — the taste of paradise!
[Tune: “Try a Little Tenderness”]
BubbleYum: 1977
(City gents on a train)
Bubblegum old chap?!
Spearmint BubbleYum actually. I chew BubbleYum because it’s soft and juicy — the flavour lasts such a long time!
How long exactly?
(Go on, blow a bubble — go on!)
Voiceover: LIFESAVERS BubbleYum — the long lasting flavour. You don’t have to blow bubbles.
(Bet you will!)
Butter Snap: c.1970
Man at the kiosk cannot remember the name of what he wants, says things like “it’s a … er …. snappy, snappy taste” to the bewildered kiosk lady; cue a schoolboy swiftly into view “Butter Snap, please, thanks!” and out again, and the chap remembers too late as the kiosk lady pulls down the shutter
Voiceover: Sharp’s Butter Snap, a name to remember!
Cadbury’s Amazin’ Raisin bar
It’s amazing what raisins can do!
Full of goodness and it’s all for you,
It’s got two kinds of chocolate (and caramel too!)
And it’s got raisins and they’re good for you
It’s amazin’ what raisins can do,
All that goodness and it’s all for you,
So just do what you have to do,
It’s amazin’ what raisins can do-oo-oo.
Cadbury’s Big One: 1971
[launched in Tyne Tees and Yorkshire areas in Sep.1971, withdrawn in 1972/73]
(Cowboy looking out across the desert)
If you like your Big One to last a long time,
Big one, sticks out a mile.
Cadbury’s Boost
What can fill the Watford Gap?
What ties up a crocodile’s snap?
What makes policemen drop their hats?
A Boost, a Boost, and Cadbury’s Boost!
Cadbury’s Bournville chocolate: c.1970
For adults only.
Cadbury’s Caramel: early 1980s
(A cartoon rabbit speaks to a cartoon beaver)
Hey Mister Beaver, why are you beavering around?
Haven’t you heard of Cadbury’s Caramel?
Soon as that thick Cadbury’s milk chocolate melts with that dreamy caramel — you just have to take things really easy!
Looks like somebody else could do with some!
Take it easy with Cadbury’s Caramel.
Cadbury’s Chocolate Buttons (1): c.1970
Buy some buttons, jolly, jolly buttons,
Buy some buttons, they’ll last you all the day.
When you’ve sixpence to spend
You’ll have buttons to lend,
And buttons to last you while you play!
Voiceover: Cadbury’s Chocolate Buttons – sixpence!
Cadbury’s Chocolate Buttons (2): c.1984
Sing a song of sixpence,
The king he gave a sigh,
He wasn’t even partial
To blackbirds in a pie,
But when the pie was opened,
Much to his surprise,
His favourite Cadbury’s Buttons
Were right before his eyes.
Cadbury’s Buttons — dairy milk chocolate for beginners!
[Tune: Sing a Song of Sixpence]
Cadbury’s Contrast: early 1960s
I like a man who likes me enough to buy me Cadbury’s Contrast.
Cadbury’s Creme Eggs (1): 1983
You can’t resist them!
Cadbury’s Creme Eggs (2): 1985
How do you eat yours?
Cadbury’s Curly Wurly (1): 1973
Cadbury’s Curly Wurly outchews everything for three pence!
Cadbury’s Curly Wurly (2)
My brother and my friends are very bright, Mr Ghost Train driver. But don’t worry, they won’t be able to scream, ’cos I’ve given them a Curly Wurly. All those miles of chewy toffee covered in creamy Cadbury’s chocolate will keep them quiet.
Ooh, aargh, help — oh crumbs, let me out of here!
Right, confess! Which one of you screamed?
[with Terry Scott as the schoolboy — at the fair]
Cadbury’s Curly Wurly (3)
Hands off my Curly Wurly!
Curly Wurlies, only 10p.
Cadbury’s Curly Wurly (3): 1973
Cadbury’s Curly Wurly outchews everything for three pence!
Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate (1): c.1970
In the supersonic, scientific, psychedelic ’seventies
Isn’t it nice to know …
There’s still the same great taste
Of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk.
Chocolate as it used to be,
Chocolate as it always will be! —
Cadbury’s Dairy Milk.
Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate (2): 1965
Mother just about manages to close a jam-packed suitcase - then child brings teddy bear. She awards herself the CDM for closing it.
Voiceover: Have you been sent packing today? Award yourself the CDM!
Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate (3): 1965
Man at tailor’s being measured for a suit.
Voiceover: Have you had a trying day? Award yourself the CDM!
Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate (4)
A glass and a half of full-cream milk in every half pound.
Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate (5)
Nothing tastes nicer — you tell ’em, Cilla!
Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate (6): 1970s
One chunk (leads to another),
One chunk (one chunk),
Just a glass and a half in every half-pound,
One chunk (one chunk) leads to another.
Cadbury’s Double Decker
Get on board, get on board,
Get on board with the Double Deckers!
Cadbury’s Flake (1)
What rings the bell with ice-cream eaters? Cadbury’s 99 Flake!
Cadbury’s Flake (3): 1959 onwards
[Series showing girls eating a Flake in exotic settings, e.g. sitting in a gipsy caravan in 1981, and rowing a boat through a waterfall into a cave in Jamaica in 1983]
Only the crumbliest, flakiest chocolate,
Tastes like chocolate never tasted before.
Cadbury’s Flake (4): 1969
Cadbury’s Flake. Fold upon fold of creamy milk chocolate.
Cadbury’s Flake (5): 1970s
Cadbury’s Flake — and nothing else matters.
Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut (1): 1976
Everyone’s a Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut case.
It’s the nuts and raisins!
They’re all after those crunchy nuts and juicy raisins —
wrapped up in lovely dairy milk chocolate.
Isn’t it strange how the simple combination of —
nutty nuts, juicy raisins, and Cadbury’s chocolate —
can affect people?
Are you a Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut case?
[Frank Muir; Tune: “Return to Django”]
Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut (2): 1977
Everyone’s a Fruit and Nut case
It keeps you going when you toss the caber,
Whatever you are doing.
It’s nutricious and beauticious
To judiciously be chewing.
Everyone’s a Fruit and Nut case
If only it could help improve my singing,
A healthy recreation.
Cadbury’s — Fruit and Nut.
(We make these up as we go along, you know.)
[Frank Muir; Tune: Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the reed flutes”]
Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut (3): 1977
Everyone’s a Fruit and Nut case
I find it very healthy for my ego
It makes one feel more vital
As if one had a title!
Lots more fun than plumbing —
Or a saxophone recital.
Everyone’s a Fruit and Nut case
For bathing and ballooning it’s essential
For any recreation
Cadbury’s — Fruit and Nut.
(They don’t make commercials like this any more!)
[Frank Muir; Tune: Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the reed flutes”]
Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut (4): 1970s
Everyone’s a fruit and nut case,
Crazy for those Cadbury’s nuts and raisins,
When you’ve got your feet up
What a joy to eat up,
City gents of consequence and blokes who dig the street up:
Everyone’s a fruit and nut case,
Crazy for those Cadbury’s nuts and raisins,
When you’ve got your feet up,
What a joy to eat up,
Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut!
Cadbury’s Fudge
A finger of Fudge is just enough to give the kids a treat,
A finger of fudge is just enough until it’s time to eat.
It’s full of Cadbury goodness, and very small and neat,
A finger of fudge is just enough to give the kids a treat.
Cadbury’s Lucky Numbers: Late 1950s
Lucky Numbers, Lucky Numbers — chocolate and chew.
I’ll be lucky, you’ll be lucky … they’ll be lucky too!
Cadbury’s Milk Tray (1)
Cadbury’s Milk Tray,
With Cadbury’s Milk Tray,
With Cadbury’s Milk Tray
Cadbury’s Milk Tray (2): 1968
And all because the lady loves Milk Tray!
[starring “man in black” Gary Myers]
Cadbury’s Milk Tray Calypso: 1974
A calypso steel band sails to chocolate islands in a chocolate sea
Why don’t you stop what you’re doing and come with me
To fourteen islands in a chocolate sea,
Fourteen … that you’ll love to eat,
… chocolate treat?
Marzipan and a chocolate ice,
A nutty one from the nutty nut tree,
Each a different island in a chocolate sea.
Oh … It’s a different experience every time”
Cadbury’s Monsters, Laughs, and Furry Friends: 1971
We’ve just arrived from Cadbury Land,
Monsters, Laughs, and Furry Friends,
Milk chocolate bars from Cadbury’s,
We’re such a happy band.
You’ll find us now in your sweetshop,
This is Cadbury Land!
Cadbury’s Old Jamaica: 1970s
Don’t ’ee knock it all back at once!
Cadbury’s Picnic: 1970s [later Lion Bar]
Cadbury’s Picnic has so many nutty bits it won’t stand up on its end! Look!
[with Kenny Everett]
Cadbury’s Roses (1): 1958
There’s more to enjoy in Cadbury’s Roses.
Cadbury’s Roses (2): 1964
Roses grow on you!
They say that roses grow on you,
They seem so nice it must be true,
They say that roses grow on you,
Roses grow on you.
Cadbury’s Roses (4): 1979
Say “thank you” with Cadbury’s Roses
Cadbury’s Roses (5): 1982
Thank you very much for the care they needed,
Thank you very much, thank you very, very, very much!
Cadbury’s Roses chocolates with all your favourite centres!
Thank you very much for doing the dishes,
Thank you very much, thank you very, very, very much!
Thank you very much just for being my missis,
Thank you very, very, very — very, very, very, very,
Thank you very, very, very much!
[Tune: “Thank You Very Much” by the Scaffold]
Cadbury’s Rumba: 1973
You’ll succumba to Rumba!
Cadbury’s Snack (1): 1960s
Bridge that gap,
Cadbury’s Snack (2): 1973
It’s Snack time!
Bridge that gap with Cadbury’s Snack Biscuits galore!
One biscuit — two biscuits — three biscuits — four
Five biscuits — six biscuits — biscuits galore!
Cadbury’s Whole Nut (1)
Whole nuts, not crunched or halved
Cadbury’s Whole Nut (2): 1970s
Nuts! Who-o-le Hazelnuts!
Cadbury’s take them and they cover them in chocolate!
[Tune: “The Banana Boat Song”]
Cadbury’s Wispa : 1983 relaunch [now Dairy Milk Bubbly]
(with Hi-de-Hi Stars Ruth Madoc and Simon Cadell)
Ruth: Simon — can I interest you in an amazing new experience?
Simon: Well, that rather depends.
Ruth: It’s called Wispa, and it’s made entirely from milk chocolate, but it tastes very different.
Simon: How odd: I thought that chocolate was just chocolate.
Ruth: Oh no. This is from Cadbury, see. It has this yielding velvety texture to it which can only be described as “indescribable”.
Simon: Absolutely extraordinary. That’s the most pleasurable experience I’ve ever had.
Ruth: I can well believe that….
Voice-over (whispered): Cadbury’s new Wispa. The ultimate chocolate experience. Bite it and believe it!
Chipitos crisps (formerly Wotsits): late 1960s
Tune: Chick, Chick, Chick, Chick, Chicken (Lay a Little Egg for Me)
Chip Chip Chip Chipitos,
Buy another bag for me.
Chip Chip Chip Chipitos,
I’ve seen them on TV.
I haven’t had a bite since lunchtime,
and now it’s nearly three.
Chip Chip Chip chipitos
Buy another bag for me.
Chipsticks: 1976
Young man: Come on, darlin’!
Girl: No!
Young man: You don’t know until you’ve tried it.
Girl: Oh, all right, I’ll try anything once (eats a Chipstick). ’Ere, they’re smashin’ (Young man looks at her cleavage and sighs Yeah). Oh, Chipsticks. They look like chips, don’t they? They’re all crunchy, ain’t they?
Young man: Right. Say when.
Girl: Wait till I’ve finished the Chipsticks.
Smack your chops, lick your lips,
Eat a lovely bag of Chipsticks.
Cornetto (1): 1977
I a taking no chances,
I bring all si-i-x.
Serenader: Si! Now there’s a-neapolitan with a-strawberry and a ….
Just one Cornetto … from Walls ice cream.
[Tune: “O sole mio”]
Oooh, Duncan’s Walnut Whips!
Fox’s Glacier Mints (1)
Fox: Why is there a bear on Fox’s Glacier mints?
Polar bear: There’s a bear on Fox’s Glacier Mints because they’re so clear and cool and minty.
Fox’s Glacier Mints (2): 1983
Clearly minty!
Fry’s Chocolate Cream (1)
Seven pieces of heaven, that’s Fry’s Chocolate Cream,
Seven pieces of heaven, that’s Fry’s Chocolate Cream.
Fry’s Chocolate Cream (2)
I want to be alone, I want to be alone,
Me myself at home sweet home,
Leave the oysters in their bed,
…
Tell the casino that I’ll miss the next game,
I don’t want to dress up, I dont want to dine,
Come up and see me some other time,
I want to be alone with Fry’s Chocolate Cream.
Fry’s Chocolate Cream (3): 1979
Scene: A railway platform. A man is saying ’bye to his lady friend through the train window.
Man: Daphne – here’s something for the journey.
Daphne: Fry’s Chocolate Cream! You remembered!
Man: It will always remind me of you … slim, dark, sophisticated … yet, underneath it all … a soft heart … and a sweetness that will hold me all my life.
Daphne: If only you’d told me before!
[The train doors slam and Daphne is shown seated … reading a magazine. The carriage door opens…]
Man: Can we start all over again?
Voiceover: Fry’s Chocolate Cream … the bittersweet experience!
Fry’s Chocolate Cream (3)
Fry’s Chocolate Cream — make the moment last.
Fry’s Crunchie (1): 1960s
Crunchie makes exciting biting!
Fry’s Crunchie (2): 1969
Crunchie … the taste bomb!
(later changed to “Crunchie … your taste bomb!”)
Fry’s Crunchie (3)
I get a certain feeling
I get it every day
And when I get that feeling
A Crunchie comes my way
It’s that Friday feeling
Thank Crunchie it’s Friday
Get that Friday feeling any day of the week!
Fry’s Crunchie (4): 1976
Bite into a golden Crunchie.
Fry’s Five Boys
(Too early for television advertising? The following newspaper/magazine advert dates from 1902)
Five girls want Five Boys and will have no other.
Fry’s Medley: c.1963
Do yourself a favour — have a Medley …
Chocolate bar with the fruit surprise.
Do yourself a favour — have a Medley!
Real fruit flavour — NEW FROM FRY’s!
Milky chocolate covered — that’s a Medley!
Real fruit too — that’s the fruit surprise!
Do yourself a favour — have a Medley!
Fruity Medley … NEW FROM FRY’s!
Fry’s Turkish Delight: 1957
Fry’s Turkish Delight is a rich red secret —
A rare Eastern essence slowly mingles with smooth milk chocolate —
to give you a long luxuriant taste of the East.
Fry’s Turkish Delight … full of Eastern promise!
[with harem girls]
Fry’s Turkish Delight (2)
Fry’s Turkish Delight, Fry’s Turkish Delight,
From the fabulous east
So full of milk, it almost moos!
Galaxy chocolate (2): 1987
Background music = George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”
A lady (over-elegantly dressed (for the hot climate) swans in and seats herself on a couch, beneath a ceiling fan, and reaches for a bar of Galaxy, slipping off her high heels as she unwraps it
Voiceover: Why have cotton when you can have silk?
After unwrapping and tasting the first piece, the lady drifts off into her own world.
Glees: c.1965
T wo sweets in one!
Golden Wonder crisps (1): c.1969
Golden Wonder — they’re Jungle Fresh…
Golden Wonder — real Jungle Fresh…
When a fellow isn’t feeling very strong
Give a nut a nut….
Look out! People go wild…
Golden Wonder — they’re Jungle Fresh…
Golden Wonder — real Jungle Fresh….
[Tune: The Peanut Vendor]
Golden Wonder are the crispiest crisps!
Golden Wonder crisps (3): 1970
The crisp with the light touch.
Golden Wonder peanuts
Golden Wonder Rock ’n’ Rollers crisps: 1970s
New from Golden Wonder — they’re called Rock ’n Rollers
Betcha gonna like ’em!
There’s a million ways to eat a Wotsit!
Hanky Panky sweet popcorn
Arthur Lowe sitting on a park bench beside a girl:
Would you care for a bit of Hanky Panky?
(SLAP! )
I was only offering you a little nibble!”
( BIG SLAP!)
Harvest Chewy Bars: early 1980s
You’re witnessing a very dangerous experiment.
This man will attempt to eat a cereal bar within earshot of — the squirrels!
Is he barmy?
No, he’s chewing a new Harvest Chewy Bar.
(The squirrels take no notice)
Yes, conclusive proof new moist and chewy Quaker Harvest Chewy Bars are extremely quiet.
Uh-oh!
They’ll be around for ever.
It’s so happy crunching Hula Hoops,
Crisper than a crisp — they’re Hula Hoops,
Hula Hoops, Hula Hoops, Hula Hoops,
Crispy Hula Hoops,
It’s crunchy when you’re munching Hula Hoops.
You should come and stay with Hula Hoops,
New potato rings — they’re Hula Hoops,
Hula Hoops, Hula Hoops, Hula Hoops,
Crispy Hula Hoops,
It’s crunchy when you’re munching Hula Hoops,
So crunchy when you’re munching Hula Hoops.
Ipso
(Small fruit- and mint-flavoured sweets in a boxes with sides like Lego bricks that could be joined together)
Ipso Ipso, Ipso calypso.
So refreshing, lots of flavour …
“Come one, you’ll miss your train!”
Jacob’s Club biscuit (1): 1972
If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit join our club,
If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit join our club,
If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit join our club.
Jacob’s Club — have you ever seen more chocolate on a biscuit?
If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit join our club!
Jacobs Club Biscuits (2): 1980
Scene: A Courtroom
Teddy Boy (taking oath): … nothing but the truth.
Judge : Does the accused usually frequent The Blue Lagoon Gentlemen’s Club?
Teddy Boy and the rest of the courtroom sing to the tune of Barbara Ann:
A Bar-bar-bar, bar-bar-a Club,
A Jacobs Club in my hand, bar-a Club (bar-bar-a Club),
I’ll be munchin’ and a crunchin’, crunchin’ and a munchin’
Bar-a-Club, bar-bar,bar-bar-a Club,
Thick chocolate to excite, thick biscuit to bite,
See a Jacob’s Club….
Voiceover: Jacob’s Club-the biscuit bar, bar none!
Jacob’s Club biscuit (3): 1984
When they’ve gone off the bite at the Angling Club,
And it’s gone all wobbly down the Pottery Club,
If your partner’s waltzed off at the Dancing Club,
They’ve found a club
They really love.
Well, you couldn’t have a biscuit that’s as chocolatey as Club,
Well, you couldn’t have a biscuit that’s as chocolatey as Club,
So come and be a member of the Club Fan Club!
Jacob’s Club biscuit (4)
(With characters from the Wizard of Oz)
Scarecrow: Oh, I wish I had a brain!
Tin-man: I wish I had a heart!
Lion: I wish I had c-c-c- …
Dorothy: Courage?
Lion: No, a c-c Club!
If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit join our Club!
Lion: Jacob’s Club … oh-oh … all that thick chocolate drives me wild!
If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit join our Club!
Kit-Kat (1): 1957
Have a break — Have a Kit Kat!
Kit Kat (2): 1984
(Record deal: a dreadful looking group is singing dreadfully)
Lead singer: This is the best bit …
Record producer: I think we’ll take a break!
Voice-over: Have a break, have a Kit Kat!
Lead singer: What do you think?
Record producer: You can’t sing, you can’t play, you look awful!! … You’ll go a long way!!
KP Good ’n’ Crunchy Crisps: 1984
It’s so good and they’re so crunchy …
And nothing even like it’s ever happened before!
They’re so good — Good ’n’ Crunchy Crisps ….
The salt ’n’ vinegar flavour — that’s the one I adore!
You’ve never crunched a crisp that’s tastier or tasted a crisp that’s crunchier than new KP Good ’n’ Crunchy crisps!
It’s so good ’cos they’re so crunchy and….
… I may like lots of crisps!
I bet you’ll like these lots more!
KP Discos
They’re Discos, They’re Discos,
They’re KP Discos,
They’re different, they’re rounder, won’t you take a look,
They’re Discos, They’re Discos,
They’re KP Discos,
And they taste as different as they look-look-look.
KP Discos taste as different as they look!
KP Nuts: c.1970
I’m dancing at this party,
Lettin’ it all hang out,
I’m looking for some peanuts,
But there’s none about.
I’ve got my Number Ones!
My lucky Number Ones (he’s got KP!).
KP nuts are fresh and tasty — in the bag,
They give you lots of protein — which can’t be bad,
They’re irresistible,
They’re really beautiful (we’re having so much fun!)
With Britain’s Number One (he’s got KP!).
My lucky Number Ones!
KP Wigwams. The light-as-a-crisp, munchy-as-a-biscuit snack.
Lee’s Macaroon Bars: c.1960
Lee’s, Lee’s,
Scores of us beg on our bended knees,
For piccaninnies and grandpapas
It’s Lee’s for luscious macaroon bars!
Logger chocolate bars
Lumberjack: I truly love a Logger!
Girlfriend: What, love one more than me?
Lumberjack: The Logger that I truly love’s got marks on, like a tree!
Lovell’s Milky Lunch
Lovell’s Milky Lunch is lov-er-ly, lov-er-ly
Lovells Milky Lunch is lov-er-ly
Lovell’s Milky Lunch is lov-er-ly, lov-er-ly
Lovell’s Milky Lunch is lov-er-ly!
Lovells toffees
Lovells are lovely, lovely, lovely,
Lovells are lovely!
Lyon’s Maid ice-cream: c.1970
With Lyons Maid, you’re laughing!
Lyon’s Maid Cornish ice-cream
Dairy ice cream, like a dream.
Mackintosh’s Reward Chocolates: 1965
Man puts diamond earrings in one space in a box of Reward chocolates ready for his girlfriend
Man: What are you doing now?
Lady: Thinking.
Mackintosh’s [now Nestle’s] Quality Street (1): c.1971
Quality Street was made for sharing
Mackintosh’s [now Nestle’s] Quality Street (2)
Quality, Quality, Quality Street,
Bang the drum and a great big gun,
All the fun of the share.
Made for sharing, made for sharing,
Bang the drum and a great big gun,
All the fun of the share.
Mackintosh’s [now Nestle’s] Quality Street (3): Christmas 1973
Quality Quality Quality Street — Quality Quality Quality Street
All of the sparkle, all of the flair
All of the fun of the share!
Mackintosh’s Mint Cracknel
[To the tune of Jimmy Crack Corn]
Gimme Mint Cracknel and I don’t care
Gimme Mint Cracknel and I don’t care
Gimme Mint Cracknel and I don’t care …
It’ll chase those blues away!
McVitie’s Taxi
Taxi (honk), follow that taxi (honk, honk),
It’s the bumper bargain biscuit of today.
Taxi (honk), follow that taxi (honk, honk),
There’s much more for the fare that you pay.
Taxi, when you’re feeling snack-si,
It’s got that chocolate satisfaction guaranteed,
It’s the bumper bargain, chocolate-flavoured, coated wafer, crispy biscuit
Snack bar … on four wheels (honk, honk)!
Maltesers (1): Late 1950s
Friend: Chocolates, with a figure like yours to take care of?
Woman: Those aren’t chocolates, they’re Maltesers.
Announcer: Maltesers, the chocolates with the less fattening centres.
Maltesers (2): 1980
When you’re giving the boys a lead there’s nothing more tempting than Maltesers.
“Chocolates!?”
“No! Maltesers!”
Inside that delicious coating of milk chocolate is a light, crisp, honeycomb centre. Together they make a winning combination.
“Chocolates!?”
Maltesers — it’s the honeycomb middle that weighs so little.
Marathon [now renamed Snickers] (1): 1976
With the then unknown Keith Chegwin (just prior to the launch of “Swap Shop”)
Hey! New Marathon’s arrived!
New Marathon?!
New Marathon because now the peanuts are greater roasted for extra peanut taste!
Hey! smashing new peanut taste!
New lighter centre (mmm smooth!) super chocolate, golden caramel, peanuts!
New Marathon! Comes up peanuts slice after slice!
New extra flavour — MARATHON!
Marathon [now renamed Snickers] (2): 1976
(Five people in street — each holding a Marathon bar)
1: Marathon is marvellous! You can eat it in the street, in the office — anywhere!
Marathon is marvellous
2: When I’m really hungry Marathon is just right — it’s absolutely perfect!
3: Fills the old tum you know!
Marathon is marvellous
4: It’s very nutty — very filling!
5: Keeps your hunger at bay.
Marathon is marvellous
[With Bob Monkhouse, Richard Murdoch, Vera Lynn, Petula Clark]
Mars Bar (2): 1965
Life is full of fun if you know how to enjoy it, and a Mars bar helps you to enjoy life even more.
You see Mars gives you energy while you work, nourishes you while you relax, keeps you going while you play.
A Mars a day helps you work rest and play — because glucose and sugar, milk and chocolate are all in Mars!
Yes a Mars a day helps you work rest and play.
Maynard’s Wine Gums (1)
Let the juice loose!
Maynard’s Wine Gums (2)
Hoots mon, there’s juice loose aboot this hoose.
Meltis New Berry Fruits (1): 1957
The only sweet with these lovely fruit liqueur centres.
Meltis New Berry Fruits (2): 1950s/1960s
Pineapple, Gooseberry, Strawberry, …………, ………… [order of fruits not known]
Meltis New Berry Fruits with lovely fruit liqueur centres!
Midland Counties ice cream (1): early 1960s
(A family out for a drive in their Morris Minor convertible)
Daughter: There’s one, Dad!
(Dad stops the car and enters a shop displaying a “Midland Counties ice cream” sign)
Dad: Here’s something for everyone!
Daughter: Raspberry Ripple please, Daddy!
Son: Orange bar for me, Dad!
Mum: Ooh! A choc ice!
Dad: And I’m taking home a family brick for tea!
Mum: We always stop when we see this sign.
All: Mmm — Midland Counties!
Midland Counties ice cream (2): 1966
This morning when you’re out shopping,
Pass the Midland Counties cooler without stopping,
And you’ll hear this muffled appeal:
Liberate a lolly from the Counties cooler today,
Free a frantic ice cream from a Counties cooler today.
Reprieve young Raspberry Ripple,
Aid Big Cake to make his break,
Restore Pop Sticks to the people,
Smoothe young Strawberry Jack’s escape.
Liberate a lolly from the Counties cooler today!
(Lyrics by Mike Isaacson / music by Mike Batt)
Milky Way (1)
The sweet you can eat between meals without spoiling your appetite.
Milky Way (2)
The red car and the blue car had a race
All Red wants to do is stuff his face.
He eats everything he sees
From trucks to prickly trees
But smart old Blue he took the Milky Way.
He’s looking for a chocolate treat – fluffy and light
’Cos he knows it won’t spoil his app-e-tite (mm mm MMMM!).
Oh no! the bridge has gone, poor old Red can’t carry on!
But smart old Blue, he took the Milky Way.
This advert made a comback on E4/satellite in 2009 with a couple of changes. “Smart old Blue” was changed to “Good old Blue”, and “’Cos he knows it won’t spoil his appetite” was changed (post-Trades Description Act) to “’Cos he knows it tastes just right”.
Mint Cracknel: 1973
Chap eating a Mint Cracknel in pouring rain, singing to the tune of “Blue Tail Fly”:
Gimme Mint Cracknel and I don’t care,
Gimme Mint Cracknel and I don’t care,
Gimme Mint Cracknel and I don’t care,
It’ll chase those blues away!
Monster Munch (Smith’s): 1977
This Monster is having his favourite dream —
The one where Monster Munch grows on trees —
Giant trees of course!
There’s one tree for Pickled Onion flavour,
One tree for Saucy flavour,
And one tree for Roast Beef flavour —
Which is all very nice and fun for him —
But not so for his somewhat smaller friends!
However, while he’s enjoying his dream —
Guess who’s enjoying his Monster Munch?
Monster Munch from Smith’s in three flavours
The biggest snack pennies can buy!
Murray Mints (1): 1955
The too good to hurry mints.
Why make haste when you can taste,
The hint of mint in Murray Mints?
Murray Mints, Murray Mints,
The too good to hurry mints.
Treat yourself to Murray Mints — The too good to hurry mints.
Murray Mints (2)
You can never hurry a Murray!
Nestle’s Breakaway
If I eat my sister’s Breakaway she’ll burst my new balloon….
(The balloon pops!).
Well, once you’ve seen one balloon, you’ve seen them all!
Don’t take away my Breakaway!
Nestle’s Dairy Box (1): 1956
With Una Stubbs dancing
My girl is sent by Dairy Box centres!
Nestle’s Dairy Box (2): 1950s
Man (after calling out “Judy” to wake sleeping girl):
Judy’s pretty and Judy’s good,
But little Judy never never could
Resist the chocs in Dairy Box,
So lovely centres in Dairy Box!
Judy:
Fresh butter makes it taste so well,.
Sugar and milk, you’re bound to fall
For just the dreamiest sweet of all.
Man:
Blended in as smooth as silk,
You’ll love the chocs in Dairy Box
With all those lovely centres, centres, centres, centres [fades away]
Nestle’s Dairy Box (2): 1970s
What the world needs now is love, sweet love,
It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.
What the world needs now is love sweet love,
No not just for some but for everyone.
Dairy Box milk chocolates — for everyone.
Nestle’s Milkybar: 1961
The Milky Bar Kid is tough and strong,
The Milky Bar Kid just can’t go wrong,
The Milky Bar Kid only eats what’s right,
That’s Milky Bar, it’s sweet and white,
Nestle’s Milky Bar.
The Milky Bar Kid is strong and tough
And only the best is good enough,
The creamiest milk, the whitest bar,
The goodness that’s in Milky Bar
Nestle’s Milky Bar.
The Milky Bars are on me!
Nestles Secret Chocolate Bar: late 1970s
(Young lady on train eats her Secret … in secret)
I see her face everywhere I go …
Have you seen her?
Opal Fruits [now renamed Starburst]
Want something fresh?
Made to make your mouth water,
Fresh with the tang of citrus,
Four refreshing fruit flavours,
A chewing gum ever had
And it’s kind to your teeth —
And that ain’t bad.
Orbit ice-cream
The big ice-cream on a stick.
Pacers
Voiceover: Now you can enjoy new Pacers — wait till you taste that fresh chewy spearmint. Now striped with peppermint!
Ice-skater: Striped?
Voiceover: Yes, peppermint stripes. Stripes of peppermint in refreshing chewy spearmint that mingle in your mouth to give a new two-mint freshness.
Ice-skater: Stripes?
Voiceover: Enjoy a new kind of freshness — new striped Pacers: peppermint stripes for two-mint freshness.
Pascall sweets: mid-1950s
Children skip down the road, over a stream on a bridge, and into a sweet shop while singing. Someone who took part as young child adds: “It was filmed in the Cotswolds, in the villages of Lower Slaughter, where we ran through the village and over the bridge and Fifield where the shop was filmed. We children were mostly from Lower and Upper Slaughter and we had to run around singing the song while patting our heads and rubbing our stomachs simultaneously”
Pascalls sweets, Pascalls sweets are the best.
Yes the best are the sweets made by Pascalls.
Don’t you wish that you had for yourself,
Those lovely jars upon the shelf.
Pascalls sweets, Pascalls sweets are the best….
Pascall Murray sweets: 1960s
The flavour lingers longer and longer,
Pascall Murray super sweets,
The flavour lingers longer and longer and longer and longer….
Pascall's White Heather chocolates: 1960s
You can't resist – White Heather!
Pendleton’s Twicer ice-cream: 1950s
There was a young girl of Southend
Who had only twopence to spend,
So what could be nicer
Than a Pendleton’s Twicer?
Ice cream — with a lolly each end!
[Recited by Cyril Fletcher]
Rolo. More fun to have around.
Rolo (5): 1980
Do you love anyone enough to give them your last Rolo?
Rowntree’s Aero
Every bubble’s passed its test.
Rowntree’s Black Magic (1): 1950s
[Cartoon of young man and girl in a park]
Voiceover: Wonderful day, wonderful world…. Uh huh, something’s gone wrong with the reception. What magic could be missing to make it really perfect?
Aah, good thing he remembered: Black Magic. Nothing sweetens the atmosphere so quickly as a box of Black Magic chocolates. There’s a certain something about those centres that’s irresistible; so many, so marvellous: liquid cherry for brightening her eyes, montelimar for parting her lips, orange creme to make her heart beat faster, hazel cluster, coffee cream. They are all so, so delicious.
Black Magic chocolates will win anyone’s heart – yours too. Try them soon.
Rowntree’s Black Magic (2): c.1960
Woman: I remember the first time we met.
That old black magic has me in its spell,
That old black magic that you weave so well …
Man: I couldn’t take my eyes off you!
… the same old witchcraft when your eyes met mine.
Man: I knew I had to see you again!
Woman: Black Magic! It was the first thing you ever gave me!
That old black magic called love.
Rowntree’s Black Magic (3)
Who knows the secret of the Black Magic box?
Rowntree’s Cabana: c.1984
Come, mister tally-man, tally me Cabana,
I want a Cabana and I want one now,
Coconut, caramel, cherries and milk chocolate,
I want a Cabana and I want one now!
Cab-a-a-na, Cab-a-a-a-na,
I want a Cabana and I want one now!
[Tune: Banana Boat Song]
Rowntree’s Fruit Gums (1): 1956
Don’t forget my fruit gums, Mum,
I just love those fruit gums, Mum,
Thruppence buys a tube of fruit gums,
Gums that last all day.
Bring me home some fruit gums, Mum,
All my pals love fruit gums, Mum,
Rowntree’s fruit gums last the longest,
That’s why we all say:
They’re smashing! They’re Rowntree’s!
[With a young Dennis Waterman. Later changed to “Don’t forget the fruit gums, chum” to stop mums from being coerced]
Rowntree’s Fruit Gums (2)
Rowntree’s fruit gums,
In your tum, tum, tum!
Rowntree’s Fruit Gums (3)
Rowntree’s Fruit Gums will last as long as the day.
Rowntree’s Fruit Gums (4): 1960s
[A boy wins his race at a school sports day, and his proud father has a flashback of Roger Bannister completing the first four-minute mile. The disheartened losers are given fruit gums, and one by one they break into huge smiles]
It’s the four-minute smile.
The longest lasting fruit gums in the world.
Rowntree’s Fruit Gums (5): mid-1970s
We got plenty of fruit gums,
Raspberry, lemon and lime.
Taste the orange and blackcurrant fruit gums,
’Cause fruit gums last a long, long time.
Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles (1): 1959
[The first ever advert for these sweets. The tubes were priced 3d and the boxes 1/-]
(A young couple enter a sweet shop)
She: Look! Rowntree’s pastilles!
He: Would you like some?
She: Ooo please!
Shopkeeper: Yes, only Rowntree’s know how to get the best out of fruit — that’s why you get the real fruit taste in Rowntree’s pastilles. Soft, juicy … there’s nothing like the taste of fruit in Rowntree’s pastilles!
Voiceover: There are plenty of Rowntree’s pastilles in the shops now — be sure to ask for Rowntree’s pastilles! Yes, now you too can enjoy the best sweets in the world…. Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles!
Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles (2): 1961
(A housewife is tidying the lounge)
Men! They’re all the same … untidy, lazy … especially when it comes to doing something around the house!
(She spots a tube of Rowntree’s pastilles on the mantelshelf, next to a picture of hubby)
Still, Bill’s not so bad really I suppose. You know, it’s funny the things you remember … little things, like these pastilles he brings me — he knows I like them. Sounds a bit silly I suppose — it’s not to me!
Voiceover: Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles with the tingle tongue taste — just a thought!
Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles (3): 1972
(A mother tiptoes downstairs, picks up a tube of Rowntree’s pastilles, and is caught in the act by the children)
Put those pastilles down, ma,
Put those pastilles down,
Pastille pickin’ mama,
Pass those pastilles round!
Mum says she buys fresh, fruity Rowntree’s pastilles for us, but sometimes I’m not so sure!
Pastille pickin’ mama,
Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles (4)
All you can do is chew.
Rowntree’s Lion Bar
Bite it! Crunch it! Chew it!
Rowntree’s Nutty bar: 1970s
Nuts, nuts — lots of nuts! You get them in a Nutty bar!
Rowntree’s Striper
Four times the flavour, four times the chew.
Rowntree’s Tots
Jelly Tots — your favourite sweet,
Candy Tots — made to eat,
And Teddy Tots — all shiny bright,
Tiger tots — liquorice for you to bite.
Four to choose from on the shelf,
Rowntree’s Tots — please yourself!
Rowntree’s Jelly Tots (1): 1973
Sung by Joe Brown
There’s twenty, thirty, forty or more,
Red ones, yellow ones, colours galore
In the Jelly Tots bag.
Rowntree’s Jelly Tots (2): 1970s
Sung as skipping tune
’Cos they’re small and sweet,
Bags I Jelly Tots,
They’re nice and soft to eat.
Bags I Jelly Tots
Jelly Tots, Rowntree’s Jelly Tots.
Rowntree’s Jelly Tots (3)
Rowntree’s Jelly Tots fill small hands,
And the mum who buys them understands
That in small hands they’re nice to eat,
Jelly soft, and jelly sweet.
And there’s 20, 30, 40, or more,
Red ones, yellow ones, colours galore,
In the Jelly Tots bag
To fill small hands.
“I’ve got just one thing to say to you Jenkins …
You get a lovely lot of Savors in a bag!”
Cheese Savors — they’re made with real cheeses.
You get a lovely lot of Savors — crisp cheese Savors —
A lovely lot of Savors in a bag!
Sharp’s Extra Strong Mints: 1978
Two adverts (1) Launderette (starring Sheila Bernette);
(2) Barber’s Shop (starring Andrew Sachs)
They’ve got to be strong to be good.
Sharp’s toffees
Sharp’s the word for toffee
Smarties (1): 1960s
A tube of Smarties means, lots and lots of chocolate beans!
Yes you get lots and lots and lots and lots, of Smarties!
Buy some for Lulu!
When you eat your Smarties
Do you eat the red ones last?
Do you suck them very slowly?
Or crunch them very fast?
Eat that candy-coated chocolate
But tell me when I ask —
When you eat your Smarties
Do you eat the red ones last?
Smarties (3): 1970s
Hey guys! Check this out!
Here’s how every way-cool chocolate Smartie starts its life
They wait, and when they all come out of their candy-coated shells —
Who knows what awesome things they become!
Nestlé Smarties … wotalotigot!
Only Smarties have the answer!
Smith’s Crisps (1)
Farmer (in potato field): These potatoes are for the crisp makers! (He tugs and tugs at the plants) ’Ere — they won’t come up!
Potatoes: We’re too good to be any old crisps!
We wanna be Smi-iths crisps, we wanna be Smi-iths crisps,
We’re not coming until we make you see …
That if we were Smi-ths crisps, if we were Smi-iths crisps,
What tasty, light, and golden crisps we’d be!
Farmer: I’d better phone Smiths!
We wanna be Smi-iths crisps, we wanna be Smi-iths crisps….
Voiceover: Smiths crisps — so good, every potato wants to be one!
[Tune: “I wanna be Bobby’s Girl”]
Smiths Crisps (2): c.1965
See the face you love light up
With Terry’s All Gold.
Terry’s Chocolate Orange (1)
Unpeel a Terry’s Chocolate Orange today!
Tap it and unwrap it!
Terry’s Chocolate Orange (2): late 1970s
(Wife goes out leaving husband indoors — meets neighbour at the gate)
Neighbour: Do you think it’s all right to leave George there on his own?
Wife: Oh yes!
Neighbour: But aren’t you afraid he might find your chocolate orange?!
Wife: No! (chuckles) I think it’s quite safe!
(George opens a revolving bookcase which leads to a secret tunnel. He triggers and escapes from lots of booby-traps before discovering the chocolate orange)
Voiceover: Terry’s Chocolate Orange — smooth chocolate with real oil of orange. How safe is yours?!
Texan bar (1): 1978
A cowboy faces a Mexican firing firing squad.
Mexican soldier: A last request, gringo!
Cowboy: Guess I’ll finish this chewy Texan Bar …por favor.
Bite through that chocolate …and chew … real slow.
Everybody knows a Texan takes time to chew.
Can you you boys come back next week?
Voiceover: Texan – it sure is a mighty chew!
Texan Bar (2): c.1979
Texan Cowboy: Hold on there Bald Eagle. You wouldn’t fire a man ’til he’d finished his Texan bar would you?
Bald Eagle: Whoah!
Texan Cowboy: Bite through the chocolate and chew. Real slow.
(Indians exhaust themselves dancing)
Texan Cowboy: Someone should have told them a Texan takes time a’chewin’
Tic Tac (1)
A man’s gotta chew what a man’s gotta chew….
Toffo (3):
Sheriff to small boy: “If you wanna be my deputy, you gotta think fast.” He produces three flavours of Toffos and puts them on a little table, saying, “Gonna cover ‘em up and switch ‘em round!”, putting cups over the toffees and moving them about on the table and then asking the boy which is which – “Chocolate?" “Banana?" “Strawberry?”
The boy correctly picks them all and the sheriff says, “Are you after my job?”, and the little boy spins round in his chair and says, "Yup!”
Topic (1)
A Topic munching, cartoon character named Toby (voice = Bill Oddie) is asked a few very simple general knowledge questions (voiceover = Graham Garden?) which he gets wrong.
Voiceover: What’s got a hazelnut in every bite?
Toby: Topic!
Voiceover: Yes, funny how you always remember right at the end!
Topic (2)
What has a hazelnut in every bite? — TOPIC
Thick milk chocolate for your delight,
Nougat, caramel golden light,
And don’t forget a hazelnut in every bite.
Trebor Mints (1)
Trebor Mints are a minty bit stronger!
Trebor Mints (2): 1973
Trebor. More flavour than the common mint.
Trebor Softmints: early 1980s
Mr So-oft, won’t you tell me why the world in which you’re living is so strange…
Oh, Mr So-oft, how come everything around you is so soft and rearranged?…
Voiceover: Bite into the shell of a Trebor spearmint Softmint and everything turns chewy and soft! Mmm — they’re crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside!
[Tune: Mr Soft by Cockney Rebel 1974]
Treets [now renamed Minstrels]
The milk chocolate melts in your mouth, not in your hands.
Sealed in a crispy shell.
Trio: early 1980s
Tri-i-i-o, Tri-i-i-i-o, I want a Trio and I want one now!
Not one, not two, but three things in it!
Chocolate, biscuit and de caramel too!
Tri-tri-tri-tr-i-i-i-ii-o
I want a Trio and I want one now!
No three things are quite as good together as the three things in Trio!
[Tune: “Day-O!”, aka “The Banana Boat Song”]
Trio (2): 1985
Scene: An escape by two musicians to the Arctic / the Trio girl arrives by air balloon singing:
Tr-i-o, Tr-i-i-i-o
“Hey man, where does a man have to go to get a little peace?”
Trio girl:
Tr-i-i-o! I want a Trio and I want one now! (ouch!)
Not one, not two, but three things in it!
A chocolaty biscuit and a toffee flavour too!
“Like a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, man!”
Voice-over: No three things are quite as good together as a …
(“TRI-I-I-I-O”)
[Tune: “Day-O!”, aka “The Banana Boat Song”]
Trio (3)
A third advertisement with the same characters ended with the line:
When a duo won’t do-o, have a … TRI-O!
[Tune: “Day-O! “, aka “The Banana Boat Song”]
Tudor Crisps (1970s)
Tudor: the crisp that’s really worth its salt.
Twister
You can’t resist the twist!
Twix (1): 1973
Voiceover with jingly jokey musical background:
Ah! Twix! The three course snack. Chocolate … biscuit … toffee.
Twix (2): 1977
Some people find that most quick snacks are a little too quick —
Snap! and they’re gone!
Twix gives you more to bite into,
Crunchy shortcake biscuit topped with caramel, covered in creamy milk chocolate.
Deliciously satisfying!
Next time, get the longer lasting snack,
Twix — the longer-lasting snack.
It’s all in the mix — Twix!
United biscuit bars
“I am Stan, I am a fan
And I’m delighted to eat United.”
“We are the fellas,
And some things make me cross,
But even I’m delighted
To eat United.”
“We’re all delighted to eat United!”
Wagon Wheels (1)
It’s so big, you’ve gotta grin to get it in!
Wagon Wheels (2)
Wagon Wheels are a treat for me (Wagon Wheels)
They’re the biggest biscuit
You ever did see (Wagon Wheels),
Marshmallow filled, they taste so grand,
A biscuit filled to beat the band.
Walkers Crisps: 1970s
Can you resist Walkers Crisps?
Wall’s ice cream (1)
Stop me and buy one
Wall’s ice cream (2)
More than a treat — a food!
Walls Jolly Jelly ice cream
Wall’s Jolly Jelly,
Wall’s Neapolitan ice cream: 1970s
It’s-a-lovely!
Wall’s Refresher: 1969
Voiceover It may look like a chocolate snack, but when you bite it, you'll know why it's called … the Refresher.
The Refresher: Let's get away on a sunny day: the Refresher
Voiceover: It's chocolate coating around golden vanilla ice cream, and what it does – [image of girl lying on ground].
Our snack is Wall's ice cream snack bar – the Refresher.
White Heather chocolates (Pascall): c.1960
You can’t resist White Heather,
You can’t resist White Heather,
Chocolates and toffees, they’re sensational,
So temptional,
Everybody knows, you can’t resist White Heather.
Wilkinson’s toffees
Wilkinson’s – have you ever tried them?
Wilkinson’s – with liquorice inside them.
Wrigley’s Doublemint chewing gum
Wrigleys Doublemint chewing gum
Double the flavour, double the fun!
Double your pleasure, double your fun,
With Doublemint, Doublemint, Doublemint Gum!
Double delicious, double smooth too,
Doublemint doubles delight as you chew.
So double your pleasure, double your fun
With Doublemint Doublemint Doublemint gum.
Wrigley’s — For a cleaner whiter smile.
Refreshes your breath, naturally Wrigley’s Double Mint!
Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum
Juicy fruit adds to your fun
It’s a hit with everyone.
Fine fruit flavour, what a treat,
Makes your mouth feel fresh and sweet,
Juicy fruit adds to your fun,
Juicy fruit chewing gum.
Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum (1)
Carry the big fresh flavour:
Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum.
Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum (2): c.1970
Almost anything you do,
You do a little better when you chew
Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum.
Voiceover: Try some yourself … and see!
Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum (3): c.1979/80
End of jingle::
Call it Wrigley’s, call it spearmint, call it gum.
Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum (4): 1984
When you need a lift but you just can’t take a break —
chew Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum!
The cool refreshing feeling of Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum
Puts a little lift in everything you do —
That good smooth chewing, that crisp clean taste —
That Wrigley’s Spearmint pick-up is going for you!
Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum really keeps you buzzin’
Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum keeps you buzzin’ along —
Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum really keeps you buzzin’
Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum keeps you buzzin’ along!
Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum (5)
Clap hands, one, two,
Let’s take a trip to the Wrigley zoo,
Chitter chatter, yakety yak,
When you talk to the animals they talk back.
We’ll talk to Melvin Monkey today,
Let’s hear what Melvin has to say:
“My mummy says I should realize
That monkeys all need exercise,
But teeth need exercising too
And my mum makes it fun to do,
For when I swing she gives me some
Delicious WRIGLEY’s SPEARMINT GUM
It helps to keep teeth clean and bright
And never spoils my appetite.
My mum’s my favourite swinging chum,
We both like Wrigley’s spearmint gum.”
Let’s talk to Buster Beaver today,
Lets hear what Buster has to say:
“My teeth have lots of work to do
Like gnawing tree trunks right in two.”
Now please remember this:
There’s always fun at the Wrigley zoo
And Wrigley Spearmint is fun to chew,
Younger folk and grown ups too,
Enjoy it while it’s helping you.
Yorkie (1)
Long and thick, a real chocolate brick.
Yorkie (2)
I’ve pounded the roads from coast to coast,
Yorkie and me rolling on —
’Cos a long day’s run can be short on fun
Without Yorkie to help me along.
Good, rich and thick, a milk chocolate brick
— each bite a chunky big mouthful,
Yorkie’s the shape that real milk chocolate ought to be …
So when I still that big old mill there’s plenty more in store for me …
From that chunky bar of mine.
Rowntree’s Yorkie chunky milk chocolate.
YZ Chewing Gum
This gum (with a wise owl on the packet) was sold from a machine and a free packet was given every fourth time, when the arrow on the knob pointed forward.
Buy some YZ Chewing Gum,
Smashing you’ll agree,
With the fourth you get one more,
An extra packet free!
5—4—3—2—1, 5—4—3—2—1
First bite into real milk chocolate, 5—4—3—2—1
Then crunch into light crispy rice, 5—4—3—2—1
Chew, chew, chew the caramel topping, 5—4—3—2—1
Uh huh — wafer and fondant too, 5—4—3—2—1
5—4—3—2—1, 5—4—3—2—1.
[Tune: Manfred Mann’s “54321”]
Notes
Bassett’s took over Wilkinson’s in 1961, Barrett’s in 1966, and Jameson’s in the 1980s.
Cadbury’s took over Fry’s in 1916, and both Trebor and Bassett’s in 1989 (calling the latter Trebor Bassett).
Rowntree took over Mackintosh’s in 1969.
Nestle’s took over Rowntree Mackintosh in 1988.
In the 1960s, “Nestle’s” did not have an acute accent. It rhymed with “wrestles”, and was never pronounced “Nestlé”. And “Cadbury” was always known as “Cadbury’s”.
Kraft took over Terry’s in 1993, and Cadbury in 2010.
Barrett’s Sherbert Fountain
| Starburst (confectionery) |
What is the name of the mouthpiece on most woodwind instruments? | UK television adverts 1955-1985
Blue Bird – Blue Bird – Blue Bird Liquorice Rolls.
Blue Riband
I’ve got those — can’t get enough of those Blue Riband blues,
Blue Riband’s the chocolate wafer biscuit I always choose,
When my woman treats me right,
She buys me Blue Riband wafer biscuits, crisp and light,
I’ve got those — can’t get enough of those Bl-u-u-u-e….
Oh! thank you!
Voice-over: Buy Blue Riband — the biscuit to beat the blues.
Bounty (1)
I’d rather have a Bounty.
Bounty brings you tender coconut.
The taste of paradise!
They came in search of paradise.
Bounty (2): 1984
You know I’m waiting,
Just anticipating
Things I may never possess,
While I’m without them
Try a little tenderness …
Bounty — the taste of paradise!
[Tune: “Try a Little Tenderness”]
BubbleYum: 1977
(City gents on a train)
Bubblegum old chap?!
Spearmint BubbleYum actually. I chew BubbleYum because it’s soft and juicy — the flavour lasts such a long time!
How long exactly?
(Go on, blow a bubble — go on!)
Voiceover: LIFESAVERS BubbleYum — the long lasting flavour. You don’t have to blow bubbles.
(Bet you will!)
Butter Snap: c.1970
Man at the kiosk cannot remember the name of what he wants, says things like “it’s a … er …. snappy, snappy taste” to the bewildered kiosk lady; cue a schoolboy swiftly into view “Butter Snap, please, thanks!” and out again, and the chap remembers too late as the kiosk lady pulls down the shutter
Voiceover: Sharp’s Butter Snap, a name to remember!
Cadbury’s Amazin’ Raisin bar
It’s amazing what raisins can do!
Full of goodness and it’s all for you,
It’s got two kinds of chocolate (and caramel too!)
And it’s got raisins and they’re good for you
It’s amazin’ what raisins can do,
All that goodness and it’s all for you,
So just do what you have to do,
It’s amazin’ what raisins can do-oo-oo.
Cadbury’s Big One: 1971
[launched in Tyne Tees and Yorkshire areas in Sep.1971, withdrawn in 1972/73]
(Cowboy looking out across the desert)
If you like your Big One to last a long time,
Big one, sticks out a mile.
Cadbury’s Boost
What can fill the Watford Gap?
What ties up a crocodile’s snap?
What makes policemen drop their hats?
A Boost, a Boost, and Cadbury’s Boost!
Cadbury’s Bournville chocolate: c.1970
For adults only.
Cadbury’s Caramel: early 1980s
(A cartoon rabbit speaks to a cartoon beaver)
Hey Mister Beaver, why are you beavering around?
Haven’t you heard of Cadbury’s Caramel?
Soon as that thick Cadbury’s milk chocolate melts with that dreamy caramel — you just have to take things really easy!
Looks like somebody else could do with some!
Take it easy with Cadbury’s Caramel.
Cadbury’s Chocolate Buttons (1): c.1970
Buy some buttons, jolly, jolly buttons,
Buy some buttons, they’ll last you all the day.
When you’ve sixpence to spend
You’ll have buttons to lend,
And buttons to last you while you play!
Voiceover: Cadbury’s Chocolate Buttons – sixpence!
Cadbury’s Chocolate Buttons (2): c.1984
Sing a song of sixpence,
The king he gave a sigh,
He wasn’t even partial
To blackbirds in a pie,
But when the pie was opened,
Much to his surprise,
His favourite Cadbury’s Buttons
Were right before his eyes.
Cadbury’s Buttons — dairy milk chocolate for beginners!
[Tune: Sing a Song of Sixpence]
Cadbury’s Contrast: early 1960s
I like a man who likes me enough to buy me Cadbury’s Contrast.
Cadbury’s Creme Eggs (1): 1983
You can’t resist them!
Cadbury’s Creme Eggs (2): 1985
How do you eat yours?
Cadbury’s Curly Wurly (1): 1973
Cadbury’s Curly Wurly outchews everything for three pence!
Cadbury’s Curly Wurly (2)
My brother and my friends are very bright, Mr Ghost Train driver. But don’t worry, they won’t be able to scream, ’cos I’ve given them a Curly Wurly. All those miles of chewy toffee covered in creamy Cadbury’s chocolate will keep them quiet.
Ooh, aargh, help — oh crumbs, let me out of here!
Right, confess! Which one of you screamed?
[with Terry Scott as the schoolboy — at the fair]
Cadbury’s Curly Wurly (3)
Hands off my Curly Wurly!
Curly Wurlies, only 10p.
Cadbury’s Curly Wurly (3): 1973
Cadbury’s Curly Wurly outchews everything for three pence!
Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate (1): c.1970
In the supersonic, scientific, psychedelic ’seventies
Isn’t it nice to know …
There’s still the same great taste
Of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk.
Chocolate as it used to be,
Chocolate as it always will be! —
Cadbury’s Dairy Milk.
Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate (2): 1965
Mother just about manages to close a jam-packed suitcase - then child brings teddy bear. She awards herself the CDM for closing it.
Voiceover: Have you been sent packing today? Award yourself the CDM!
Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate (3): 1965
Man at tailor’s being measured for a suit.
Voiceover: Have you had a trying day? Award yourself the CDM!
Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate (4)
A glass and a half of full-cream milk in every half pound.
Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate (5)
Nothing tastes nicer — you tell ’em, Cilla!
Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate (6): 1970s
One chunk (leads to another),
One chunk (one chunk),
Just a glass and a half in every half-pound,
One chunk (one chunk) leads to another.
Cadbury’s Double Decker
Get on board, get on board,
Get on board with the Double Deckers!
Cadbury’s Flake (1)
What rings the bell with ice-cream eaters? Cadbury’s 99 Flake!
Cadbury’s Flake (3): 1959 onwards
[Series showing girls eating a Flake in exotic settings, e.g. sitting in a gipsy caravan in 1981, and rowing a boat through a waterfall into a cave in Jamaica in 1983]
Only the crumbliest, flakiest chocolate,
Tastes like chocolate never tasted before.
Cadbury’s Flake (4): 1969
Cadbury’s Flake. Fold upon fold of creamy milk chocolate.
Cadbury’s Flake (5): 1970s
Cadbury’s Flake — and nothing else matters.
Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut (1): 1976
Everyone’s a Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut case.
It’s the nuts and raisins!
They’re all after those crunchy nuts and juicy raisins —
wrapped up in lovely dairy milk chocolate.
Isn’t it strange how the simple combination of —
nutty nuts, juicy raisins, and Cadbury’s chocolate —
can affect people?
Are you a Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut case?
[Frank Muir; Tune: “Return to Django”]
Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut (2): 1977
Everyone’s a Fruit and Nut case
It keeps you going when you toss the caber,
Whatever you are doing.
It’s nutricious and beauticious
To judiciously be chewing.
Everyone’s a Fruit and Nut case
If only it could help improve my singing,
A healthy recreation.
Cadbury’s — Fruit and Nut.
(We make these up as we go along, you know.)
[Frank Muir; Tune: Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the reed flutes”]
Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut (3): 1977
Everyone’s a Fruit and Nut case
I find it very healthy for my ego
It makes one feel more vital
As if one had a title!
Lots more fun than plumbing —
Or a saxophone recital.
Everyone’s a Fruit and Nut case
For bathing and ballooning it’s essential
For any recreation
Cadbury’s — Fruit and Nut.
(They don’t make commercials like this any more!)
[Frank Muir; Tune: Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the reed flutes”]
Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut (4): 1970s
Everyone’s a fruit and nut case,
Crazy for those Cadbury’s nuts and raisins,
When you’ve got your feet up
What a joy to eat up,
City gents of consequence and blokes who dig the street up:
Everyone’s a fruit and nut case,
Crazy for those Cadbury’s nuts and raisins,
When you’ve got your feet up,
What a joy to eat up,
Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut!
Cadbury’s Fudge
A finger of Fudge is just enough to give the kids a treat,
A finger of fudge is just enough until it’s time to eat.
It’s full of Cadbury goodness, and very small and neat,
A finger of fudge is just enough to give the kids a treat.
Cadbury’s Lucky Numbers: Late 1950s
Lucky Numbers, Lucky Numbers — chocolate and chew.
I’ll be lucky, you’ll be lucky … they’ll be lucky too!
Cadbury’s Milk Tray (1)
Cadbury’s Milk Tray,
With Cadbury’s Milk Tray,
With Cadbury’s Milk Tray
Cadbury’s Milk Tray (2): 1968
And all because the lady loves Milk Tray!
[starring “man in black” Gary Myers]
Cadbury’s Milk Tray Calypso: 1974
A calypso steel band sails to chocolate islands in a chocolate sea
Why don’t you stop what you’re doing and come with me
To fourteen islands in a chocolate sea,
Fourteen … that you’ll love to eat,
… chocolate treat?
Marzipan and a chocolate ice,
A nutty one from the nutty nut tree,
Each a different island in a chocolate sea.
Oh … It’s a different experience every time”
Cadbury’s Monsters, Laughs, and Furry Friends: 1971
We’ve just arrived from Cadbury Land,
Monsters, Laughs, and Furry Friends,
Milk chocolate bars from Cadbury’s,
We’re such a happy band.
You’ll find us now in your sweetshop,
This is Cadbury Land!
Cadbury’s Old Jamaica: 1970s
Don’t ’ee knock it all back at once!
Cadbury’s Picnic: 1970s [later Lion Bar]
Cadbury’s Picnic has so many nutty bits it won’t stand up on its end! Look!
[with Kenny Everett]
Cadbury’s Roses (1): 1958
There’s more to enjoy in Cadbury’s Roses.
Cadbury’s Roses (2): 1964
Roses grow on you!
They say that roses grow on you,
They seem so nice it must be true,
They say that roses grow on you,
Roses grow on you.
Cadbury’s Roses (4): 1979
Say “thank you” with Cadbury’s Roses
Cadbury’s Roses (5): 1982
Thank you very much for the care they needed,
Thank you very much, thank you very, very, very much!
Cadbury’s Roses chocolates with all your favourite centres!
Thank you very much for doing the dishes,
Thank you very much, thank you very, very, very much!
Thank you very much just for being my missis,
Thank you very, very, very — very, very, very, very,
Thank you very, very, very much!
[Tune: “Thank You Very Much” by the Scaffold]
Cadbury’s Rumba: 1973
You’ll succumba to Rumba!
Cadbury’s Snack (1): 1960s
Bridge that gap,
Cadbury’s Snack (2): 1973
It’s Snack time!
Bridge that gap with Cadbury’s Snack Biscuits galore!
One biscuit — two biscuits — three biscuits — four
Five biscuits — six biscuits — biscuits galore!
Cadbury’s Whole Nut (1)
Whole nuts, not crunched or halved
Cadbury’s Whole Nut (2): 1970s
Nuts! Who-o-le Hazelnuts!
Cadbury’s take them and they cover them in chocolate!
[Tune: “The Banana Boat Song”]
Cadbury’s Wispa : 1983 relaunch [now Dairy Milk Bubbly]
(with Hi-de-Hi Stars Ruth Madoc and Simon Cadell)
Ruth: Simon — can I interest you in an amazing new experience?
Simon: Well, that rather depends.
Ruth: It’s called Wispa, and it’s made entirely from milk chocolate, but it tastes very different.
Simon: How odd: I thought that chocolate was just chocolate.
Ruth: Oh no. This is from Cadbury, see. It has this yielding velvety texture to it which can only be described as “indescribable”.
Simon: Absolutely extraordinary. That’s the most pleasurable experience I’ve ever had.
Ruth: I can well believe that….
Voice-over (whispered): Cadbury’s new Wispa. The ultimate chocolate experience. Bite it and believe it!
Chipitos crisps (formerly Wotsits): late 1960s
Tune: Chick, Chick, Chick, Chick, Chicken (Lay a Little Egg for Me)
Chip Chip Chip Chipitos,
Buy another bag for me.
Chip Chip Chip Chipitos,
I’ve seen them on TV.
I haven’t had a bite since lunchtime,
and now it’s nearly three.
Chip Chip Chip chipitos
Buy another bag for me.
Chipsticks: 1976
Young man: Come on, darlin’!
Girl: No!
Young man: You don’t know until you’ve tried it.
Girl: Oh, all right, I’ll try anything once (eats a Chipstick). ’Ere, they’re smashin’ (Young man looks at her cleavage and sighs Yeah). Oh, Chipsticks. They look like chips, don’t they? They’re all crunchy, ain’t they?
Young man: Right. Say when.
Girl: Wait till I’ve finished the Chipsticks.
Smack your chops, lick your lips,
Eat a lovely bag of Chipsticks.
Cornetto (1): 1977
I a taking no chances,
I bring all si-i-x.
Serenader: Si! Now there’s a-neapolitan with a-strawberry and a ….
Just one Cornetto … from Walls ice cream.
[Tune: “O sole mio”]
Oooh, Duncan’s Walnut Whips!
Fox’s Glacier Mints (1)
Fox: Why is there a bear on Fox’s Glacier mints?
Polar bear: There’s a bear on Fox’s Glacier Mints because they’re so clear and cool and minty.
Fox’s Glacier Mints (2): 1983
Clearly minty!
Fry’s Chocolate Cream (1)
Seven pieces of heaven, that’s Fry’s Chocolate Cream,
Seven pieces of heaven, that’s Fry’s Chocolate Cream.
Fry’s Chocolate Cream (2)
I want to be alone, I want to be alone,
Me myself at home sweet home,
Leave the oysters in their bed,
…
Tell the casino that I’ll miss the next game,
I don’t want to dress up, I dont want to dine,
Come up and see me some other time,
I want to be alone with Fry’s Chocolate Cream.
Fry’s Chocolate Cream (3): 1979
Scene: A railway platform. A man is saying ’bye to his lady friend through the train window.
Man: Daphne – here’s something for the journey.
Daphne: Fry’s Chocolate Cream! You remembered!
Man: It will always remind me of you … slim, dark, sophisticated … yet, underneath it all … a soft heart … and a sweetness that will hold me all my life.
Daphne: If only you’d told me before!
[The train doors slam and Daphne is shown seated … reading a magazine. The carriage door opens…]
Man: Can we start all over again?
Voiceover: Fry’s Chocolate Cream … the bittersweet experience!
Fry’s Chocolate Cream (3)
Fry’s Chocolate Cream — make the moment last.
Fry’s Crunchie (1): 1960s
Crunchie makes exciting biting!
Fry’s Crunchie (2): 1969
Crunchie … the taste bomb!
(later changed to “Crunchie … your taste bomb!”)
Fry’s Crunchie (3)
I get a certain feeling
I get it every day
And when I get that feeling
A Crunchie comes my way
It’s that Friday feeling
Thank Crunchie it’s Friday
Get that Friday feeling any day of the week!
Fry’s Crunchie (4): 1976
Bite into a golden Crunchie.
Fry’s Five Boys
(Too early for television advertising? The following newspaper/magazine advert dates from 1902)
Five girls want Five Boys and will have no other.
Fry’s Medley: c.1963
Do yourself a favour — have a Medley …
Chocolate bar with the fruit surprise.
Do yourself a favour — have a Medley!
Real fruit flavour — NEW FROM FRY’s!
Milky chocolate covered — that’s a Medley!
Real fruit too — that’s the fruit surprise!
Do yourself a favour — have a Medley!
Fruity Medley … NEW FROM FRY’s!
Fry’s Turkish Delight: 1957
Fry’s Turkish Delight is a rich red secret —
A rare Eastern essence slowly mingles with smooth milk chocolate —
to give you a long luxuriant taste of the East.
Fry’s Turkish Delight … full of Eastern promise!
[with harem girls]
Fry’s Turkish Delight (2)
Fry’s Turkish Delight, Fry’s Turkish Delight,
From the fabulous east
So full of milk, it almost moos!
Galaxy chocolate (2): 1987
Background music = George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”
A lady (over-elegantly dressed (for the hot climate) swans in and seats herself on a couch, beneath a ceiling fan, and reaches for a bar of Galaxy, slipping off her high heels as she unwraps it
Voiceover: Why have cotton when you can have silk?
After unwrapping and tasting the first piece, the lady drifts off into her own world.
Glees: c.1965
T wo sweets in one!
Golden Wonder crisps (1): c.1969
Golden Wonder — they’re Jungle Fresh…
Golden Wonder — real Jungle Fresh…
When a fellow isn’t feeling very strong
Give a nut a nut….
Look out! People go wild…
Golden Wonder — they’re Jungle Fresh…
Golden Wonder — real Jungle Fresh….
[Tune: The Peanut Vendor]
Golden Wonder are the crispiest crisps!
Golden Wonder crisps (3): 1970
The crisp with the light touch.
Golden Wonder peanuts
Golden Wonder Rock ’n’ Rollers crisps: 1970s
New from Golden Wonder — they’re called Rock ’n Rollers
Betcha gonna like ’em!
There’s a million ways to eat a Wotsit!
Hanky Panky sweet popcorn
Arthur Lowe sitting on a park bench beside a girl:
Would you care for a bit of Hanky Panky?
(SLAP! )
I was only offering you a little nibble!”
( BIG SLAP!)
Harvest Chewy Bars: early 1980s
You’re witnessing a very dangerous experiment.
This man will attempt to eat a cereal bar within earshot of — the squirrels!
Is he barmy?
No, he’s chewing a new Harvest Chewy Bar.
(The squirrels take no notice)
Yes, conclusive proof new moist and chewy Quaker Harvest Chewy Bars are extremely quiet.
Uh-oh!
They’ll be around for ever.
It’s so happy crunching Hula Hoops,
Crisper than a crisp — they’re Hula Hoops,
Hula Hoops, Hula Hoops, Hula Hoops,
Crispy Hula Hoops,
It’s crunchy when you’re munching Hula Hoops.
You should come and stay with Hula Hoops,
New potato rings — they’re Hula Hoops,
Hula Hoops, Hula Hoops, Hula Hoops,
Crispy Hula Hoops,
It’s crunchy when you’re munching Hula Hoops,
So crunchy when you’re munching Hula Hoops.
Ipso
(Small fruit- and mint-flavoured sweets in a boxes with sides like Lego bricks that could be joined together)
Ipso Ipso, Ipso calypso.
So refreshing, lots of flavour …
“Come one, you’ll miss your train!”
Jacob’s Club biscuit (1): 1972
If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit join our club,
If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit join our club,
If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit join our club.
Jacob’s Club — have you ever seen more chocolate on a biscuit?
If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit join our club!
Jacobs Club Biscuits (2): 1980
Scene: A Courtroom
Teddy Boy (taking oath): … nothing but the truth.
Judge : Does the accused usually frequent The Blue Lagoon Gentlemen’s Club?
Teddy Boy and the rest of the courtroom sing to the tune of Barbara Ann:
A Bar-bar-bar, bar-bar-a Club,
A Jacobs Club in my hand, bar-a Club (bar-bar-a Club),
I’ll be munchin’ and a crunchin’, crunchin’ and a munchin’
Bar-a-Club, bar-bar,bar-bar-a Club,
Thick chocolate to excite, thick biscuit to bite,
See a Jacob’s Club….
Voiceover: Jacob’s Club-the biscuit bar, bar none!
Jacob’s Club biscuit (3): 1984
When they’ve gone off the bite at the Angling Club,
And it’s gone all wobbly down the Pottery Club,
If your partner’s waltzed off at the Dancing Club,
They’ve found a club
They really love.
Well, you couldn’t have a biscuit that’s as chocolatey as Club,
Well, you couldn’t have a biscuit that’s as chocolatey as Club,
So come and be a member of the Club Fan Club!
Jacob’s Club biscuit (4)
(With characters from the Wizard of Oz)
Scarecrow: Oh, I wish I had a brain!
Tin-man: I wish I had a heart!
Lion: I wish I had c-c-c- …
Dorothy: Courage?
Lion: No, a c-c Club!
If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit join our Club!
Lion: Jacob’s Club … oh-oh … all that thick chocolate drives me wild!
If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit join our Club!
Kit-Kat (1): 1957
Have a break — Have a Kit Kat!
Kit Kat (2): 1984
(Record deal: a dreadful looking group is singing dreadfully)
Lead singer: This is the best bit …
Record producer: I think we’ll take a break!
Voice-over: Have a break, have a Kit Kat!
Lead singer: What do you think?
Record producer: You can’t sing, you can’t play, you look awful!! … You’ll go a long way!!
KP Good ’n’ Crunchy Crisps: 1984
It’s so good and they’re so crunchy …
And nothing even like it’s ever happened before!
They’re so good — Good ’n’ Crunchy Crisps ….
The salt ’n’ vinegar flavour — that’s the one I adore!
You’ve never crunched a crisp that’s tastier or tasted a crisp that’s crunchier than new KP Good ’n’ Crunchy crisps!
It’s so good ’cos they’re so crunchy and….
… I may like lots of crisps!
I bet you’ll like these lots more!
KP Discos
They’re Discos, They’re Discos,
They’re KP Discos,
They’re different, they’re rounder, won’t you take a look,
They’re Discos, They’re Discos,
They’re KP Discos,
And they taste as different as they look-look-look.
KP Discos taste as different as they look!
KP Nuts: c.1970
I’m dancing at this party,
Lettin’ it all hang out,
I’m looking for some peanuts,
But there’s none about.
I’ve got my Number Ones!
My lucky Number Ones (he’s got KP!).
KP nuts are fresh and tasty — in the bag,
They give you lots of protein — which can’t be bad,
They’re irresistible,
They’re really beautiful (we’re having so much fun!)
With Britain’s Number One (he’s got KP!).
My lucky Number Ones!
KP Wigwams. The light-as-a-crisp, munchy-as-a-biscuit snack.
Lee’s Macaroon Bars: c.1960
Lee’s, Lee’s,
Scores of us beg on our bended knees,
For piccaninnies and grandpapas
It’s Lee’s for luscious macaroon bars!
Logger chocolate bars
Lumberjack: I truly love a Logger!
Girlfriend: What, love one more than me?
Lumberjack: The Logger that I truly love’s got marks on, like a tree!
Lovell’s Milky Lunch
Lovell’s Milky Lunch is lov-er-ly, lov-er-ly
Lovells Milky Lunch is lov-er-ly
Lovell’s Milky Lunch is lov-er-ly, lov-er-ly
Lovell’s Milky Lunch is lov-er-ly!
Lovells toffees
Lovells are lovely, lovely, lovely,
Lovells are lovely!
Lyon’s Maid ice-cream: c.1970
With Lyons Maid, you’re laughing!
Lyon’s Maid Cornish ice-cream
Dairy ice cream, like a dream.
Mackintosh’s Reward Chocolates: 1965
Man puts diamond earrings in one space in a box of Reward chocolates ready for his girlfriend
Man: What are you doing now?
Lady: Thinking.
Mackintosh’s [now Nestle’s] Quality Street (1): c.1971
Quality Street was made for sharing
Mackintosh’s [now Nestle’s] Quality Street (2)
Quality, Quality, Quality Street,
Bang the drum and a great big gun,
All the fun of the share.
Made for sharing, made for sharing,
Bang the drum and a great big gun,
All the fun of the share.
Mackintosh’s [now Nestle’s] Quality Street (3): Christmas 1973
Quality Quality Quality Street — Quality Quality Quality Street
All of the sparkle, all of the flair
All of the fun of the share!
Mackintosh’s Mint Cracknel
[To the tune of Jimmy Crack Corn]
Gimme Mint Cracknel and I don’t care
Gimme Mint Cracknel and I don’t care
Gimme Mint Cracknel and I don’t care …
It’ll chase those blues away!
McVitie’s Taxi
Taxi (honk), follow that taxi (honk, honk),
It’s the bumper bargain biscuit of today.
Taxi (honk), follow that taxi (honk, honk),
There’s much more for the fare that you pay.
Taxi, when you’re feeling snack-si,
It’s got that chocolate satisfaction guaranteed,
It’s the bumper bargain, chocolate-flavoured, coated wafer, crispy biscuit
Snack bar … on four wheels (honk, honk)!
Maltesers (1): Late 1950s
Friend: Chocolates, with a figure like yours to take care of?
Woman: Those aren’t chocolates, they’re Maltesers.
Announcer: Maltesers, the chocolates with the less fattening centres.
Maltesers (2): 1980
When you’re giving the boys a lead there’s nothing more tempting than Maltesers.
“Chocolates!?”
“No! Maltesers!”
Inside that delicious coating of milk chocolate is a light, crisp, honeycomb centre. Together they make a winning combination.
“Chocolates!?”
Maltesers — it’s the honeycomb middle that weighs so little.
Marathon [now renamed Snickers] (1): 1976
With the then unknown Keith Chegwin (just prior to the launch of “Swap Shop”)
Hey! New Marathon’s arrived!
New Marathon?!
New Marathon because now the peanuts are greater roasted for extra peanut taste!
Hey! smashing new peanut taste!
New lighter centre (mmm smooth!) super chocolate, golden caramel, peanuts!
New Marathon! Comes up peanuts slice after slice!
New extra flavour — MARATHON!
Marathon [now renamed Snickers] (2): 1976
(Five people in street — each holding a Marathon bar)
1: Marathon is marvellous! You can eat it in the street, in the office — anywhere!
Marathon is marvellous
2: When I’m really hungry Marathon is just right — it’s absolutely perfect!
3: Fills the old tum you know!
Marathon is marvellous
4: It’s very nutty — very filling!
5: Keeps your hunger at bay.
Marathon is marvellous
[With Bob Monkhouse, Richard Murdoch, Vera Lynn, Petula Clark]
Mars Bar (2): 1965
Life is full of fun if you know how to enjoy it, and a Mars bar helps you to enjoy life even more.
You see Mars gives you energy while you work, nourishes you while you relax, keeps you going while you play.
A Mars a day helps you work rest and play — because glucose and sugar, milk and chocolate are all in Mars!
Yes a Mars a day helps you work rest and play.
Maynard’s Wine Gums (1)
Let the juice loose!
Maynard’s Wine Gums (2)
Hoots mon, there’s juice loose aboot this hoose.
Meltis New Berry Fruits (1): 1957
The only sweet with these lovely fruit liqueur centres.
Meltis New Berry Fruits (2): 1950s/1960s
Pineapple, Gooseberry, Strawberry, …………, ………… [order of fruits not known]
Meltis New Berry Fruits with lovely fruit liqueur centres!
Midland Counties ice cream (1): early 1960s
(A family out for a drive in their Morris Minor convertible)
Daughter: There’s one, Dad!
(Dad stops the car and enters a shop displaying a “Midland Counties ice cream” sign)
Dad: Here’s something for everyone!
Daughter: Raspberry Ripple please, Daddy!
Son: Orange bar for me, Dad!
Mum: Ooh! A choc ice!
Dad: And I’m taking home a family brick for tea!
Mum: We always stop when we see this sign.
All: Mmm — Midland Counties!
Midland Counties ice cream (2): 1966
This morning when you’re out shopping,
Pass the Midland Counties cooler without stopping,
And you’ll hear this muffled appeal:
Liberate a lolly from the Counties cooler today,
Free a frantic ice cream from a Counties cooler today.
Reprieve young Raspberry Ripple,
Aid Big Cake to make his break,
Restore Pop Sticks to the people,
Smoothe young Strawberry Jack’s escape.
Liberate a lolly from the Counties cooler today!
(Lyrics by Mike Isaacson / music by Mike Batt)
Milky Way (1)
The sweet you can eat between meals without spoiling your appetite.
Milky Way (2)
The red car and the blue car had a race
All Red wants to do is stuff his face.
He eats everything he sees
From trucks to prickly trees
But smart old Blue he took the Milky Way.
He’s looking for a chocolate treat – fluffy and light
’Cos he knows it won’t spoil his app-e-tite (mm mm MMMM!).
Oh no! the bridge has gone, poor old Red can’t carry on!
But smart old Blue, he took the Milky Way.
This advert made a comback on E4/satellite in 2009 with a couple of changes. “Smart old Blue” was changed to “Good old Blue”, and “’Cos he knows it won’t spoil his appetite” was changed (post-Trades Description Act) to “’Cos he knows it tastes just right”.
Mint Cracknel: 1973
Chap eating a Mint Cracknel in pouring rain, singing to the tune of “Blue Tail Fly”:
Gimme Mint Cracknel and I don’t care,
Gimme Mint Cracknel and I don’t care,
Gimme Mint Cracknel and I don’t care,
It’ll chase those blues away!
Monster Munch (Smith’s): 1977
This Monster is having his favourite dream —
The one where Monster Munch grows on trees —
Giant trees of course!
There’s one tree for Pickled Onion flavour,
One tree for Saucy flavour,
And one tree for Roast Beef flavour —
Which is all very nice and fun for him —
But not so for his somewhat smaller friends!
However, while he’s enjoying his dream —
Guess who’s enjoying his Monster Munch?
Monster Munch from Smith’s in three flavours
The biggest snack pennies can buy!
Murray Mints (1): 1955
The too good to hurry mints.
Why make haste when you can taste,
The hint of mint in Murray Mints?
Murray Mints, Murray Mints,
The too good to hurry mints.
Treat yourself to Murray Mints — The too good to hurry mints.
Murray Mints (2)
You can never hurry a Murray!
Nestle’s Breakaway
If I eat my sister’s Breakaway she’ll burst my new balloon….
(The balloon pops!).
Well, once you’ve seen one balloon, you’ve seen them all!
Don’t take away my Breakaway!
Nestle’s Dairy Box (1): 1956
With Una Stubbs dancing
My girl is sent by Dairy Box centres!
Nestle’s Dairy Box (2): 1950s
Man (after calling out “Judy” to wake sleeping girl):
Judy’s pretty and Judy’s good,
But little Judy never never could
Resist the chocs in Dairy Box,
So lovely centres in Dairy Box!
Judy:
Fresh butter makes it taste so well,.
Sugar and milk, you’re bound to fall
For just the dreamiest sweet of all.
Man:
Blended in as smooth as silk,
You’ll love the chocs in Dairy Box
With all those lovely centres, centres, centres, centres [fades away]
Nestle’s Dairy Box (2): 1970s
What the world needs now is love, sweet love,
It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.
What the world needs now is love sweet love,
No not just for some but for everyone.
Dairy Box milk chocolates — for everyone.
Nestle’s Milkybar: 1961
The Milky Bar Kid is tough and strong,
The Milky Bar Kid just can’t go wrong,
The Milky Bar Kid only eats what’s right,
That’s Milky Bar, it’s sweet and white,
Nestle’s Milky Bar.
The Milky Bar Kid is strong and tough
And only the best is good enough,
The creamiest milk, the whitest bar,
The goodness that’s in Milky Bar
Nestle’s Milky Bar.
The Milky Bars are on me!
Nestles Secret Chocolate Bar: late 1970s
(Young lady on train eats her Secret … in secret)
I see her face everywhere I go …
Have you seen her?
Opal Fruits [now renamed Starburst]
Want something fresh?
Made to make your mouth water,
Fresh with the tang of citrus,
Four refreshing fruit flavours,
A chewing gum ever had
And it’s kind to your teeth —
And that ain’t bad.
Orbit ice-cream
The big ice-cream on a stick.
Pacers
Voiceover: Now you can enjoy new Pacers — wait till you taste that fresh chewy spearmint. Now striped with peppermint!
Ice-skater: Striped?
Voiceover: Yes, peppermint stripes. Stripes of peppermint in refreshing chewy spearmint that mingle in your mouth to give a new two-mint freshness.
Ice-skater: Stripes?
Voiceover: Enjoy a new kind of freshness — new striped Pacers: peppermint stripes for two-mint freshness.
Pascall sweets: mid-1950s
Children skip down the road, over a stream on a bridge, and into a sweet shop while singing. Someone who took part as young child adds: “It was filmed in the Cotswolds, in the villages of Lower Slaughter, where we ran through the village and over the bridge and Fifield where the shop was filmed. We children were mostly from Lower and Upper Slaughter and we had to run around singing the song while patting our heads and rubbing our stomachs simultaneously”
Pascalls sweets, Pascalls sweets are the best.
Yes the best are the sweets made by Pascalls.
Don’t you wish that you had for yourself,
Those lovely jars upon the shelf.
Pascalls sweets, Pascalls sweets are the best….
Pascall Murray sweets: 1960s
The flavour lingers longer and longer,
Pascall Murray super sweets,
The flavour lingers longer and longer and longer and longer….
Pascall's White Heather chocolates: 1960s
You can't resist – White Heather!
Pendleton’s Twicer ice-cream: 1950s
There was a young girl of Southend
Who had only twopence to spend,
So what could be nicer
Than a Pendleton’s Twicer?
Ice cream — with a lolly each end!
[Recited by Cyril Fletcher]
Rolo. More fun to have around.
Rolo (5): 1980
Do you love anyone enough to give them your last Rolo?
Rowntree’s Aero
Every bubble’s passed its test.
Rowntree’s Black Magic (1): 1950s
[Cartoon of young man and girl in a park]
Voiceover: Wonderful day, wonderful world…. Uh huh, something’s gone wrong with the reception. What magic could be missing to make it really perfect?
Aah, good thing he remembered: Black Magic. Nothing sweetens the atmosphere so quickly as a box of Black Magic chocolates. There’s a certain something about those centres that’s irresistible; so many, so marvellous: liquid cherry for brightening her eyes, montelimar for parting her lips, orange creme to make her heart beat faster, hazel cluster, coffee cream. They are all so, so delicious.
Black Magic chocolates will win anyone’s heart – yours too. Try them soon.
Rowntree’s Black Magic (2): c.1960
Woman: I remember the first time we met.
That old black magic has me in its spell,
That old black magic that you weave so well …
Man: I couldn’t take my eyes off you!
… the same old witchcraft when your eyes met mine.
Man: I knew I had to see you again!
Woman: Black Magic! It was the first thing you ever gave me!
That old black magic called love.
Rowntree’s Black Magic (3)
Who knows the secret of the Black Magic box?
Rowntree’s Cabana: c.1984
Come, mister tally-man, tally me Cabana,
I want a Cabana and I want one now,
Coconut, caramel, cherries and milk chocolate,
I want a Cabana and I want one now!
Cab-a-a-na, Cab-a-a-a-na,
I want a Cabana and I want one now!
[Tune: Banana Boat Song]
Rowntree’s Fruit Gums (1): 1956
Don’t forget my fruit gums, Mum,
I just love those fruit gums, Mum,
Thruppence buys a tube of fruit gums,
Gums that last all day.
Bring me home some fruit gums, Mum,
All my pals love fruit gums, Mum,
Rowntree’s fruit gums last the longest,
That’s why we all say:
They’re smashing! They’re Rowntree’s!
[With a young Dennis Waterman. Later changed to “Don’t forget the fruit gums, chum” to stop mums from being coerced]
Rowntree’s Fruit Gums (2)
Rowntree’s fruit gums,
In your tum, tum, tum!
Rowntree’s Fruit Gums (3)
Rowntree’s Fruit Gums will last as long as the day.
Rowntree’s Fruit Gums (4): 1960s
[A boy wins his race at a school sports day, and his proud father has a flashback of Roger Bannister completing the first four-minute mile. The disheartened losers are given fruit gums, and one by one they break into huge smiles]
It’s the four-minute smile.
The longest lasting fruit gums in the world.
Rowntree’s Fruit Gums (5): mid-1970s
We got plenty of fruit gums,
Raspberry, lemon and lime.
Taste the orange and blackcurrant fruit gums,
’Cause fruit gums last a long, long time.
Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles (1): 1959
[The first ever advert for these sweets. The tubes were priced 3d and the boxes 1/-]
(A young couple enter a sweet shop)
She: Look! Rowntree’s pastilles!
He: Would you like some?
She: Ooo please!
Shopkeeper: Yes, only Rowntree’s know how to get the best out of fruit — that’s why you get the real fruit taste in Rowntree’s pastilles. Soft, juicy … there’s nothing like the taste of fruit in Rowntree’s pastilles!
Voiceover: There are plenty of Rowntree’s pastilles in the shops now — be sure to ask for Rowntree’s pastilles! Yes, now you too can enjoy the best sweets in the world…. Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles!
Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles (2): 1961
(A housewife is tidying the lounge)
Men! They’re all the same … untidy, lazy … especially when it comes to doing something around the house!
(She spots a tube of Rowntree’s pastilles on the mantelshelf, next to a picture of hubby)
Still, Bill’s not so bad really I suppose. You know, it’s funny the things you remember … little things, like these pastilles he brings me — he knows I like them. Sounds a bit silly I suppose — it’s not to me!
Voiceover: Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles with the tingle tongue taste — just a thought!
Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles (3): 1972
(A mother tiptoes downstairs, picks up a tube of Rowntree’s pastilles, and is caught in the act by the children)
Put those pastilles down, ma,
Put those pastilles down,
Pastille pickin’ mama,
Pass those pastilles round!
Mum says she buys fresh, fruity Rowntree’s pastilles for us, but sometimes I’m not so sure!
Pastille pickin’ mama,
Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles (4)
All you can do is chew.
Rowntree’s Lion Bar
Bite it! Crunch it! Chew it!
Rowntree’s Nutty bar: 1970s
Nuts, nuts — lots of nuts! You get them in a Nutty bar!
Rowntree’s Striper
Four times the flavour, four times the chew.
Rowntree’s Tots
Jelly Tots — your favourite sweet,
Candy Tots — made to eat,
And Teddy Tots — all shiny bright,
Tiger tots — liquorice for you to bite.
Four to choose from on the shelf,
Rowntree’s Tots — please yourself!
Rowntree’s Jelly Tots (1): 1973
Sung by Joe Brown
There’s twenty, thirty, forty or more,
Red ones, yellow ones, colours galore
In the Jelly Tots bag.
Rowntree’s Jelly Tots (2): 1970s
Sung as skipping tune
’Cos they’re small and sweet,
Bags I Jelly Tots,
They’re nice and soft to eat.
Bags I Jelly Tots
Jelly Tots, Rowntree’s Jelly Tots.
Rowntree’s Jelly Tots (3)
Rowntree’s Jelly Tots fill small hands,
And the mum who buys them understands
That in small hands they’re nice to eat,
Jelly soft, and jelly sweet.
And there’s 20, 30, 40, or more,
Red ones, yellow ones, colours galore,
In the Jelly Tots bag
To fill small hands.
“I’ve got just one thing to say to you Jenkins …
You get a lovely lot of Savors in a bag!”
Cheese Savors — they’re made with real cheeses.
You get a lovely lot of Savors — crisp cheese Savors —
A lovely lot of Savors in a bag!
Sharp’s Extra Strong Mints: 1978
Two adverts (1) Launderette (starring Sheila Bernette);
(2) Barber’s Shop (starring Andrew Sachs)
They’ve got to be strong to be good.
Sharp’s toffees
Sharp’s the word for toffee
Smarties (1): 1960s
A tube of Smarties means, lots and lots of chocolate beans!
Yes you get lots and lots and lots and lots, of Smarties!
Buy some for Lulu!
When you eat your Smarties
Do you eat the red ones last?
Do you suck them very slowly?
Or crunch them very fast?
Eat that candy-coated chocolate
But tell me when I ask —
When you eat your Smarties
Do you eat the red ones last?
Smarties (3): 1970s
Hey guys! Check this out!
Here’s how every way-cool chocolate Smartie starts its life
They wait, and when they all come out of their candy-coated shells —
Who knows what awesome things they become!
Nestlé Smarties … wotalotigot!
Only Smarties have the answer!
Smith’s Crisps (1)
Farmer (in potato field): These potatoes are for the crisp makers! (He tugs and tugs at the plants) ’Ere — they won’t come up!
Potatoes: We’re too good to be any old crisps!
We wanna be Smi-iths crisps, we wanna be Smi-iths crisps,
We’re not coming until we make you see …
That if we were Smi-ths crisps, if we were Smi-iths crisps,
What tasty, light, and golden crisps we’d be!
Farmer: I’d better phone Smiths!
We wanna be Smi-iths crisps, we wanna be Smi-iths crisps….
Voiceover: Smiths crisps — so good, every potato wants to be one!
[Tune: “I wanna be Bobby’s Girl”]
Smiths Crisps (2): c.1965
See the face you love light up
With Terry’s All Gold.
Terry’s Chocolate Orange (1)
Unpeel a Terry’s Chocolate Orange today!
Tap it and unwrap it!
Terry’s Chocolate Orange (2): late 1970s
(Wife goes out leaving husband indoors — meets neighbour at the gate)
Neighbour: Do you think it’s all right to leave George there on his own?
Wife: Oh yes!
Neighbour: But aren’t you afraid he might find your chocolate orange?!
Wife: No! (chuckles) I think it’s quite safe!
(George opens a revolving bookcase which leads to a secret tunnel. He triggers and escapes from lots of booby-traps before discovering the chocolate orange)
Voiceover: Terry’s Chocolate Orange — smooth chocolate with real oil of orange. How safe is yours?!
Texan bar (1): 1978
A cowboy faces a Mexican firing firing squad.
Mexican soldier: A last request, gringo!
Cowboy: Guess I’ll finish this chewy Texan Bar …por favor.
Bite through that chocolate …and chew … real slow.
Everybody knows a Texan takes time to chew.
Can you you boys come back next week?
Voiceover: Texan – it sure is a mighty chew!
Texan Bar (2): c.1979
Texan Cowboy: Hold on there Bald Eagle. You wouldn’t fire a man ’til he’d finished his Texan bar would you?
Bald Eagle: Whoah!
Texan Cowboy: Bite through the chocolate and chew. Real slow.
(Indians exhaust themselves dancing)
Texan Cowboy: Someone should have told them a Texan takes time a’chewin’
Tic Tac (1)
A man’s gotta chew what a man’s gotta chew….
Toffo (3):
Sheriff to small boy: “If you wanna be my deputy, you gotta think fast.” He produces three flavours of Toffos and puts them on a little table, saying, “Gonna cover ‘em up and switch ‘em round!”, putting cups over the toffees and moving them about on the table and then asking the boy which is which – “Chocolate?" “Banana?" “Strawberry?”
The boy correctly picks them all and the sheriff says, “Are you after my job?”, and the little boy spins round in his chair and says, "Yup!”
Topic (1)
A Topic munching, cartoon character named Toby (voice = Bill Oddie) is asked a few very simple general knowledge questions (voiceover = Graham Garden?) which he gets wrong.
Voiceover: What’s got a hazelnut in every bite?
Toby: Topic!
Voiceover: Yes, funny how you always remember right at the end!
Topic (2)
What has a hazelnut in every bite? — TOPIC
Thick milk chocolate for your delight,
Nougat, caramel golden light,
And don’t forget a hazelnut in every bite.
Trebor Mints (1)
Trebor Mints are a minty bit stronger!
Trebor Mints (2): 1973
Trebor. More flavour than the common mint.
Trebor Softmints: early 1980s
Mr So-oft, won’t you tell me why the world in which you’re living is so strange…
Oh, Mr So-oft, how come everything around you is so soft and rearranged?…
Voiceover: Bite into the shell of a Trebor spearmint Softmint and everything turns chewy and soft! Mmm — they’re crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside!
[Tune: Mr Soft by Cockney Rebel 1974]
Treets [now renamed Minstrels]
The milk chocolate melts in your mouth, not in your hands.
Sealed in a crispy shell.
Trio: early 1980s
Tri-i-i-o, Tri-i-i-i-o, I want a Trio and I want one now!
Not one, not two, but three things in it!
Chocolate, biscuit and de caramel too!
Tri-tri-tri-tr-i-i-i-ii-o
I want a Trio and I want one now!
No three things are quite as good together as the three things in Trio!
[Tune: “Day-O!”, aka “The Banana Boat Song”]
Trio (2): 1985
Scene: An escape by two musicians to the Arctic / the Trio girl arrives by air balloon singing:
Tr-i-o, Tr-i-i-i-o
“Hey man, where does a man have to go to get a little peace?”
Trio girl:
Tr-i-i-o! I want a Trio and I want one now! (ouch!)
Not one, not two, but three things in it!
A chocolaty biscuit and a toffee flavour too!
“Like a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, man!”
Voice-over: No three things are quite as good together as a …
(“TRI-I-I-I-O”)
[Tune: “Day-O!”, aka “The Banana Boat Song”]
Trio (3)
A third advertisement with the same characters ended with the line:
When a duo won’t do-o, have a … TRI-O!
[Tune: “Day-O! “, aka “The Banana Boat Song”]
Tudor Crisps (1970s)
Tudor: the crisp that’s really worth its salt.
Twister
You can’t resist the twist!
Twix (1): 1973
Voiceover with jingly jokey musical background:
Ah! Twix! The three course snack. Chocolate … biscuit … toffee.
Twix (2): 1977
Some people find that most quick snacks are a little too quick —
Snap! and they’re gone!
Twix gives you more to bite into,
Crunchy shortcake biscuit topped with caramel, covered in creamy milk chocolate.
Deliciously satisfying!
Next time, get the longer lasting snack,
Twix — the longer-lasting snack.
It’s all in the mix — Twix!
United biscuit bars
“I am Stan, I am a fan
And I’m delighted to eat United.”
“We are the fellas,
And some things make me cross,
But even I’m delighted
To eat United.”
“We’re all delighted to eat United!”
Wagon Wheels (1)
It’s so big, you’ve gotta grin to get it in!
Wagon Wheels (2)
Wagon Wheels are a treat for me (Wagon Wheels)
They’re the biggest biscuit
You ever did see (Wagon Wheels),
Marshmallow filled, they taste so grand,
A biscuit filled to beat the band.
Walkers Crisps: 1970s
Can you resist Walkers Crisps?
Wall’s ice cream (1)
Stop me and buy one
Wall’s ice cream (2)
More than a treat — a food!
Walls Jolly Jelly ice cream
Wall’s Jolly Jelly,
Wall’s Neapolitan ice cream: 1970s
It’s-a-lovely!
Wall’s Refresher: 1969
Voiceover It may look like a chocolate snack, but when you bite it, you'll know why it's called … the Refresher.
The Refresher: Let's get away on a sunny day: the Refresher
Voiceover: It's chocolate coating around golden vanilla ice cream, and what it does – [image of girl lying on ground].
Our snack is Wall's ice cream snack bar – the Refresher.
White Heather chocolates (Pascall): c.1960
You can’t resist White Heather,
You can’t resist White Heather,
Chocolates and toffees, they’re sensational,
So temptional,
Everybody knows, you can’t resist White Heather.
Wilkinson’s toffees
Wilkinson’s – have you ever tried them?
Wilkinson’s – with liquorice inside them.
Wrigley’s Doublemint chewing gum
Wrigleys Doublemint chewing gum
Double the flavour, double the fun!
Double your pleasure, double your fun,
With Doublemint, Doublemint, Doublemint Gum!
Double delicious, double smooth too,
Doublemint doubles delight as you chew.
So double your pleasure, double your fun
With Doublemint Doublemint Doublemint gum.
Wrigley’s — For a cleaner whiter smile.
Refreshes your breath, naturally Wrigley’s Double Mint!
Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum
Juicy fruit adds to your fun
It’s a hit with everyone.
Fine fruit flavour, what a treat,
Makes your mouth feel fresh and sweet,
Juicy fruit adds to your fun,
Juicy fruit chewing gum.
Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum (1)
Carry the big fresh flavour:
Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum.
Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum (2): c.1970
Almost anything you do,
You do a little better when you chew
Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum.
Voiceover: Try some yourself … and see!
Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum (3): c.1979/80
End of jingle::
Call it Wrigley’s, call it spearmint, call it gum.
Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum (4): 1984
When you need a lift but you just can’t take a break —
chew Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum!
The cool refreshing feeling of Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum
Puts a little lift in everything you do —
That good smooth chewing, that crisp clean taste —
That Wrigley’s Spearmint pick-up is going for you!
Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum really keeps you buzzin’
Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum keeps you buzzin’ along —
Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum really keeps you buzzin’
Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum keeps you buzzin’ along!
Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum (5)
Clap hands, one, two,
Let’s take a trip to the Wrigley zoo,
Chitter chatter, yakety yak,
When you talk to the animals they talk back.
We’ll talk to Melvin Monkey today,
Let’s hear what Melvin has to say:
“My mummy says I should realize
That monkeys all need exercise,
But teeth need exercising too
And my mum makes it fun to do,
For when I swing she gives me some
Delicious WRIGLEY’s SPEARMINT GUM
It helps to keep teeth clean and bright
And never spoils my appetite.
My mum’s my favourite swinging chum,
We both like Wrigley’s spearmint gum.”
Let’s talk to Buster Beaver today,
Lets hear what Buster has to say:
“My teeth have lots of work to do
Like gnawing tree trunks right in two.”
Now please remember this:
There’s always fun at the Wrigley zoo
And Wrigley Spearmint is fun to chew,
Younger folk and grown ups too,
Enjoy it while it’s helping you.
Yorkie (1)
Long and thick, a real chocolate brick.
Yorkie (2)
I’ve pounded the roads from coast to coast,
Yorkie and me rolling on —
’Cos a long day’s run can be short on fun
Without Yorkie to help me along.
Good, rich and thick, a milk chocolate brick
— each bite a chunky big mouthful,
Yorkie’s the shape that real milk chocolate ought to be …
So when I still that big old mill there’s plenty more in store for me …
From that chunky bar of mine.
Rowntree’s Yorkie chunky milk chocolate.
YZ Chewing Gum
This gum (with a wise owl on the packet) was sold from a machine and a free packet was given every fourth time, when the arrow on the knob pointed forward.
Buy some YZ Chewing Gum,
Smashing you’ll agree,
With the fourth you get one more,
An extra packet free!
5—4—3—2—1, 5—4—3—2—1
First bite into real milk chocolate, 5—4—3—2—1
Then crunch into light crispy rice, 5—4—3—2—1
Chew, chew, chew the caramel topping, 5—4—3—2—1
Uh huh — wafer and fondant too, 5—4—3—2—1
5—4—3—2—1, 5—4—3—2—1.
[Tune: Manfred Mann’s “54321”]
Notes
Bassett’s took over Wilkinson’s in 1961, Barrett’s in 1966, and Jameson’s in the 1980s.
Cadbury’s took over Fry’s in 1916, and both Trebor and Bassett’s in 1989 (calling the latter Trebor Bassett).
Rowntree took over Mackintosh’s in 1969.
Nestle’s took over Rowntree Mackintosh in 1988.
In the 1960s, “Nestle’s” did not have an acute accent. It rhymed with “wrestles”, and was never pronounced “Nestlé”. And “Cadbury” was always known as “Cadbury’s”.
Kraft took over Terry’s in 1993, and Cadbury in 2010.
Barrett’s Sherbert Fountain
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Which element-atomic number 14-is the second most abundant element in the earth's crust? | Chemistry Per#2
Chemistry Per#2
Silicon:�
����������� Silicon with an atomic number of 14 is an element with an atomic weight of 28.086.� Silicon is also the second most abundant element, making up 25.7% of the earths crust and is found mostly in minerals and alongside other compounds such as rock crystal, asbestos, clay and Jasper. Silicon is also found in large quantities on the sun. In its pure form silicon looks like just a dark grey semi metallic blob of jelly and it can also be found in the form of foil similar to tin foil.� www.webelements.com
Silicon was discovered in 1842 by a Swedish scientist named J�ns Jacob Berzelius. Silicon is an important ingredient in the production of things such as cells for solar powered machines and various electronic devices.� It is also found in the sand particles that make up glass. However the most important use would have to be use in computer chips which are an all too common device in our day and age.� Lastly for the amusement of my fellow classmates it is also used in the production of bodily implants that I won�t mention.� www.webelements.com
| Silicon |
What is the medical name for the lower jaw? | The Eight Most Abundant Elements in the Earth's Crust | Sciencing
The Eight Most Abundant Elements in the Earth's Crust
By Doug Donald
Scott Rothstein/iStock/Getty Images
Elements are the simplest form of matter. They are substances made from one type of atom that cannot be broken down or separated into a simpler form. All other matter is made from compounds or combinations of these fundamental substances. An example is water, a compound of oxygen and hydrogen. The outermost surface of Earth is called the crust. The Earth's crust contains some elements in abundance and only trace amounts of others.
Oxygen (O)
Keith Brofsky/Digital Vision/Getty Images
Oxygen is by far the most abundant element in the earth's crust. Scientists estimate oxygen comprises nearly half of the mass of the crust. It also accounts for 21 percent of Earth's atmosphere. Oxygen is a highly reactive element capable of combining with most other elements. For example, oxygen and iron (Fe) form various compounds we know as iron ore.
Silicon (Si)
Ingram Publishing/Ingram Publishing/Getty Images
As the second most abundant element in the Earth's crust, silicon accounts for over 28 percent of its mass. Combined with oxygen, silicon dioxide is the most common compound in the crust. Most people know silicon dioxide as common sand, but it can also take the form of quartz and other crystalline rocks. Silicon is also an essential material in the manufacture of electronics and computer chips.
Aluminum (Al)
wavebreakmedia/iStock/Getty Images
Aluminum is the third most common element in the Earth's crust. Aluminum is the crust's most abundant metal, but all the earth's aluminum has combined with other elements to form compounds, so it is never found free in nature. Aluminum oxide is a common aluminum compound. Aluminum and aluminum alloys have a variety of uses from kitchen utensils to aircraft manufacturing.
Iron (Fe)
Keith Brofsky/Photodisc/Getty Images
Iron is one of the most common and cheapest of all metals and accounts for over 5 percent of the Earth's crust, making it fourth on the list of abundant elements. Iron combined with carbon makes steel. There is archaeological evidence that humans have used iron for thousands of years.
Calcium (Ca)
kyoshino/iStock/Getty Images
Calcium is the fifth most abundant element in the Earth's crust. Calcium makes up over 4 percent of the crust.. Calcium is another reactive element that is not found free in nature because it readily forms compounds with oxygen and water. Manufacturers use calcium compounds in many applications including gypsum board (drywall), chalk and toothpaste.
Sodium (Na)
Benjamin Miner/iStock/Getty Images
Sodium may be best known as part of the compound that makes table salt, or sodium chloride, but it also composes over 2 percent of the Earth's crust, making it the sixth most abundant element. Sodium is never found free in nature due to its high reactivity. It is an ingredient in many useful compounds such as baking soda, caustic soda, and borax. Sodium lamps produce a bright yellow-orange light and are widely used to light roads and parking lots.
Magnesium (Mg)
StockTrek/Purestock/Getty Images
Magnesium makes up over 2 percent of the Earth's crust. In nature, magnesium is found in compounds with other elements. It is never found free. Magnesium has many applications in industry and the home. It is the essential ingredient of Epsom salts and is also used as an antacid and laxative. Magnesium-aluminum alloy is used in the construction of aircraft and other applications where strong, light metals are required.
Potassium (K)
Valentyn Volkov/iStock/Getty Images
About 2 percent of the Earth's crust is composed of potassium. This extremely reactive element is never found free in nature. Potassium forms many useful compounds that are used in the manufacture of fertilizer, soaps, detergent and some types of glass.
References
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Which London museum occupies part of the old Bethlehem Royal Hospital? | The Imperial War Museum, London (previously the Royal Bethlehem Hospital, or "Bedlam"), additions by Sydney Smirke
(Previously the Royal Bethlehem Hospital, or "Bedlam")
James Lewis, 1815
Important additions by Sydney Smirke, 1835-1846.
Lambeth Road, London
Photograph and text 2008 by Jacqueline Banerjee
[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
The original building on this site was designed by James Lewis, the hospital surveyor for the old Bethlehem Royal Hospital at Moorfields. However, his design was based on prize-winning plans submitted by other architects, the best of which were by John Gandy (later known as John Deering). The asylum was completed in 1815, but soon proved inadequate. After the initial transfer of 122 patients, blocks were added in the very next year for the criminally insane. The building was greatly enlarged by Sydney Smirke from 1835 onwards. Smirke provided wings on either side (since demolished) and galleried blocks at the rear; he also enlarged the original low cupola into a tall copper-covered dome, mainly, it seems, to help extend the space in the chapel beneath it. Smirke is sometimes said to have added the imposing portico as well (e.g., see Weinreb and Hibbert, 62); but Gandy had proposed a "pediment supported by six Doric columns" (Darlington): it is the type of structure to be seen at University College London , for which he also submitted plans, and on which he worked with William Wilkins. The portico can be seen on Thomas Shepherd's steel engraving of the Royal Bethlehem Hospital in 1828, long before Smirke started work on the building.
Sadly, A.W. N. Pugin, who designed St George's Roman Catholic Cathedral diagonally opposite the hospital building, was confined here for a while in 1852 — though he was later moved, and died at home in Ramsgate later that year.
In Ida Darlington's chapter on this building, the tall dome is criticised; but it is a familiar landmark in this part of London. The chapter concludes with a brief history of the building's later use:
The central portion of the front, with the dome looking disproportionately high above it, and the rear galleries were leased to the Commissioners of Works to house the Imperial War Museum. The building, which was opened to the public in 1936, was damaged considerably by bombs in 1940, 1941, and 1944, but by 1946 was sufficiently repaired for the museum to be re-opened. It is perhaps appropriate that a building occupied for so many years by men and women of unsound mind should now be used to house exhibits of that major insanity of our own time, war.
Sadly again, the comment on the building's appropriateness for its present purpose is still timely.
Note
| Imperial War Museum |
Who was the last World Heavyweight Boxing champion born in Great Britain? | Bedlam | hospital, Beckenham, England, United Kingdom | Britannica.com
hospital, Beckenham, England, United Kingdom
Written By:
Alternative Titles: Bethlehem Royal Hospital, Priory of St. Mary of Bethlehem
Related Topics
London 1970s overview
Bedlam, byname of Bethlem Royal Hospital , the first asylum for the mentally ill in England . It is currently located in Beckenham, Kent . The word bedlam came to be used generically for all psychiatric hospitals and sometimes is used colloquially for an uproar.
In 1247 the asylum was founded at Bishopsgate, just outside the London wall, by Simon FitzMary, former sheriff of London; it was then known as the Priory of St. Mary of Bethlehem (from which sprang the variant spellings Bedlam and Bethlem). Bedlam was mentioned as a hospital in 1329, and some permanent patients were accommodated there by 1403. In 1547 it was granted by Henry VIII to the City of London as a hospital for the mentally ill. It subsequently became infamous for the brutal ill treatment meted out to its patients. In the 17th and 18th centuries Bedlam was open to fee-paying spectators, but this disruptive practice was ended in 1770. The hospital was moved in 1675–76 to Moorfields (just north of the ancient London wall at Moorgate), in 1815 to St. George’s Fields (now in Southwark ), and in 1930 to Monks Orchard, Beckenham. Now a part of the National Health Service , it is linked administratively with the Maudsley Hospital. Since 1936 the old hospital building in Southwark has been the site of the Imperial War Museum .
Learn More in these related articles:
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Which country is the world's largest producer of silver? | Production of silver in the world in ounces and by producer countries, Mexico, Peru.
pdf
The production of silver mines in the world is complex to study because of the variety and the number of countries where the silver mines (on 5 continents, more than 30 countries). The pure silver producers are few, in fact there are a variety of metallogeny deposits (¾ in mine production of silver is under product of zinc, lead, copper, or gold ) in fact little income for the producers of silver ( the weak price of the silver often do of them one returned secondary compared to other metals). There is a demand for both industrial (manufacturing, photography and jewelry) and fiduciary (coins, medals and storage). World production of silver is a kind of super giant puzzle that we must rebuild their eyes closed. World production of silver experience a regular development since the Second World War from 4000 to 20000 tonnes of silver produced worldwide. The average growth of the production silver in the world was 1.5% per annum for more than a century. World production of silver has to increase by 10 millions ounces of silver annually to continue to answer the growth of the request.
Let us see how the worldwide production of silver set out again between the countries.
I.Five largest producers’ countries of silver in the world
In 2006, the first 5 silver producing countries produce 60% of world production of silver.
- Peru (111.6 million ounces of silver)
- Mexico (96.4 million ounces of silver)
- China (75.4 million ounces of silver)
- Australia (55.6 million ounces of silver)
- Chile (51.5 million ounces of silver)
Mexico and Peru are very old silver’s country (since 1500), and their silver’s production remains among the top five nations of silver for decades, even centuries.
In 1935 only Mexico and Peru are already part of the top five silver-producing nations. Peru and Mexico are still now on their own 1 / 3 of the world's silver production.
China is a special case, large producing and consuming silver for centuries, the production of silver tends to enter the country rather than out, for example, the Mexico already exported some silver to China at the time of the conquistadors. Chinese production of silver is very difficult to identify, it is very hard to know the exact statistics of this production. The situation of Australia and Poland is close because for the two countries a majority of the production is handled by a single mine.
II. Decline of the American northern production
The USA and Canada were major producers of the production silver in the world since the gold rush of the nineteenth century, but their production is a inexorable decline for 40 years. The USA and Canada were first and second silver producers in the world in 1960. The production of a USA Today declined by 18% since 1960 to go from first to 8th largest in the world (-41% since 1998). Production of Canada has dropped by 30% since 1960, it passed from the second rank to the ninth rank world (less 21.1% since 1998). Canada and the USA have silver’s production that inexorably decline due to the depletion of deposits actively exploited for 150 years.
III. Growth and decline of the production of silver per country since 1998
World silver’s production has stagnated from 2005 to 2006, according to sources the exact figures vary slightly. The countries where the production of silver increases in 2006 compared with their average production from 1998 to 2006 are Peru (8.7%), Mexico (+4.5%), Chile (+14.4%), Poland (+3.4%) and Bolivia (+9.5%).
All the other producing countries have a silver production stagnating or declining relative to their average production since 1998. Among these silver producers are China, Australia, the USA, Canada, Kazakhstan, Russia, Sweden, Morocco, Indonesia, Uzbekistan, Brazil, South Africa, North Korea, Japan and Spain.
Overall, the production of silver countries located between the 11th and the 20th largest global producer countries silver has fallen by 22.6% since 1998.
The trend is an increase in the production of major silver producer and a decrease in production silver for small producers silver.
pdf
To conclude on the situation of the production silver in the world, the largest producing countries save silver growth of world production silver for a few years. The first five silver producing countries in the world produce more and compensate for fewer reductions in production silver from smaller countries.
The Peru and Mexico are the two pillars of world production of silver. Mexico and Peru are for the silver that South Africa is to gold and Saudi Arabia in oil.
My feeling is that each year the production of silver mines has become increasingly difficult to monitor the rising demand. The Peru and Mexico are the savers of the growth of silver in world, without them production silver in the world would stagnate since 1998. Production of mines for a lot of years is 1 / 3 less than the demand. With the disappearance of hedging, the sale of governments and recycling, difficulties in bridging the "gap" of more than 250 million ounces missing every year between the production of mines and consumers are growing. Then imagine if production drops… Just follow the production of Mexico and Peru to find out what makes the world's silver production. In 2007, production increased by only 0.6% in Peru while its average since 1998 is a growth of 7.2% per annum. Mexico prevented that it will regain its place of producing first of silver in the world in 2007, which want to say that the production of silver of Mexico increased at least by 17%, which should compensate for the stagnation of Peru for 2007. Shall Peru and Mexico still save silver’s production in 2008? This year promises to be exciting, as well as to oil and gold so do not forget to follow the price of silver in 2008.
Dr Thomas Chaize
| Mexico |
Which pop singer played the part of 'Pauline Mole' in 'The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole'? | World top 20 silver producers – countries and companies - Mineweb
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World top 20 silver producers – countries and companies
Mexico comfortably retained the World No. 1 producer slot for silver in 2013, while that country’s Fresnillo moved into the top spot among silver miners.
Lawrence Williams / 15 May 2014 12:46
Only just over a week ago we published a listing of the World top 10 gold producers – countries and companies as researched by consultancy Metals Focus – and this week we are going one better with Silver with a listing of the Top 20 silver producing countries and companies as researched by Thomson Reuters GFMS, and published in its latest annual silver study for the Silver Institute in the U.S. GFMS reported that global silver production and demand were both at all time highs in 2013, with demand exceeding supply by over 260 million ounces.
See: World silver demand hits record 1.08bn ounces in 2013—Silver Institute
Mexico remains top of the tree among silver producing nations, while Peru is reported to have moved above China into second place, but by the smallest of margins. Further down the listing, Bolivia and Chile in 6th and 7th places both overtook Poland which is now in 8th place. Guatemala also moved up two places in 15th place with Morocco and Turkey falling back to 16th and 17th respectively. New entrants in the Top 20 this year were Armenia and Papua New Guinea. The full Top 20 table for production by country appears below:
Top 20 Silver Producing Countries – 2013
2013 Rank
+3.4%
Source: GFMS, Thomson Reuters
In the companies table Fresnillo moved to world No. 1 in 2013 as Poland’s KGHM Polska Miedsz fell back to third and BHP Billiton, although it remained in second place, saw production fall 3.6%. Notable among the silver miners were First Majestic with a 27.7% rise in production with production set to grow even further this year, and Hecla with a 39.1% production increase as its big Lucky Friday mine came back on stream for almost the full year. Guidance suggests further output growth this year too.
Top 20 Silver Producing Companies – 2013
2013 Rank
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Which 'palace' is located in Muswell Hill, London? | National Hotel, Alexandra Palace is located in Muswell Hill
Transport Links
Located in the heart of Muswell Hill the hotel is just off the bustling Muswell Hill Broadway, consisting of a range of bars, restaurants and boutique shops. There are many local attractions including Alexandra Palace, Mountview Academy, Kenwood House, as well trendy spots Hampstead Heath, Camden Town and Crouch End.
Brent Cross Shopping Centre, Wembley Arena and Emirates football stadium are only 15 minutes away, with Central London , West End Theatres and Westfield Shopping Mall less than 30 minutes away. Tower Bridge/Tower of London, The London Eye ,Leicester Square and Piccadilly Circus are easily accessible by London Underground.
London Underground Nearest tube stations are East Finchley and Highgate, 15 minutes direct to Euston and Kings Cross, Bounds Green and Finsbury Park are accessible by bus links.
© GlobalHDS.com / Opusden.com 2017
| Alexandra Palace |
What is the name of the Spanish National Lottery? | Raglan Hotel - Welcome to the Raglan Hotel, 3 star boutique hotel in Muswell Hill, North London
Sorry, we're fully booked tonight
Welcome to the Raglan Hotel!
Soak up the cosy village atmosphere the area surrounding this North London hotel. The Raglan Hotel is situated in one of the city's most stylish districts, Muswell Hill.
The boutique Raglan Hotel is focused on both the needs of corporate guests and leisure visitors to London. The warm welcome you receive here will make you feel at home in its fashionable, contemporary surroundings.
The 47 guest rooms, all of which are non-smoking, feature many conveniences to add to your comfort while staying at the Raglan. A number of the bedrooms are situated on the ground floor as the classic design of the building means there is no elevator.
Begin your day with a continental, vegetarian or hearty, full English breakfast in the fresh, uplifting surroundings of the hotel's breakfast room. Take your time over your morning coffee as you plan your day ahead exploring London.
The Raglan Hotel's corporate facilities are excellent and suited to a variety of events. The hotel's large Garden Suite is located on the ground floor and opens out onto the attractive Japanese Gardens. The room can be divided into 2 smaller suites for board meetings or interviews.
Muswell Hill is known as one of the most pleasant areas of London. Located nearby, you will find charming places to visit such as Hampstead Heath, Kenwood House and the stately Alexandra Palace. Shoppers will love the Raglan's close proximity to Brent Cross Shopping Centre while sports enthusiasts can enjoy easy access to Muswell Hill Golf Club and the football grounds of Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspurs.
When staying at the Raglan Hotel, the friendly, multilingual staff are available 24 hours a day to ensure your stay is comfortable and pleasant. Whether you require restaurant or theatre reservations, an airport transfer, local information or simply directions to the nearest tube station, the helpful team at the Raglan Hotel are at your service.
Raglan Hotel, 8-12 Queens Ave, Muswell Hill, London, N10 3NR, United Kingdom | Contact Us
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What is the medical namefor hives, or nettle rash? | Urticaria (hives) - NHS Choices
Urticaria (hives)
Nettle-rash Treatment
Introduction
Urticaria – also known as hives, weals, welts or nettle rash – is a raised, itchy rash that appears on the skin. It may appear on one part of the body or be spread across large areas.
The rash is usually very itchy and ranges in size from a few millimetres to the size of a hand.
Although the affected area may change in appearance within 24 hours, the rash usually settles within a few days.
Doctors may refer to urticaria as either:
acute urticaria – if the rash clears completely within six weeks
chronic urticaria – in rarer cases, where the rash persists or comes and goes for more than six weeks, often over many years
A much rarer type of urticaria, known as urticaria vasculitis, can cause blood vessels inside the skin to become inflamed. In these cases, the weals last longer than 24 hours, are more painful, and can leave a bruise.
When to seek medical advice
Visit your GP if your symptoms don't go away within 48 hours.
You should also contact your GP if your symptoms are:
severe
occurring alongside other symptoms
Who's affected by urticaria?
Acute urticaria (also known as short-term urticaria) is a common condition, estimated to affect around one in five people at some point in their lives.
Children are often affected by the condition, as well as women aged 30 to 60, and people with a history of allergies .
Chronic urticaria (also known as long-term urticaria) is much less common, affecting up to five in every 1,000 people in England.
What causes urticaria?
Urticaria occurs when a trigger causes high levels of histamine and other chemical messengers to be released in the skin.
These substances cause the blood vessels in the affected area of skin to open up (often resulting in redness or pinkness) and become leaky. This extra fluid in the tissues causes swelling and itchiness.
Histamine is released for many reasons, including:
Read more about the causes of urticaria .
Diagnosing urticaria
Your GP will usually be able to diagnose urticaria by examining the rash. They may also ask you questions to find out what triggered your symptoms.
If your GP thinks that it's caused by an allergic reaction, you may be referred to an allergy clinic for an allergy test . However, if you've had urticaria most days for more than six weeks, it's unlikely to be the result of an allergy.
You may also be referred for a number of tests, including a full blood count (FBC) , to find out whether there's an underlying cause of your symptoms.
Read more about diagnosing urticaria .
Treating urticaria
In many cases, treatment isn't needed for urticaria, because the rash often gets better within a few days.
If the itchiness is causing you discomfort, antihistamines can help. Antihistamines are available over the counter at pharmacies – speak to your pharmacist for advice.
A short course of steroid tablets (oral corticosteroids ) may occasionally be needed for more severe cases of urticaria.
If you have persistent urticaria, you may be referred to a skin specialist (dermatologist). Treatment usually involves medication to relieve the symptoms, while identifying and avoiding potential triggers.
Read about treating urticaria .
Complications of urticaria
Around a quarter of people with acute urticaria and half of people with chronic urticaria also develop angioedema, which is a deeper swelling of tissues.
Chronic urticaria can also be upsetting and negatively impact a person's mood and quality of life.
Angioedema
Angioedema is swelling in the deeper layers of a person's skin. It's often severe and is caused by a build-up of fluid. The symptoms of angioedema can affect any part of the body, but usually affect the:
eyes
| Urticaria |
In America, which 'UP' is the largest freight railroad company? | Definition of Hives
Our Hives (Urticaria & Angioedema) Main Article provides a comprehensive look at the who, what, when and how of Hives (Urticaria & Angioedema)
Definition of Hives
Nasal Allergy Relief Products Slideshow
Hives: A raised, itchy area of skin that may be a sign of an allergic reaction. It can be rounded or flat-topped but is always elevated above the surrounding skin. It reflects circumscribed dermal edema (local swelling of the skin). The hives are usually well circumscribed but may be coalescent and will blanch with pressure. A single spot is almost always gone by 24 hours but the process may stay for weeks to months. Approximately 20% of the population has experienced a bout of hives.
The hives are also called urticaria.
Last Editorial Review: 5/13/2016
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Which 1954 film starring Ava Gardner and Humphrey Bogart, was about a Spanish dancer who becomes a Hollywood film star? | The Barefoot Contessa Original Movie Poster, Linen Backed - 1954
The Barefoot Contessa Original Movie Poster, Linen Backed - 1954
The Barefoot Contessa Original Movie Poster, Linen Backed - 1954
For further information or concierge service regarding this rare item, please call (844) 452-1715 .
$1,250.00
AVAILABLE FOR INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING ORDER HERE
This original one-sheet movie poster measures 27" x 41" and features a classic image of the beautiful Ava Gardner in a dress alongside the image of Humphrey Bogart's face. The studio that filmed the movie was actually ready to release the movie’s poster without the image of Bogie, which would have been a breach in his contract. As a result, the large drawing of his face was later added on to correct the situation.
This poster can be considered to be in a virtually mint condition. It has been professionally linen backed to 30” x 44” in order to preserve its condition. There are no rips, tears or major defects. Learn More
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Description
“The Barefoot Contessa” is a 1954 drama film starring two legends of American cinema, Humphrey Bogart and Ava Gardner. The movie, directed by Academy Award-winning director Joseph L. Mankiewicz also featured actors Edmond O’Brien, Marius Goring, Valentina Cortesa and Warren Stevens.
In the movie, Bogart plays a director who is looking for something to save his career when he discovers a dancer in Madrid played by Ava Gardner. She becomes a star in his next movie and is then courted by numerous men vying for her hand in marriage. “The Barefoot Contessa” is one of the most glamorous films from the Golden Age of Hollywood as it was filmed in numerous locations in Italy. It was well received by critics who praised the movie for its extravagance and it even led to Edmond O’Brien winning the Academy Award in 1954 for Best Supporting Actor.
This original one-sheet movie poster measures 27" x 41" and features a classic image of the beautiful Ava Gardner in a dress alongside the image of Bogie’s face. The studio that filmed the movie was actually ready to release the movie’s poster without the image of Bogart, which would have been a breach in his contract. As a result, the large drawing of his face was later added on to correct the situation.
This poster can be considered to be in a virtually mint condition. It has been professionally linen backed to 30” x 44” in order to preserve its condition. There are no rips, tears or major defects.
Comes with a certificate of authenticity from Brigandi Coins & Collectibles of New York, a leader in collectibles since 1959. Ships within 2 business days.
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| The Barefoot Contessa |
Which singing partnership appeared together in the television series 'Soldier, Soldier'? | Barefoot Contessa, The -- (Movie Clip) Nobody Can Teach You
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Barefoot Contessa, The -- (Movie Clip) Nobody Can Teach You
The first appearance by Maria (Ava Gardner) whom Harry (Humphrey Bogart), sent by his masters, finds in fact shoeless, back stage, where they talk about Hollywood, in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's The Barefoot Contessa, 1954.
View the TCMDb entry for The Barefoot Contessa (1954)
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Barefoot Contessa, The -- (Movie Clip) Nobody Can...
The first appearance by Maria (Ava Gardner) whom Harry...
Barefoot Contessa, The -- (Movie Clip) Nobody Can Teach You
The first appearance by Maria (Ava Gardner) whom Harry (Humphrey Bogart), sent by his masters, finds in fact shoeless, back stage, where they talk about Hollywood, in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's The Barefoot Contessa, 1954.>
Barefoot Contessa, The -- (Movie Clip) You Cannot...
Movie star Maria (Ava Gardner), unhappy at a cafe society...
Barefoot Contessa, The -- (Movie Clip) You Cannot Rent A Prince
Movie star Maria (Ava Gardner), unhappy at a cafe society party, summons Harry (Humphrey Bogart) to complain about her needs, in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's The Barefoot Contessa, 1954.>
Barefoot Contessa, The -- (Movie Clip) We Came To...
The nightclub in Madrid, in which writer-director Joseph L....
Barefoot Contessa, The -- (Movie Clip) We Came To Madrid
The nightclub in Madrid, in which writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz refuses to show "Maria" (Ava Gardner), features Enzo Staiola (from "The Bicycle Thief") then resumes Harry (Humphrey Bogart) in narration, from The Barefoot Contessa, 1954.>
Barefoot Contessa, The -- (Movie Clip) Two Dozen...
Back at the funeral, Dawes (Humphrey Bogart) standing by,...
Barefoot Contessa, The -- (Movie Clip) Two Dozen Nobodies
Back at the funeral, Dawes (Humphrey Bogart) standing by, narration by Oscar (Edmond O'Brien) begins, covering the launch of Maria (Ava Gardner) on the world stage, in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's The Barefoot Contessa, 1954.>
Barefoot Contessa, The -- (Movie Clip) Open,...
The distinctive opening of writer-director Joseph L....
Barefoot Contessa, The -- (Movie Clip) Open, Maria's Funeral
The distinctive opening of writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz's The Barefoot Contessa, 1954, starring Ava Gardner, and the initial narration by Humphrey Bogart, as writer-director "Harry Dawes." >
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Lee Marvin had a number one hit record with 'Wanderin' Star' in 1970, but which actor had a minor hit with the flipside - 'I Talk To The Trees'? | Gravybread's Movie Top 10s
Gravybread's Movie Top 10s
Film Top 10 Lists:
1853 - 2003
The movie on TV was "A High Wind in Jamaica." Sea adventure, kids kidnapped by pirates, great dramatic gravitas, adolescent stirrings. I was 9.
My eyes beheld the color TV in grandma’s apartment on a Saturday afternoon. Channel 11. Anthony Quinn was the main pirate, and I thought he was great; I didn’t yet know who Quinn was, but I didn’t care, because on the screen was a 10-year-old actress, Deborah Baxter, dominating the film and my heart. My love affair with cinema had begun.
(For the rest of the rambling essay, go to: By way of intro... )
In a nutshell: This is a listing of my favorite films out of the approximately 10,000 that I've seen over the past 30 - 40 years. It is year by year and in chronological order. Please understand, this list is not a "best films" listing --that would look very different; and I have that list stored elsewhere. These are my personal top 10s and runners up with notations on other films viewed or ones still to see. Essentially these are the films that gave me the most pleasure or which I admired the most. Also note that this is not a listing of every film I've ever seen; that would require more space or time than feasible. That is why I include a parenthetical number of films viewed next to each year. This is a work in progress, in more ways than one.
* indicates a favorite of the early cinema
LATEST ADDITIONS (Feb. 2010 / includes films relegated to “for the record” status): Mr. and Mrs. Bridge (1990/Paul Newman); Border Radio (1987/Allison Anders, et. al.); Kill! (Kiru) (1968/Kihachi Okamoto)
RECENT ADDITIONS (Jan. 2010 / includes films relegated to “for the record” status): Melo (1986/Alain Resnais); Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973/Sam Peckinpah); Ten (2002/Abbas Kiarostami); Harper (1966/Jack Smight); The Cool World (1964/Shirley Clarke); Skullduggery Part II (1961/Stan VanDerBeek); Science Friction (1959/Stan VanDerBeek); Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer (1992/Nick Broomfield); Castro Street (1966/Bruce Baillie); Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970/Russ Meyer); Ringu (1998/Hideo Nakata); The Stranger's Return (1933/King Vidor); Girls About Town (1931/George Cukor); Report (1967/Bruce Conner); Joy of Living (1938/Tay Garnett); Madigan (1968/Don Siegel); Strange Interlude (1932/Robert Z. Leonard); It Should Happen to You (1954/George Cukor); Ko-Ko's Earth Control (1928/Dave Fleischer); Spiegel van Holland (Mirror of Holland) (1950/Bert Haanstra); Unaccustomed As We Are (1929/Lewis R. Foster, Hal Roach) (& several more Laurel & Hardy shorts); Pretty Poison (1968/Noel Black; second viewing; placement unchanged); Ivan the Terrible, Part II (1946/1958/Sergei Eisenstein); Fat Man and Little Boy (1989/Roland Joffe); The Bishop's Wife (1947/Henry Koster; second viewing); The Amazing Quest of Ernest Bliss (1936/Alfred Zeisler); Ben-Hur (1907/Sidney Olcott); Vanity Fair (2004/Mira Nair); Face/Off (1997/John Woo); Any Given Sunday (1999/Oliver Stone); I Was a Male War Bride (1949/Howard Hawks; second viewing); 6/64: Mama und Papa (Materialaktion Otto Mühl) (1964/Kurt Kren); Deseret (1995/James Benning); Meet the Parents (2000/Jay Roach); Chaos (1999/Hideo Nakata); Escape from New York (1981/John Carpenter); City for Conquest (1940/Anatole Litvak)
RECENT ADDITIONS (Dec. 2009 / includes films relegated to “for the record” status): Outrage (1950/Ida Lupino); Beyond the Forest (1949/King Vidor); Berlin Express (Jacques Tourneur); The Corn is Green (1945/Irving Rapper); Midnight Mary (1933/William Wellman); Possession (1981/Andrzej Zulawski); Angel (1982/Neil Jordan); Robin and Marian (1976/Richard Lester); Public Housing (1997/Frederick Wiseman); The Mayor of Hell (1933/Archie Mayo); The Constant Nymph (1943/Edmund Goulding); Christiane F. (1981/Uli Edel); The Hard Way (1943/Vincent Sherman); The Beach (2000/Danny Boyle); My Name is Julia Ross (1945/Joseph H. Lewis); Madonna: Truth or Dare (1991/Alek Keshishian, Mark Aldo Miceli); Bunny Lake is Missing (1965/Otto Preminger); A nos amours (1983/Maurice Pialat); Christopher Strong (1933/Dorothy Arzner); Penguin Pool Murder (1932/George Archainbaud); Casino Royale (2006/Martin Campbell); Kinsey (2004/Bill Condon); Boxing Helena (1993/Jennifer Chambers Lynch); Calle 54 (2000/Fernando Trueba); Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997/Werner Herzog); Une si jolie petite plage (Riptide) (1949/Yves Allégret); Russian Ark (2002/Aleksandr Sokurov); Fast Food Nation (2006/Richard Linklater); The Major and the Minor (1942/Billy Wilder; second viewing); Standing in the Shadows of Motown (2002/Paul Justman); Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960/Karel Reisz); Princess Mononoke (1997/Hayao Miyazaki); Steel Magnolias (1989/Herbert Ross); My Name is Joe (1998/Ken Loach); The Falcon and the Snowman (1985/John Schlesinger); Georgia (1995/Ulu Grosbard); The Waterdance (1992/Neal Jimenez, Michael Steinberg); Sommersby (1993/Jon Amiel); Urbania (2000/Jon Matthews, aka Jon Shear); The Cell (2000/Tarsem Singh); Ju-on (2002/Takashi Shimizu); Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005/Miranda July)
RECENT ADDITIONS (Oct.-Nov. '09 / Includes films relegated to "for the record" status): Swing High, Swing Low (1937/Mitchell Leisen); Fourteen Hours (1951/Henry Hathaway); The Tailor of Panama (2001/John Boorman); Dark Water (2002/Hideo Nakata); The Squid and the Whale (2005/Noah Baumbach); Akira (1988/Katsuhiro Otomo); Blade (1998/Stephen Norrington); Voyage of the Damned (1976/Stuart Rosenberg); Sex (1920/Fred Niblo); The First of the Few (Spitfire) (1942/Leslie Howard); Carrington (1995/Christopher Hampton); Fool for Love (1985/Robert Altman); In the Cut (2003/Jane Campion); Frantic (1988/Roman Polanski); Wild Things (1998/John McNaughton); Naked Killer (1992/Clarence Fok Yiu-leung); The Underneath (1995/Steven Soderbergh); I am Sam (2001/Jessie Nelson); Bolero (1934/Wesley Ruggles); Eye of Vichy (1993/Claude Chabrol); The Company (2003/Robert Altman); Joe (1970/John G. Avildsen); Shoot the Piano Player (Tirez sur le pianiste) (1960/Francois Truffaut - second viewing); Les Mistons (1957/Francois Truffaut); All the Boys are Called Patrick (1957/Jean-Luc Godard); The Truth About Charlie (2002/Jonathan Demme); The Informer (1935/John Ford - third viewing); The Running Man (1987/Paul Michael Glaser); Last Summer (1969/Frank Perry); Marie Antoinette (2006/Sofia Coppola); Gia (1998/Michael Cristofer); Broken Flowers (2005/Jim Jarmusch); Femme Fatale (2002/Brian De Palma); United 93 (2006/Paul Greengrass); Miami Vice (2006/Michael Mann); Cal (1984/Pat O'Connor); Bucktown (1975/Arthur Marks); Besieged (1998/Bernardo Bertolucci); Heart Like a Wheel (1983/Jonathan Kaplan); The Indian Runner (1991/Sean Penn); Black Caesar (1973/Larry Cohen); The League of Gentlemen (1960/Basil Dearden); The White Angel (1936/William Dieterle); Banjo on My Knee (1936/John Cromwell); Ask a Policeman (1938/Marcel Varnel); You and Me (1938/Fritz Lang); Three Songs About Lenin (Dziga Vertov); Beyond Rangoon (1995/John Boorman); Black Angel (1946/Roy William Neill); Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955/Henry King); The Golem (1915/Henrik Galeen, Paul Wegener; 4-minute surviving fragment); Battling Butler (1926/Buster Keaton); Topaze (1933/Harry d'Arrast/US version); Topaze (1933/Louis Gasnier/French version); Stolen Heaven (1931/George Abbott); The Crimson Kimono (1959/Samuel Fuller); Verboten! (1959/Samuel Fuller); The Steel Helmet (1951/Samuel Fuller/second viewing); Boule de Suif (Pyshka) (1934/Mikhail Romm); Attack (1956/Robert Aldrich); The Battle of Britain (1969/Guy Hamilton); Go West (Buster Keaton); If You Could Only Cook (1935/William A. Seiter); The Glass Key (1942/Stuart Heisler); The Young in Heart (1938/Richard Wallace); Diary of a Shinjuku Thief (1968/Nagisa Oshima); The Show of Shows (1929/John G. Adolphi); The Good Companions (1933/Victor Saville); House of Rothschild (1934/Alfred Werker); Viktor und Viktoria (1933/Reinhold Schunzel); They Had to See Paris (1929/Frank Borzage); Arsene Lupin (1932/Jack Conway); Faro Dokument 1979 (1979/Ingmar Bergman); The Rains Came (1939/Clarence Brown)
Current Projects: Updating my "films-owned list"; Samuel Fuller; Marlene Dietrich (films in Universal's "Glamour Collection" DVD set); Rare Soviet silents and early sound films and Stalin-era films through the '50s; 1930s comedies (always); lesser-known French classics of the '30s; Frank Borzage; Remaining films on the BFI/Sight & Sound 360 Film Classics list; Nagisa Oshima hard-to-get titles; Bill Douglas' autobiographical trilogy ("My Childhood," etc.); the ongoing fruitless search for films by Werner Hochbaum; etc. etc.
Newly inaugurated: Gravy's Movie Notes (some random impressions of random films)
Explanation of the List (truncated example):
1944 <<---year (103) <<---no. of films counted officially as seen
Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder) <<< --top 10+ fave movies, italicized RUNNERS UP: <<<----- more films I enjoyed
For the record: Sampling of some other films viewed, but not faves
To re-watch: = Films seen so long ago that a fresh viewing is needed for fair judgment
To see: Films not on hand yet to view
In the queue: Films I own/possess that are ready to view
Pre-cinema moving images (toward 1895)
1853 (1)
(two photographic slides to mimic movement)
1865 (1)
Revolving self-portrait (Gaspard-Felix Tournachon; aka, Nadar) (sequential photographs; later animated)
1874 (1)
Du passage de Venus devant le soleil (The Transit of Venus Across the Sun) (Pierre Jules Cesar Janssen)
1878 (3) (Muybridge series photography using multiple still cameras to analyze motion)
Sallie Gardner at a Gallop (from the "Horse in Motion" card series) (Eadweard Muybridge)
1882 (2) (Marey single-camera chronophotography (on plates) to analyze motion)
Flight of a Gull (Etienne-Jules Marey)
Transit of Venus (David Peck Todd)
1884 (2)
J. Laurie Wallace walking (Thomas Eakins)
1885 (1)
Galloping horse (c. 1885) (Ottomar Anschutz)
1886 (1)
Man Walking Around a Corner (Louis Le Prince) (glass plate series)
1887 (106)
"Animal Locomotion" (series) (Eadweard Muybridge)
(have seen 100+ Muybridge motion studies, as transferred to film)
1888 (4) (first actual use of spooled photographic (paper) film, by Le Prince)
Leeds Bridge (Louis Le Prince)
1889 (2) (Development of celluloid roll film; key for cinema invention)
Mounted horse, canter (Etienne-Jules Marey) (chronophotography)
Mounted Horse, walk (Etienne-Jules Marey)
1890 (3) (Earliest Dickson/Edison experiments in filmmaking)
Trafalgar Square (Wordsworth Donisthorpe)
Monkeyshines (1 & 2) (W.K.L. Dickson, for Edison) (non-feasible system of tiny images on an Edison cylinder)
1891 (8)
Dickson Greeting (W.K.L. Dickson, for Edison)
Men Boxing (Dickson)
Emil on the Roof (Max Skladanowsky)
Demeny Speaking ("Je vous aime") (Georges Demeny, E-J Marey)
1893 (6) (Edison publicly demonstrates kinetoscope film viewer)
Blacksmithing Scene (W.K.L. Dickson, Wm. Heise)
The Barber Shop (Dickson, Heise)
1894 (42+) (Edison kinetoscope parlors open to public; movies though a peephole)
Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze (Fred Ott's Sneeze)
(W.K.L. Dickson, Wm. Heise, for Edison)
Buffalo Dance (W.K.L. Dickson, William Heise)
Corbett and Courtney Before the Kinetograph (Dickson, Heise)
Carmencita (Dickson)
Chute du chat (Falling Cat) (Etienne-Jules Marey)
Caicedo, King of the Slack Wire (Dickson, Heise)
Luis Martinetti, Contortionist (Dickson, Heise)
Sandow (Dickson, Heise)
The Boxing Cats (Dickson, Heise)
Bucking Broncho (Dickson, Heise)
Sioux Ghost Dance (Dickson, Heise)
(mostly Edison actualities)
Generally accepted official birth of cinema
(projected film before paying audience)
1895 (41) (Lumiere brothers' Dec. 1895 projected public screening of 10 films in Paris)
Le Jardinier (aka L'Arroseur arrose) (The Sprayer Sprayed)
(Louis Lumiere)
Repas de bebe (The Baby's Meal) (Lumiere)
La Sortie des usines (Leaving the Lumiere Factory) (Lumiere)
The Execution of Mary Stuart (Alfred Clark)
Dickson Experimental Sound Film (WKL Dickson)
Querelle enfantine (Childish Quarrel) (Lumiere)
La Peche aux poissons (Fishing for Goldfish) (Lumiere)
Serpentinen Tanz (Max Skladanowsky)
1896 (53) (Note: Armat/Edison Vitascope, first public projections in U.S., April 1896)
The Kiss (William Heise)
Demolition of a Wall (Demolition d'un mur) (Louis Lumiere)
The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (Louis Lumiere)
Leaving Jerusalem by Railway (Alexander Promio, for Lumiere)
Escamotage d'une dame chez Robert-Houdin (Georges Melies)
Feeding the Doves (Wm. Heise, James White)
(mostly Lumiere and Edison actualities)
1897 (57)
Seminary Girls (Wm. Heise, James White)
What Demoralized the Barber Shop (William Heise)
Fisherman's Luck (Heise)
The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight (Enoch Rector)
Return of Lifeboat (James White, Frederick W. Blechynden)
(mostly Edison actualities)
Ella Lola, a la Trilby (Unknown, for Edison)
The Miller and the Sweep (G.A. Smith)
Burial of the "Maine" Victims (Wm. Paley)
A Street Arab (Unknown, for Edison)
(mostly Edison actualities)
Cripple Creek Bar-Room Scene (James White)
U.S. Infantry Supported by Rough Riders at El Caney (Paley, White)
The Kiss in the Tunnel (G.A. Smith)
(mostly Edison actualities)
1900 (42) (High point of the innovative British "Brighton School"; basic narrative film language)
L'Homme orchestre (The One-Man Band) (Georges Melies)*
Grandma's Reading Glass (Arthur Melbourne Cooper)
The Enchanted Drawing (J. Stuart Blackton)
As Seen Through a Telescope (G.A. Smith)
Uncle Josh's Nightmare (Edwin Porter)
Attack on a China Mission (James Williamson)
A Storm at Sea (James White)
The Mystic Swing (Melies? or Porter?)
1901 (28) (Rise of French Pathe to dominate world film production until 1914, WWI)
The Man with the India-Rubber Head (Georges Melies)*
The Big Swallow (James Williamson)*
The Story of a Crime (Ferdinand Zecca)
Martyred Presidents (Edwin Porter)
The Countryman and the Cinematograph (R.W. Paul)
Pan-American Exposition by Night ( Edwin S. Porter, James Blair Smith)
Panorama of Esplenade by Night (Porter, White)
The Artist's Dilemma (J. Stuart Blackton?)
What Happened on Twenty-Third Street, New York City (Porter)
1902 (21) (Height of the Melies tableaux spectacle fantasy film)
Le Voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon) (Georges Melies)*
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (Ferdinand Zecca)
Charleston Chain-gang (Unknown, for Edison)
Jack and the Beanstalk (Edwin Porter)
Star Theatre (Frederick Armitage)
Les Victimes de l'alcoolisme (Ferdinand Zecca)
Uncle Josh at the Moving Picture Show (Edwin Porter)
1903 (53) (Porter's Great Train Robbery codifies basic filmic narrative technique; biggest hit of early cinema)
The Great Train Robbery (Edwin Porter)*
The Kingdom of the Fairies (Georges Melies)
Sky Scrapers of New York City, From the North River (J.B. Smith)
A Daring Daylight Robbery (Frank Mottershaw)
The Dude and the Burglars (G.W. Bitzer)
Mary Jane's Mishap (G.A. Smith)
Pickpocket - A Chase Through London (Alf Collins)
Desperate Poaching Affray (William Haggar)
A Search for Evidence (G.W. Bitzer)
Sick Kitten (G.A. Smith)
The Ballet Master's Dream (Georges Melies)
Alice in Wonderland (Percy Stowe)
La Vie et la passion de Jesus-Christ (Ferdinand Zecca)
The Life of an American Fireman (Edwin Porter)
1904 (32)
The Impossible Voyage (Georges Melies)*
Westinghouse Works (series) (G.W. Bitzer)
The Untameable Whiskers (Melies)
Le Sirene (The Mermaid) (Melies)
A Butterfly's Metamorphosis (Melies)
The Wonderful Living Fan (Melies)
The Ex-Convict (Edwin Porter)
How a French Nobleman Got a Wife Through
the New York Herald Personal Columns (Porter)
The Widow and the Only Man (Wallace McCutcheon)
1905 (42) (Rescued by Rover apotheosis of 'chase film' craze, fast editing for suspense / Nickelodeons rise)
Rescued by Rover (Lewin Fitzhamon, Cecil Hepworth)*
Coney Island at Night (Edwin Porter)*
The White Caps (Edwin Porter, Wallace McCutcheon)*
The Kleptomaniac (Porter, McCutcheon)
Interior N.Y. Subway, 14th St. to 42nd St. (Billy Bitzer)
Tom, Tom the Piper's Son (G.W. Bitzer)
Les cartes vivantes (The Living Playing Cards) (Georges Melies)
The Watermelon Patch (Porter, McCutcheon)
Willie and Tim in the Motor Car (Percy Stow)
Note: Gypsies have stolen the baby. Rover to the rescue! Rover was actually Blair, the family dog of producer and co-director, Cecil Hepworth, and the canine gives the first great animal performance in movies. Oddly, because of the nature of early cinema, the version of ...Rover that we see today is not the one first screened in 1905, but a remake, perhaps even a remake of a remake. Few prints were struck back then, and when the film was a hit the prints wore out and the movie had to be filmed again. Whatever the case, the surviving version is impressive as a basic textbook example of suspense cutting and action.
1906 (27) ("Humorous Phases..." displays early animation techniques)
Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (J. Stuart Blackton)
Dream of a Rarebit Fiend (Edwin Porter, Wallace McCutcheon)*
The Hilarious Posters (Georges Melies)*
The Terrible Kids (Porter, McCutcheon)
The '?' Motorist (Walter Booth)
Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp (Albert Capellani)
Madam Has Her Cravings (Alice Guy)
Arrival of Immigrants, Ellis Island (Bitzer)
Farfalle (Butterflies) (Unknown, for Cines)
Three American Beauties (Porter, McCutcheon)
The Scheming Gambler's Paradise (Melies)
1907 (26)
Le Scarabee d'or (The Golden Beetle) (Segundo de Chomon)
Le Spectre Rouge (The Red Spectre) (Ferdinand Zecca)
L'eclipse du soleil en pleine lune (The Eclipse: the
Courtship of Sun and Moon) (Georges Melies)
That Fatal Sneeze (Lewin Fitzhamon)
The Policeman's Little Run (Ferdinand Zecca)
For the record: Ben Hur (Sidney Olcott)
1908 (33) (French Pathe's Physician of the Castle advances suspense cutting and close-ups)
The Physician of the Castle (Unknown; Ferdinand Zecca?)
The Song of the Shirt (D.W. Griffith)
The Thieving Hand (J. Stuart Blackton)
Moscow Clad in Snow (Unknown; Pathe Freres newsreel)
La Course aux potirons (The Pumpkin Race) (Romeo Bosetti)
Le Cheval emballe (The Runaway Horse) (Louis Gasnier)
La Photographie Electrique a distance (Long Distance
Wireless Photography) (Georges Melies)
El Hotel Electrico (Segundo de Chomon)
The Adventures of Dollie (Griffith)
1909 (52) (Second-year director D.W. Griffith raises quality of Biograph's productions)
A Corner in Wheat (D.W. Griffith)*
The Country Doctor (D.W. Griffith)*
En evant la musique (Segundo de Chomon)
The Lonely Villa (Griffith)
1776, or the Hessian Renegades (Griffith)
The Light That Came (Griffith)
The Curtain Pole (Griffith)
The Romance of an Umbrella (J. Stuart Blackton)
The Cord of Life (Griffith)
At the Altar (Griffith)
Princess Nicotine, or the Smoke Fairy (Blackton)
The Sealed Room (Griffith)
Lines of White on a Sullen Sea (Griffith)
The Drunkard's Reformation (Griffith)
As it Is in Life (D.W. Griffith)
The Unchanging Sea (Griffith)
In the Border States (Griffith)
The House With Closed Shutters (Griffith)
The Informer (Griffith)
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Otis Turner)
A Child of the Ghetto (Griffith)
King Lear (Gerolamo Lo Savio)
The Hasher's Delirium (Emile Cohl)
Frankenstein (J.S. Dawley)
To see: Afgrunden (The Abyss) (Urban Gad)
1911 (20)
The Lonedale Operator (D.W. Griffith)
Max Sets the Style (Max lance la mode) (Max Linder)*
The Battle (Griffith)
Enoch Arden (Parts 1 & II) (Griffith)
What Shall We Do With Our Old? (Griffith)
The Miser's Heart (Griffith)
L'Odissea (The Odyssey) (Bertolini, Padovan, Liguoro)
L'Inferno (Liguoro, Bertolini, Padovan)
The Last Drop of Water (Griffith)
Richard III (UK version; Will Barker)
Little Nemo (Winsor McCay)
For the record: The Dream (George Loane Tucker); Romance with a Double Bass (Kai Hansen); Her Crowning Glory (Laurence Trimble); Max Takes Tonics (Max Linder)
In the queue: Temptations of a Great City (August Blom)
1912 (47) (Birth of Hollywood; rise of urban movie theatre 'palaces'; earliest features released)
The Cameraman's Revenge (Ladislaw Starewicz)*
The New York Hat (D.W. Griffith)*
The Girl and Her Trust (Griffith)
An Unseen Enemy (Griffith)
The Musketeers of Pig Alley (Griffith)
The Lesser Evil (Griffith)
The Confederate Ironclad (Kenean Buel)
The Informer (Griffith)
One is Business, the Other Crime (Griffith)
The Sunbeam (Griffith)
The Female of the Species (Griffith)
The Burglar's Dilemma (Griffith)
The Automatic Moving Company (Romeo Bosetti)
Onesime horloger (Jean Durand)
How a Mosquito Operates (Winsor McCay)
For the record: Land Beyond the Sunset (Harold Shaw); Conquest of the Pole (Georges Melies); Richard III (Andre Calmettes, James Keane); Peasant's Lot (Vasili Goncharov); The Invaders (Francis Ford); From the Manger to the Cross (Sidney Olcott); Queen Elizabeth (Louis Mercanton); A Cure for Pokeritis (Laurence Trimble); Making an American Citizen (Alice Guy Blache); Max and the Statue (Max Linder); For His Son (D.W. Griffith); Iola's Promise (D.W. Griffith)
To see: Die Arme Jenny (Poor Jenny) (Urban Gad); Au pays des tenebres (The Great Mine Disaster) (Victorin Hippolyte-Jassett); Les Miserables (Albert Capellani)
In the queue: 1812 god (Kai Hansen, Vasili Goncharov); The Flying Circus (Alfred Lind); The Great Circus Catastrophe (Eduard Schnedler-Sorensen); Romeo e Giulietta (Ugo Falena)
1913 (33)
The Mothering Heart (D.W. Griffith)*
The Student of Prague (Stellan Rye)
Twilight of a Woman's Soul (Yevgeny Bauer)
Death's Marathon (Griffith)
The Drummer of the 8th (Thomas Ince)
Matrimony's Speed Limit (Alice Guy Blache)
A House Divided (Alice Guy Blache)
The Ambassador's Daughter (Charles J. Brabin)
The Last Days of Pompeii (Mario Caserini, E. Rudolfi)
Christmas Eve (Ladislaw Starewicz)
Traffic in Souls (George Loane Tucker)
For the record: Quo Vadis? (Enrico Guazzoni); The Bangville Police (Henry Lehrman); Little House in Kolomne (Pierre Charynin); Evidence of the Film (Lawrence Marston, Edwin Thanhouser); Suspense (Lois Weber, Phillips Smalley); How Men Propose (Lois Weber, Phillips Smalley); Just a Shabby Doll (unknown, for Thanhouser)
To see: The Child of Paris (Leonce Perret); Ingeborg Holm (Victor Sjostrom)
In the queue: Fantomas (Louis Feuillade)
1914 (26) (Italian film spectacles reach height with 'Cabiria.' Rise of fluid and lateral tracking shots)
The Massacre (D.W. Griffith; made 1912, released 1914)*
Cabiria (Giovanni Pastrone)*
Kid Auto Races at Venice (Charles Chaplin)
A Child of the Big City (Yevgeny Bauer)
Gertie the Dinosaur (Winsor McKay)
A Florida Enchantment (Sidney Drew)
Judith of Bethulia (D.W. Griffith)
Silent Witnesses (Yevgeny Bauer)
The Wishing Ring (Maurice Tourneur)
The Battle of Elderbush Gulch (D.W. Griffith)
The Avenging Conscience (D.W. Griffith)
Home Sweet Home (D.W. Griffith)
For the record: Fantomas contre Fantomas (Louis Feuillade); In the Land of the Headhunters (Edward S. Curtis); The Patchwork Girl of Oz (J. Farrell MacDonald); The Hazards of Helen, episode 26 "The Wild Engine" (James Davis, J.P. McGowan); many Chaplin Keystone comedies including The Rounders (Chaplin), His New Profession (Chaplin), Tango Tangles (Sennett), Caught in a Cabaret (Mabel Norman), etc.
To re-watch: Tillie's Punctured Romance (Mack Sennett)
To see: The Wrath of the Gods (Reginald Barker); The Spoilers (Colin Campbell)
In the queue: The Mysterious X (Benjamin Christensen); The Squaw Man (Cecil B. DeMille, Oscar Apfel); The Call of the North (Cecil B. DeMille, Oscar Apfel)
VINTAGE RATING (1914): 5***
1915 (49) (Birth of a Nation proves viability of features; biggest film hit until 1939)
The Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith)*
Posle Smerti (After Death) (Yevgeny Bauer)*
Les Vampires (Louis Feuillade)
A Night in the Show (Charles Chaplin)
The Cheat (Cecil B. DeMille)
The Tramp (Charles Chaplin)
Alias Jimmy Valentine (Maurice Tourneur)
The Portrait (Ladislaw Starewicz)
The Coward (Reginald Barker, Thomas Ince)
A Fool There Was (Frank Powell)
Carmen (Cecil B. DeMille)
Assunta Spina (Francesca Bertini, Gustavo Serena)
Their One Love (Jack Harvey, for Thanhouser)
The Golem (Henrik Galeen, Paul Wegener) (4-minute surviving fragment)
For the Record: Trilby (Maurice Tourneur); Daydreams (Yevgeny Bauer); The 1002nd Ruse (Yevgeny Bauer); La Folie du Docteur Tube (Abel Gance); Dinosaur and the Missing Link (Willis O'Brien); The Lily of Belgium (Ladislaw Starewicz); Pool Sharks (Edwin Middleton); several Fatty Arbuckle Keystone comedies including Fatty's Tintype Tangle (Roscoe Arbuckle); many Charlie Chaplin Keystone films including The Bank/By the Sea/Carmen, etc. (Chaplin)
To see: The Juggernaut (Ralph Ince); Hypocrites (George Loane Tucker, Lois Weber); Chimmie Fadden (Cecil B. DeMille); Kindling (Cecil B. DeMille); Old Heidelberg (John Emerson); Rumpelstiltskin (Raymond B. West); The Second in Command (William J. Bowman); The Warrens of Virginia (Cecil B. DeMille)
In the queue: La signora della camelie (Gustavo Serena); Children of the Age (Deti Veka) (Yevgeny Bauer)
VINTAGE RATING (1915): 6.5****
1916 (26) (Chaplin begins to flower with his Mutual shorts)
Intolerance (D.W. Griffith)*
Hell's Hinges (Wm. S. Hart)
Behind the Screen (Charles Chaplin)
The Floorwalker (Charles Chaplin)
The Mystery of the Leaping Fish (John Emerson)
The Queen of Spades (Y. Protazanov)
Snow White (J.S. Dawley)
Gretchen the Greenhorn (Franklin brothers)
To see: Judex (Louis Feuillade); Where Are My Children? (Phillips Smalley, Lois Weber); Homunculus (Otto Rippert)
In the queue: Haevnens nat (Night of Revenge) (Benjamin Christensen); Shoe Palace Pinkus (Ernst Lubitsch)
VINTAGE RATING (1916): 5***
Joan the Woman (Cecil B. DeMille)
Easy Street (Charles Chaplin)
The Butcher Boy (Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle)
The Rough House (Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle)
Wild and Woolly (John Emerson)
Coney Island (Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle)
His Wedding Night (Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle)
A Girl's Folly (Maurice Tourneur)
To see: Thomas Graal's Best Film (Victor Sjostrom); A Marked Man (John Ford); Tom Sawyer (William Desmond Taylor); Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman (George Irving)
In the queue: Terje Vigen (Victor Sjostrom); Hilde Warren und der Tod (Joe May); The Little American (Cecil B. DeMille)
VINTAGE RATING (1917): 5***
1918 (20) (Ufa in Germany, Europe's biggest studio, formed at end of WWI)
The Outlaw and His Wife (Victor Sjostrom)
A Dog's Life (Charles Chaplin)*
The Cook (Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle)
Shoulder Arms (Charles Chaplin)
Thomas Graal's Basta Barn (Victor Sjostrom)
Stella Maris (Marshall Neilan)
Good Night, Nurse! (Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle)
Out West (Arbuckle)
The Blue Bird (Maurice Tourneur)
The Unbeliever (Alan Crosland)
For the record: Hearts of the World (D.W. Griffith)
To see: Tih Minh (Louis Feuillade); Shifting Sands (Albert Parker)
In the queue: Himmelskibet (Holger-Madsen); Carmen (Gypsy Blood) (Ernst Lubitsch); The Eyes of the Mummy (Ernst Lubitsch)
VINTAGE RATING (1918): 4.5**
1919 (24) (Pickford, et. al. form indie distributor United Artists to fight monopoly, control their own films)
Herr Arnes Pengar (Sir Arne's Treasure) (Mauritz Stiller)*
Broken Blossoms (D.W. Griffith)*
Blind Husbands (Erich von Stroheim)
Sunnyside (Charles Chaplin)
True Heart Susie (D.W. Griffith)
South (Shackleton's Expedition to the Antarctic) (Frank Hurley)
Die Austernprinzessin (Ernst Lubitsch)
Madame du Barry (Ernst Lubitsch)
Hawthorne of the U.S.A. (James Cruze)
J'Accuse (Abel Gance)
Die Spinnen (The Spiders) (Fritz Lang)
A Day's Pleasure (Charles Chaplin)
For the record: Different From the Others (Richard Oswald); Die Puppe (The Doll) (Ernst Lubitsch)
To see: The Dragon Painter (William Worthington); Back to God's Country (David Hartford); Unheimliche Geschichten (Eerie Tales) (Richard Oswald); The Delicious Little Devil (Robert Z. Leonard); The Sentimental Bloke (Raymond Longford); When the Clouds Roll By (Victor Fleming, Theodore Reed); Harakiri (Fritz Lang); The Mother and the Law (D.W. Griffith)
In the queue: Mod Lyset (Towards the Light) (Holger-Madsen)
VINTAGE RATING (1919): 6***
RECAP--Favorite Films of the 1910s:
1.) The Birth of a Nation (Griffith/US/1915)
2.) The Cameraman's Revenge (Starewicz/Russia/1912)
3.) The Massacre (Griffith/US/1914)
4.) Posle smerti (After Death) (Bauer/Russia/1915)
5.) Cabiria (Pastrone/Italy/1914)
6.) A Dog's Life (Charles Chaplin/US/1918)
7.) The Adventurer (Charles Chaplin/US/1917)
8.) The New York Hat (Griffith/US/1912)
9.) The Mothering Heart (Griffith/US/1913)
10.) Herr Arnes Pengar (Stiller/Sweden/1919)
RUNNERS UP::
*Max Sets the Style (Max Linder/France/1911)
*Intolerance (Griffith/US/1916)
Way Down East (D.W. Griffith)*
The Last of the Mohicans (Maurice Tourneur)
The Golem (Paul Wegener, Carl Boese)
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Weine)
One Week (Buster Keaton)
Number, Please? (Fred Newmeyer, Hal Roach)
High and Dizzy (Hal Roach)
The Grocery Clerk (Larry Semon)
Convict 13 (Buster Keaton, Eddie Cline)
The Mark of Zorro (Fred Niblo)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (John S. Robertson)
The Penalty (Wallace Worsley)
The Parson's Widow (Carl Dreyer)
Erotikon (Mauritz Stiller)
For the record: Leaves from Satan's Book (Carl Dreyer); The Toll Gate (Lambert Hillyer); Genuine (Robert Wiene); The Mollycoddle (Victor Fleming); Nomads of the North (David Hartford); Pollyanna (Paul Powell); The Saphead (Herbert Blache); Sumurun (One Arabian Night) (Ernst Lubitsch); Within Our Gates (Oscar Micheaux); Neighbors (Buster Keaton, Edward Cline); The Great Cheese Robbery (Vernon Stallings); Sex (Fred Niblo)
To see: Karin Ingmarsdotter (Victor Sjostrom); Masterman (Victor Sjostrom); I Don't Want to Be a Man (Ernst Lubitsch); The Flapper (Alan Crosland); The Wandering Image (Fritz Lang); Something New (Nell Shipman, Bert Van Tuyle); The Symbol of the Unconquered (Oscar Micheaux)
In the queue: Monastery of Sendomir (Victor Sjostrom); L'Homme du large (Marcel L'Herbier); Von Morgen bis Mitternachts (From Morn to Midnight) (Karl Heinz Martin); Anna Boleyn (Ernst Lubitsch); Romeo and Juliet in the Snow (Ernst Lubitsch); Why Change Your Wife? (Cecil B. DeMille); Kohlhiesel's Daughters (Ernst Lubitsch); The Jack-Knife Man (King Vidor)
VINTAGE RATING (1920): 4**
Note: A weak year worldwide; immediate postwar fare was pretty formulaic except for the anomaly of 'Caligari.'
1921 (35)
Seven Years Bad Luck (Max Linder)
The Kid (Charles Chaplin)
Hail the Woman (John Griffith Wray)
La Terre (Andre Antoine)
Der Mude Tod (Destiny) (Fritz Lang)
The Playhouse (Buster Keaton)
The Phantom Chariot (Victor Sjostrom)
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Rex Ingram)
The High Sign (Eddie Cline, Buster Keaton)
Little Lord Fauntleroy (Alfred E. Green, Jack Pickford)
The Affairs of Anatol (Cecil B. DeMille)
For the record (other notable films seen): Scherben (Shattered) (Lupu Pick); Tol'able David (Henry King); The Ace of Hearts (Wallace Worsley); Too Wise Wives (Lois Weber); L'Uomo Meccanico (The Mechanical Man) (Andre Deed); The Sheik (George Melford); Schloss Vogelod (The Haunted Castle) (F.W. Murnau); Outside the Law (Tod Browning); Orphans of the Storm (D.W. Griffith); The Conquering Power (Rex Ingram); Manhatta (Charles Sheeler, Paul Strand); The Love Light (Frances Marion); The Indian Tomb (Joe May); The Idle Class (Charles Chaplin); Die Hintertreppe (Backstairs) (Leopold Jessner); The Three Musketeers (Fred Niblo); Dream Street (D.W. Griffith); Danton (Dimitri Buchowetzki); Lichtspiel Opus 1 (Walter Ruttmann); Rhythmus 21 (Hans Richter); several Buster Keaton shorts including The Haunted House/The Boat/The Goat/Hard Luck (Buster Keaton, Edward Cline); Never Weaken (Fred Newmeyer)
To see: Johan (Mauritz Stiller); L'Atlantide (Jacques Feyder); Rojo no Reikon (Souls on the Road) (Minoru Murata); The Three Musketeers (Henri Diamant-Berger); A Small Town Idol (Erle C. Kenton); Molly O' (F. Richard Jones); Miss Lulu Bett (William C. de Mille); Growth of the Soil (Markens grode) (Gunnar Sommerfeldt); Die Geierwally (E.A. Dupont); Fievre (Fever) (Louis Delluc); Peck's Bad Boy (Sam Wood); Camille (Ray C. Smallwood); Janosik (Jaroslav Siakel); My Boy (Albert Austin, Victor Heerman); Leap Year (Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, James Cruze); The Dark Road (F.W. Murnau); Love Never Dies (King Vidor); The Adventures of Tarzan (Robert F. Hill, Scott Sidney); The Nut (Theodore Reed); Jackie (John Ford); Through the Back Door (Alfred E. Green, Jack Pickford); Appearances (Donald Crisp); Dangerous Lies (Paul Powell); The Bonnie Brier Bush (Donald Crisp)
In the queue: Die Bergkatze (The Wildcat) (Ernst Lubitsch); Hamlet (Sven Gade, Heinz Schall); Be My Wife (Max Linder); Vier um die Frau (Four Around a Woman) (Fritz Lang); A Sailor-Made Man (Fred Newmeyer)
VINTAGE RATING (1921): 6.5***
Note: Marcel l'Herbier's astonishingly beautiful psychological melodrama 'El Dorado' is probably the greatest unknown movie of the silent era.
1922 (30) (Thalberg fires Stroheim from "Merry Go Round'; ends Hollywood's "age of the director")
Haxan (Witchcraft Through the Ages) (Benjamin Christensen)*
Foolish Wives (Erich von Stroheim)*
Nanook of the North (Robert Flaherty)*
Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau)
Tess of the Storm Country (John S. Robertson)
Crainquebille (Jacques Feyder)
The Light in the Dark (Clarence Brown)
Cops (Buster Keaton)
Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (Fritz Lang)
The Toll of the Sea (Chester Franklin)
Othello (Dimitri Buchowetzki)
Lorna Doone (Maurice Tourneur)
For the record: Der Brennende Acker (The Burning Soil) (F.W. Murnau); Blood and Sand (Fred Niblo); Down to the Sea in Ships (Elmer Clifton); Oliver Twist (Frank Lloyd); Merry-Go-Round (released 1925) (Rupert Julian, Erich von Stroheim); Manslaughter (Cecil B. DeMille); Fulta Fisher's Boarding House (Frank Capra); Beyond the Rocks (Sam Wood); The Blacksmith (Buster Keaton, Malcolm St. Clair); Day Dreams (Buster Keaton, Edward Cline); Les Grenouilles qui demandent un roi (Frogland) (Ladislaw Starewicz); The Sawmill (Larry Semon, Norman Taurog); Sky High (Lynn Reynolds); The Village Blacksmith (extant reel) (John Ford)
To see: Vem domer (Love's Crucible) (Victor Sjostrom); Das Weib des Pharao (The Loves of Pharaoh) (Ernst Lubitsch); Rob Roy (W.P. (Will) Kellino); Saturday Night (Cecil B. DeMille); The Man From Beyond (Burton King); La Femme de nulle part (The Woman From Nowhere) (Louis Delluc); David Copperfield (Anders Wilhelm Sandberg); Lucrezia Borgia (Richard Oswald); Moran of the Lady Letty (George Melford); Smilin' Through (Sidney Franklin); When Knighthood Was in Flower (Robert A Vignola); Der var engang (Once Upon a Time) (Carl Theodor Dreyer); Beauty's Worth (Robert G. Vignola); The Young Rajah (Phil Rosen); The Primitive Lover (Sidney Franklin); Nathan der Weise (Manfred Noa); Samson und Delila (Alexander Korda)
In the queue: The Prisoner of Zenda (Rex Ingram); Phantom (F.W. Murnau); Die Gezeichneten (Love One Another) (Carl Theodor Dreyer); Polikushka (Aleksandr Sanin); The Three Must-Get-Theres (Max Linder); Peg O' My Heart (King Vidor)
VINTAGE RATING (1922): 8****
Our Hospitality (Buster Keaton, John Blystone)*
A Woman of Paris (Charles Chaplin)*
Safety Last (Fred Newmeyer, Sam Taylor)
The Smiling Madame Beudet (Germaine Dulac)
The Pilgrim (Charles Chaplin)
Why Worry? (Fred Newmeyer, Sam Taylor)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Wallace Worsley)
The Covered Wagon (James Cruze)
Anna Christie (John Griffith Ray)
Schatten (Warning Shadows) (Arthur Robison)
Die Strasse (The Street) (Karl Grune)
RUNNERS UP:
The Ten Commandments (Cecil B. DeMille)
Salome (Charles Bryant)
Cirano di Bergerac (Cyrano de Bergerac) (Augusto Genina)
For the record: Adam's Rib (Cecil B. DeMille); Amour noir et blanc (Love in Black and White) (Ladislaw Starewicz); Modeling (Dave Fleischer); Le Retour a la raison (Return to Reason) (Man Ray); The Shock (Lambert Hillyer); Au Secours! (Abel Gance); The White Rose (D.W. Griffith); several Buster Keaton shorts including The Balloonatic, The Love Nest (Buster Keaton, Edward Cline)
To re-watch: The Three Ages (Buster Keaton, Edward Cline)
To see: Le Brasier ardent (Ivan Mozzhukhin); L'Auberge rouge (The Red Inn) (Jean Epstein); Bella Donna (George Fitzmaurice); Erdgeist (Loulou) (Leopold Jessner); The Extra Girl (F. Richard Jones); The Green Goddess (Sidney Olcott); Der Steinerne Reiter (The Stone Rider) (Fritz Wendhausen); Suzanna (F. Richard Jones); Der Verlorene Schuh (Cinderella) (Ludwig Berger); Little Old New York (Sidney Olcott); The Christian (Maurice Tourneur); Trail of the Lonesome Pine (Charles Maigne); Souls for Sale (Rupert Hughes); White Tiger (Tod Browning); The Net (J. Gordon Edwards); Fire on Board (Victor Sjöström); The White Sister (Henry King); Woman to Woman (Graham Cutts); Der Kaufmann von Venedig (The Jew of Mestri) (Peter Paul Felner)
In the queue: La roue (Abel Gance); Gunnar Hedes Saga (Mauritz Stiller); Coeur fidele (The Faithful Heart) (Jean Epstein); Raskolnikow (Robert Wiene); Rosita (Ernst Lubitsch); Scaramouche (Rex Ingram); La Belle Nivernaise (Jean Epstein); Cameo Kirby (John Ford); Der Schatz (The Treasure) (G.W. Pabst)
VINTAGE RATING (1923): 7***
1924 (37) (Murnau's 'Last Laugh' advances visual storytelling, influencing filmmakers worldwide)
Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton)*
The Last Laugh (F.W. Murnau)*
The Navigator (Buster Keaton, Donald Crisp)
The Marriage Circle (Ernst Lubitsch)
HE Who Gets Slapped (Victor Sjostrom)
Symphonie diagonale (Viking Eggeling)
Girl Shy (Fred Newmeyer, Sam Taylor)
Peter Pan (Herbert Brenon)
The Thief of Bagdad (Raoul Walsh)
Ballet mecanique (Fernand Leger, Dudley Murphy; with 1999 reconstructed original score)
Gosta Berlings Saga (Mauritz Stiller)
Nibelungen: Siegfried (and) Kriemhild's Revenge (Fritz Lang)
The Iron Horse (John Ford)
For the record: L'Inhumaine (Marcel L'Herbier); Das Wachsfigurenkabinett (Waxworks); (Paul Leni); Hot Water (Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor); The Chechahcos (Lewis H. Moomaw); The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (Lev Kuleshov); Kino-Eye (Dziga Vertov); Isn't Life Wonderful? (D.W. Griffith); America (D.W. Griffith); Aelita (Yakov Protazanov); Entr'acte (Rene Clair); The Cigarette Girl of Mosselprom (Yuri Zhelyabuzhsky); Romola (Henry King); The Hands of Orlac (Robert Wiene)
To see: Sylvester (Lupu Pick); Beau Brummel (Harry Beaumont); Der Berg des Schicksals (Mountain of Destiny) (Arnold Fanck); Forbidden Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch); La Fille de l'eau (Whirlpool of Fate) (Jean Renoir); Kean (Alexandre Volkoff); Le Lion des Mogols (Jean Epstein); Manhandled (Allan Dwan); Monsieur Beaucaire (Sidney Olcott); Wild Oranges (King Vidor); The Red Lily (Fred Niblo); Manhandled (Allan Dwan); The Beautiful Rebel (E. Mason Hopper); Helen's Babies (William A. Seiter); Open All Night (Paul Bern); Helena (Helen of Troy) (Manfred Noa); Captain January (Edward F. Cline); Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall (Marshall Neilan); The Enchanted Cottage (John S. Robertson); The Age of Innocence (Wesley Ruggles); The Prude's Fall (Graham Cutts); Backbiters (Albert Dieudonné, Jean Renoir); Name the Man (Victor Sjostrom); Nju (Husbands or Lovers) (Paul Czinner); Dante’s Inferno (Henry Otto); Le miracle des loups (The Miracle of the Wolves) (Raymond Bernard); Reveille (George Pearson); L'affiche (The Poster) (Jean Epstein); La Briere (Leon Poirier); Le diable dans la Ville (The Devil in the Town) (Germaine Dulac)
In the queue: The Sea Hawk (Frank Lloyd); Mikael (Michael) (Carl Dreyer); The Finances of the Grand Duke (F.W. Murnau); Lady of the Night (Monta Bell)
VINTAGE RATING (1924): 8.5****
1925 (41) (Golden age of Soviet cinema begins with premiere of two Eisenstein films)
Strike (Sergei Eisenstein)*
Greed (4-hour restoration, 1999) (Erich von Stroheim)*
Variety (E.A. Dupont)
Master of the House (Carl Dreyer)
The Big Parade (King Vidor)
Seven Chances (Buster Keaton)
The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin)
The Freshman (Fred Newmeyer, Sam Taylor)
Go West (Buster Keaton)
Don Q., Son of Zorro (Donald Crisp)
RUNNERS UP:
The Phantom of the Opera (Rupert Julian)
Paris qui dort (Crazy Ray) (Rene Clair)
Smouldering Fires (Clarence Brown)
Clash of the Wolves (Noel Mason Smith)
The Unholy Three (Tod Browning)
Cockeyed: Gems From the Memory of a Nutty Cameraman (Unknown; Pathe)
Merry-Go-Round (Rupert Julian, Erich von Stroheim)
The Lost World (Harry O. Hoyt)
The Eagle (Clarence Brown)
The Vanishing American (George B. Seitz)
The Joyless Street (Georg W. Pabst)
Paths to Paradise (Clarence Badger)
In Youth, Beside the Lonely Sea (creators unknown)
Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life (Merian C. Cooper, Ernest Schoedsack)
Lady Windermere's Fan (Ernst Lubitsch)
Little Annie Rooney (William Beaudine)
Tumbleweeds (King Baggott, William S. Hart)
Beggar on Horseback (James Cruze) (surviving dream sequence)
For the record : Cobra (Joseph Henabery); Parisian Love (Louis Gasnier)
To see: Stella Dallas (Henry King); The Chronicles of the Gray House (Arthur von Gerlach); A Kiss for Cinderella (Herbert Brenon); Die Verrufenen (The Slums of Berlin) (Gerhard Lamprecht); Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit (Ways to Strength and Beauty) (Wilhelm Prager); The Merry Widow (Erich Von Stroheim); Whirlpool of Fate (Jean Renoir); The Rag Man (Edward F. Cline); Bravheart (Alan Hale); Zander the Great (George W. Hill); Les Miserables (Henri Fescourt); Poil de Carotte (Julien Duvivier); Quo Vadis? (Gabriel d’Annunzio, Georg Jacoby); Der Rosenkavalier (Robert Wiene); The Salvation Hunters (Josef von Sternberg); Aitare da Praia (Gentil Roiz); Are Parents People? (Malcolm St. Clair); Les Aventures de Robert Macaire (The Adventures of Robert Macaire) (Jean Epstein); The Best Bad Man (John G. Blystone); The Calgary Stampede (Herbert Blache); California Straight Ahead (Harry Pollard); La cavalcata ardente (The Fiery Foray) (Carmine Gallone); Charley's Aunt (Scott Sidney); The Coming Of Amos (Paul Sloane); Dick Turpin (John G. Blystone);
El Husar de la muerte (Death's Hussar) (Pedro Sienna); Le fantome du Moulin-Rouge (The Phantom of the Moulin Rouge) (Rene Clair); Free to Love (Frank O'Connor); The Golden Bed (Cecil B. DeMille); The Goose Woman (Clarence Brown); Her Sister from Paris (Sidney Franklin); His People (Edward Sloman); Ingmarsarvet (Gustaf Molander); Jidische Glickn (Jewish Luck) (Alexandr Granowsky); Karl XII (John W. Brunius); The King on Main Street (Monta Bell); The Lady (Frank Borzage); Luch smerti (The Death Ray) (Lev Kuleshov); The Mad Whirl (William A. Seiter); Miss Bluebeard (Frank Tuttle); The Mystic (Tod Browning); Orochi (Buntaro Futagawa); The Pony Express (James Cruze); Prem Sanyas (Light of Asia) (Franz Osten, Himansu Rai); The Rat (Graham Cutts); Riders of the Purple Sage (Lynn Reynolds); The Road to Yesterday (Cecil B. DeMille); She (Leander De Cordova, G.B. Samuelson); Shore Leave (John S. Robertson); Skargardskavaljerer (Theodor Berthels); Soul-Fire (John S. Robertson); The Sporting Venus (Marshall Neilan); Stage Struck (Allan Dwan); The Street of Forgotten Men (Herbert Brenon); The Swan (Dimitri Buchowetzki); The Thundering Herd (William K. Howard); The Unchastened Woman (James Young); Le voyage imaginaire (Rene Clair); Waking Up the Town (James Cruze); The Way of a Girl (Robert G. Vignola); Wild Horse Mesa (George B. Seitz); A Woman of the World (Malcolm St. Clair); Ypres (Walter Summers)
In the queue: Visages d'enfants (Faces of Children) (Jacques Feyder); Lazybones (Frank Borzage); The Monster (Roland West); Body and Soul (Oscar Micheaux); Sally of the Sawdust (D.W. Griffith); The Wizard of Oz (Larry Semon); The Case of the Three Million (Yakov Protazanov); Tailor from Torzhok (Yakov Protazanov); The Pleasure Garden (Alfred Hitchcock); Lightnin’ (John Ford); The Red Kimona (Walter Lang); The Plastic Age (Wesley Ruggles)
VINTAGE RATING (1925): 9.5*****
Note: If you read film history texts you'd think that Soviet artsy masterworks such as 'Strike' and 'Potemkin,' or Erich von Stroheim's 'Greed' were representative of their time, but in fact cowboys like Tom Mix and dogs such as Rin Tin Tin were the biggest things at the box office (and yes, there were literally dozens of canine stars). But diamond-collared "Rinty" was the box office king, and fast-moving, exciting vehicles such as 'Clash of the Wolves' (runner up) (in which the star plays a wolf!) make it easy to understand why. It begins with a spectacular forest fire and ends with Rinty and his pack chasing down and mauling the baddie.The film is impossible not to like and disarmingly moving in its anthropomorphism. 'Don Q., Son of Zorro,' Douglas Fairbanks' belated sequel to his 1920 classic, 'The Mark of Zorro,' ups the production values on the earlier picture and is a better film overall despite some slow patches. I was never keen on the 2+-hour mutilated theatrical release version of Stroheim's "Greed," but the 1999 "restoration," creatively using ample production stills, following the shooting script and inserting narrative titles, makes it clear how much of the rich plot and character development was lost under MGM's scissors. Frank Norris' novel examined its theme via comparison and contrast of a broad cross-section of characters, returned herein. In lieu of ever finding the long-lost footage, this four-hour version is both revelatory and sad.
1926 (60)
For Heaven's Sake (Sam Taylor)*
A Page of Madness (Tienosuke Kinugasa)
Menilmontant (Dmitri Kirsanoff)
The Holy Mountain (Arnold Fanck)
Don Juan (Alan Crosland)
The Black Pirate (Alan Parker)
The Strong Man (Frank Capra)
La Boheme (King Vidor)
Maciste in Hell (Guido Brignone)
Faust (F.W. Murnau)
Now You Tell One (Charles Bowers)
By the Law (Dura Lex) (Lev Kuleshov)
Battling Butler (Buster Keaton)
So's Your Old Man (Gregory La Cava)
The Great K & A Train Robbery (Lewis Seiler)
Flesh and the Devil (Clarence Brown)
What Price Glory (Raoul Walsh)
Moana (Robert Flaherty)
The Show Off (Malcolm St. Clair)
Sparrows (William Beaudine)
The Son of the Sheik (George Fitzmaurice)
Ella Cinders (Alfred E. Green)
The Flute of Krishna (J.G. Capstaff)
Tell it to the Marines (George W. Hill)
It's the Old Army Game (A. Edward Sutherland)
3 Bad Men (John Ford)
Filmstudie (Hans Richter)
The Scarlet Letter (Victor Seastrom)
Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (Harry Edwards)
For the record: The Sorrows of Satan (D.W. Griffith); The Student of Prague (Henrik Galeen); The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Lotte Reiniger); Tartuffe (F.W. Murnau); Secrets of a Soul (G.W. Pabst); Mantrap (Victor Fleming); The Bells (James Young)
To re-watch: Rien que les heures (Alberto Cavalcanti); Saturday Afternoon (Harry Edwards)
To see: Skinner's Dress Suit (William A Seiter); The Overcoat (Shinel) (Grigori Kozintsev, Leonid Trauberg); Feu Mathias Pascal (Marcel L'Herbier); Michel Strogoff (Victor Toujansky); Miss Mend (Fyodor Otsep); Beau Geste (Herbert Brenon); The Temptress (Fred Niblo); Carmen (Jacques Feyder); Brown of Harvard (Jack Conway); The Boob (William Wellman); The Blackbird (Tod Browning); Bardelys the Magnificent (King Vidor); Behind the Front (A. Edward Sutherland); Garras de oro (P.P. Jambrina); Kreuzzug des Weibes (Unwelcome Children) (Martin Berger); Brudeferden i Hardanger (The Wedding at Hardanger) (Rasmus Breistein); Chyortovo koleso (The Devil’s Wheel) (Grigori Kozintsev, Leonid Trauberg); Dobry vojak Svejk (The Good Soldier Schweik) (Karel Lamac); Gli ultimi giorni di Pompeii (The Last Days of Pompeii) (Amleto Palermi, Carmine Gallone); Glomdalsbruden (The Bride of Glomdal) (Carl Dreyer); The Magician (Rex Ingram); Nell Gwynn (Herbert Wilcox); The Open Road (Claude Friese-Greene); A Filha do Advogado (Jota Soares); April Fool (Nat Ross); Der Bastard (Gennaro Righelli); The Better 'Ole (Charles Reisner); The Black Bird (Tod Browning); The Canadian (William Beaudine); The Cat's Pajamas (William A. Wellman); The Clinging Vine (Cecil B. DeMille); The Devil's Circus (Benjamin Christensen); The Duchess of Buffalo (Sidney Franklin); Fig Leaves (Howard Hawks); Fine Manners (Richard Rosson); The Fire Brigade (William Nigh); The Flag Lieutenant (Maurice Elvey); The Flaming Frontier (Edward Sedgwick); Going Crooked (George Melford); The Grand Duchess and the Waiter (Malcolm St. Clair); Gribiche (Mother of Mine) (Jacques Feyder); Irene (Alfred E. Green); The Johnstown Flood (Irving Cummings); Katka-bumazhnyy ranet (Katka's Reinette Apples) (Fridrikh Ermler, Eduard Johanson); Kid Boots (Frank Tuttle); Krylya kholopa (Wings of a Serf) (Yuri Tarich); Love 'Em and Leave 'Em (Frank Tuttle); Malvaloca (Benito Perojo); Manon Lescaut (Arthur Robison); Married? (George Terwilliger); Medvezhya svadba (The Bear's Wedding) (Vladimir Gardin, Konstantin Eggert); Mekhanika golovnogo mozga (Mechanics of the Brain) (Vsevolod I. Pudovkin); Menschen Untereinander (Gerhard Lamprecht); The Night Cry (Herman C. Raymaker); Ranson's Folly (Sidney Olcott); The Road to Mandalay (Tod Browning); The Sea Beast (Millard Webb); Shagaj, sovyet! / Shagai, Soviet (Forward, Soviet!) (Dziga Vertov); The Third Degree (Michael Curtiz); Die Unehelichen (Children of No Importance) (Gerhard Lamprecht); Up In Mabel's Room (E. Mason Hopper); Upstage (Monta Bell); The Volga Boatman (Cecil B. DeMille); Yichuan Zhenzhu (A String of Pearls) (Li Zeyuan); You Never Know Women (William A. Wellman); You'd Be Surprised (Arthur Rosson)
In the queue: So This is Paris (Ernst Lubitsch); The Winning of Barbara Worth (Henry King); A Sixth of the World (Dziga Vertov); Nana (Jean Renoir); Dancing Mothers (Herbert Brenon); The Bat (Roland West); Torrent Monta Bell); The Shamrock Handicap (John Ford); The Blue Eagle (John Ford); Mare Nostrum (Rex Ingram);
VINTAGE RATING (1926): 7.5****
Note: 'The Great K & A Train Robbery' (runner up) is a mostly thrilling action western breathtakingly shot in a Colorado gorge, and a good entre into the work of star Tom Mix, though his glamorized cowboy duds and some of the derring-do, especially the formulaic serial b-movie-style finale, don't survive well. The Italian fantasy epic, 'Maciste in Hell' has a laughable plot that makes no sense, but it does have burly grinning Maciste kicking demon ass in a stunningly conceived Hades that the cinema has never bettered. Lillian Gish had to pull a lot of strings to get Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter" (runner up) on the screen in opposition to a skittish Hollywood, pulling a full dog and pony show across the hinterlands to get the clergy on her side. Starstruck, they backed her and it was made, earning critical plaudits and even now is regarded as something of a classic. It's respectable and faithful, more or less, and Gish gives it her all, but it's ever so slightly dull.
'For Heaven's Sake' is, IMO, Harold Lloyd's best film.
1927 (52) (G.W. Pabst perfects seamless 'cutting-on-action' in films like 'Love of Jeanne Ney')
October (Ten Days that Shook the World) (Sergei Eisenstein)*
Bed and Sofa (Abram Room)*
The General (Buster Keaton)*
Berlin--Symphony of a Great City (Walter Ruttman)*
The Kid Brother (J.A. Howe, Ted Wilde)
Uncle Tom's Cabin (Harry Pollard)*
The Gaucho (F. Richard Jones)*
An Italian Straw Hat (Rene Clair)
Metropolis (Fritz Lang)
The Love of Jeanne Ney (G.W. Pabst)
Sunrise (F.W. Murnau)
The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland) -PART TALKIE
Wings (William Wellman)
Ghosts Before Breakfast (Hans Richter)
The End of St. Petersburg (V.I. Pudovkin)
My Best Girl (Sam Taylor)
College (Buster Keaton)
The Second 100 Years (Fred Guiol/w Laurel & Hardy)
Chang (Cooper, Schoedsack)
Putting Pants on Philip (Clyde Bruckman)
The Battle of the Century (Clyde Bruckman)
For the record: The Chess Player (Raymond Bernard); London After Midnight (Tod Browning) (stills reconstruction); Running Wild (Gregory La Cava); Hotel Imperial (Mauritz Stiller); The Cat and the Canary (Paul Leni); The Beloved Rogue (Alan Crosland); The Girl With the Hat Box (Boris Barnet)
To re-watch: La glace a trois faces (Jean Epstein)
To see: Stark Love (Karl Brown); Barbed Wire (Rowland V. Lee); Casanova (Alexander Volkoff); Shooting Stars (Anthony Asquith); Two Arabian Nights (Lewis Milestone); The Love of Sunya (Albert Parker); For the Term of His Natural Life (Norman Dawn); Annie Laurie (John S. Robertson); Chuji Tabi Nikki (Daisuke Ito/surviving parts); Dekabristy (The Decembrists) (Aleksandr Ivanovsky); Der Geisterzug (The Ghost Train) (Geza von Bolvary); Man, Woman and Sin (Monta Bell); Mockery (Benjamin Christensen); The Night of Love (George Fitzmaurice); Poet i tsar (Vladimir Gardin); Potseluj Meri Pikford (A Kiss From Mary Pickford) (Sergei Komarov); Prostitutka (The Prostitute) (Oleg Frelikh); Quality Street (Sidney Franklin); The Scar of Shame (Frank Peregini); Senorita (Clarence Badger); Six et demi onze (Jean Epstein); Sorok pervyj (The Forty-First) (Yakov Protazanov); Surrender (Edward Sloman); S.V.D. - Soyuz velikogo dela (The Club of the Big Deed) (Grigori Kozintsev, Leonid Trauberg); Tesouro Perdido (Lost Treasure) (Humberto Mauro); Three's A Crowd (Harry Langdon); The Valley of the Giants (Charles Brabin); When a Man Loves (Alan Crosland); White Gold (William K. Howard); Xi Xiang Ji (Tale of the Western Chamber) (Hou Yao); Dva dnya (Two Days) (Grigori Stobovoi); Sumka dipkuryera (Diplomatic Pouch) (Aleksandr Dovzhenko); Chelovek iz restorana (The Man From the Restaurant) (Yakov Protazanov); Old San Francisco (Alan Crosland); The Patent Leather Kid (Alfred Santell); Hula (Victor Fleming); The Girl in the Pullman (Erle C. Kenton); Mr. Wu (William Nigh); Rubber Tires (Alan Hale); The Notorious Lady (King Baggot); Getting Gertie's Garter (E. Mason Hopper); The Fighting Eagle (Donald Crisp); Tracked By the Police (Ray Enright); A Gentleman of Paris (Harry d'Abbadie D'Arrast); Ritzy (Richard Rosson); The First Auto (Roy Del Ruth); Parizhskiy sapozhnik (The Parisian Cobbler) (Friedrich Ermler); Baby ryazanskie (Women of Ryazan) (Olga Preobrazhenskaya, Ivan Pravov); Kreutzerova sonata (The Kreutzer Sonata) (Gustav Machaty); The Somme (M.A. Wetherell); Le Vertige (Marcel L'Herbier)
In the queue: L'Invitation au voyage (Germaine Dulac); Downhill (Alfred Hitchcock); The Ring (Alfred Hitchcock); The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (Ernst Lubitsch); The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (Esfir Shub); The King of Kings (Cecil B. DeMille); Love (Edmund Goulding/to re-watch); Slipping Wives (Fred Guiol)
VINTAGE RATING (1927): 10*****
Notes: One of the cinema's greatest years.
'October' is, IMO, Eisenstein's greatest film; a tour-de-force experimental visual treatment of the Revolution. In contrast, another Soviet film, 'Bed and Sofa' is the most realistic, unaffected and naturalistic movie of the silent era: dirty clothes, live-in unisex cohabs, abortion, and an emancipated woman; there's nothing else like it from this period. 'The Gaucho' is Douglas Fairbanks' oddest vehicle from his prime period, with one of the sexiest dance scenes ever and lavish production values. It's my favorite among his films. 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' one of the most expensive flops of the silent era, is an impressive epic melodrama that, despite racist elements, is a moving anti-slavery tale and an exciting, well-paced film that deserves critical re-evaluation. Many buffs regard 'Sunrise' as the greatest of all silent pictures. It impresses me quite a bit less, and then only for its visual schemes and Janet Gaynor's performance. Its hoary redemption plot and depiction of the evil city woman's temptations is as hokey as anything in Griffith, all the while pretending to be something more significant than the standard melodrama it is. I'd rather watch the flapper girl mantease drama, 'It', starring saucy Clara Bow, any day.
1928 (63+) (Release of first all-talking feature films)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Dreyer)*
The Wedding March (Erich von Stroheim)*
The Crowd (King Vidor)*
Fall of the House of Usher (US version) (Watson & Webber)
Fall of the House of Usher (French version) (Jean Epstein)
Moulin Rouge (E.A. Dupont)
The Docks of New York (Josef von Sternberg)
Arsenal (Alexander Dovzhenko)
The Seashell and the Clergyman (Germaine Dulac)
Show People (King Vidor)
Steamboat Bill Jr. (Charles Reisner, Buster Keaton)
Limousine Love (Fred Guiol)
Storm Over Asia (V.I. Pudovkin)
White Shadows in the South Seas (W.S. Van Dyke)
The Finishing Touch (Clyde Bruckman, Leo McCarey)
Sex in Chains (William Dieterle)
There It Is (H.L. Muller, Charles Bowers)
The Last Command (Josef von Sternberg)
From Soup to Nuts (Edgar Kennedy/w Laurel and Hardy)
Two Tars (James Parrott/w Laurel & Hardy)
Uberfall (Erno Metzner)
The Man Who Laughs (Paul Leni)
The Wind (Victor Sjostrom)
The Matinee Idol (Frank Capra)
Ko-Ko's Earth Control (Dave Fleischer)
Laugh Clown Laugh (Herbert Brenon)
Their Purple Moment (James Parrott, Fred Guiol/w Laurel & Hardy)
You're Darn Tootin' (Edgar Kennedy/w Laurel and Hardy)
Lights of New York (Bryan Foy) -TALKIE (first all-talking feature)
The Singing Fool (Lloyd Bacon) -TALKIE
For the record: Zvenigora (Alexander Dovzhenko); Alraune (Henrik Galeen); The Cameraman (Edward Sedgwick); That Certain Thing (Frank Capra); Tempest (Sam Taylor); West of Zanzibar (Tod Browning); Beggars of Life (William A. Wellman); Sadie Thompson (Raoul Walsh); The Farmer's Wife (Alfred Hitchcock); Lilac Time (George Fitzmaurice); The Life and Death of 9413, A Hollywood Extra (Robert Florey, Slavko Vorkapich); The Bridge (Joris Ivens); The Sex Life of the Polyp (Thomas Chalmers); Should Married Men Go Home? (Leo McCarey, James Parrott); Interference (Lothar Mendes, Roy Pomeroy)
To re-watch: Heimkehr (Joe May); Spies (Spione) (Fritz Lang); A Woman of Affairs (Clarence Brown); The Spieler (Tay Garnett)
To see: Maldone (Jean Gremillon); Crossroads (Jujiro) (Teinosuke Kinugasa); The Divine Woman (Victor Sjöström); Underground (Anthony Asquith); Noah's Ark (Michael Curtiz); Across to Singapore (William Nigh); The Battle of the Sexes (D.W. Griffith); West Point (Edward Sedgwick); The Garden of Eden (Lewis Milestone); Balaclava (Maurice Elvey); Q-Ships (Geoffrey Barkas); The Way of the Strong (Frank Capra); Submarine (Frank Capra); The Power of The Press (Frank Capra); La Borrachera Del Tango (Edmo Cominetti); The Constant Nymph (Adrian Brunel); Les Deux Timides (Rene Clair); Dressed to Kill (Irving Cummings); Eliso (Nikolai Shengelaya); En rade (Alberto Cavalcanti); Geheimnisse des Orients (Secrets of the Orient) (Alexandre Volkoff); Jitsuroku Chushingura (Shozo Makino); Kruzheva / Krusheva (Lace) (Sergei Yutkevich); Kukla s millionami (The Doll with Millions) (Sergei Komarov); Kurama Tengu (Teppei Yamaguchi); News Parade (David Butler); Odinnadtsatyj / Odinnadtsatyi (The Eleventh Year) (Dziga Vertov); The Red Dance (Raoul Walsh); The River Pirate (William K. Howard); Rossiya Nikolaya II i Lev Tolstoy (Esfir Shub); Scampolo (Augusto Genina); Schmutziges Geld (Richard Eichberg); Shanhkayskiy dokument / Shangkhaiskij dokument (The Shanghai Document) (Yakov Bliokh); Le Tourbillon de Paris (Julien Duvivier); The Trail of '98 (Clarence Brown); While the City Sleeps (Jack Conway); Yvette (Alberto Cavalcanti); Zuflucht (Carl Froelich); Golf Widows (Erle C. Kenton); The First Born (Miles Mander); L'equipage (Maurice Tourneur); Palais de Danse (Maurice Elvey); Don Diego i Pelage (Yakov Protazanov); A Ship Comes In (William K. Howard); Let 'Er Go Gallegher (Elmer Clifton); Captain Swagger (Edward H. Griffith); The Circus Kid (George B. Seitz); The Cossacks (George Hill); Her Cardboard Lover (Robert Z. Leonard); The Lady of Chance (Robert Z. Leonard); The Mysterious Lady (Fred Niblo); Walking Back (Rupert Julian); Burning Daylight (Charles J. Brabin); The Race Symphony (Rennsymphonie) (Hans Richter); Le tournoi dans la cite (Tournament) (Jean Renoir); Die Heilige und ihr Narr (The Saint and Her Fool) (William Dieterle); Huo shao hong lian si (The Burning of the Red Lotus Temple) (Zhang Shichuan); Le Diable au Coeur (Little Devil May Care) (Marcel l’Herbier); The Three Passions (Rex Ingram)
In the queue: Tire au flanc (Jean Renoir); The Little Match Girl (Jean Renoir); Lonesome (Paul Fejos); Brasa Dormida (Humberto Mauro); A Girl in Every Port (Howard Hawks); The Viking (Roy William Neill); The Patsy (King Vidor); The Racket (Lewis Milestone); Champagne (Alfred Hitchcock); Four Sons (John Ford); Hangman's House (John Ford); Riley the Cop (John Ford); The House on Trubnaya (Dom na Trubnoy) (Boris Barnet); Our Dancing Daughters (Harry Beaumont); In Old Arizona (Raoul Walsh, Irving Cummings)
VINTAGE RATING (1928): 9.5*****
Note: The silent era's swansong; another great year...
'Lights of New York' (runner up), the cinema's first all-talkie is charmingly bad, but there's a delightful musical number thrown into the middle, a vivid period sense and the certain frisson one feels when seeing an historic landmark and archival rarity. The same feeling comes to a lesser degree with Al Jolson's first all-talking vehicle, the exceedlingly schmaltzy and somewhat embarassing 'The Singing Fool,' the first monster hit of the talking age (grossing about twice the box office as 'The Jazz Singer'). It's the 'Kramer vs. Kramer' of its day, with the saintly dad (sometimes in black face) losing custody of his boy to the despicable two-timing wife. I had the feeling I might be watching a minor masterwork in Joe May's "Heimkehr," but the video dupe was so atrocious that I simply couldn't tell. A re-viewing, via another copy I'm securing is in the offing.
1929 (64) (Last year of silent cinema dominance)
Pandora's Box (G.W. Pabst)*
Big Business (James Horne, Leo McCarey/w Laurel & Hardy)*
Un Chien Andalou (Luis Bunuel, Salvador Dali)
Piccadilly (E.A. Dupont)
Dynamite (Cecil B. DeMille) -TALKIE
Blackmail (Alfred Hitchcock) -TALKIE
The Man With the Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov)
Liberty (Leo McCarey)
The White Hell of Pitz Palu (Georg W. Pabst, Arnold Fanck)
Bulldog Drummond (F. Richard Jones) -TALKIE
The Love Parade (Ernst Lubitsch) -TALKIE
The Love Trap (William Wyler) -PART-TALKIE
Turksib (Victor Turin)
Bacon Grabbers (Lewis R. Foster)
Double Whoopee (Lewis R. Foster)
Unaccustomed As We Are (Lewis R. Foster, Hal Roach)
The Four Feathers (Merian C. Cooper, Ernest Schoedsack)
The Virginian (Victor Fleming) -TALKIE
Diary of a Lost Girl (Georg W. Pabst)
The Broadway Melody (Harry Beaumont) - TALKIE
Old and New (The General Line) (Sergei Eisenstein)
Hallelujah! (King Vidor) -TALKIE
The Cocoanuts (Robert Florey) -TALKIE
Sunny Side Up (David Butler) -TALKIE
L'Argent (Marcel L'Herbier)
Regen (Rain) (Mannus Franken, Joris Ivens)
The Skeleton Dance (Walt Disney)
They Had to See Paris (Frank Borzage)
Seven Footprints to Satan (Benjamin Christensen)
The Show of Shows (John G. Adolphi)
Eveready Harton in Buried Treasure (E. Hardon)
For the record: Hollywood Revue of 1929 (Charles Reisner); The Letter (Jean de Limur); The Single Standard (John S. Robertson); The Iron Mask (Allan Dwan); Drifters (John Grierson): Coquette (Sam Taylor); Asphalt (Joe May); Spite Marriage (Edward Sedgwick, Buster Keaton); Disraeli (Alfred E. Green); The Mysterious Island (Lucien Hubbard, Benjamin Christensen, Maurice Tourneur); Wild Orchids (Sidney Franklin); The Woman in the Moon (Fritz Lang); The Great Gabbo (James Cruze, Erich von Stroheim); Tusalava (Len Lye); Madame X (Lionel Barrymore); Black and Tan (Dudley Murphy)
To re-watch (in the queue): Queen Kelly (Erich von Stroheim); Alibi (Roland West); Salute (John Ford); Flight (Frank Capra; queued); Novyj Vavilon (The New Babylon) (Grigori Kozintsev, Leonid Trauberg); Wrong Again (Leo McCarey)
To see: Eternal Love (Ernst Lubitsch); A Cottage on Dartmoor (Anthony Asquith); The Cock-eyed World (Raoul Walsh); Kitty (Victor Saville); Chinatown Nights (William Wellman); Welcome Danger (Clyde Bruckman, Malcolm St. Clair); Our Modern Maidens (Jack Conway); Dans La Nuit (Charles Vanel); Thunderbolt (Josef von Sternberg); The Last Warning (Paul Leni); The Wild Party (Dorothy Arzner); Their Own Desire (E. Mason Hopper); The Thirteenth Chair (Tod Browning); The Ship of Lost Men (Das Schiff der verlorenen Menschen) (Maurice Tourneur); The Case of Lena Smith (surviving 4 minutes) (Josef von Sternberg); Gentlemen of the Press (Millard Webb); High Treason (Maurice Elvey); Barro Humano (Adhemar Gonzaga); Thunderbolt (Josef von Sternberg); Atlantic / Atlantis (E.A. Dupont); L'arpete (The Seamstress) (E. B. Donatien); The Battle of Paris (Robert Florey); Le Bled (Jean Renoir); Broadway (Pal Fejos); The Charlatan (George Melford); Chiny i lyudi (Ranks and People) (Yakov Protazanov); Desert Nights (William Nigh); Evangeline (Edwin Carewe); La femme et le pantin (The Woman and the Puppet (Jacques de Baroncelli); Finis Terrae (Jean Epstein); Fragmentos da vida (Life's Fragments) (Jose Medina); Gardiens de Phare (Jean Gremillon); Goluboj express (Goluboi Ekspress) (Ilya Trauberg); His Glorious Night (Lionel Barrymore); Histoire de detective (Charles Dekeukeleire); The Hole in the Wall (Robert Florey); The Informer (Arthur Robison); Laila (George Schneevoigt); Linda (Dorothy Davenport); Marianne (Robert Z. Leonard); La Merveilleuse vie de Jeanne d'Arc (Marco de Gastyne); Monte Cristo (Henri Fescourt); Mutter Krausens Fahrt ins Gluck (Mother Krause's Journey Into Happiness) (Piel Jutzi); Nogent, Eldorado du dimanche (Marcel Carne); Les Nouveaux messieurs (The Gentlemen) (Jacques Feyder); The Pagan (W.S. Van Dyke); Paris Bound (Edward H. Griffith); Prapancha Pash (A Throw of Dice) (Franz Osten); Redskin (Victor Schertzinger); The River (Frank Borzage); Rotaie (Rails) (Mario Camerini); Seven Keys to Baldpate (Reginald Barker); The Shakedown (William Wyler); Sled pozara u Rusija / Sled pozhara nad Rusiya (After the Fire Over Russia) (Boris Grezhov); Sole (Sun) (Alessandro Blasetti/surviving 15 minutes); Den Starkaste (The Stronger) (Alf Sjoberg); Thru Different Eyes (John G. Blystone); The Trial of Mary Dugan (Bayard Veiller); The Vagabond Queen (Geza von Bolvary); The Valiant (William K. Howard); Varhanik u sv. Vita (The Organist of St Vitus) (Martin Fric); Vesnoj (Vesnoy / Springtime) (Mikhail Kaufman); Where East is East (Tod Browning); Wild Blood (Henry MacRae); Would You Believe It! (Walter Forde); The Younger Generation (Frank Capra); Zhivoj trup / Zhivoi trup (The Living Corpse) (Fyodor Otsep)
In the queue: Fragment of an Empire (Fridrikh Ermler); Manxman (Alfred Hitchcock); Verdun (Leon Poirier); The Woman Men Yearn For (Curtis Bernhardt); I Kiss Your Hand, Madame (Robert Land); The Wonderful Lies of Nina Petrovna (Hans Schwartz); Die Melodie der Welt (Walter Ruttmann); The Racketeer (Howard Higgin); The Canary Murder Case (Malcolm St. Clair, Frank Tuttle); The Ghost that Never Returns (Abram Room); The Godless Girl (Cecil B. DeMille); Lucky Star (Frank Borzage); The Taming of the Shrew (Sam Taylor); I Graduated, But... (Yasujiro Ozu); Tokyo March (Yasujiro Ozu); Days of Youth (Yasujiro Ozu); Rio Rita (Luther Reed); Show Boat (Harry Pollard); The Divine Lady (Frank Lloyd); Perfect Day (James Parrott); Men o' War (Lewis Foster); Wrong Again (Leo McCarey)
VINTAGE RATING (1929): 7.5****
Note: 'Big Business' is probably the quintessential Laurel and Hardy short comedy; pure destructive slapstick done in their sublime way. Luis Bunuel's surreal 'Un Chien Andalou' is slapstick of another kind, the director's middle finger thrust to an easily shocked public, delightfully grotesque from beginning to end. 'Dynamite' is an outlandish deco melodrama; Cecil B. DeMille's first talking film. It revels in the notion of a society woman brought down to size after her greedy exploitation of a prole, who is himself not so admirable a character. It has a crazy, ingenious plot, and is probably the liveliest talking film yet made; a window on the dusk of the Jazz Age before The Crash. Vertov's 'Man With a Movie Camera' is a cool idea that runs out of steam well before its end--(and Walter Ruttmann's more disciplined 1927 'Berlin--Symphony of a Great City' is arguably a better way to do this kind of visual "city symphony")--but it's invigorating and historically important enough to recommend. William Wyler's delightful romantic comedy-drama, 'The Love Trap' (runner up) is an interesting example of a type of movie that for decades had fallen off the face of the Earth in terms of film scholarship, the half-silent and half-talkie 'transition' film. Through some effort I was able to see an admittedly dismal video dupe of the legendary (for its scarceness, mostly) Jeanne Eagels' vehicle, "The Letter" (For the record). The good news is that there's a good film version of the story; that was made in 1940 by William Wyler, with Bette Davis. You'll do well to go no further than that.
AA winner "The Broadway Melody" can be hardgoing for audiences today but it's actually not half bad as a Tin Pan Alley meller (more a drama with musical interludes, with a sincere turn by Bessie Love as the mothering sister), and is practically of The Bard when stacked against the straight-up and godawful stagey musical revues: Warner's "The Show of Shows" (runner up) and MGM's "The Hollywood Revue of 1929" (for the record). ...Shows in particular gets a bad rap, and probably deserves it; it can get excruciating. Still, I watch these curios with a kind of fascinated disbelief, and once in awhile an act or an out-of-place celebrity or an interesting effect (2-color Technicolor sequences in both cases) make the going fun. Winnie Lightner in ...Shows, for instance, belts it out through two production numbers to really capture the electric spirit of vaudeville, and the dance finale is eye-poppingly manic.
Marcel L'Herbier brings similar deco grandiosity to the theme of greed in his "L'Argent," a film about the comeuppance of a ruthless speculator. Ironically, it was made for a mountain of money - and looks it - and lost a mountain of it, because, looking at it, it's dull as hell.
Favorite Films of the 1920s:
1.) The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Dreyer/France/1928)
The rest in chronological order:
Way Down East (D.W. Griffith/US/1920)
El Dorado (Marcel L'Herbier/France/1921)
Seven Years Bad Luck (Max Linder/US/1921)
Haxan (Witchcraft Through the Ages) (Christensen/Sweden/1922)
Foolish Wives (Erich von Stroheim/US/1922)
Nanook of the North (Robert Flaherty/US/1922)
Grandma's Boy (Fred Newmeyer/US/1922)
Our Hospitality (Buster Keaton, Blystone/US/1923)
A Woman of Paris (Charles Chaplin/US/1923)
Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton/US/1924)
The Last Laugh (F.W. Murnau/Germany/1924)
Strike (Sergei Eisenstein/USSR/1925)
Greed (4-hour restoration) (Erich von Stroheim/US/1925)
Mother (V.I. Pudovkin/USSR/1926)
For Heaven's Sake (Sam Taylor/US/1926)
October (Sergei Eisenstein/USSR/1927)
Bed and Sofa (Abram Room/USSR/1927)
The General (Buster Keaton/US/1927)
Berlin--Symphony of a Great City (Walter Ruttman/Germany/1927)
Uncle Tom's Cabin (Harry Pollard/US/1927)
The Gaucho (F. Richard Jones/US/1927)
The Wedding March (Erich von Stroheim/US/1928)
The Crowd (King Vidor/US/1928)
Big Business (James Horne, Leo McCarey/US/1929)
1930 (72) (Silent cinema dead; beginning of talkie 'Pre-Code' era; studio system solidified)
All Quiet On the Western Front (Lewis Milestone)
L'Age d'or (Luis Bunuel)
The Blue Angel (German-language version) (Josef von Sternberg)
A Propos de Nice (Jean Vigo)
Salt for Svanetia (Mikhail Kalatozov)
Morocco (Josef von Sternberg)
Menschen Am Sonntag (B. Wilder, Siodmak, Ulmer, Zinneman,etc)
Le Roman de Renard (Tale of the Fox) (Ladislaw Starewicz)
Ladies of Leisure (sound version) (Frank Capra)
Hell's Angels (Howard Hughes)
The Devil to Pay (George Fitzmaurice)
The Bat Whispers (Roland West)
Hell's Heroes (William Wyler)
The Big Trail (widescreen version/Raoul Walsh)
Animal Crackers (Victor Heerman)
Half Shot at Sunrise (Paul Sloane)
The Dawn Patrol (Howard Hawks)
Holiday (Edward H. Griffith)
King of Jazz (John Murray Anderson)
Elstree Calling (Alfred Hitchcock,et, al.)
It's a Bird (Harold Muller, Charles Bowers)
The Silent Enemy (H.P. Carver)
Night Owls (James Parrott)
The Royal Family of Broadway (George Cukor)
Journey's End (James Whale)
The Golf Specialist (Monte Brice)
Earth (Alexander Dovzhenko)
The Divorcee (Robert Z. Leonard)
Aimless Walk (Bezucelna Prochazka) (Alexander Hammid)
Min and Bill (George W. Hill)
Madam Satan (Cecil B. DeMille)
For the Record (other famous or interesting flicks viewed): Under the Roofs of Paris (Rene Clair); Blood of a Poet (Jean Cocteau); City Girl (F.W. Murnau); Prix de beaute (Augusto Genina); Abraham Lincoln (D.W. Griffith); The Big House (George W. Hill); Monte Carlo (Ernst Lubitsch); Murder! (Alfred Hitchcock); With Byrd at the South Pole (Rucker and Van der Veer), Whoopee! (Thornton Freeland), Just Imagine (David Butler); etc.
To see: Abschied (Robert Siodmak); The Green Goddess (Alfred E. Green); Outward Bound (Robert Milton); Rain or Shine (Frank Capra); Street of Chance (John Cromwell); Wild Flower (China/Sun Yu); The March of Time (surviving fragments of MGM's aborted musical extravaganza); The Devil's Holiday (Edmund Goulding); Die Drei von der Tankstelle (Three of the Filling Station) (Wilhelm Thiele); Dreyfus (Richard Oswald); Ingagi (William Campbell); Are You There? (Exit Laughing) (Hamilton MacFadden); Men Without Women (John Ford); Tom Sawyer (John Cromwell); Free and Easy (Edward Sedgwick); Our Blushing Brides (Harry Beaumont); The Pay-Off (Lowell Sherman); School for Scandal (Maurice Elvey); Tom Sawyer (John Cromwell); Sin Takes a Holiday (Paul L. Stein); Au bonheur des dames (Julien Duvivier); Sangue Mineiro (Blood of Minas) (Humberto Mauro); Sweethearts on Parade (Marshall Neilan); Takovy je zivot (So ist das Leben / Such is Life) (Carl Junghans)
In the queue: La Aldea Maldita (Florian Rey); Holiday of St. Jorgen (Yakov Protazanov); Juno and the Paycock (Alfred Hitchcock); Feet First (Clyde Bruckman; to re-watch); The Unholy Three (Tod Browning); Anna Christie (Clarence Brown/re-watch); Up the River (John Ford); Raffles (George Fitzmaurice); The Doorway To Hell (Archie Mayo)
VINTAGE RATING (1930): 8****
Notes: 'Laughter' (runner up) is an embryonic screwball comedy that lacks the mile-a-minute pacing that marked the genre's maturity later in the decade. So is 'The Devil to Pay' (runner up), with a wonderfully witty Ronald Colman and refreshing pre-Code touches. 'The Bat Whispers' is a stylish 'so-bad-it's-good' old dark house drawing room thriller, especially fascinating to see in its early widescreen 65-millimeter format. Although William Wyler's 'Hell's Heroes' (runner up) eventually becomes an idealized redemption tale, it is probably the most realistic western of its time, a pre-Code gem with a real sense of the desert heat, dust and authentic grubby characters. John Ford's beautiful 1948 color remake ('3 Godfathers') is actually much more sentimental and religious. It was easy to see from a screening in college film class in 1983 why Alexander Dovzhenko's 'Earth' (runner up) was a world cinema masterwork, but in subsequent video viewings its impact is drastically minimized (and its Stalinist messages harder to stomach).
1931 (81) (Depression hits Hollywood hard)
City Lights (Charles Chaplin)
The Front Page (Lewis Milestone)
Five Star Final (Mervyn LeRoy)
Platinum Blonde (Frank Capra)
The Public Enemy (William Wellman)
The Last Flight (William Dieterle)
Maedchen in Uniform (Leontine Sagan)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Rouben Mamoulian)
Filmstudie No. 8 (Oskar Fischinger)
A Nous la Liberte (Rene Clair)
RUNNERS UP:
Monkey Business (Norman Z. McLeod)
Blonde Crazy (Roy del Ruth)
City Streets (Rouben Mamoulian)
Niemandsland (No Man's Land) (Victor Trivas)
La Chienne (Jean Renoir)
Studie no. 7 (Oskar Fischinger)
The Smiling Lieutenant (Ernst Lubitsch)
The Maltese Falcon (Dangerous Female) (Roy del Ruth)
Girls About Town (George Cukor)
Private Lives (Sidney Franklin)
Susan Lenox, Her Fall and Rise (Robert Z. Leonard)
Tabu (Robert Flaherty)
Dracula (Spanish version) (George Melford)
The Miracle Woman (Frank Capra)
Dishonored (Josef Von Sternberg)
Trader Horn (W.S. Van Dyke)
The Criminal Code (Howard Hawks)
Waterloo Bridge (James Whale)
The Skin Game (Alfred Hitchcock)
Man of the World (Richard Wallace)
Arrowsmith (John Ford)
For the Record (other famous or interesting flicks viewed): Enthusiasm (Simfoniya Donbassa) (A. Dovzhenko); Marius (Alexander Korda); Kameradschaft (G.W. Pabst); The Threepenny Opera (G.W. Pabst); Dracula (Tod Browning); The Road to Life (Nikolai Ekk); Cimarron (Wesley Ruggles); A Connecticut Yankee (David Butler); Dirigible (Frank Capra); A Free Soul (Clarence Brown); The Guardsman (Sidney Franklin); Congress Dances (Erik Charell); Huckleberry Finn (Norman Taurog); Night Nurse (William Wellman); Possessed (Clarence Brown); The Sin of Madelon Claudet (Edgar Selwyn); The Struggle (D.W. Griffith); Svengali (Archie Mayo); The Common Law (Paul L. Stein); East of Borneo (George Melford), The Easiest Way (Jack Conway); etc.
To re-watch: The Miracle Woman (Frank Capra) (in the queue)
To see: Emil und die detektive (Gerhard Lamprecht); Odna (Grigori Kozintsev, Leonid Trauberg); The Peach Girl (Bu Wancang); Ariane (Paul Czinner); The Ghost Train (Walter Forde); Der Morder Dimitri Karamasoff (Fyodor Otsep); Over the Hill (Henry King); Quick Millions (Rowland Brown); Der Raub der Mona Lisa (Geza von Bolvary); Tell England (Anthony Asquith); Transatlantic (William K. Howard); The Captain from Kopenick (Richard Oswald); Alam Ara (India/Ardeshir Irani); Die Andere Seite (Heinz Paul); Bezkrustni grobove (Graves Without Crosses) (Boris Grezov); East Lynne (Frank Lloyd); Figaro e la sua gran giornata (Figaro and His Great Day) (Mario Camerini); Itel a Balaton (Pal Fejos); Love and Duty (Bu Wancang); Madamu to nyobo (The Neighbor's Wife and Mine) (Heinosuke Gosho); Le Parfum de la dame en noir (Marcel L'Herbier); Taris (Jean Vigo); Zlatiye gory (Golden Mountains) (Sergei Yutkevich); This Modern Age (Nick Grinde); Laugh and Get Rich (Gregory La Cava); Safe in Hell (William A. Wellman); Lonely Wives (Russell Mack)
In the queue: Limite (Mario Peixoto); Berlin-Alexanderplatz (Piel Jutzi); La Fin du Monde (Abel Gance); On Purge Bebe (Jean Renoir); Smart Money (Alfred E. Green); Douro, Faina, Fluvial (Manoel de Oliveira); Hippolyte the Lackey (Steve Sekely); Marius (Alexander Korda); Tokyo Chorus (Japan/Yasujiro Ozu); Other Men's Women (William Wellman); Murder by the Clock (Edward Sloman); The Secret Six (George W. Hill); Skippy (Norman Taurog); The Mad Genius (Michael Curtiz); Inspiration (Clarence Brown); The Black Camel (Hamilton McFadden); Tonight or Never (Mervyn LeRoy)
VINTAGE RATING (1931): 8.5****
Notes: I was surprised at how much I enjoyed Alfred Hitchcock's stagey 'The Skin Game' (runner up)--often rated as one of his worst and most boring films. The film grabbed me at the outset with some trademark Hitch sound and visual flourishes and kept me interested through its tale of class envy and nasty double-crosses among England's new and old gentry (along with having an interesting environmental angle predicated mostly on the now-lost ideal of noblesse oblige).
1932 (96) (Stalin's mandate for 'socialist-realist' films ends Soviet art-film golden age)
I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (Mervyn LeRoy)
Las Hurdes (Land Without Bread) (Luis Bunuel)
Love Me Tonight (Rouben Mamoulian)
Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch)
Scarface (Howard Hawks)
The Fatal Glass of Beer (Clyde Bruckman)
Horse Feathers (Norman Z. McLeod)
The Sign of the Cross (Cecil B. DeMille)
The Old Dark House (James Whale)
Movie Crazy (Clyde Bruckman)
Blessed Event (Roy Del Ruth)
American Madness (Frank Capra)
Night After Night (Archie Mayo)
Call Her Savage (John Francis Dillon)
One Hour With You (Ernst Lubitsch)
The Most Dangerous Game (Irving Pichel, Ernest Schoedsack)
The Music Box (James Parrott)
Million Dollar Legs (Eddie Cline)
Red Dust (Victor Fleming)
20,000 Years in Sing Sing (Michael Curtiz)
Rome Express (Walter Forde)
What Price Hollywood? (George Cukor)
Arsene Lupin (Jack Conway)
Chandu the Magician (Marcel Varnel, William Cameron Menzies)
White Zombie (Victor Halperin)
Cabin in the Cotton (Michael Curtiz)
Skyscraper Souls (Edgar Selwyn)
One Way Passage (Tay Garnett)
Shanghai Express (Josef Von Sternberg)
Crazy Inventions (Dave Fleischer)
I Was Born, But... (Yasujiro Ozu)
Freaks (Tod Browning)
The Animal Kingdom (Edward H. Griffith)
Emma (Clarence Brown)
Que Viva Mexico! (Sergei Eisenstein)
Poil de Carotte (Julien Duvivier)
Back Street (John M. Stahl)
L'Atlantide (G.W. Pabst)
Bird of Paradise (King Vidor)
Murders in the Rue Morgue (Robert Florey)
Strange Interlude (Robert Z. Leonard)
Flowers and Trees (Burt Gillett)
Penguin Pool Murder (George Archainbaud)
For the Record (other famous or interesting flicks I've seen): The Blue Light (Leni Riefenstahl); Boudu Saved From Drowning (Jean Renoir): If I Had a Million (Ernst Lubitsch, et. al); A Farewell to Arms (Frank Borzage); The Mask of Fu Manchu (Charles Brabin); The Mummy (Karl Freund); A Bill of Divorcement (George Cukor); The Big Broadcast (Frank Tuttle); Blonde Venus (Josef von Sternberg); Doctor X (Michael Curtiz); Number Seventeen (Alfred Hitchcock); Three on a Match (Mervyn LeRoy); Two Seconds (Mervyn LeRoy); Street of Women (Archie Mayo); The Last Mile (Sam Bischoff)
To see: L'Affaire est dans le sac (Pierre Prevert); Razzia in St. Pauli (Werner Hochbaum); Der Rebell (Curtis Bernhardt/Luis Trenker); Wild Rose (China/Sun Yu); The Mouthpiece (Elliot Nugent/James Flood); Forbidden (Frank Capra); Okay America! (Tay Garnett); It's Tough to Be Famous (Alfred E. Green); The Half Naked Truth (Gregory La Cava); Hell's Highway (Rowland Brown); Hot Saturday (William Seiter): Make Me a Star (William Beaudine); The Bartered Bride (Max Ophuls); End of the Trail (D. Ross Lederman); Ivan (Aleksandr Dovzhenko); Tavaszi zapor (Marie, a Hungarian Legend) (Pal Fejos); Chandidas (Debaki Bose); Law and Order (Edward L. Cahn); Unheimliche Geschichten (Unholy Tales) (Richard Oswald); Uomini, che mascalzoni! (Mario Camerini); The Trial of Vivienne Ware (William K. Howard); State's Attorney (George Archainbaud); As You Desire Me (George Fitzmaurice); So Big! (William Wellman); Cynara (King Vidor); Madame Racketeer (Alexander Hall); Service for Ladies (Alexander Korda); This Is the Night (Frank Tuttle)
In the queue: La Nuit du carrefour (Jean Renoir); Where are the Dreams of Youth? (Yasujiro Ozu); Wooden Crosses (Les Croix de bois) (Raymond Bernard); Tiger Shark (Howard Hawks); Downstairs (Monta Bell); Symphony of Six Million (Gregory La Cava); Night World (Hobart Henley); Young America (Frank Borzage); Letty Lynton (Clarence Brown); L'Idee (Berthold Bartosch); The Crowd Roars (Howard Hawks); No Man of Her Own (Wesley Ruggles); Me and My Gal (Raoul Walsh/to re-watch); Taxi (Roy del Ruth); Counterplan (Fridrikh Ermler, Sergei Yutkevich)
VINTAGE RATING (1932): 9****
Note: King Vidor's 'Bird of Paradise' (runner up) is strictly third rate, but Dolores del Rio is so hot looking in her breast-covering lais and sucking tropical fruit juices and dribbling them into her man's mouth that I had to list it. 'Kuhle Wampe' (koo-lay vomp-uh) is a remarkable film--an unjustly unknown German masterwork--made by leftists before the rising tide of Nazism; the film presciently reels in horror at the complacency and acceptance of bourgeoise Berlin and has some amazingly frank, thoroughly natural scenes of domestic life. Clara Bow is just goddamned awesome wielding a whip and attitude in the zesty pre-Code, "Call Her Savage" (runner up).
1933 (114)
King Kong (Ernest Schoedsack, Merian Cooper)
Bombshell (Victor Fleming)
Gold Diggers of 1933 (Mervyn LeRoy)
Design for Living (Ernst Lubitsch)
She Done Him Wrong (Lowell Sherman)
The Invisible Man (James Whale)
42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon)
Viktor und Viktoria (Reinhold Schunzel)
The Bitter Tea of General Yen (Frank Capra)
Zero de conduite (Zero for Conduct) (Jean Vigo)
Lady Killer (Roy Del Ruth)
Queen Christina (Rouben Mamoulian)
Night on Bald Mountain (Alexieff and Parker)
The Private Life of Henry VIII (Alexander Korda)
90 Degrees South (Herbert Ponting)
Quatorze Juillet (Rene Clair)
Counsellor at Law (William Wyler)
Zoo in Budapest (Rowland V. Lee)
Lady for a Day (Frank Capra)
Dinner at Eight (George Cukor)
Penthouse (W.S. Van Dyke)
Employees' Entrance (Roy del Ruth)
The Mystery of the Wax Museum (Michael Curtiz)
Three-Cornered Moon (Elliott Nugent)
The Kennel Murder Case (Michael Curtiz)
Ecstasy (Gustav Machaty)
Heroes For Sale (William Wellman)
Bureau of Missing Persons (Roy Del Ruth)
La Maternelle (Jean Benoit-Levy, Marie Epstein)
The Good Companions (Victor Saville)
Sons of the Desert (William A. Seiter)
I'm No Angel (Wesley Ruggles)
Wild Boys of the Road (William Wellman)
Picture Snatcher (Lloyd Bacon)
The Barber Shop (Arthur Ripley)
Liebelei (Max Ophuls)
The Mayor of Hell (Archie Mayo)
International House (A. Edward Sutherland)
The Stranger's Return (King Vidor)
Island of Lost Souls (Erle C. Kenton)
Baby Face (Alfred E. Green)
I Cover the Waterfront (James Cruze)
Deserter (V.I. Pudovkin)
Gabriel Over the White House (Gregory La Cava)
Murders in the Zoo (A. Edward Sutherland)
Hallelujah I'm a Bum! (Lewis Milestone)
Lot in Sodom (James Sibley Watson, Melville Webber)
Christopher Strong (Dorothy Arzner)
Dawn to Dawn (Josef Berne)
Roman Scandals (Frank Tuttle)
Topaze (Harry d'Arrast)
Corruption (Charles Roberts)
For the Record (other famous or interesting flicks viewed): The Story of Temple Drake (John Cromwell); The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Fritz Lang); The Ghoul (T. Hayes Hunter); Hitlerjunge quex (Hans Steinhoff); Industrial Britain (Robert Flaherty); Mauvaise Graine (Billy Wilder); The Little Giant (Roy del Ruth); Madame Bovary (Jean Renoir); Morgenrot (Gustav Ucicky); Morning Glory (Lowell Sherman); The Power and the Glory (William K. Howard); Reunion in Vienna (Sidney Franklin); Sweepings (John Cromwell); Flying Down to Rio (Thornton Freeland); Topaze (Louis Gasnier); Diplomaniacs (William A. Seiter); The Devil's Brother (Hal Roach, Charles Rogers); Ladies They Talk About (William Keighley, Howard Bretherton)
To re-watch: The Power and the Glory (William K. Howard); Hello, Sister (Eric Von Stroheim)
To see: Chuncan (Spring Silkworms) (Cheng Bugao); Tianming (Daybreak) (Sun Yu); Ganga Bruta (Humberto Mauro); Little Toys (Sun Yu); Another Language (Edward H. Griffith); Hard to Handle (Mervyn LeRoy); Only Yesterday (John M. Stahl); The Sin of Nora Moran (Phil Goldstone); This Day and Age (Cecil B. DeMille); Kimi To Wakarete (Apart From You) (Mikio Naruse); This Nude World (Michael Mindlin); Destination Unknown (Tay Garnett); Eagle and the Hawk (Stuart Walker); Eskimo (W.S. Van Dyke); Izu no Odoriko (The Dancer of Izu) (Heinosuke Gosho); Knock ou le Triomphe de la medecine (Dr. Knock) (Louis Jouvet); Minato no nihon musume (Japanese Girls at the Harbor) (Hiroshi Shimizu); Sonnenstrahl (Pal Fejos); State Fair (Henry King); Taki no shiraito (The Water Magician) (Kenji Mizoguchi); Tango (Luis Moglia Barth); Velikii Uteshitel (The Great Consoler) (Lev Kuleshov); Zem spieva (The Earth Sings) (Karel Plicka); Today We Live (Howard Hawks); Mama Loves Papa (Norman Z. McLeod); Herthas Erwachen (Gerhard Lamprecht); Misere au Borinage (Joris Ivens, Henri Storck); Secrets (Frank Borzage); Ever in My Heart (Archie Mayo); The Silver Cord (John Cromwell); Our Betters (George Cukor); Voltaire (John G. Adolfi)
In the queue: Dekigokoro (Passing Fancy) (Ozu); Pilgrimage (John Ford); Stoopnocracy (Dave Fleischer); Dragnet Girl (Yasujiro Ozu); S.O.S. Eisberg (Arnold Fanck); Jofroi (Marcel Pagnol); Tokyo no Onna (A Woman of Tokyo) (Yasujiro Ozu); Peg O' My Heart (Robert Z. Leonard); Ann Vickers (John Cromwell); Bed of Roses (Gregory La Cava); The Vampire Bat (Frank Strayer)
VINTAGE RATING (1933): 10*****
Note: So many classics; so many second-tier obscure delights...
It's impossible not to list scads of flicks here because 1933's films are so hugely enjoyable, and there seems to be an endless supply of them. On the whole, this is probably my very favorite year in movies. Even several listed in 'For the Record' and many others I've not listed have their worthwhile moments.
There's no better example of a classic that's electric on the big screen and lifeless and slow on the TV screen than the famous Greta Garbo vehicle, 'Queen Christina.' The obscure 'b'-movie indie, 'Corruption' (runner up) is a vigorous if obvious swipe at political rot, but makes the list for an astonishing pre-Code moment: a flamboyantly flourished middle finger thrust by a reporter at the film's main political goon. "I Cover the Waterfront" (runner up) is not a topnotch newspaper pre-Code but it has a game young Claudette Colbert and a wonderful pre-Code scene of Ben Lyon kinkily clamping her in stockade irons (she likes it!) to steal kisses, much to the shock of several old ladies. Two interesting 'zoo' flicks this year. First is 'Zoo in Budapest' (runner up), a lyrical little winsome romance being something of a spawn of F.W. Murnau's 'Sunrise' and Pal Fejos' 'Lonesome,' and looking forward to contemporary classics such as 'A Little Romance' and 'Before Sunrise.' It's also one of the most visually lovely movies of the '30s. The other, 'Murders in the Zoo' (runner up) looks like an A-minus programmer, an implausible but gleefully and irresistibly nasty horror thriller about an insanely jealous adventurer who uses zoo animals in the commission of perfect murders against his perceived enemies (usually those he wrongly suspects of screwing his wife.) Charlie Ruggles' comic relief has a pre-Code edge; particularly when he has a frightening animal encounter and then asks of no one in particular: "Does anyone know I can find the nearest laundry?"
1934 (106) (Strict Production Code enforcement kicks in, June 1934; 'Pre-Code' era ends; screwball comedies born)
Man of Aran (Robert Flaherty)
Ukigusa Monogatari (A Story of Floating Weeds) (Yasujiro Ozu)
It Happened One Night (Frank Capra)
It's a Gift (Norman Z. McLeod)
Twentieth Century (Howard Hawks)
The Thin Man (W.S. Van Dyke)
The Old-Fashioned Way (William Beaudine)
The Mascot (Fetiche) (Ladislaw Starewicz)
Wonder Bar (Lloyd Bacon)
Murder at the Vanities (Mitchell Leisen)
La Joie de Vivre (Hector Hoppin)
The House of Rothschild (Alfred Werker)
The Scarlet Pimpernel (Harold Young)
Fog Over Frisco (William Dieterle)
RUNNERS UP:
The New Earth (Joris Ivens)
The Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright)
Chapayev (Vasiliev brothers)
Fashions of 1934 (William Dieterle)
Bolero (Wesley Ruggles)
Boule de Suif (Pyshka) (Mikhail Romm)
Tarzan and His Mate (Cedric Gibbons)
The Lost Patrol (John Ford)
Treasure Island (Victor Fleming)
You're Telling Me (Erle Kenton)
The Black Cat (Edgar Ulmer)
The Scarlet Empress (Josef von Sternberg)
Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back (Roy Del Ruth)
Evergreen (Victor Saville)
Belle of the Nineties (Leo McCary)
Imitation of Life (John M. Stahl)
Hi'-Neighbor! (Gus Meins; feat. Our Gang)
Six of a Kind (Leo McCarey)
Little Man, What Now? (Frank Borzage)
The Gay Divorcee (Mark Sandrich)
Death Takes a Holiday (Mitchell Leisen)
Manhattan Melodrama (W.S. Van Dyke)
Le Grand jeu (Jacques Feyder)
Bulldog Jack (Walter Forde)
Devil Dogs of the Air (Lloyd Bacon)
Kid Millions (Roy Del Ruth)
Poor Cinderella (Dave Fleischer)
The Merry Widow (Ernst Lubitsch)
Dames (Ray Enright, Busby Berkeley)
Three Songs About Lenin (Dziga Vertov)
The Jolly Fellows/Jazz Comedy (Grigory Alexandrov)
Our Daily Bread (irrigation-trench-digging sequence) (King Vidor)
For the record: The Goddess (Shen nu/Wu Yonggang); Liliom (Fritz Lang); Toni (Jean Renoir); La Signora di Tutti (Max Ophuls); Maria Chapdelaine (Julien Duvivier); The Man Who Knew Too Much (Alfred Hitchcock); Waltzes from Vienna (Alfred Hitchcock); One Night of Love (Victor Schertzinger); Of Human Bondage (John Cromwell); Happiness (Alexander Medvedkin); We're Not Dressing (Norman Taurog); The Count of Monte Cristo (Rowland V. Lee); (others)
To see: Der Verlorene Sohn (Luis Trenker); I'll Tell (Edwin J. Burke); Chu Chin Chow (Walter Forde); Crime Without Passion (Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur); Le Dernier Milliardaire (The Last Millionaire) (Rene Clair); Groza (The Storm) (Vladimir Petrov); The Little Minister) (Richard Wallace); Les Miserables (Raymond Bernard); Mlody las (The Young Trees) (Jozef Lejtes); La Mujer del Puerto (Arcady Boytler, Rafael Sevilla); No Greater Glory (Frank Borzage); Return of the Terror (Howard Bretherton); Seeta (Debaki Bose); So ein Flegel (Robert A. Stemmle); Tonari no Yae-chan (Our Neighbour, Miss Yae) (Yasujiro Shimazu); Vosstaniye rybakov (Revolt of the Fishermen) (Erwin Piscator); What Every Woman Knows (Gregory LaCava); The White Parade (Irving Cummings); The World Moves On (John Ford); Yu guang qu (Song of the Fisherman) (Cai Chusheng); One More River (James Whale); Sadie McKee (Clarence Brown); Hips Hips Hooray! (Mark Sandrich); Mills of the Gods (Roy William Neill); 6 Day Bike Rider (Lloyd Bacon); Plunder of Peach and Plum (Ying Yunwei); We Live Again (Rouben Mamoulian); Hollywood Party (Roy Rowland)
In the queue: The Youth of Maxim (Maxim Trilogy Pt. 1) (Grigory Kozintsev); Angele (Marcel Pagnol); The Barrets of Wimpole Street (Sidney Franklin); Nana (Dorothy Arzner); Zou Zou (Marc Allegret); The Mystery of Edwin Drood, (Maurice Elvey); The Clairvoyant (Maurice Elvey); Evelyn Prentice (William K. Howard); The Affairs of Cellini (Gregory La Cava); The Cat’s Paw (Sam Taylor); The Painted Veil (Richard Boleslawski)
VINTAGE RATING (1934): 9.5****
Notes: I struggled a bit with the top slots here; the old art-vs.-entertainment tug of war favored the art ('Man of Aran' and "Ukigusa monogatari') for the top two slots over all of the more easily 'entertaining' films listed below them. Ozu's film in particular is so impressive for its unadorned naturalness that it makes everything else look artificial. Still, Flaherty's hardscrabble visual poetry in "Man of Aran' wins by a hair.
Released just days before the full enforcement of the Production Code, Mitchell Leisen's spicy and funny backstage musical-comedy-mystery 'Murder at the Vanities' was probably the fleshiest movie Hollywood ever made up to its time (apart from jungle pictures such as 'Trader Horn,' 'Tarzan and His Mate' and 'Legong: Dance of the Virgins' which all have full nude or topless scenes). The jiggle factor is high, filled with half-naked chorus girls or simulated full nudes (in body suits), and much risque' patter between hilariously feuding Victor McLaglen and Jack Oakie. The movie revels in ways to show women's legs spread apart (a la Berkeley). Oakie's final come-on ("Let's do it!") to blonde hottie Toby Wing would be completely off limits by the rules just a week or so later. As a bonus, there's also a musical number singing the praises of "Sweet Marijuana!" (The whole thing was banned in Detroit, apparently). Similarly Warner's Al Jolson vehicle, 'Wonder Bar' is filled with delightful Pre-Code innuendo and vivid showbiz milieu, including an amazingly direct gay joke on the dance floor. The finale sequence is a jawdroppingly racist dance number, in which Busby Berkely enshrines nearly every black stereotype known (including giant watermelons!) into a massive--and admittedly, impressive--choreographic melange. There's impressive choreography of a sort also in King Vidor's 'Our Daily Bread', an otherwise confused social-problem melodrama, that has a rhythmically dynamic and iconic irrigation-trench-digging scene in the finale that blends Soviet-inspired montage with smooth Hollywood technical execution.
1935 (95) (Hollywood rises from Depression ahead of general economy; First full-color feature released)
The 39 Steps (Alfred Hitchcock)
Triumph of the Will (Leni Riefenstahl)
Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale)
Top Hat (Mark Sandrich)
A Night at the Opera (Sam Wood)
The Man on the Flying Trapeze (Clyde Bruckman)
La Bandera (Julien Duvivier)
Steamboat Round the Bend (John Ford)
Front Page Woman (Michael Curtiz)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (Max Reinhardt)
Hands Across the Table (Mitchell Leisen)
RUNNERS UP:
Mutiny on the Bounty (Frank Lloyd)
Kaleidoscope (Len Lye)
A Colour Box (Len Lye)
The Good Fairy (William Wyler)
The Devil is a Woman (Josef von Sternberg)
Broadway Melody of 1936 (Roy del Ruth)
The Scoundrel (Ben Hecht)
Carnival in Flanders (Jacques Feyder)
The Informer (John Ford)
Crime and Punishment (Josef von Sternberg)
The Story of Louis Pasteur (William Dieterle)
Lucrèce Borgia (Lucrezia Borgia) (Abel Gance)
An Inn in Tokyo (Tokyo No Yado) (Yasujiro Ozu)
Alice Adams (George Stevens)
The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (Henry Hathaway)
Star of Midnight (Stephen Roberts)
Ruggles of Red Gap (Leo McCarey)
Dangerous (Alfred E. Green)
The Band Concert (Wilfred Jackson)
Captain Blood (Michael Curtiz)
First a Girl (Victor Saville)
Naughty Marietta (W.S. Van Dyke)
Gold Diggers of 1935 (Busby Berkeley)
The Whole Town's Talking (John Ford)
'G' Men (William Keighley)
If You Could Only Cook (William A. Seiter)
The Story of Louis Pasteur (William Dieterle)
For the record: Annie Oakley (George Stevens); Sylvia Scarlett (George Cukor); Becky Sharp (Rouben Mamoulian); Roberta (William A. Seiter); Anna Karenina (Clarence Brown); Mad Love (Karl Freund)
To re-watch: Folies Bergere (Roy Del Ruth); Bonnie Scotland (James W. Horne)
To see: Ah, Wilderness! (Clarence Brown); Wife, Be Like a Rose! (Mikio Naruse); Amphitryon (Reinhold Schunzel); Bonne chance (Sacha Guitry); Black Fury (Michael Curtiz); Chandrasena (Rajaram Vankudre Shantaram); Cigalon (Marcel Pagnol); Devdas (P.C. Barua); Four Hours to Kill! (Mitchell Leisen); The Gilded Lily (Wesley Ruggles); It's a Small World (Irving Cummings); Janosik (Martin Fric); King of the Damned (Walter Forde); Krestyane (Peasants) (Fridrikh Ermler); The Last Journey (Bernard Vorhaus); Lazybones (Michael Powell); Magnificent Obsession (John M. Stahl); Merlusse (Marcel Pagnol); No Limit (Monty Banks); Orizuru Osen (The Downfall of Osen) (Kenji Mizoguchi); Palos brudefaerd (The Wedding of Palo) (Friedrich Dahlsheim, Knud Rasmussen); Podrugi (The Girl Friends/The Song of Potemkin,) (Lev Arnstam); Princess Tam Tam (Edmond T. Greville); Remember Last Night? (James Whale); Stutzen der Gesellschaft (Pillars of Society) (Douglas Sirk); Swedenhielms (Gustaf Molander); Uwasa no musume (The Girl on Everyone's Lips) (Mikio Naruse); The Passing of the Third Floor Back (Berthold Viertel); After Office Hours (Robert Z. Leonard); Dr. Socrates (William Dieterle); Goin' to Town (Alexander Hall); The Phantom Light (Michael Powell); Go Into Your Dance (Archie Mayo); Clive of India (Richard Boleslawski)
In the queue: La Belle Equipe (Julien Duvivier); Aerograd (Alexander Dovzhenko); The New Gulliver (Alexander Ptushko); Youth of Maxim (the Maxim Trilogy) (Grigory Kozintsev); The Wedding Night (King Vidor); Pension Mimosas (Jacques Feyder); Earthworm Tractors (Ray Enright); Golgotha (Julien Duvivier); The Big Road (Dalu) (Yu Sun); Tange Sazen and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo (Sadao Yamanaka); The Tunnel (Transatlantic Tunnel) (Maurice Elvey); She (Irving Pichel, Lansing Holden); The Black Room (Roy William Neill); Crime and Punishment (Pierre Chenal); Dante's Inferno (Harry Lachman); A Tale of Two Cities (Jack Conway); Stranded (Frank Borzage); The Last Days of Pompeii (Ernest Schoedsack); No More Ladies (Edward H. Griffith, George Cukor); Legong: Dance of the Virgins (Henri de la Falaise)
VINTAGE RATING (1935): 8****
Note: In a response to the restrictions of the Production Code, Hollywood turned to the literary classics as the basis for big, dazzling productions to make up for the lack of spicy original material. Most of Tinseltown had weathered the Depression, but only MGM was sufficiently capitalized to display the kind of moxy and risk to undertake two epics based on Dickens: 'David Copperfield' (runner up) and 'A Tale of Two Cities' (seen, but not listed here). On top of that, the studio had Hollywood's most expensive production of the year, "Mutiny on the Bounty' (runner up) a still entertaining yarn that plays best when Charles Laughton's Captain Bligh is onscreen but less well in the more arid and lifeless patches resulting from Frank Lloyd's staid direction. As it happened, MGM had a hit with all three films. Less prestigious Warner Bros. even managed to undertake a lavish Shakespearean project, 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' which earns big points for being one of the most beautifully staged and photographed movies ever, even though the acting and narrative direction are very strange indeed.
1936 (131) (Jean Renoir directs four features, beginning his greatest period)
A Day in the Country (Jean Renoir)
Night Mail (Basil Wright, Harry Watt)
Rainbow Dance (Len Lye)
The Crime of Monsieur Lange (Jean Renoir)
Modern Times (Charles Chaplin)
Sisters of the Gion (Kenji Mizoguchi)
Page Miss Glory (Tex Avery)
Libeled Lady (Jack Conway)
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Frank Capra)
Craig's Wife (Dorothy Arzner)
Born to Dance (Roy del Ruth)
RUNNERS UP:
Der Kaiser von Kalifornian (Luis Trenker)
Intermezzo (Gustaf Molander)
Things to Come (William Cameron Menzies)
The Green Pastures (William Keighley)
Dodsworth (William Wyler)
Bullets or Ballots (William Keighley)
The Petrified Forest (Archie Mayo)
My Man Godfrey (Gregory La Cava)
Three Smart Girls (Henry Koster)
The Prisoner of Shark Island (John Ford)
Come and Get It (William Wyler, Howard Hawks)
The Moon’s Our Home (William A. Seiter)
Wife vs. Secretary (Clarence Brown)
I Love to Singa (Tex Avery)
Show Boat (James Whale)
Popeye the Sailor Meets Sinbad (Dave Fleischer)
The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (Henry Hathaway)
The Story of a Cheat (Sacha Guitry)
Winterset (Alfred Santell)
As You Like It (Paul Czinner)
The Devil-Doll (Tod Browning)
Love Before Breakfast (Walter Lang)
Banjo on My Knee (John Cromwell)
The White Angel (William Dieterle)
Ceiling Zero (Howard Hawks)
Follow the Fleet (Mark Sandrich)
Sabotage (Alfred Hitchcock)
The Gay Desperado (Rouben Mamoulian)
For the record: We are From Kronstadt (Efim Dzigan); Les bas-fonds (Jean Renoir); Circus (Tsirk) (Grigori Alexandrov); The Princess Comes Across (William K. Howard); Yiddle with His Fiddle (Joseph Green, Jan Nowina-Przybylski); The Secret Agent (Alfred Hitchcock); Rose Hobart (Joseph Cornell); Dracula's Daughter (Lambert Hillyer); The Milky Way (Leo McCarey); After the Thin Man (W.S. Van Dyke); The Plainsman (Cecile B. DeMille); San Francisco (W.S. Van Dyke); These Three (William Wyler); Theodora Goes Wild (Richard Boleslawski); The Garden of Allah (Richard Boleslawski); The Road to Glory (Howard Hawks); The Amazing Quest of Ernest Bliss (Alfred Zeisler); The Ex-Mrs. Bradford (Stephen Roberts)
To re-watch: These Three (William Wyler); The Man Who Could Work Miracles (Lothar Mendes); Mary of Scotland (John Ford)
To see: Die Ewige Maske (Werner Hochbaum); Anything Goes (Lewis Milestone); Daro un milione (Mario Camerini); Fahrmann Maria (Frank Wisbar); La Guerre des gosses (Generals Without Buttons) (Jacques Daroy); Hortobagy (Georg Hollering); Jenny (Marcel Carne); Komedie om Geld (Max Ophuls); Lumpacivagabundus (Lumpaci the Vagabond) (Geza von Bolvary); Redes (The Wave) (Emilio Gomez Muriel, Fred Zinnemann); Sant Tukaram (Vishnupant Govind Damle, Sheikh Fattelal); Syn Mongolij (Son of Mongolia) (Ilya Trauberg); La Tendre ennemie (Max Ophuls); The Man Who Could Work Miracles (Lothar Mendes); Mary of Scotland (John Ford); It's Love Again (Victor Saville); Woman of Osaka (Kenji Mizoguchi); Three Godfathers (Richard Boleslawski); Small Town Girl (William A. Wellman); Club de femmes (Girls' Club) (Jacques Deval); The Man Who Changed His Mind (aka, The Man Who Lived Again) (Robert Stevenson); etc
In the queue: Cesar (Marcel Pagnol); By the Bluest of Seas (Boris Barnet); La Belle Equipe (Julien Duvivier); The Only Son (Yasujiro Ozu); Lenochka i Vinograd (Antonina Kudryavtseva); Soigne ton gauche (Jacques Tati); Seven Brave Ones (Sergei Gerasimov); Desire (Ernst Lubitsch); Arigato-san (Mr. Thank You) (Hiroshi Shimizu); Un grand amour de Beethoven (Abel Gance); Lloyds of London (Henry King); Anthony Adverse (Mervyn LeRoy); Allotria (Willi Forst)
VINTAGE RATING (1936): 8****
Note: Tex Avery's charming and funny cartoons 'I Love to Singa' (a spoof of 'The Jazz Singer') and "Page Miss Glory" are the first really good Warner Brothers animated shorts. Of Renoir's four features this year, the unfinished yet complete and perfect 'A Day in the Country' is the most lyrical and haunting; 'The Crime of Monsieur Lange' the most fun and vigorous. 'Night Mail' is one of the masterworks of the British documentary school; it somehow finds visual and aural excitement in the mundane subject of postal delivery. For a brief time, Alexander Korda's London Film company makes Britain the behemoth of Euro production (his Denham studio marks the first, and last, time the UK had Europe's largest film production facility) with two excellent prestige pictures, the exceptional biopic 'Rembrandt' with the great Charles Laughton and the fascinating sci-fi epic 'Things to Come' (runner up). MGM's 'Libeled Lady' assembles a dream cast (Spencer Tracy, Myrna Loy, William Powell, and Jean Harlow) for a classic screwball comedy. The Germans make an unexpectedly vivid and exciting Western biopic of John Sutter--'Der Kaiser von Kalifornien' (runner up)--about the man who unwittingly set off the California gold rush.
1937 (114+) (Disney's Snow White--a massive hit--proves viability of feature animation)
La Grande illusion (Jean Renoir)
Pepe-le-Moko (Julien Duvivier)
Humanity and Paper Balloons (Sadao Yamanaka)
Nothing Sacred (William Wellman)
The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey)
Easy Living (Mitchell Leisen)
They Won't Forget (Mervyn LeRoy)
The Old Mill (Wilfred Jackson)
Stage Door (Gregory La Cava)
Gueule d'amour (Julien Duvivier)
The Life of Emile Zola (William Dieterle)
Camille (George Cukor)
History Is Made at Night (Frank Borzage)
The Prisoner of Zenda (John Cromwell)
Swing High, Swing Low (Mitchell Leisen)
Way Out West (James W. Horne)
Make Way For Tomorrow (Leo McCarey)
Stand-In (Tay Garnett)
Shall We Dance? (Mark Sandrich)
Un Carnet de bal (Julien Duvivier)
Wise Girl (Leigh Jason)
Doctor Syn (Roy William Neill)
True Confession (Wesley Ruggles)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (David Hand)
You Only Live Once (Fritz Lang)
The Pearls of the Crown (Christian-Jaque, Sacha Guitry)
Trade Tattoo (Len Lye)
Fire Over England (William K. Howard)
Night Must Fall (Richard Thorpe)
Dark Journey (Victor Saville)
A Star is Born (William Wellman)
A Day at the Races (Sam Wood)
Marked Woman (Lloyd Bacon)
Young and Innocent (Alfred Hitchcock)
Captains Courageous (Victor Fleming)
The Prince and the Pauper (William Keighley)
A Damsel in Distress (Astaire's dance scenes) (George Stevens)
100 Men and a Girl (Henry Koster)
Stella Dallas (King Vidor)
Peter the First (Vladimir Petrov)
Broadway Melody of 1938 (Roy del Ruth)
The Broken Jug (Der Zerbrochene Krug) Gustav Ucicky
For the Record: The Baltic Deputy (Zharki and Heifetz); It's Love I'm After (Archie Mayo); Black Legion (Archie Mayo); The Dybbuk (Michal Waszynski); Hollywood Hotel (Busby Berkeley); Conquest (Clarence Brown); The Good Earth (Sidney Franklin); The Hurricane (John Ford); Topper (Norman Z. McLeod); Wee Willie Winkie (John Ford); Bizarre, Bizarre (Marcel Carné)
To re-watch: The Toast of New York (Rowland V. Lee)
To see: Smart Blonde (Frank McDonald); Mannequin (Frank Borzage); The Last of Mrs. Cheney (Richard Boleslawski); To New Shores (Douglas Sirk); Confession (Joe May); Artists & Models (Raoul Walsh); Ali Baba Goes to Town (David Butler); Victoria The Great (Herbert Wilcox); Mukti (P.C. Barua); L'Etrange Monsieur Victor (The Strange Monsieur Victor (Jean Gremillon); Double Wedding (Richard Thorpe); The Great Garrick (James Whale)
In the queue: Angel (Ernst Lubitsch); Straits of Love and Hate (Aien Kyo) (Kenji Mizoguchi); Lenin in October (Mikhail Romm); Street Angel (Malu tianshi) (Mu-jih Yuan); What Did the Lady Forget? (Yasujiro Ozu); Crossroads (Xiling Shen); Lone White Sail (Vladimir Legoshin); Josette (Christian-Jaque); Harvest (Marcel Pagnol); Good Morning, Boys (Marcel Varnel); Knight Without Armour (Jacques Feyder); Kaze no naka no kodomo (Children in the Wind) (Hiroshi Shimizu); Song at Midnight (Weibang Ma-Xu)
VINTAGE RATING (1937): 9****
Note: 'The Awful Truth' is the year's best comedy, but I'm giving a slight edge to 'Nothing Sacred' for its subversive acerbic tone as it trashes journalism, fame and public gullibility. It also has an unbeatable screwball trio in Carole Lombard, Fredric March and Walter Connolly. 'They Won't Forget' is one of the more vigorous liberal social dramas to come in the wake of 1932's 'I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang' and 1936's 'Fury.' Once again, the ignorance of Southern lynch mobs was on trial, and Claude Rains chews the scenery gloriously as a Dixie-loving prosecutor. Disney's AA-winning 'The Old Mill' is possibly the most beautiful short cartoon the studio ever made; it put the newly developed multi-plane camera to expert use to create a striking illusion of image depth. This, along with the great achievement this year of 'Snow White..' (runner up), proved that there was no serious rival to Disney's animation hegemony. Frank Capra's 'Lost Horizon' is yet another example of a classic that desperately needs a proper movie-theater screening for full visual and emotional impact. Of the famous Warner biopics of the '30s, 'The Life of Emile Zola' (runner up) is the most enjoyable. My somewhat unfair aversion to 'Captains Courageous' (runner up)--which, to be fair, is a highly enjoyable Kipling adventure--mostly derives from the knowledge that Spencer Tracy won the best-actor AA for a pretty routine performance; he merely seems ridiculous as a Portuguese with a cobbled accent and Harpo Marx hair.
1938 (118+)
The Lady Vanishes (Alfred Hitchcock)
The Adventures of Robin Hood (Michael Curtiz, Wm. Keighley)
Pygmalion (Anthony Asquith)
Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks)
The Young in Heart (Richard Wallace)
Block-Heads (John Blystone)
La Bete humaine (Jean Renoir)
Port of Shadows (Quai des Brumes) (Marcel Carne)
Angels With Dirty Faces (Michael Curtiz)
Alexander's Ragtime Band (Henry King)
RUNNERS UP:
The Dawn Patrol (Edmund Goulding)
Olympia (Leni Riefenstahl)
The Shining Hour (Frank Borzage)
Porky in Wackyland (Robert Clampett)
You Can't Take It With You (Frank Capra)
The Citadel (King Vidor)
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Norman Taurog)
The Mad Miss Manton (Leigh Jason)
South Riding (Victor Saville)
You and Me (Fritz Lang)
Joy of Living (Tay Garnett)
In Old Chicago (Henry King)
St. Martin's Lane (Tim Whelan)
A Slight Case of Murder (Lloyd Bacon)
A Christmas Carol (Edwin L. Marin)
The Goldwyn Follies (George Marshall)
White Banners (Edmund Goulding)
Four Men and a Prayer (John Ford)
Ask a Policeman (Marcel Varnel)
Volga-Volga (Grigory Alexandrov)
For the record: The Childhood of Maxim Gorky (Mark Donskoi; this is probably better than I thought, re-watch); Too Hot to Handle (Jack Conway); The Great Waltz (Julien Duvivier); The Baker's Wife (Marcel Pagnol); Room Service (William A. Seiter); Swiss Miss (John G. Blystone); The Shopworn Angel (H.C. Potter); J'accuse! (Abel Gance); Yellow Jack (George B. Seitz); Algiers (John Cromwell); The Big Broadcast of 1938 (Mitchell Leisen); Boys Town (Norman Taurog); Four Daughters (Michael Curtiz); En kvinnas ansikte (A Woman's Face) (Gustaf Molander); Prison Train (Gordon Wiles); A Yank at Oxford (Jack Conway)
To re-watch: The Baker's Wife (Marcel Pagnol); The Buccaneer (Cecil B. DeMille); Jezebel (William Wyler)
To see: King of Alcatraz (Robert Florey); The Drum (Drums) (Zoltan Korda); Vessel of Wrath (The Beachcomber) (Erich Pommer); Varastettu kuolema (Stolen Death) (Nyrki Tapiovaara); Mad About Music (Norman Taurog); Hana chirinu (Flowers Have Fallen) (Tamizo Ishida); La Vuelta al nido (Return to the Nest) (Leopoldo Torres Rios); Heimat (Carl Froelich); Professor Mamlock (Adolf Minkin, Gerbert Rappaport); Katia (Maurice Tourneur); Farinet (Max Haufler); 13 Stuhle (EW Emo); Aa kokyo (Kenji Mizoguchi); L'Affaire Lafarge (Pierre Chenal); Artists and Models Abroad (Mitchell Leisen); Ba bai zhuang shi (800 Heroes) (Yunwei Ying); Bank Holiday (Carol Reed); Blockade (William Dieterle); Entree des artistes (Marc Allegret); Heiratsschwindler (Herbert Selpin); It's in the Air (Anthony Kimmins); Komsomolsk (Sergei Gerasimov); La Maison du Maltais (Pierre Chenal); Mujeres que trabajan (Manuel Romero); Orage (Marc Allegret); Remontons les Champs-Elysees (Sacha Guitry); Robo no ishi (A Pebble By the Wayside) (Tomotaka Tasaka); Sotto la croce del sud (Under the Southern Cross) (Guido Brignone); Sweethearts (W.S. Van Dyke); Werther (Max Ophuls)
In the queue: Hotel du Nord (Marcel Carne); Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (Ernst Lubitsch); If I Were King (Frank Lloyd); Elephant Boy (Robert Flaherty, Zoltan Korda); Le Schpountz (Heartbeat) (Marcel Pagnol); The Great Citizen (Fridrikh Ermler); Masseurs and the Woman (Hiroshi Shimizu); Les Disparus de St. Agil (Boys School) (Christian-Jaque); The Return of Maxim (Maxim Trilogy part 2) (Kozintzev & Trauberg); The Vyborg Side (Maxim Trilogy part 3) (Kozintzev & Trauberg); La Marseillaise (Jean Renoir); The Sisters (Anatole Litvak); Little Miss Broadway (Irving Cummings); Men Are Such Fools (Busby Berkeley); Love Finds Andy Hardy (George B Seitz); Joy of Living (Tay Garnett); Carefree (Mark Sandrich)
VINTAGE RATING (1938): 8.5****
Note: There's hardly a more lumpen musical-comedy than 'The Goldwyn Follies' (runner up), an outrageously expensive and fairly embarassing fiasco flop from producer Sam Goldwyn. To me, it's an endearing mess; a Technicolored train wreck of a movie, with forced comedy and hokum galore. I can't explain why, but I like it. The year's two great European art films, Leni Riefenstahl's 'Olympia' and Sergei Eisenstein's 'Alexander Nevsky' (both runners up) have to take a back seat to the best Hollywood fare on the enjoyment scale. Both are visually stunning, yet almost wholly dependent on big-screen viewing for watchability and impact. King Vidor's 'The Citadel' (runner up)--an UK/US MGM co-production--also needs the big screen to raise it from its humble dramatic mis-en-scene. It joins the long list of old A-rank Hollywood classics that have undeservedly slipped into the obscure margins of auteurist-driven movie history. John Ford's 'Four Men and a Prayer' (runners up) is pretty superficial among the director's films, and yet it is vigorously entertaining, and the chemistry among the male leads (Richard Greene, George Sanders, David Niven, C. Aubrey Smith) so good that it's a mystery why the film didn't spawn a sequel. French fatalistic poetic realism emerges full force in Jean Renoir's 'La bete humaine' and Marcel Carne's brooding 'Quai des brumes' (runner up). Laurel and Hardy's 'Block-Heads' has always seemed to me their funniest and best-paced film; in that judgment I constitute a minority among fans of "the Boys." By all accounts, Fox's musical drama, 'Alexander's Ragtime Band' should be minor tin-pan alley fluff, and yet there's a certain earnestness and dark edge to it that makes it special of its type. 'Three Comrades,' with a script by F. Scott Fitzgerald, universalizes the tragedy emerging in Nazi Germany, then shifts into a superb melodrama with a heartbreaking performance by Margaret Sullavan. Hepburn and Grant score in two classic comedies, 'Bringing Up Baby' and the drawing room semi-screwballer, 'Holiday,' the latter a sort of run-through for Cukor's 'The Philadelphia Story'. Fox's 'In Old Chicago' (runner up) tried to duplicate the formula of MGM's 1936 smash hit, 'San Francisco', with a blend of historical costume drama, humor, musical interludes, romantic triangle, and spectacular disaster finale. Less popular and less famous, the Fox film nonetheless is the superior one; less staid, better paced and far more watchable today, with impressive Chicago fire special effects and a much more palatable songstress in Alice Faye.
1939 (115) (Massive hit 'Gone with the Wind' released; apex of Hollywood's 'golden age)
La Regle du jeu (The Rules of the Game) (Jean Renoir)
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Frank Capra)
Stagecoach (John Ford)
Drums Along the Mohawk (John Ford)
Bachelor Mother (Garson Kanin)
Only Angels Have Wings (Howard Hawks)
The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming)
The Roaring Twenties (Raoul Walsh)
The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum (Kenji Mizoguchi)
RUNNERS UP:
The Four Feathers (Zoltan Korda)
Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch)
Young Mr. Lincoln (John Ford)
Of Mice and Men (Lewis Milestone)
Love Affair (Leo McCarey)
Goodbye, Mr. Chips (Sam Wood)
The Saint Strikes Back (John Farrow)
Midnight (Mitchell Leisen)
The Man in the Iron Mask (James Whale)
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (Michael Curtiz)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (William Dieterle)
Jesse James (Henry King)
The Spy in Black (U-Boat 29) (Michael Powell)
Union Pacific (Cecil B. DeMille)
The Little Princess (Walter Lang)
The Story of Alexander Graham Bell (Irving Cummings)
Five Came Back (John Farrow)
Son of Frankenstein (Rowland V. Lee)
Intermezzo (Gregory Ratoff)
Rose of Washington Square (Gregory Ratoff)
Idiot's Delight (Clarence Brown)
The Oklahoma Kid (Lloyd Bacon)
Dodge City (Michael Curtiz)
The Rains Came (Clarence Brown)
For the record: Gone With the Wind (Victor Fleming); Stanley and Livingstone (Henry King); The Cat and the Canary (Elliot Nugent); Dark Victory (Edmund Goulding); The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Alfred L. Werker); We Are Not Alone (Edmund Goulding); The Hound of the Baskervilles (Sidney Lanfield); The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (H.C. Potter); Another Thin Man (WS Van Dyke); Wuthering Heights (William Wyler); Confessions of a Nazi Spy (Anatole Litvak); Made for Each Other (John Cromwell); At the Circus (Edward Buzzell); The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Richard Thorpe); Vassilisa the Beautiful (Alexander Row); Babes in Arms (Busby Berkeley); The Flying Deuces (A. Edward Sutherland); The Real Glory (Henry Hathaway); The Gorilla (Allan Dwan); The Three Musketeers (Allan Dwan); Eternally Yours (Tay Garnett); The Dark Eyes of London (Walter Summers); You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (George Marshall); Tevye (Maurice Schwartz); etc.
To re-watch: Each Dawn I Die (William Keighley); Destry Rides Again (George Marshall); The Great Man Votes (Garson Kanin); Juarez (William Dieterle); Le jour se leve (Daybreak) (Marcel Carne)
To see: My Apprenticeship (Gorky Trilogy II) (Mark Donskoi); 5th Ave. Girl (Gregory La Cava); Remember? (Norman Z. McLeod); The 400 Million (Joris Ivens); Ils etaient neuf celibataires (They Were Nine Bachelors) (Sacha Guitry); Fric-Frac (Claude Autant-Lara); Der Florentiner Hut (The Florentine Hat) (Wolfgang Liebeneiner); The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (Anatole Litvak); Back Door to Heaven (William K. Howard); Raffles (Sam Wood); Sans lendemain (Max Ophuls); Ani to song imoto (A Brother and His Younger Sister) (Yasujiro Shimazu); El Azima (Kamal Selim); Blind Alley (Charles Vidor); La charrette fantome (Julien Duvivier); Le dernier tournant (Pierre Chenal); Die Geliebte (Gerhard Lamprecht); Gu dao tian tang (Orphan Island Paradise) (Cai Chusheng); In Name Only (John Cromwell); Jeunes filles en detresse (G.W. Pabst); Ket lany az utcan (Two Girls in the Street) (Andre de Toth); Kodomo no shiki (Four Seasons of Children) (Hiroshi Shimizu); Kristian (Martin Fric); The Light Ahead (Di Klyatshe) (Edgar G. Ulmer); The Mikado (Victor Schertzinger); Pieges (Robert Siodmak); Prisioneros de la tierra (Mario Soffici); Pukar (Sohrab Modi); Skilsmissens born (Children of Divorce) (Benjamin Christensen); Tsuchi (Earth) (Tomu Uchida); Uchitel (The Teacher) (Sergei Gerasimov); Die Unheimlichen Wunsche (The Unholy Wish) (Heinz Hilpert); Zolotoy klyuchik (The Golden Key) (Aleksandr Ptushko)
In the queue: It's a Wonderful World (W.S. Van Dyke); La fin du jour (Julien Duvivier); Lenin in 1918 (Mikhail Romm); Tractor Drivers (Ivan Pyriev); Sixty Glorious Years (Herbert Wilcox); Man with the Gun (Chelovek s ruzhyom) (Sergei Yutkevich); Jamaica Inn (Alfred Hitchcock); Frontier Marshal (Allan Dwan); Q Planes (Tim Whelan)
VINTAGE RATING (1939): 10****
Note: 1939 is rightfully regarded as the preeminent Hollywood yearÑthe number of large-scale, self-important prestige pictures would never again be equaled. It's not listed here, but in its defense 'Gone With the Wind' is a rattling good flick; possibly the best realization of a middlebrow literary epic. Having respectfully sat through its four hours a couple of times, though, the replay factor for me is now nil. 'Wuthering Heights', 'Stanley and Livingstone' and several other sporadically interesting but staid prestige classics also are missing here. The former dishonors a fine novel and the latter looks more disconcertingly artificial (too much back projection) than I once thought. MGM's 'Jitterbug Follies' (runner up) is probably the wildest and funniest short cartoon to date. No doubt Tex Avery and Bob Clampett learned a thing or two from it. Director Milt Gross was only allowed to make this and one other subversive cartoon featuring Count Screwloose and J.R. the Wonder Dog before MGM pulled the plug. Gross's lampooning of a "Citizen's Fair Play Committee" was probably seen by skittish studio honchos as a mockery of MGM's core white-bread patrons. I was on the fence about adding Fox's spit-and-polished disaster epic, 'The Rains Came' (runners up) as it is on the whole unmemorable, but there's something intriguing about such a bloated movie hinging all its drama on almost no plot and rather on the petty intrigues of a small group of isolated colonials. And the effects, when they come, are still the best ever.
1940 (137)
His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks)
The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor)
The Letter (William Wyler)
Fantasia (Ben Sharpsteen, et. al.)
Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock)
Angels Over Broadway (Ben Hecht)
Contraband (Michael Powell)
The Stars Look Down (Carol Reed)
Foreign Correspondent (Alfred Hitchcock)
The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford)
The Shop Around the Corner (Ernst Lubitsch)
Northwest Passage (King Vidor)
The Bank Dick (Eddie Cline)
The Great McGinty (Preston Sturges)
Strange Cargo (Frank Borzage)
Pinocchio (Hamilton Luske, Ben Sharpsteen)
Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson)
The Long Voyage Home (John Ford)
The Thief of Bagdad (Ludwig Berger, Tim Whelan)
The Sea Hawk (Michael Curtiz)
The Mark of Zorro (Rouben Mamoulian)
Night Train to Munich (Carol Reed)
My Little Chickadee (Eddie Cline)
Remember the Night (Mitchell Leisen)
Christmas in July (Preston Sturges)
Dance, Girl, Dance (Dorothy Arzner)
The Blue Bird (Walter Lang)
Kitty Foyle (Sam Wood)
The Great Dictator (Charles Chaplin)
They Drive By Night (Raoul Walsh)
Abe Lincoln in Illinois (John Cromwell)
Lillian Russell (Irving Cummings)
City for Conquest (Anatole Litvak)
Broadway Melody of 1940 (Eleanor Powell dance sequences) (Norman Taurog)
Stranger on the Third Floor (Boris Ingster)
The House of the Seven Gables (Joe May)
Wild Oysters (Charles Bowers)
London Can Take It (Humphrey Jennings)
Santa Fe Trail (Michael Curtiz)
The Son of Monte Cristo (Rowland V. Lee)
Composition No. 1: Themis (Dwinell Grant)
Tarantella (Mary Ellen Bute, Ted Nemeth)
Edison the Man (Clarence Brown)
The Howards of Virginia (Frank Lloyd)
Chad Hanna (Henry King)
For the record: All This, and Heaven Too (Anatole Litvak); Ahi esta en detalle (Juan Bustillo Oro); De Mayerling a Sarajevo (Max Ophuls); A Chump at Oxford (Alfred J. Goulding); Dr. Cyclops (Ernest Schoedsack); Escape (Mervyn LeRoy); Der Ewige Jude (Fritz Hippler); The Ghost Breakers (George Marshall); Go West (Edward Buzzell); I Love You Again (W. S. Van Dyke); Jud Suss (Veit Harlan); June Night (Per Lindberg); Knute Rockne, All American (Lloyd Bacon); The Mortal Storm (Frank Borzage); My Favorite Wife (Garson Kanin); One Million B.C. (Hal Roach, Hal Roach Jr.); Our Town (Sam Wood); Power and the Land (Joris Ivens); Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse (Barney Elliot); Torrid Zone (William Keighley); The Westerner (William Wyler); Strike Up the Band (Busby Berkeley); The Return of Frank James (Fritz Lang); Johnny Apollo (Henry Hathaway); Hudson's Bay (Irving Pichel)
To see: My Universities (Gorky Trilogy III) (Mark Donskoi); Member of the Government (Chlen pravitelstva) (Iosif Kheifits, Aleksandr Zarkhi); Argila (Clay) (Humberto Mauro); The Biscuit Eater (Stuart Heisler); Pastor Hall (Roy Boulting); Der Postmeister (Gustav Ucicky); Svetlyj put (The Shining Path) (Grigori Aleksandrov); A Dispatch from Reuters (William Dieterle); They Knew What They Wanted (Garson Kanin); Med livet som insats (They Staked Their Lives) (Alf Sjoberg); Paradiso terrestre (Luciano Emmer); La fille du puisatier (The Well-Digger's Daughter) (Marcel Pagnol); Primrose Path (Gregory La Cava); The Lady in Question (Charles Vidor); Nishizumi senshacho-den (The Story of Tank Commander Nishizumi) (Kozaburo Yoshimura); more...
In the queue: Seven Sinners (Tay Garnett); A Great Life (Leonid Lukov); La Fille du puisatier (The Well-Digger's Daughter) (Marcel Pagnol); New Moon (Robert Z. Leonard); Black Friday (Arthur Lubin); The Mortal Storm (Frank Borzage; to re-watch); Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet (Wm. Dieterle; to re-watch); Christmas in July (Preston Sturges; to re-watch): Pride and Prejudice (Robert Z. Leonard; to re-watch); Vigil in the Night (George Stevens); Arise, My Love (Mitchell Leisen); Where's That Fire? (Marcel Varnel); Brother Orchid (Lloyd Bacon); Johnny Apollo (Henry Hathaway; re-watch); Chad Hanna (Henry King; re-watch)
VINTAGE RATING (1940): 10***** (arguably better than the vaunted 1939, though these two years really should be considered as an organic whole)
Note: The runners up list here could go on and on for this incredible year, so I had to stop. "The Howards of Virginia" on the "runners up" list is possibly the first feature-length drama (excluding Disney stuff) that I ever sat through in its entirety. I recall seeing this Revolutionary War period flick in a third-grade history class, which I think would put it around 1970 or 1971 (so long ago!). I saw the movie a few years later and still thought it was OK. Most critics don't. They're probably right.
1941 (124) (Citizen Kane pushes and inventively plays with existing narrative techniques, thematic depth)
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
The Maltese Falcon (John Huston)
The Little Foxes (William Wyler)
Major Barbara (Gabriel Pascal)
Here Comes Mr. Jordan (Alexander Hall)
The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges)
The Devil and Daniel Webster (William Dieterle)
How Green Was My Valley (John Ford)
Hellzapoppin (H.C. Potter)
The Devil and Miss Jones (Sam Wood)
The Sea Wolf (Michael Curtiz)
Meet John Doe (Frank Capra)
The Strawberry Blonde (Raoul Walsh)
Ball of Fire (Howard Hawks)
Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (Eddie Cline)
Dangerous Moonlight (Brian Desmond Hurst)
The Shanghai Gesture (Josef Von Sternberg)
Ladies in Retirement (Charles Vidor)
Tortoise Beats Hare (Tex Avery)
The 49th Parallel (Michael Powell)
That Hamilton Woman (Alexander Korda)
Man Hunt (Fritz Lang)
Blossoms in the Dust (Mervyn Leroy)
Sun Valley Serenade (H. Bruce Humberstone)
The Shepherd of the Hills (Henry Hathaway)
Lydia (Julien Duvivier)
The Great Lie (Edmund Goulding)
I Wake Up Screaming (H. Bruce Humberstone)
A Woman's Face (George Cukor)
That Uncertain Feeling (Ernst Lubitsch)
Sex Hygiene (Otto Brower, John Ford, for U.S. Signal Corps)
Composition No. 2: Contrathemis (Dwinell Grant)
Love Crazy (Jack Conway)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Victor Fleming)
Volpone (Maurice Tourneur)
Footsteps in the Dark (Lloyd Bacon)
All Through the Night (Vincent Sherman)
The Ghost Train (Walter Forde)
Dive Bomber (Michael Curtiz)
Lady Be Good (Eleanor Powell dance sequences) (Norman McLeod)
For the record: Sergeant York (Howard Hawks); Scrub me Mamma with a Boogie Beat (Walter Lantz); Tobacco Road (John Ford); The 47 Ronin (Kenji Mizoguchi); Suspicion (Alfred Hitchcock); Swamp Water (Jean Renoir); A Yank in the R.A.F. (Henry King); Ziegfeld Girl (Robert Z. Leonard, Busby Berkeley)
To re-watch: Hold Back the Dawn (Mitchell Leisen); Remorques (Stormy Waters) (Jean Gremillon); Footsteps in the Dark (Lloyd Bacon); Tom Dick and Harry (Garson Kanin)
To see: Venus aveugle (Abel Gance); Skylark (Mark Sandrich); Hold Back the Dawn (Mitchell Leisen); Kanzashi (Ornamental Hairpin) (Hiroshi Shimizu); Back Street (Robert Stevenson); Blues in the Night (Anatole Litvak); Dead Men Tell (Harry Lachman); Smilin' Through (Frank Borzage); It Started With Eve (Henry Koster); O Pai Tirano (Antonio Lopes Ribeiro); Ohm Kruger (Hans Steinhoff); Piccolo Mondo Antico (Mario Soldati); The Reluctant Dragon (Forde Beebe, Hamilton Luske, et. al); Turned Out Nice Again (Marcel Varnel); Uma (Horse) (Kajiro Yamamoto); En sommarsaga (Arne Sucksdorff)
In the queue: Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family (Yasujiro Ozu); Princess Iron Fan (Wan Guchan); Two-Faced Woman (George Cukor); Swineherd and Shepherd (Ivan Pyriev); Love on the Dole (John Baxter); L'Assassinat du Pere Noel (Christian-Jaque); Kipps (Carol Reed); The Flame of New Orleans (Rene Clair); Manpower (Raoul Walsh); Shadow of the Thin Man (W.S. Van Dyke); H.M. Pulham, Esq. (King Vidor); The Iron Crown (Alessandro Blasseti); Out of the Fog (Anatole Litvak); Tom Dick and Harry (Garson Kanin/re-watch)
VINTAGE RATING (1941): 9.5*****
Note: Guilty pleasure 'Sun Valley Serenade' (runner up) is a typical 20th-Century Fox entertainment of the wartime years, just the right amount of light comedy, inconsequential plot and lots of musical numbers--all taking place in a Hollywood-conceived ski lodge to up the warm-and-cozy factor. Sonja Henie skates, Glenn Miller's orchestra plays, and the incomparable Nicholas Brothers perform their eyepopping acrobatic dancing. 'Lady Be Good' (runner up) is a prime example of the critical dilemma regarding most MGM musicals: great dance sequences stuck inside plodding, banal narratives. In this case, it's Eleanor Powell's fancy stepping through the glitzy 'Fascinatin' Rhythm" sequence. 'Pimpernel Smith' (runner up) is a tour-de-force for English actor-director Leslie Howard, updating his earlier 1934 'Scarlet Pimpernel' success by placing his unassuming English spy hero into Nazi Germany. It gets off to a wobbly start, but becomes deliciously witty and exciting, capped by a mysterious, inspiring ending. There are no similar compensations weighty enough to offset the idealized hokum of Howard Hawks' biopic flagwaver, 'Sergeant York' (not listed). Not a bad film, per se, but one that leaves a sour taste: York's ignorance seems to be heralded as an ideal American trait; not coincidentally, one that always gets us into stupid wars.
1942 (114)
Listen to Britain (Humphrey Jennings)
The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles)
Casablanca (Michael Curtiz)
The Man Who Came to Dinner (William Keighley)
In Which We Serve (Noel Coward, David Lean)
The Dover Boys at Pimento University or The Rivals of
Roquefort Hall (Chuck Jones)
Noi Vivi (We the Living) (Goffredo Alessandrini)
Woman of the Year (George Stevens)
Sullivan's Travels (Preston Sturges)
Native Land (Paul Strand, Leo Hurwitz)
RUNNERS UP:
The Palm Beach Story (Preston Sturges)
To Be or Not to Be (Ernst Lubitsch)
The Talk of the Town (George Stevens)
One of Our Aircraft is Missing (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger)
The Moon and Sixpence (Albert Lewin)
Mrs. Miniver (William Wyler)
Yankee Doodle Dandy (Michael Curtiz)
Bambi (David Hand)
Razgrom nemetskikh voysk pod Moskvoy (Defeat of the German Armies Near Moscow/Moscow Strikes Back) (Leonid Varlamov, Ilya Kopalin)
Journey Into Fear (Norman Foster)
Aniki-Bobo (Manoel de Oliveira)
The Glass Key (Stuart Heisler)
The Black Swan (Henry King)
Tales of Manhattan (Julien Duvivier)
For Me and My Gal (Busby Berkeley)
My Sister Eileen (Alexander Hall)
Saboteur (Alfred Hitchcock)
The Major and the Minor (Billy Wilder)
Across the Pacific (John Huston)
This Gun For Hire (Frank Tuttle)
Hold the Lion, Please (Chuck Jones)
Tarzan's New York Adventure (Richard Thorpe)
I Married a Witch (Rene Clair)
Charley's Aunt (Archie Mayo)
The First of the Few (Spitfire) (Leslie Howard)
Holiday Inn (Mark Sandrich)
Horton Hatches the Egg (Robert Clampett)
Joan of Paris (Robert Stevenson)
For the record: The Male Animal (Elliot Nugent); King's Row (Sam Wood); My Favorite Blonde (Sidney Lanfield); The Night Has Eyes (Leslie Arliss); Now, Voyager (Irving Rapper); Les visiteurs du soir (Marcel Carne); Wake Island (John Farrow); Went the Day Well? (Alberto Cavalcanti); Gentleman Jim (Raoul Walsh); Reap the Wild Wind (Cecil B. DeMille); Road to Morocco (David Butler); Keeper of the Flame (George Cukor); Kid Glove Killer (Fred Zinnemann); Tortilla Flat (Victor Fleming); Take a Letter, Darling (Mitchell Liesen); Orchestra Wives (Archie Mayo); The Pied Piper (Irving Pichel); Pardon My Sarong (Erle C. Kenton); You Were Never Lovelier (William Seiter)
To re-watch: Take a Letter, Darling (Mitchell Leisen)
To see: Thunder Rock (Roy Boulting); The Falcon Takes Over (Irving Reis); L'Assassin Habite au 21 (The Murderer Lives at Number 21) (Henri-Georges Clouzot); The Next of Kin (Thorold Dickinson); The Adventures of Martin Eden (Sidney Salkow); Son of Fury (John Cromwell); Once Upon a Honeymoon (Leo McCarey); The Foreman Went to France (Charles Frend); Castle in the Desert (Harry Lachman); Fari nella nebbia (Gianni Franciolini); Un Colpo di pistola (A Pistol Shot) (Renato Castellani); Die Goldene Stadt (The Golden City (Veit Harlan); Himlaspelet (Alf Sjoberg); Malombra (Mario Soldati); O Patio das Cantigas (Francisco Ribeiro)
In the queue: There was a Father (Chichi ariki) (Yasujiro Ozu); Mashenka (Yuli Raizman); The Lady is Willing (Mitchell Leisen); Johnny Eager (Mervyn LeRoy); In This Our Life (John Huston); My Gal Sal (Irving Cummings); Larceny Inc. (Lloyd Bacon); Reunion in France (Jules Dassin); The Land (Paul Strand, Leo Hurwitz); La symphonie fantastique (Christian-Jaque)
VINTAGE RATING (1942): 9****
Note: Chuck Jones' innovative 'The Dover Boys' presages postwar mimimalist animation techniques and bids fair to be the funniest cartoon ever made. Orson Welles' 'The Magnificent Ambersons' topped this list until I saw Humphrey Jennings' overwhelming work of documentary art, 'Listen to Britain'--a non-narrated view of wartime England blending ambient sounds and masterfully selected images to evoke Brit pride without the usual pedantic bombast. The Welles film is a mutilated masterwork, the Jennings film is a fully realized one. The best picture winner 'Mrs. Miniver' (runner up) is essentially Hollywood artifice and wartime propaganda, yet works better than expected, offering deft storytelling and great chemistry between its stars. That much of it sounds silly on paper but works so well in execution is to director William Wyler's credit. Leftist artists Paul Strand and Leo Hurwitz's 'Native Land' is brave domestic dissent to come from wartime America, vividly depicting a right-wing conspiracy against labor, minorities and civil libertarians.
1943 (121) (Meshes of the Afternoon advances art of avant-garde, independent film)
Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren)
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Powell, Pressburger)
Day of Wrath (Carl Dreyer)
The Gang's All Here (Busby Berkeley)
The More the Merrier (George Stevens)
The Ox-Bow Incident (William Wellman)
Shadow of a Doubt (Alfred Hitchcock)
Victory Through Air Power (H.C. Potter, et. al.)
Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarfs (Robert Clampett)
The Seventh Victim (Mark Robson)
I Walked with a Zombie (Jacques Tourneur)
Heaven Can Wait (Ernst Lubitsch)
Le Corbeau (The Raven) (H.G. Clouzot)
Sahara (Zoltan Korda)
Romanze in Moll (Romance in a Minor Key) (Helmut Kautner)
RUNNERS UP:
The Song of Bernadette (Henry King)
Five Graves to Cairo (Billy Wilder)
A Lady Takes A Chance (William Seiter)
Desert Victory (Roy Boulting)
Prelude to War (Frank Capra)
Air Force (Howard Hawks)
Porky Pig's Feat (Frank Tashlin)
An Itch in Time (Robert Clampett)
Red Hot Riding Hood (Tex Avery)
This Land is Mine (Jean Renoir)
The Man in Grey (Leslie Arliss)
No Greater Love (Fridrikh Ermler)
Crazy House (Eddie Cline)
The Cross of Lorraine (Tay Garnett)
My Learned Friend (Basil Dearden, Will Hay)
Private Snafu: Spies (Chuck Jones)
Hangmen Also Die (Fritz Lang)
L'éternel retour (The Eternal Return) (Jean Delannoy)
The Hard Way (Vincent Sherman)
The Constant Nymph (Edmund Goulding)
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (opening scene) (Roy William Neill)
Thank Your Lucky Stars (David Butler)
Bataan (Tay Garnett)
The Leopard Man (Jacques Tourneur)
Madame Curie (Mervyn LeRoy)
Action in the North Atlantic (Lloyd Bacon)
We Dive at Dawn (Anthony Asquith)
Hit the Ice (Charles Lamont)
For the record: The Demi-Paradise (Anthony Asquith); The Human Comedy (Clarence Brown); Guadalcanal Diary (Lewis Seiler); Watch on the Rhine (Herman Shumlin); The Outlaw (Howard Hughes); Titanic (Herbert Selpin); Munchhausen (Josef von Baky); Behind the Rising Sun (Edward Dmytryk); Stage Door Canteen (Frank Borzage); Fires Were Started (Humphrey Jennings); Girl Crazy (Norman Taurog, Busby Berkeley); Background to Danger (Raoul Walsh); Cabin in the Sky (Vincente Minnelli); Forever and a Day (Rene Clair, and many more); So Proudly We Hail! (Mark Sandrich); Stormy Weather (Andrew L. Stone); Best Foot Forward (Edward Buzzell); Above Suspicion (Richard Thorpe); The Canterville Ghost (Jules Dassin); Gung Ho! (Ray Enright); The North Star (Lewis Milestone)
Lumpy Gravy Award for Worst Film of the Century (1943 edition): The North Star (Lewis Milestone)
To see: Millions Like Us (Sidney Gilliat, Frank Launder); Douce (Love Story) (Claude Autant-Lara); Mr. Lucky (H.C. Potter); Edge of Darkness (Lewis Milestone); The Desperados (Charles Vidor); Flor silvestre (Emilio Fernandez); Kismet (Gyan Mukherjee); Nine Men (Harry Watt); The Bells Go Down (Basil Dearden)
In the queue: La Main du Diable (Maurice Tourneur); Les Anges du Peche (Robert Bresson); Gente del Po (Michelangelo Antonioni); Secretary of the Communist Party (Ivan Pyriev); Holy Matrimony (John M. Stahl); The Ghost Ship (Mark Robson); The Dream (Mechta) (Mikhail Romm); Corvette K-225 (Richard Rosson); The Phantom of the Opera (Arthur Lubin); Sanshiro Sugata (Akira Kurosawa); San Demetrio London (Charles Frend); Goupi mains rouges (It Happened at the Inn) (Jacques Becker); Lassie Come Home (Fred M. Wilcox); Lumiere d'ete (Jean Gremillon)
VINTAGE RATING (1943): 8.5****
Note: OK, Busby Berkeley's 'The Gang's All Here' is an embarassing guilty pleasure, yet there's some indefinable moment when this routinely plotted, unwieldy wartime Technicolor musical goes from the silly to the sublime; it might be when the film turns into a completely abstract kaleidoscope in the last minute with the orchestra going full blast. It's possibly Hollywood's only moment of pure visual abstraction, unrelated to the narrative or to movie-musical conventions. There are a million things I love in this whole kitschy fiasco, not to mention the unbridled enthusiasm and energy put into some horrific songs and choreography, as well as the first sequence, which is probably the longest unbroken tracking crane shot in movies up to its time. Because Berkeley was able to get his artistic vision largely unencumbered onto the screen -- no matter how looney it may be -- this film is his masterpiece. Two surprises this year are the darkly resonant German romance, 'Romanze in Moll,' which made Josef Goebbels bristle at its frank depiction of adultery (he had to knuckle under and let it pass to appease the popular taste and low morale of the battle-weary populace); and Fox's 'The Song of Bernadette,' a surprisingly balanced and steely depiction of the miracle of Lourdes, not saccharine in the way most '40s Hollywood religious pictures are. 'Victory Through Air Power' is the Disney studio's major contribution to the war effort and one of its best features ever; a long-unseen documentary that was completely vaulted until its DVD release in 2004. It uses extensive animation and expert presentations to propagandize very effectively for the expansion of an air-based offensive strategy. Another long-unseen animated work, 'Coal Black...' is likely to stay that wayÑwhich is too bad because it's the brassiest and most energetic cartoon to come out of Warner's 'Termite Terrace" at its wartime artistic peak. Where most people see malicious racism in it, I see a good deal of charm. Another Clampett cartoon, 'An Itch in Time' (Robert Clampett) has a fleabitten male dog grinding his itchy ass across the ground and stopping suddenly to tell the audience, "Hey, I'm starting to like this!" A rare concession from the time to the joys of masturbatory friction. No Freudian segue intended: Delmer Daves' 'Destination Tokyo' (runner up) is probably the best submarine warfare movie made during WWII. By comparison, 'Crash Dive' (runner up) is a pretty standard submarine war actioner with lots of throwaway love stuff, but the Technicolor is great, the special-effects model work cool, and the entertainment value high. Jean Renoir's 'This Land is Mine' (runner up) is a problemmatic film that never escapes its Hollywood artifice, yet is very moving; seething with earnest anger and a palpable sense of both hope and helplessness about occupied France that must have reflected its expatriate director's own feelings. Fritz Lang's compelling 'Hangmen Also Die' (runner up) does pretty much the same thing for occupied Czechoslovakia--and has virtually the same problems in overcoming its artifice and narrative holes. Also angry, but considerably weirder, is the anti-Nazi propaganda drama, 'Hitler's Children' (runner up); perhaps not good, but something not forgotten once seen. Its tale suggesting the forced insemination of Aryan women was sensational stuff in its day; making it one of the year's biggest hits.
1944 (105) ('Double Indemnity' on 'film noir' cusp)
Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder)
Arsenic and Old Lace (Frank Capra)
The Memphis Belle (William Wyler)
To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks)
Torment (Hets) (Alf Sjoberg)
The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (Preston Sturges)
Cover Girl (Charles Vidor)
The Mask of Dimitrios (Jean Negulesco)
The Woman in the Window (Fritz Lang)
Lifeboat (Alfred Hitchcock)
Murder My Sweet (Edward Dmytryk)
Brother Brat (Frank Tashlin)
Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli)
This Happy Breed (David Lean)
Henry V (Laurence Olivier)
Hail the Conquering Hero (Preston Sturges)
The Children Are Watching Us (Vittorio De Sica)
It Happened Tomorrow (Rene Clair)
The Seventh Cross (Fred Zinnemann)
Tick Tock Tuckered (Robert Clampett)
Desert Victory (Roy Boulting)
The White Cliffs of Dover (Clarence Brown)
The Pearl of Death (Roy William Neill)
Phantom Lady (Robert Siodmak)
Ministry of Fear (Fritz Lang)
A Canterbury Tale (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger)
Since You Went Away (John Cromwell)
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (Mervyn LeRoy)
Going My Way (Leo McCarey)
Booby Traps (Robert Clampett)
Hell-Bent For Election (Chuck Jones)
The Three Caballeros (Norman Ferguson)
The Adventures of Mark Twain (Irving Rapper)
Buffalo Bill (William Wellman)
For the record: A Bell for Adano (Henry King); The Scarlet Claw (Roy William Neill); Gaslight (George Cukor); Tomorrow the World (Leslie Fenton); A Wing and a Prayer (Henry Hathaway); The Keys of the Kingdom (John M. Stahl)
To re-watch (all in the queue): The Curse of the Cat People (Gunther von Fritsch, Robert Wise); Mr. Skeffington (Vincent Sherman); The Negro Soldier (Frank Capra); Passage to Marseilles (Michael Curtiz); The Purple Heart (Lewis Milestone); The Suspect (Robert Siodmak); The Way Ahead (Carol Reed); The Uninvited (Lewis Allen)
To see: Le ciel est a vous (Jean Gremillon); Raduga (The Rainbow) (Mark Donskoi); Las Abandonadas (Emilio Fernandez); Address Unknown (William Cameron Menzies); The Lodger (John Brahm); Dark Waters (Andre de Toth); The Great Moment (Preston Sturges); None Shall Escape (Andre de Toth); Youth Runs Wild (Mark Robson); Bluebeard (Edgar G. Ulmer); Mademoiselle Fifi (Robert Wise); An American Romance (King Vidor); Block Busters (Wallace Fox); Winged Victory (George Cukor); 2,000 Women (Frank Launder); Grosse Freiheit Nr. 7 (Helmut Kautner); Opfergang (The Great Sacrifice (Veit Harlan); Western Approaches (Pat Jackson)
In the queue: Six p.m. (Ivan Pyriev); Die Frau meiner Traume (Georg Jacoby); Wilson (Henry King); Champagne Charlie (Alberto Cavalcanti); The Thin Man Goes Home (Richard Thorpe); National Velvet (Clarence Brown); Negro Soldier (Stuart Heisler); Frenchman's Creek (Mitchell Leisen); Between Two Worlds (Edward Blatt); Die Feuerzangenbowle (Helmut Weiss); When Strangers Marry (aka Betrayed) (William Castle)
VINTAGE RATING (1944): 8****
Note: I can think of a lot worse ways to spend a couple of hours than watching Leo McCarey's warm and fuzzy best-picture winner, 'Going My Way' (runner up) with Bing Crosby, though today it's hard to justify this langorously paced schmaltz that perpetrates popularly held myths as film art. McCarey makes the sugar go down easy though, thanks to his penchant for faux cynicism and Irish good spirits and for Barry Fitzgerald's skills at balancing the irascible, slightly seedy and the charming. In the middle of WWII, it's easy to see how it wrapped war-weary audiences in psychological blankets of assurance and cultural validation.
1945 (91) (Rossellini's Open City introduces neorealism and redefines films in rawer terms)
Brief Encounter (David Lean)
Dead of Night (Alberto Cavalcanti, et. al.)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Elia Kazan)
The True Glory (Carol Reed, Garson Kanin)
Open City (Roberto Rossellini)
Isle of the Dead (Mark Robson)
Blithe Spirit (David Lean)
And Then There Were None (Rene Clair)
The Body Snatcher (Robert Wise)
The Battle of San Pietro (John Huston)
The Story of G.I. Joe (William Wellman)
Scarlet Street (Fritz Lang)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (Albert Lewin)
Herr Meets Hare (Friz Freleng)
RUNNERS UP:
I Know Where I'm Going (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger)
The House on 92nd Street (Henry Hathaway)
The Clock (Vincente Minnelli)
A Walk in the Sun (Lewis Milestone)
Wonder Man (H. Bruce Humberstone)
The Valley of Decision (Tay Garnett)
Murder, He Says (George Marshall)
My Name is Julia Ross (Joseph H. Lewis)
The Corn is Green (Irving Rapper)
Rhapsody in Blue (Irving Rapper)
It's in the Bag (Richard Wallace)
Ivan the Terrible, Part One (Sergei Eisenstein) (for its visuals)
The Way to the Stars (Anthony Asquith)
Les Enfants du paradis (Children of Paradise) (Marcel Carne)
Hockey Homicide (Jack Kinney)
For the record: The Lost Weekend (Billy Wilder); Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (Robert Bresson); They Were Expendable (John Ford); The Southerner (Jean Renoir); L'espoir (Man's Hope) (Andre Malraux, Boris Peskine); The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail (Akira Kurosawa); Objective, Burma! (Raoul Walsh); L'espoir (André Malraux, Boris Peskine); The Bells of St. Mary's (Leo McCarey); Kolberg (Veit Harlan); Yolanda and the Thief (Vincente Minnelli); Along Came Jones (Stuart Heisler); Le Vampire (Jean Painleve)
To re-watch: Fallen Angel (Otto Preminger) (in the queue); Leave Her to Heaven (John M. Stahl); The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (Robert Siodmak); The Southerner (Jean Renoir); Cornered (Edward Dmytryk); Confidential Agent (Herman Shumlin)
To see: Die Letzte Chance (Leopold Lindtberg); Sortileges (Christian-Jaque); Wonder Man (H. Bruce Humberstone; re-watch); Mom and Dad (William Beaudine); The Enchanted Cottage (John Cromwell); The Affairs of Susan (William A. Seiter); La Barraca (Roberto Gavaldon); Chelovek No. 217 (Mikhail Romm); Falbalas (Jacques Becker); Love Letters (William Dieterle); A Medal for Benny (Irving Pichel); Nepokorennye (Mark Donskoi); Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (Roy Rowland); De røde enge (Bodil Ipsen, Lau Lauritzen); Velikij perelom (The Turning Point) (Fridrikh Ermler); Waterloo Road (Sidney Gilliat); Johnny Angel (Edwin L. Marin); Saratoga Trunk (Sam Wood);Week-End at the Waldorf (Robert Z. Leonard)
In the queue: Unter den Bruecken (Helmut Kautner); Son of Lassie (S. Sylvan Simon); Blood on the Sun (Frank Lloyd; to re-watch); Fallen Angel (Otto Preminger); The White Gorilla (H.L. Fraser); Tsogt taij (Yuri Tarich, D. Jigjid, M. Luvsanjamts); A Royal Scandal (Ernst Lubitsch)
VINTAGE RATING (1945): 7.5***
NOTE: A relatively weak year (for its time) with no genuine consensus masterpieces except for Lean's 'Brief Encounter,' Rossellini's 'Open City' and part of the Brit omnibus thriller 'Dead of Night'--and 'Les Enfants du paradis' (runner up), which is one of the great cinematic classics that I can't seem to bring myself to like or appreciate. As much as I admire its big-scaled historical settings and pseudo-artistic pretensions, it seems to me like nothing more than a garish soaper. Duty binds me to list it. Then there's Eisenstein's "Ivan the Terrible," an unmatched visual tour de force ruined by laughable eye-rolling acting that apologists refer to as "operatic." Still, its epic visual palette is something ravishing to see. Elia Kazan's 'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn' is Hollywood literary storytelling at its best, and features one of the greatest child performances, by Peggy Ann Garner.
1946 (95) (Hollywood's most profitable year; most attendance ever)
Beauty and the Beast (Jean Cocteau)
The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler)
Great Expectations (David Lean)
The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks)
Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock)
It's a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra)
Green for Danger (Sidney Gilliat)
A Matter of Life and Death (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger)
Glen Falls Sequence (experimental short) (Douglass Crockwell)
My Darling Clementine (John Ford)
Ivan the Terrible, Part II (Sergei Eisenstein) (released 1958)
The Seventh Veil (Compton Bennett)
Gilda (Charles Vidor)
The Postman Always Rings Twice (Tay Garnett)
The Jolson Story (Alfred E. Green)
RUNNERS UP:
Caesar and Cleopatra (Gabriel Pascal)
Margie (Henry King)
The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (Robert Clampett)
The Spiral Staircase (Robert Siodmak)
To Each His Own (Mitchell Leisen)
Shoeshine (Vittorio de Sica)
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (Lewis Milestone)
The Time of their Lives (Charles Barton)
Dragonwyck (Joseph Mankiewicz)
No Regrets For My Youth (Akira Kurosawa)
Cluny Brown (Ernst Lubitsch)
Let There Be Light (John Huston)
I See a Dark Stranger (The Adventuress) (Frank Launder)
La Symphonie Pastorale (Jean Delannoy)
Paisan (Roberto Rossellini)
The Dark Corner (Henry Hathaway)
Holiday for Shoestrings (Friz Freleng)
For the record: The Stranger (Orson Welles); Black Angel (Roy William Neill); The Dark Mirror (Robert Siodmak); Undercurrent (Vincente Minnelli); Bedlam (Mark Robson); The Overlanders (Harry Watt); Murderers are Among Us (Wolfgang Staudte); The Yearling (Clarence Brown); A Scandal in Paris (Douglas Sirk); Song of the South (Harve Foster, Wilfred Jackson); Dr. Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani (The Journey of Dr Kotnis (Rajaram Vankudre Shantaram); Till the End of Time (Edward Dmytryk); Monsieur Beaucaire (George Marshall); A Night in Casablanca (Archie Mayo); Sister Kenny (Dudley Nichols); Lady in the Lake (Robert Montgomery); Till the Clouds Roll by (Richard Whorf); Angel on My Shoulder (Archie Mayo); Crack Up (Irving Reis); The Harvey Girls (George Sidney); The Kid from Brooklyn (Norman Z. McLeod)
To re-watch: Devotion (Curtis Bernhardt); Deception (Irving Rapper)
To see: Ditte, Child of Man (Ditte Menneskebarn) (Bjarne Jensen-Henning); Seeds of Destiny (David Miller); The Diary of a Chambermaid (Jean Renoir); Blue Skies (Stuart Heisler); The Verdict (Don Siegel); Devotion (Curtis Bernhardt); Duel in the Sun (King Vidor); Dharti Ke Lal (Children of the Earth) (Khwaja Ahmad Abbas); Il Bandito (The Bandit) (Alberto Lattuada); From This Day Forward (John Berry); Morning for the Osone Family (Keisuke Kinoshita); Neecha Nagar (Chetan Anand); Osone-ke no ashita (Morning for the Osone Family (Keisuke Kinoshita); Les Portes de la nuit (Gates of the Night) (Marcel Carne); The Potted Psalm (James Broughton, Sidney Peterson); Le Retour (The Return) (Henri-Cartier Bresson); So Dark the Night (Joseph H. Lewis); Somewhere in the Night (Joseph L. Mankiewicz); Sotto il sole di Roma (Under the Sun of Rome) (Renato Castellani); Three Strangers (Jean Negulesco); La Naissance du cinema (Roger Leenhardt); Decoy (Jack Bernhard); Tomorrow is Forever (Irving Pichel); Dangerous Money (Terry O. Morse); Dear Alibi (Phil Karlson); Blue Skies (Stuart Heisler); Wanted for Murder (Lawrence Huntington); Enamorada (Emilio Fernandez); Somewhere in Berlin (Irgendwo in Berlin) (Gerhard Lamprecht)
In the queue: The Stone Flower (Alexander Ptushko); Diary of a Chambermaid (Jean Renoir); La Bataille du Rail (Rene Clement); Un Revenant (Christian-Jacque); Utamaro and His Five Women (Kenji Mizoguchi); The Blue Dahlia (George Marshall); Sylvia and the Phantom (Claude Autant-Lara); Anna and the King of Siam (John Cromwell); The Captive Heart (Basil Dearden); The Razor's Edge (Edmund Goulding); She Wolf of London (Jean Yarbrough); Deception (Irving Rapper/re-watch)
VINTAGE RATING (1946): 10*****
NOTES: What a year! All those young GI couples had a voracious appetite for flicks. The first year after the war is the most profitable in Hollywood history, logging the highest film attendance ever: an incredible 100 million tickets sold a week. IMO, it's the best year ever in terms of the number of great classics released.) As an example of a superior French art film, Jean Cocteau's 'Beauty and the Beast' fills the gaps of emotion, mystery and profundity that I felt lacking in the previous year's French prestige art picture 'Les enfants du paradis.' After talking to people and reading various film journals on the internet, it appears that 'The Best Years of Our Lives' remains one of the least-seen classics by younger film buffs. That's too bad, because it's a great American film, but it's also one that really needs a movie theater screen (I saw it at the Vogue long ago). Gregg Toland's sharp, deep-focus camerawork contributes greatly to its epic feel. It's a self important picture, but it's also earnest, bittersweet, sincere and very much what postwar audiences needed to help them salve wounds, make up for lost time, and move forward to build the industrial behemoth of the '50s. 'The Seventh Veil' from England and 'Humoresque' from Hollywood are two dark, psychological soapers with classical-music backdrops, both extremely well done to make for guilt-free pleasure.
1947 (92)
Black Narcissus (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger)
Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur)
Le Diable au corps (Devil in the Flesh) (Claude Autant-Lara)
Monsieur Verdoux (Charles Chaplin)
The Record of a Tenement Gentleman (Yasujiro Ozu)
Crossfire (Edward Dmytryk)
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
Nightmare Alley (Edmund Goulding)
Angel and the Badman (James Edward Grant)
Life With Father (Michael Curtiz)
RUNNERS UP:
Kiss of Death (Henry Hathaway)
Miracle on 34th Street (George Seaton)
Dark Passage (Delmer Daves)
Odd Man Out (Carol Reed)
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (Norman Z. McLeod)
Body and Soul (Robert Rossen)
Born to Kill (Robert Wise)
T-Men (Anthony Mann)
Quai des Orfevres (Henri-Georges Clouzot)
The Pearl (Emilio Fernandez)
The Private Life of a Cat (Alexander Hammid)
The Senator Was Indiscreet (George S. Kaufman)
Nicholas Nickleby (Cavalcanti)
Captain from Castile (Henry King)
The Farmer's Daughter (H.C. Potter)
The Red House (Delmer Daves)
Panique (Julien Duvivier)
Brighton Rock (John Boulting)
For the record: Antoine et Antionette (Jacques Becker); The Fugitive (John Ford); The Long Night (Anatole Litvak); Private Affairs of Bel Ami (Albert Lewin); Pursued (Raoul Walsh); Possessed (Curtis Bernhardt); The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (Irving Reis); A Double Life (George Cukor); The Egg and I (Chester Erskine); Railroaded! (Anthony Mann); They Made Me a Fugitive (Alberto Cavalcanti); Gentleman's Agreement (Elia Kazan); The Paradine Case (Alfred Hitchcock); A Double Life (George Cukor); The Bishop's Wife (Henry Koster); Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman (Stuart Heisler); Ride the Pink Horse (Robert Montgomery); etc.
To re-watch: They Made Me a Fugitive (Alberto Cavalcanti)
To see: Farrebique (Georges Rouquier); The Love of Sumako the Actress (Kenji Mizoguchi); Les Maudits (Rene Clement); Caccia tragica (The Tragic Hunt (Giuseppe De Santis); The Cage (Sidney Peterson); Vivere in pace (To Live in Peace) (Luigi Zampa); Spalicek (Jiri Trnka); The Unsuspected (Michael Curtiz); The Woman on the Beach (Jean Renoir); The Macomber Affair (Zoltan Korda); The Voice of the Turtle (Irving Rapper); Anjo-ke no butokai (Kozaburo Yoshimura); Joyu (Actress) (Teinosuke Kinugasa); Mad Wednesday (Preston Sturges); One Wonderful Sunday (Akira Kurosawa); Desperate (Anthony Mann); Lured (Douglas Sirk); Valahol Europaban (Geza von Radvanyi); Vesna (Spring) (Grigori Aleksandrov); Ba qian li lu yun he yue (Eight Thousand Li of Cloud and Moon) (Shi Dongshan)
In the queue: The Spring River Flows East (Chusheng Cai); Hue and Cry (Charles Crichton); Daisy Kenyon (Otto Preminger); Mourning Becomes Elektra (Dudley Nichols); The Bishop's Wife (Henry Koster; to re-watch)
VINTAGE RATING (1947): 8.5****
Note: Despite some A-class John Ford productions, Republic Studios will always be thought of as the maker of serials and 'b'-westerns. Among its A-/B+ ones, 'Angel and the Badman' with John Wayne and Gail Russell is undoubtedly the most intelligent and enjoyable. 'Monsieur Verdoux' and 'Monsieur Vincent' regrettably have titles so similar as to be confusing, yet both are exceptional and very different films. The first is Chaplin's famous black comedy about a widow murderer; the second is one of the best religious movies ever made, a serious but unsentimental French-made biopic about a few years in the life of St. Vincent De Paul. 'The Hucksters' (runner up) is a fun dig at the advertising game, though as a satire it suffers under the timid conventions of its studio, MGM. Nonetheless, it has Sydney Greenstreet at his most despicable, hocking a loogie to the disgust of all present to prove an advertising point. Claude Autant-Lara's 'Le Diable au corps' (Devil in the Flesh) reintroduces bedroom sex to the motion picture.
1948 (121) (Supreme Court's 'Paramount Decree' ends studio monopolies, hastens end of studio era)
The Red Shoes (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger)
The Bicycle Thief (Vittorio De Sica)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (John Huston)
Portrait of Jennie (William Dieterle)
Key Largo (John Huston)
The Winslow Boy (Anthony Asquith)
The Emperor's Nightingale (Jiri Trnka)
Fort Apache (John Ford)
Letter From an Unknown Woman (Max Ophuls)
Force of Evil (Abraham Polonsky)
Yellow Sky (William Wellman)
A Foreign Affair (Billy Wilder)
Apartment for Peggy (George Seaton)
Scott of the Antarctic (Charles Frend)
RUNNERS UP:
The Fallen Idol (Carol Reed)
Oliver Twist (David Lean)
The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles)
Rope (Alfred Hitchcock)
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (H.C. Potter)
Sitting Pretty (Walter Lang)
I Remember Mama (George Stevens)
Red River (Howard Hawks)
Wake of the Red Witch (Edward Ludwig)
Affaire Blum (The Blum Affair) (Erich Engel)
The Adventures of Don Juan (Vincent Sherman)
Pitfall (Andre de Toth)
La Terra Trema (Luchino Visconti)
State of the Union (Frank Capra)
They Live By Night (Nicholas Ray)
Louisiana Story (Robert Flaherty)
The Naked City (Jules Dassin)
Hamlet (Laurence Olivier)
He Walked By Night (Alfred L. Werker)
Berlin Express (Jacques Tourneur)
The Three Musketeers (George Sidney)
Words and Music (Norman Taurog)
Johnny Belinda (Jan Negulesco)
La Chartreuse de Parme (Charterhouse of Parma) (Christian-Jaque)
Act of Violence (Fred Zinnemann)
The Quiet One (Sidney Meyers)
For the record: Sleep, My Love (Douglas Sirk); Moonrise (Frank Borzage); The Big Clock (John Farrow); Call Northside 777 (Henry Hathaway); Drunken Angel (Akira Kurosawa); The Man From Colorado (Henry Levin); Germany Year Zero (Roberto Rossellini); Unfaithfully Yours (Preston Sturges); L'Amore (Roberto Rossellini); To the Ends of the Earth (Robert Stevenson); Border Street (Aleksander Ford)
To re-watch: Les Parents Terribles (Jean Cocteau)
To see: The Boy With Green Hair (Joseph Losey); Clochemerle (Pierre Chenal); L'Armoire volante (Carlo Rim); Le Diable boiteux (Sacha Guitry); Hachi No Su No Kodomo (Children of the Beehive) (Hiroshi Shimizu); Kalpana (Uday Shanka); Maclovia (Emilio Fernandez); Manniskor i stad (Arne Sucksdorff); Michurin (Aleksandr Dovzhenko); Molodaya gvardija (The Young Guard) (Sergei Gerasimov): The Village Teacher (Selskaya uchitelnitsa) (Mark Donskoi); Mother's Day (James Broughton); Der Apfel ist ab (Helmut Kautner); I Walk Alone (Byron Haskin); It Always Rains on Sunday (Robert Hamer); Rio escondido (Emilio Fernandez); Pueblerina (Emilio Fernandez); Senza pietà (Alberto Lattuada); Strange Victory (Leo Hurwitz); The Secret Beyond the Door (Fritz Lang); A Woman's Vengeance (Zoltan Korda); My Girl Tisa (Elliott Nugent); No Orchids for Miss Blandish (St. John Legh Clowes); Ostatni etap (The Last Stage) (Wanda Jakubowska); The Woman in White (Peter Godfrey)
In the queue: A Hen in the Wind (Yasujiro Ozu); Spring in a Small Town (Mu Fei); Women of the Night (Kenji Mizoguchi); The Street with No Name (William Keighley); On an Island with You (Richard Thorpe); Port of Call (Ingmar Bergman); The Time of Your Life (H.C.Potter); Bill and Coo (Dean Riesner); Dedee D'Anvers (Yves Allegret); Against the Wind (Charles Crichton); London Belongs to Me (Sidney Gilliat)
VINTAGE RATING (1948): 9.5*****
Note: I've reluctantly stuck some cinematic masterpieces into the runners-up list: Luchino Visconti's 'La terra trema' and David Lean's 'Oliver Twist.' These are two great films, worthy of the top list, but enjoyment plays a role in these rankings, and Visconti's film especially (a gritty neorealist docudrama about exploited Italian fisherman) could hardly be said to be "enjoyable."
1949 (111)
The Third Man (Carol Reed)
The Set-Up (Robert Wise)
Beyond the Forest (King Vidor)
Le Silence de la mer (Jean-Pierre Melville)
Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer)
Twelve O'Clock High (Henry King)
Whisky Galore! (Alexander Mackendrick)
Gun Crazy (Joseph H. Lewis)
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (John Ford)
Stray Dog (Akira Kurosawa)
On the Town (Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen)
The Heiress (William Wyler)
Song of the Prairie (Aire Prerie) (Jiri Trnka)
RUNNERS UP:
Christ in Concrete (Give Us This Day) (Edward Dmytryk)
The Big Steal (Don Siegel)
3 Godfathers (John Ford)
The Queen of Spades (Thorold Dickinson)
Manon (Henri-Georges Clouzot)
Passport to Pimlico (Henry Cornelius)
Une si jolie petite plage (Riptide) (Yves Allégret)
Dough for the Do-Do (Friz Freleng)
Jour de Fete (Jacques Tati)
The Small Back Room (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger)
Intruder in the Dust (Clarence Brown)
Home of the Brave (Mark Robson)
Adam's Rib (George Cukor)
I Was a Male War Bride (Howard Hawks)
The Inspector General (Henry Koster)
Jolson Sings Again (Henry Levin)
A Letter to Three Wives (Joseph Mankiewicz)
Trapped (Richard Fleischer)
All the King's Men (Robert Rossen)
Pattes Blanches (Jean Gremillon)
House of Strangers (Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
Le Sang des betes (Blood of the Beasts) (Georges Franju)
Prince of Foxes (Henry King)
Pinky (Elia Kazan)
The Stratton Story (Sam Wood)
The Window (Ted Tetzlaff)
For the record: Fabiola (Alessandro Blasetti); The Walls of Malapaga (Rene Clement); A Run for Your Money (Charles Frend); Crows and Sparrows (Junli Zheng); Flamingo Road (Michael Curtiz); Sands of Iwo Jima (Allan Dwan); Bitter Rice (Riso Amaro) (Giuseppe de Santis); Madame Bovary (Vincente Minnelli); I Was a Male War Bride (Howard Hawks); Christopher Columbus (David MacDonald); The Barkleys of Broadway (Charles Walters); The Adventures of Don Juan (Vincent Sherman); The Lead Shoes (Sidney Peterson); Pacific 231 (Jean Mitry); Christmas USA (Gregory Markopoulos)
To see: Le point du jour (Louis Daquin); Occupe-toi d'Amelie (Claude Autant-Lara); Follow Me Quietly (Richard Fleischer); The Great Madcap (Luis Buñuel); Andaz (Mehboob Khan); Barsaat (Raj Kapoor); Whirlpool (Otto Preminger); Border Incident (Anthony Mann); Come to the Stable (Henry Koster); Everybody Does It (Edmund Goulding); The Secret Garden (Fred M. Wilcox); Colorado Territory (Raoul Walsh); The Green Promise (William D. Russell); It Happens Every Spring (Lloyd Bacon); Amants de Verone (Andre Cayatte); Maneges (Yves Allegret); Rendez-vous de juillet (Jacques Becker); Bara en mor (Only a Mother) (Alf Sjoberg); In nome della legge (In the Name of the Law) (Pietro Germi); La Balandra Isabel llego esta tarde (Carlos Hugo Christensen); Il Mulino del Po (The Mill on the Po) (Alberto Lattuada); Cossacks of the Kuban (Ivan Pyryev); La vie commence demain (Nicole Vedres); Sons of Matthew (Charles Chauvel); Padeniye Berlina (The Fall of Berlin (Mikheil Chiaureli); The Last Days of Dolwyn (Emlyn Williams); Lost Boundaries (Alfred L. Werker); Obsession (The Hidden Room) (Edward Dmytryk); The Threat (Felix E. Feist); The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend (Preston Sturges); Portrait d'un assassin (Bernard-Roland); Akademik Ivan Pavlov (Grigori Roshal); Dom na pustkowiu (House of the Wastelands) (Jan Rybkowski)
In the queue: The Reckless Moment (Max Ophuls); Flame of My Love (Kenji Mizoguchi); The Quiet Duel (Akira Kurosawa); The Hasty Heart (Vincent Sherman); Late Spring (Yasujiro Ozu; to re-watch); Reign of Terror (Anthony Mann); Quartet (Ken Annakin, et. al./to re-watch); Alias Nick Beal (John Farrow)
VINTAGE RATING (1949): 9****
Note: 'Song of the Prairie' is a hilarious short spoof of singing-cowbody westerns, using puppet animation by the Czech master Jiri Trnka. 'Fabiola' ('I saw it, but...) was a long-time wish-list item that disappointed on recent viewing, though not because of its impressive art direction, convincing brutality and colisseum atrocities. The film's labyrithine, trudgingly slow plot intrigues are self defeating and wearying. Joseph Mankiewicz's cleverly structured adultery tale, 'A Letter to Three Wives,' is strangely hard to engage--maybe too smart for its own good--yet fascinating with its overly intelligent dialogue that plays like practice for his upcoming 'All About Eve'. Olivia De Havilland's revelatory acting in the latter half of 'The Heiress', in my opinion, marks the beginning of 'modern', understated film performance styles. You have to give Hollywood some credit as a force for good in 1949, releasing at least three major studio films attacking racial prejudice in the USA: 'Pinky,' 'Intruder in the Dust' and 'Home of the Brave' (all runners up). The first, closer to a traditional soaper like 'Imitation of Life,' is the least interesting, but the latter two, IMO, are better than 1962's feted 'To Kill a Mockingbird.' All three films feature possibly the first truly dignified, three-dimensional roles for African-Americans in Hollywood film: for Ethel Waters, Juano Hernandez and James Edwards. Baseball and Hollywood, America's favorite pastimes, were ahead of the rest of society.
1950 (97) (Kurosawa's Rashomon introduces Japanese cinema to West; Eastmancolor introduced)
All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder)
Panic in the Streets (Elia Kazan)
To Joy (Ingmar Bergman)
La Ronde (Max Ophuls)
Stars in My Crown (Jacques Tourneur)
For the record: Le beaute du diable (Rene Clair); Outrage (Ida Lupino); Summer Stock (Charles Walters); King Solomon’s Mines (Compton Bennett); Three Came Home (Jean Negulesco); Crisis (Richard Brooks); Key to the City (George Sidney); Cinderella (Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske, Clyde Geronimi); Destination Moon (Irving Pichel); D.O.A. (Rudolph Mate); Kon-Tiki (Thor Heyerdahl, Olle Nordemar); Harvey (Henry Koster); Annie Get Your Gun (George Sidney); Treasure Island (Byron Haskin)
To re-watch: Stromboli (Roberto Rossellini); Wagonmaster (John Ford); No Way Out (Joseph L. Mankiewicz); Seven Days to Noon (John & Roy Boulting); Scandal (Akira Kurosawa); Kim (Victor Saville); Stage Fright (Alfred Hitchcock)
To see: No Sad Songs for Me (Rudolph Maté); Domenica d'agosto (Luciano Emmer); Scandal (Akira Kurosawa); Side Street (Anthony Mann); House by the River (Fritz Lang); Try and Get Me! (The Sound and the Fury) (Cy Endfield); The Damned Don't Cry (Vincent Sherman); No Man of Her Own (Mitchell Leisen); Mussorgsky (Musorgskiy) (Grigori Roshal); Justice est faite (André Cayatte); The Angel with the Trumpet (Anthony Bushell); Bajaja (Prince Bayaya) (Jiri Trnka); Chinnamul (The Uprooted) (Nemai Ghosh); Darah dan Doa (The Long March) (Usmar Ismail); Dieu a besoin des hommes (Jean Delannoy); Dona Perfecta (Alejandro Galindo); Flicka och hyacinter (Hasse Ekman); The Lawless (Joseph Losey); The Magnet (Charles Frend); Mata au hi made (Tadashi Imai); Miquette (Henri-Georges Clouzot); Morning Departure (Roy Ward Baker); Non c'e pace tra gli ulivi (No Peace Among the Olives) (Giuseppe De Santis); Por la puerta falsa (Fernando de Fuentes); Prelude to Fame (Fergus McDonnell); Prima comunione (Alessandro Blasetti); El Rey del barrio (Gilberto Martinez Solares); The Titan: Story of Michelangelo (Curt Oertel (original footage), Robert Flaherty); Trio (Ken Annakin, Harold French); Wabash Avenue (Henry Koster); Wu Xun zhuan (The Life of Wu Xun (Sun Yu); Miasto nieujarzmione (Unvanquished City) (Jerzy Zarzycki)
In the queue: The Furies (Anthony Mann); Un Chant d'Armour (Jean Genet); Distant Journey (Daleka cesta) (Alfred Radok); The Muneketa Sisters (Yasujiro Ozu); Portrait of Madame Yuki (Kenji Mizoguchi); Flame and the Arrow (Jacques Tourneur); Variety Lights (Federico Fellini, Alberto Lattuada); The Last Holiday (Henry Cass); Where the Sidewalk Ends (Otto Preminger); So Long at the Fair (Antony Darnborough, Terence Fisher); The Woman in Question (Anthony Asquith); Madeleine (David Lean); Mystery Street (John Sturges); The Mudlark (Jean Negulesco); Daleka cesta (Distant Journey) (Alfred Radok); Odette (Herbert Wilcox)
VINTAGE RATING (1950): 9.5*****
Note: Two international landmarks: 'Rashomon' and 'Los Olivdados,' each marking the beginning of world fame for two directorial greats (Kurosawa and Bunuel) and three of Hollywood's best ('All About Eve,' 'Sunset Blvd.,' and 'The Asphalt Jungle') as well as many strong cult favorites round out an eclectic and very strong year. Roberto Rossellini's 'Flowers of St. Francis' (runner up) threatens to be one of those earthy, austere foreign dramas that everyone dreads, but eventually wins you over by rounding out its religious characters with humor and moments of slice-of-life honesty--leading to one of the most beautiful endings in all of cinema. It's sure as hell a lot more fun than Robert Bresson's dispassionate and challenging 'Diary of a Country Priest,' which is nonetheless also one of the greatest of all religious-themed movies.
1951 (96)
Strangers on a Train (Alfred Hitchcock)
The Lavender Hill Mob (Charles Crichton)
Ace in the Hole (The Big Carnival) (Billy Wilder)
Death of a Salesman (Laslo Benedek)
Miss Julie (Alf Sjoberg)
The Day the Earth Stood Still (Robert Wise)
The Red Badge of Courage (John Huston)
Royal Wedding (Stanley Donen)
Bullfighter and the Lady (Budd Boetticher)
RUNNERS UP:
The Man in the White Suit (Alexander Mackendrick)
A Streetcar Named Desire (Elia Kazan)
An American in Paris (Vincente Minnelli)
The River (Jean Renoir)
The Steel Helmet (Samuel Fuller)
Diary of a Country Priest (Robert Bresson)
Fourteen Hours (Henry Hathaway)
The African Queen (John Huston)
Hakuchi (The Idiot) (Akira Kurosawa)
Detective Story (William Wyler)
The Enforcer (Bretaigne Windust, Raoul Walsh)
Pandora and the Flying Duchman (Albert Lewin)
A Place in the Sun (George Stevens)
Symphony in Slang (Tex Avery)
Vesely cirkus (A Merry Circus) (Jiri Trnka)
Early Summer (Yasujiro Ozu)
The Tall Target (Anthony Mann)
The Desert Fox (Henry Hathaway)
Der Untertan (Wolfgang Staudte)
Scrooge (Brian Desmond Hurst)
When Worlds Collide (liftoff scene) (Rudolph Mate)
For the record: The Browning Version (Anthony Asquith); Miracle in Milan (Vittorio De Sica); Alice in Wonderland (Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske); The Medium (Gian Carlo Menotti); Show Boat (George Sidney); The Tales of Hoffmann (Michael Powell; Emeric Pressburger); Der Verlorene (The Lost One) (Peter Lorre); The Thing From Another World (Christian Nyby); Father's Little Dividend (Vincente Minnelli); The Great Caruso (Richard Thorpe)
To see: Edouard et Caroline (Jacques Becker); Olivia (The Pit of Loneliness) (Jacqueline Audry); Four in a Jeep (Die Vier im Jeep) Leopold Lindtberg, Elizabeth Montagu); Hard, Fast and Beautiful (Ida Lupino); Circle of Danger (Jacques Tourneur); He Ran All the Way (John Berry); The Prowler (Joseph Losey); His Kind of Woman (John Farrow); Baazi (Guru Dutt); The Brave Bulls (Robert Rossen); La Citte si difende (Pietro Germi); Crimen y castigo (Fernando de Fuentes); Decision Before Dawn (Anatole Litvak); Dokkoi ikiteiru (And Yet We Live) (Tadashi Imai); Guardie e ladri (Cops and Robbers) (Mario Monicelli); Genji monogatari (Kozaburo Yoshimura); Hon dansade en sommar (One Summer of Happiness) (Arne Mattsson); Karumen kokyo ni kaeru (Carmen Comes Home) (Keisuke Kinoshita); Dr. Knock (Guy Lefranc); The Mating Season (Mitchell Leisen); Patala Bhairavi (Kadri Venkata Reddy); People Will Talk (Joseph L. Mankiewicz); Sensualidad (Alberto Gout); El Suavecito (Fernando Mendez); Surcos (Jose Antonio Nieves Conde); Topaze (Marcel Pagnol); Taras Shevchenko (Aleksandr Alov, et. al.); Teresa (Fred Zinnemann); Tom Brown's Schooldays (Gordon Parry); Victimas del pecado (Emilio Fernandez); The Well (Leo C. Popkin, Russell Rouse); Die Sunderin (Willi Forst)
In the queue: The Red Inn (L'auberge rouge) (Claude Autant-Lara); Miss Oyu (Kenji Mizoguchi); La nuit est mon royaume (Night is my Kingdom) (Georges Lacombe); Meshi (Repast) (Mikio Naruse); The Lady of Musashino (Mushashino fujin) (Kenji Mizoguchi); Bellissima (Luchino Visconti); Laughter in Paradise (Mario Zampi); On the Riviera (Walter Lang); The White Sheik (Federico Fellini); Five (Arch Oboler); Vengeance Valley (Richard Thorpe); Follow the Sun (Sidney Lanfield); Distant Drums (Raoul Walsh); Il Cristo proibito (The Forbidden Christ (Curzio Malaparte); Day of the Fight (Stanley Kubrick)
VINTAGE RATING (1951): 8.5****
Notes: I can't honestly say I enjoyed Wolfgang Staudte's astute postwar German satire 'Der Untertan' (runner up) as much as I greatly admired it. Yet that admiration is substantial, the film subtly and mercilessly satirizes the nationalistic, opportunistic and hypocritical German Right-wing mindset that led to the disasters of WWs I and II. And it's very frank in the process about its protagonist's mercenary sexuality. Similarly, honesty forces me to admit fidgetyness while sitting through Yasujiro Ozu's meticulous family portrait, 'Early Summer' (runner up), even though it may be the year's most sublime film. Billy Wilder's 'Ace in the Hole' (aka, 'The Big Carnival')--long inexplicably MIA (though I had seen it on late-night TV ages ago)--finally comes to home video (DVD). Based on the Floyd Collins cave tragedy of the '20s, it is one of the cinema's most acid-laced attacks on cynical journalism, and one of the handful of Hollywood movies ('Patterns,' 'A Face in the Crowd,' 'A King in New York', etc.) made during the capitalistic go-go '50s that questioned public tastes and the ethos of the almighty dollar. Appropriately, its desert setting mirrors the reporter's aimlessless moral compass and arid bankruptcy of the soul. Overreliance on studio back projection swamps John Huston's 'The African Queen' (runner up); even so, the film's fine script, humor and chemistry between Bogie and K. Hepburn help sustain its reputation as a classic. A sea of all-white folks board the spaceship ark to save the human race in the dodgy sci-fi entry 'When Worlds Collide,' which must make it a KKKer's dream film. The liftoff scene (where the baddie gets his) is great, though.
1952 (94)
Umberto D (Vittorio De Sica)
Singin' in the Rain (Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen)
The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice (Yasujiro Ozu)
5 Fingers (Joseph Mankiewicz)
The Marrying Kind (George Cukor)
The Life of Oharu (Kenji Mizoguchi)
Carrie (William Wyler)
The Tragedy of Othello (Orson Welles)
Limelight (Charles Chaplin)
The Importance of Being Earnest (Anthony Asquith)
Feed the Kitty (Chuck Jones)
RUNNERS UP:
The Happy Time (Richard Fleischer)
The Quiet Man (John Ford)
The Big Sky (Howard Hawks)
The Member of the Wedding (Fred Zinnemann)
Outcast of the Islands (Carol Reed)
Operation: Rabbit (Chuck Jones)
Million Dollar Mermaid (Mervyn Leroy)
Mother (Okasan) (Mikio Naruse)
The Bad and the Beautiful (Vincente Minnelli)
Neighbours (Norman McLaren)
Children of Hiroshima (Children of the Atom Bomb) (Kaneto Shindo)
Come Back, Little Sheba (Daniel Mann)
Angel Face (Otto Preminger)
On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray)
High Noon (Fred Zinnemann)
The Crimson Pirate (Robert Siodmak)
Beware, My Lovely (Harry Horner)
Viva Zapata! (Elia Kazan)
Moulin Rouge (John Huston)
For the record: Le Plaisir (Max Ophuls); The Greatest Show on Earth (Cecil B. DeMille); Ivanhoe (Richard Thorpe); Moulin Rouge (John Huston); Pat and Mike (George Cukor); Fanfan la Tulipe (Christian-Jaque); Europa '51 (Roberto Rossellini); Bend of the River (Anthony Mann); Androcles and the Lion (Chester Erskine); Son of Paleface (Frank Tashlin); The Thief (Russell Rouse); Lovely to Look At (Mervyn LeRoy); Belles on Their Toes (Henry Levin); Plymouth Adventure (Clarence Brown); The Belle of New York (Charles Walters); Bells of Atlantis (Ian Hugo)
To re-watch: The Outcast of the Islands (Carol Reed); Casque d'or (Jacques Becker); The Golden Coach (Le carrosse d'or) (Jean Renoir); Ivanhoe (Richard Thorpe); Forbidden Games (Rene Clement); O. Henry's Full House (Henry Hathaway, Howard Hawks, et. al.); Scaramouche (George Sidney); Cry the Beloved Country (Zoltan Korda)
To see: The Four-Poster (Irving Reis); The White Reindeer (Erik Blomberg); Ruby Gentry (King Vidor); Due soldi di speranza (Two Cents Worth of Hope) (Renato Castellani); Hotel des Invalides (Georges Franju); Mexican Bus Ride (Luis Bunuel); Processo alla citta (The City Stands Trial) (Luigi Zampa); Waiting Women (Ingmar Bergman); Scandal Sheet (Phil Karlson); The Overcoat (Alberto Lattuada); Rimsky-Korsakov (Grigori Roshal); Glinka (Grigori Aleksandrov); Nous sommes tous des assassins (We Are All Murderers) (Andre Cayatte); Aan (Savage Princess)(Mehboob Khan); Las aguas bajan turbias (Dark River) (Hugo del Carril); Amei um bicheiro (Jorge Ileli, Paulo Wanderley); Amore rosso (Aldo Vergano); The Shepherdess and the Chimneysweep (Paul Grimault); O Canto da Saudade (The Longing Corner) (Humberto Mauro); Carnaval Atlantida (Jose Carlos Burle); Daibutsu Kaigen (Teinosuke Kinugasa); Diplomatic Courier (Henry Hathaway); Frauenschicksale (The Destinies of Women) (Slatan Dudow); Jaal (The Net) (Guru Dutt); Karumen junjo su (Carmen's Pure Love) (Keisuke Kinoshita); Liuhao men (Gate No. 6) (Liu Pan); La Macchina Ammazzacattivi (The Machine That Kills Bad People) (Roberto Rossellini); Mandy (Alexander Mackendrick); Manon des sources (Marcel Pagnol); Meet Me Tonight (Tonight at 8:30) (Anthony Pelissier); Mlodosc Chopina (Aleksander Ford); Nagarik (The Citizen) (Ritwik Ghatak); Nishijin no shimai (Sisters of Nishijin) (Kozaburo Yoshimura); Parasakthi (The Goddess) (Krishnan-Panju); The Pickwick Papers (Noel Langley); El Rebozo de Soledad (Roberto Gavaldon): Un Rincon cerca del cielo (Rogelio A. Gonzalez); Rome, Eleven O'Clock (Giuseppe De Santis); The Seven Deadly Sins (Yves Allegret, et. al.); Snegurochka (The Snow Maiden) (Ivan Ivanov-Vano); La verite sur Bebe Donge (The Truth of Our Marriage) (Henri Decoin); The Return of Vasili Bortnikov (V.I. Pudovkin); Where's Charley? (David Butler); With a Song in My Heart (Walter Lang); Without Warning! (Arnold Laven); Yi ban zhi ge (The Dividing Wall) (Zhu Shilin); O Canto do Mar (Song of the Sea) (Alberto Cavalcanti)
In the queue: The Lusty Men (Nicholas Ray); Park Row (Samuel Fuller); Fanfan la tulipe (Christian-Jaque); Don Camillo (Julien Duvivier); Il Cappotto (Alberto Lattuada); Two Cents Worth of Hope (Renato Castellani); Le Fruit defendu (Forbidden Fruit) (Henri Verneuil); Rancho Notorious (Fritz Lang); A Woman Without Love (Luis Bunuel); The Card (Ronald Neame); Secrets of Women (Ingmar Bergman); Sudden Fear (David Miller); The Sniper (Edward Dmytryk); Down Among the Z Men (Maclean Rogers); Forbidden Games (Rene Clement); The Narrow Margin (Richard Fleischer; to re-watch); The Magic Box (John Boulting); Clash By Night (Fritz Lang); Monkey Business (Howard Hawks); The Sound Barrier (David Lean); Hunted (Charles Crichton)
VINTAGE RATING (1952): 8.5****
Note: Akira Kurosawa's 'Ikiru' and Vittorio De Sica's 'Umberto D' are devastating humanist masterpieces about the loneliness and hardships of old age. They are cinematic mountains to climb, very heavy stuff, but tremendously rewarding and certain to make a dent in anyone's Kleenex box. Almost as touching, and a lot more funny, is 'Feed the Kitty,' the Chuck Jones classic cartoon about Marc Antony the bulldog and his irresistibly adorable kitten.
'Carrie'--William Wyler's overlooked adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's novel 'Sister Carrie'--is something of a revelation. The skittish studio--too afraid to show anything critical of life in the USA during the height of McCarthyite hysteria--cut a scene in which Lawrence Olivier's downtrodden character flops for the night in a mission house. The scene since has been restored and the movie is a powerful corrective to all the "love conquers all" movie myths; in fact, love here is shown as self destructive when pitted against more powerful societal expectations. It ends perfectly--unresolved, and without a sense of hope. 'Operation: Rabbit' (runner up) brings Bugs Bunny and Wile E. Coyote together for one of the more formidable faceoffs in Warner cartoons; the coyote's arrogant spoken boasts and Mel Blanc's exceptional vocal acting make this one of the funniest of Chuck Jones' Warner cartoons. Carol Reed's 'Outcast of the Islands' used to air all the time on Channel 15 and is now impossible to find. The haunting ending is etched in my brain but the rest of the film was too sophisticated for me at the time; I suspect a full viewing today would be rewarding. 'Viva Zapata!'--a film I used to be crazy about--took a tumble in a recent viewing. I find my tolerance lessened for Marlon Brando in the miscast central role; thinking his robust, ethnically flexible co-star Anthony Quinn would have been better as Zapata.
1953 (105) (MGM musicals reach quality peak with The Band Wagon; widescreen era begins)
The Wages of Fear (Le Salaire de la peur) (H.G. Clouzot)
Gan (The Mistress) (Shiro Toyoda)
Det Stora Aventyret (The Great Adventure) (Arne Sucksdorff)
The Band Wagon (Vincente Minnelli)
El (Luis Bunuel)
A Geisha (Gion bayashi) (Kenji Mizoguchi)
The Cruel Sea (Charles Frend)
Genevieve (Henry Cornelius)
The Titfield Thunderbolt (Charles Crichton)
Sawdust and Tinsel (Ingmar Bergman)
Ugetsu monogatari (Kenji Mizoguchi)
Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century (Chuck Jones)
Kiss Me Kate (George Sidney)
Lili (Charles Walters)
Beat the Devil (John Huston)
Grisbi (Jacques Becker)
Gate of Hell (Teinosuke Kinugasa)
Hondo (John Farrow)
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Howard Hawks)
The Naked Spur (Anthony Mann)
The Moon is Blue (Otto Preminger)
The Little Fugitive (Morris Engel)
Inferno (Roy Ward Baker)
Peter Pan (Hamilton Luske, et. al.)
Pickup on South Street (Samuel Fuller)
Sadko (Alexander Ptushko)
House of Wax (Andre de Toth)
The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (Roy Rowland)
Niagara (Henry Hathaway)
It Came From Outer Space (Jack Arnold)
The Sun Shines Bright (John Ford)
The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (Eugene Lourie)
For the record: Madame De (Max Ophuls); Les Orgueilleux (The Proud Ones) (Yves Allegret); From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann); I Confess (Alfred Hitchcock); Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (Jacques Tati); The Hitch-Hiker (Ida Lupino); The Blue Gardenia (Fritz Lang); The Wild One (Laslo Benedek); Invaders From Mars (William Cameron Menzies); How to Marry a Millionaire (Jean Negulesco); The Man Between (Carol Reed); Crin-Blanc (White Mane) (Albert Lamorisse); The Robe (Henry Koster); Battle Circus (Richard Brooks); Battle Circus (Richard Brooks); Houdini (George Marshall); The War of the Worlds (Byron Haskin); Mogambo (John Ford); Calamity Jane (David Butler); The Captain's Paradise (Anthony Kimmins); Salome (William Dieterle); Robot Monster (Phil Tucker); Glen or Glenda (Ed Wood); The Magnetic Monster (Curt Siodmak); The Living Desert (James Algar); The Long, Long Trailer (Vincente Minnelli)
To re-watch: Voyage in Italy (Roberto Rossellini); Inferno (Roy Ward Baker); Call Me Madam (Walter Lang)
To see: The Conquest of Everest (George Lowe); O Cangaceiro (The Bandit) (Lima Barreto); Dos tipos de cuidado (Ismael Rodriguez); The Glass Web (Jack Arnold); The Actress (George Cukor); Take Me to Town (Douglas Sirk); All I Desire (Douglas Sirk); 99 River Street (Phil Karlson); Aah (Raja Nawathe); Agulha no Palheiro (Needle in the Haystack) (Alex Viany); All My Babies (George Stoney); Anatahan (Josef Von Sternberg); Avvaiyyar (Kothamangalam Subbu); The Beggar's Opera (Peter Brook); The End (Christopher Maclaine); Entotsu no mieru basho (Where Chimneys are Seen) (Heinosuke Gosho); Espaldas mojadas (Alejandro Galindo); Harimau Tjampa (The Tiger From Tjampa) (D. Djajakusuma); Himeyuri no to (The Tower of Lilies) (Tadashi Imai); I, the Jury (Harry Essex); Karlekens brod (The Bread of Love) (Arne Mattsson); Kanikosen (The Crab-Canning Ship) (So Yamamura); Kidnappers (The Little Kidnappers) (Philip Leacock); Murder Without Tears (William Beaudine); Nihon no higeki (A Japanese Tragedy) (Keisuke Kinoshita); Onna hitori daichi o iku (A Woman Walks the Earth Alone) (Fumio Kamei); Pane, amore e fantasia (Bread, Love and Dreams) (Luigi Comencini); The Pleasure Garden (James Broughton); La Provinciale (The Wayward Wife) (Mario Soldati); Pu-san (Kon Ichikawa); La Red (Emilio Fernandez); Le Rideau cramoisi (The Crimson Curtain) (Alexandre Astruc); Rue de l'estrapade (Francoise Steps Out) (Jacques Becker); Sie fanden eine Heimat (Leopold Lindtberg); La signora senze camelie (The Lady Without Camelias) (Michelangelo Antonioni); Sinha Moca (Tom Payne, Oswaldo Sampaio); Summer With Monika (Ingmar Bergman); Stare Povesti Ceske (Old Czech Legends) (Jiri Trnka); The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan (Sidney Gilliat); The Sword and the Rose (Ken Annakin); Therese Raquin (Marcel Carne); Tsuma (Wife) (Mikio Naruse); Weilou chunxiao (In the Face of Demolition) (Lee Tit); World Without End (Paul Rotha, Basil Wright); Yoake mae (Before Dawn) (Kozaburo Yoshimura); The Heart of the Matter (George More O'Ferrall); L'amour d'une femme (The Love of a Woman) (Jean Gremillon); Lewat Djam Malam (After the Curfew) (Usmar Ismail); Nigorie (Muddy Waters) (Tadashi Imai)
In the queue: L'amore in citta (Fellini, Antonioni, Lattuada, Risi, etc); Bienvenido Mister Marshall (Luis Garcia Berlanga); Older Brother, Younger Sister (Ani Imoto) (Mikio Naruse); El Bruto (Luis Bunuel); Titanic (Jean Negulesco); Bo Bigha Zamin (Two Acres of Land) (Bimal Roy); The Tell-Tale Heart (Ted Parmelee)
VINTAGE RATING (1953): 8.5****
Note: There's hardly anything more enjoyable than a good British naval drama, and 'The Cruel Sea'--set in the Atlantic in WWII--is arguably the best (and certainly my favorite). In another Brit classic, 'Genevieve', marital spats punctuate a genteel cross-country road race. The result is a whimsical, lovely comedy that put the Rank Organisation in the same artistic league as the Ealing studios.
A cruel sea stirred by an atomic blast spit a thawed monster onto the streets of New York in 'The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms' (runner up), the first of the '50s giant-monsters pics and a cherished memory from the days of TV's "Fright Night." 'House of Wax' and 'It Came From Outer Space,' which I saw at the Showcase Cinemas and Vogue Theatre respectively in the late '70s in revivals in the original 3-D process, proved the lameness of simple color filter '3-D' as an effect and the headache-inducing annoyance of the glasses themselves. The films work fairly well without the process, though both are much better on the big screen. 'Hondo' with John Wayne is a virtual copycat of 'Shane' in several key ways. Even so I prefer the Farrow film over the more famous Stevens classic, probably because it's less self important and because the kid in the Wayne film is less annoying than Brandon DeWilde. It pains me to put something as great as Ingmar Bergman's dark, pessimistic circus-set character drama, 'Sawdust and Tinsel,' into the runners-up listing, but we're dealing in miniscule delineations of preference here, and the cutoff has to begin somewhere. Needless to say, it's not the feel-good movie of the year. Most criticism of Otto Preminger's notorious 'The Moon is Blue' (runner up) (first movie to joke (mildly) about virginity) seems to focus on people's disappointment when they find it's not really saucy at all. Still, it's a good, breezy modern romantic comedy. The glaring omission here is 'From Here to Eternity,' a soaper that now seems to me to be unimpressively ordinary. I still find myself trying to warm up to Samuel Fuller's 'Pickup on South Street' (runner up), a good noirish thriller that nonetheless creeps me out for its unabashed anti-commie paranoia (even an apolitical slimey street thug can be a good American as long as he parrots the McCarthyite line by the last reel). Or maybe Fuller is making a darker statement about the American mentality. I'll have to cogitate on it.
1954 (113)
The Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa)
Sansho the Bailiff (Kenji Mizoguchi)
Hobson's Choice (David Lean)
A Star is Born (George Cukor)
Samurai I (Miyamoto Musashi) (Hiroshi Inagaki)
Salt of the Earth (Herbert Biberman)
Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock)
Crime Wave (Andre de Toth)
Executive Suite (Robert Wise)
A Time Out of War (Denis Sanders)
The Devil's General (Des Teufels General) (Helmut Kautner)
RUNNERS UP:
Demetrius and the Gladiators (Delmer Daves)
Chikamatsu monogatari (The Crucified Lovers) (Kenji Mizoguchi)
On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan)
Magnificent Obsession (Douglas Sirk)
An Inspector Calls (Guy Hamilton)
Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray)
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (Stanley Donen)
Father Brown, Detective (Robert Hamer)
Twenty-Four Eyes (Keisuke Kinoshita)
The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (Luis Bunuel)
The Miracle of Marcelino (Ladislao Vajda)
A Generation (Andrzej Wajda)
Animal Farm (Joy Batchelor, John Halas)
Beau Brummell (Curtis Bernhardt)
The Caine Mutiny (Edward Dmytryk)
The Maggie (Alexander Mackendrick)
Susan Slept Here (Frank Tashlin)
It Should Happen to You (George Cukor)
Them! (Gordon Douglas)
The Barefoot Contessa (Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
Track of the Cat (William Wellman)
Doctor in the House (Ralph Thomas)
For the record: Broken Lance (Edward Dymtryk); The Country Girl (George Seaton); The Dam Busters (Michael Anderson); This Island Earth (Joseph M. Newman); Tiefland (Leni Riefenstahl); Vera Cruz (Robert Aldrich); Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Richard Fleischer); Dial M For Murder (Alfred Hitchcock); Godzilla (Ishirô Honda); Riot in Cell Block 11 (Don Siegel); Suddenly (Lewis Allen); The Bridges at Toko-Ri (Mark Robson); There's No Business Like Show Business (Walter Lang); Five Boys From Barska Street (Aleksander Ford); Die Letzte Brucke (The Last Bridge) (Helmut Kautner); Brigadoon (Vincente Minnelli); Creature from the Black Lagoon (Jack Arnold); The Far Country (Anthony Mann); Three Coins in the Fountain (Jean Negulesco); Ulysses (Mario Camerini); White Christmas (Michael Curtiz); Desistfilm (Stan Brakhage); A Lesson in Love (Ingmar Bergman); River of No Return (Otto Preminger); The Glenn Miller Story (Anthony Mann); Knock On Wood (Norman Panama, Melvin Frank)
To re-watch: Golden Demon (Koji Shima); Carmen Jones (Otto Preminger); The High and the Mighty (William Wellman); Knock On Wood (Norman Panama, Melvin Frank)
To see: Fear (La paura) (Roberto Rossellini); Thursday's Children (Lindsay Anderson); The Divided Heart (Charles Crichton); Black Tuesday (Hugo Fregonese); Illusion Travels by Streetcar (Luis Buñuel); Pushover (Richard Quine); The Woman in the Rumor (Kenji Mizoguchi); Sleeping Tiger (Joseph Losey); Private Hell 36 (Don Siegel); Taza, Son of Cochise (Douglas Sirk); Rogue Cop (Roy Rowland); Aar Paar (Guru Dutt); Amar (Mehboob Khan); El wahsh (The Monster) (Salah Abouseif); Anna Na Shee (Anna Around the Neck) (Isidor Annensky); Avant le deluge (Before the Deluge) (Andre Cayatte); Il Cardinale Lambertini (Giorgio Pastina); Carosello napoletano (Ettore Giannini); Celuloza (A Night of Remembrance) (Jerzy Kawalerowicz); Cronache di poveri amanti (Chronicle of Poor Lovers) (Carlo Lizzani); Le defroque (Leo Joannon); Eletjel (Fourteen Lives) (Zoltan Fabri); Forever Female (Irving Rapper); Hendes store aften (Annelise Reenberg); Les impures (Pierre Chevalier); Jagriti (The Awakening) (Satyen Bose); Kyriakatiko xypnima (Windfall in Athens) (Michael Cacoyannis); Letters from My Windmill (Marcel Pagnol); Liang Shanba yu Zhu Yingtai (Sang Hu, Hu Sha); Das Lied der Strome (Song of the Rivers) (Joris Ivens); Matar ou Correr (To Kill or to Run) (Carlos Manga); Monsieur Ripois (Knave of Hearts) (Rene Clement); Le mouton a cinq pattes (The Sheep Has Five Legs) (Henri Verneuil); La mujer de las camelias (Ernesto Arancibia); Munna (The Lost Child) (Khwaja Ahmad Abbas); The Naked Jungle (Byron Haskin); L'oro di Napoli (Gold of Naples) (Vittorio De Sica); Osaka no yado (An Inn at Osaka) (Heinosuke Gosho); Pod gwiazda frygijska (Under the Phrygian Star) (Jerzy Kawalerowicz); Qiao qian zhi xi (The House-warming) (Shilin Zhu); Raices (Roots) (Benito Alazraki); The Raid (Hugo Fregonese); Romeo and Juliet (Renato Castellani); Si Versailles m'etait conte (Affairs in Versailles) (Sacha Guitry); Siraa Fil-Wadi (Struggle in the Valley) (Youssef Chahine); Starker als die Nacht (Stronger Than the Night) (Slatan Dudow); Taiyo no nai Machi (The Sunless Street) (Satsuo Yamamoto); The Unconquered (Helen Keller in Her Story) (Nancy Hamilton)
In the queue: The Big Family (Bolshaya semya) (Josif Kheifits); Boot Polish (Prakash Arora); Sound of the Mountain (Yama no oto) (Mikio Naruse); Human Desire (Fritz Lang); Wuthering Heights (Abismos de pasion) (Luis Bunuel); The Belles of St. Trinians (Frank Launder); Late Chrysanthemums (Mikio Naruse); Young at Heart (Gordon Douglas); Three Cases of Murder (David Eady, et al); Senso (The Wanton Countess); The Red and the Black (Claude Autant-Lara); Silver Lode (Allan Dwan); Jail Bait (Ed Wood); The High and the Mighty (William Wellman/re-watch)
VINTAGE RATING (1954): 9****
Note: Many great ones this year, but a not-so-great one, 'Demetrius and the Gladiators' (runner up) is this year's guilty pleasure. Because it at least moves, it's a superior sequel to 1953's boring 'The Robe', largely due to Jay Robinson's flamboyant turn as Caligula. I admire 'On the Waterfront' more than I like it, thus the runner-up placement. The notion of the priest as the locus of community morality--and the film's melodramatic notions--makes it seem to me like an old James Cagney/Pat O'Brien meller dressed up in new 'realistic' duds. 'Them!', in which giant ants threaten LA, is probably the classiest, best-looking and least hysterical of the '50s giant monster flicks. It's probably best to see Federico Fellini's "La Strada" (runner up) before you see any of the director's other movies (which is how I saw it); otherwise its sentimental, mawkish elements could seem unbearable when stacked against Fellini's later, more detached and less manipulative works. 'Susan Slept Here' (runner up) is a testament to how effevescent young Debbie Reynolds could transform a minor romantic comedy into something special. Frank Tashlin's outrageously beautiful color schemes don't hurt either.
1955 (101) (Hollywood's last 3-strip Technicolor film ('Foxfire') released; 'Marty' shows TV's influence on Hollywood)
Bob le Flambeur (Bob the Gambler) (Jean-Pierre Melville)
Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich)
All That Heaven Allows (Douglas Sirk)
Death of a Cyclist (Muerte de un ciclista) (Juan Antonio Bardem)
Summertime (David Lean)
East of Eden (Elia Kazan)
The Colditz Story (Guy Hamilton)
Pather Panchali (Apu Trilogy, 1) (Satyajit Ray)
Picnic (Joshua Logan)
Rififi (Du rififi chez les hommes) (Jules Dassin)
I Am a Camera (Henry Cornelius)
One Froggy Evening (Chuck Jones)
Miyamoto Musashi: Ichijoji no ketto (Samurai II) (Hiroshi Inagaki)
Shack Out on 101 (Edward Dein)
RUNNERS UP:
Artists and Models (Frank Tashlin)
The Prisoner (Peter Glenville)
Diabolique (Les diaboliques) (H.G. Clouzot)
The Night My Number Came Up (Leslie Norman)
Les Grandes Manoeuvers (Rene Clair)
Ordet (Carl Dreyer)
Smiles of a Summer Night (Ingmar Bergman)
The Trouble With Harry (Alfred Hitchcock)
The Big Combo (Joseph H. Lewis)
The Big Knife (Robert Aldrich)
Momma Don't Allow (Karel Reisz)
Love Me or Leave Me (Charles Vidor)
The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton)
Marty (Delbert Mann)
The Seven Year Itch (Billy Wilder)
The Phenix City Story (Phil Karlson)
Mr. Arkadin (Orson Welles)
Cast a Dark Shadow (Lewis Gilbert)
Man Without a Star (King Vidor)
Bad Day at Black Rock (John Sturges)
Guys and Dolls (Joseph Mankiewicz)
French Cancan (Jean Renoir)
Nuit et brouillard (Night and Fog) (Alain Resnais)
To Catch a Thief (Alfred Hitchcock)
Lola Montes (Max Ophuls)
Lady and the Tramp (Hamilton Luske, Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson)
The Ladykillers (Alexander Mackendrick)
For the record: Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (Henry King); Hill 24 Doesn't Answer (Thorold Dickinson); Land of the Pharaohs (Howard Hawks); Wee Geordie (Frank Launder); Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray); The Man with the Golden Arm (Otto Preminger); The African Lion (James Algar); To Hell and Back (Jesse Hibbs); The Rose Tattoo (Daniel Mann); The Long Gray Line (John Ford); Oklahoma! (Fred Zinnemann); The Blackboard Jungle (Richard Brooks); I'll Cry Tomorrow (Daniel Mann); I Live in Fear (Akira Kurosawa); The Man From Laramie (Anthony Mann); Mister Roberts (John Ford, Mervyn LeRoy); Trial (Mark Robson); Daddy Long Legs (Jean Negulesco); Conquest of Space (Byron Haskin); It Came from Beneath the Sea (Robert Gordon); The Cockleshell Heroes (Jose Ferrer); Tarantula (Jack Arnold); I Died a Thousand Times (Stuart Heisler); 8 X 8 (Hans Richter); The Quatermass Xperiment (Val Guest)
To re-watch (in the queue): Man Without a Star (King Vidor); Shin heike monogatari (Taira Clan Saga) (Kenjo Mizoguchi); The Tender Trap (Charles Walters)
To see: Shree 420 (Raj Kapoor); Floating Clouds (Ukigumo) (Mikio Naruse); It's Always Fair Weather (Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly/to re-watch); Stella (Michael Cacoyannis); Don Quixote (Orson Welles/unfinished); House of Bamboo (Samuel Fuller); Captain Lightfoot (Douglas Sirk); The Indian Fighter (Andre de Toth); Murder is My Beat (Edgar G. Ulmer); Mr. & Mrs. '55 (Guru Dutt); Run for Cover (Nicholas Ray); Shin heike monogatari (Taira Clan Saga) (Kenjo Mizoguchi); The Seven Little Foys (Melville Shavelson); Heroes of Shipka (Sergei Vasilyev); A 9-es korterem (Ward no. 9) (Karoly Makk; Altid ballade (Gabriel Axel); Amici per la pelle (Friends for Life) (Franco Rossi); Budapesti tavasz (Spring in Budapest (Felix Mariassy); Chuzhaya rodnya (Other People's Relatives) (Mikhail Shvejtser); Ciske de Rat (Wolfgang Staudte); The Cobweb (Vincente Minelli); Continente perduto (The Lost Continent) (Enrico Gras, Giorgio Moser); Delo Rumyantseva (The Rumyantsev Case) (Iosif Khejfits); Dementia (Daughter of Horror) (John Parker); Despues de la tormenta (Roberto Gavaldon); Devdas (Bimal Roy); Dvenadtsataya noch (Twelfth Night) (Yan Frid); Egy pikolo vilagos (A Glass of Beer) (Felix Mariassy); Es geschah am 20. Juli (The Jackboot Mutiny) (Georg Wilhelm Pabst); Herr uber Leben und Tod (Victor Vicas); Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baaje (Rajaram Vankudre Shantaram); Istoria mias kalpikis liras (The False Coin) (Giorgos Javellas); A Kid for Two Farthings (Carol Reed); Kinder, Mutter und ein General (Children, Mother, and the General) (Laszlo Benedek); Kokoro (The Heart) (Kon Ichikawa); Lourdes et ses miracles (Georges Rouquier); Lurdzha Magdany (Magda's Donkey) (Tengiz Abuladze, Revaz Chkeidze); Les Mauvaises rencontres (Alexandre Astruc); Meoto zenzai (Marital Relations) (Shiro Toyoda); Nem Sansao Nem Dalila (Neither Samson Nor Delilah) (Carlos Manga); Neokonchennaya povest (An Unfinished Story) (Fridrikh Ermler); Nicht mehr fliehen (No More Fleeing) (Herbert Vesely); Nogiku no gotoki kimi nariki (She Was Like a Wild Chrysanthemum) (Keisuke Kinoshita); Ovod (The Gadfly) (Aleksandr Faintsimmer); Paris la nuit (Jacques Baratier); Die Ratten (The Rats) (Robert Siodmak); Razzia sur la chnouf (Henri Decoin); Romeo i Dzhulyetta (Romeo and Juliet) (Lev Arnshtam, Leonid Lavrovsky); Simba (Brian Desmond Hurst); La Sospechosa (Alberto Gout); Strijd zonder einde (The Rival World) (Bert Haanstra); Takekurabe (Adolescence) (Heinosuke Gosho); Tamu Agung (Exalted Guest) (Usmar Ismail); Tight Spot (Phil Karlson); Toto e Carolina (Mario Monicelli); Tuntematon sotilas (The Unknown Soldier) (Edvin Laine)
In the queue: Princess Yang Kwei Fei (Kenji Mizoguchi); Les Maitre Fous (The Mad Masters) (Jean Rouch); Korhinta (Merry Go Round) (Zoltan Fabri); Moonfleet (Fritz Lang): Le Amiche (The Girl Friends) (Michelangelo Antonioni); Rio 40 Graus (Rio 40 Degrees) (Nelson Pereira dos Santos); Otello (Sergei Yutkevich); The Grasshopper (Poprygunya) (Samson Samsonov); Il Bidone (Federico Fellini); Dreams (Ingmar Bergman); Killer's Kiss (Stanley Kubrick); We're No Angels (Michael Curtiz); The Private Life of Major Benson (Jerry Hopper); The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (Luis Bunuel); My Sister Eileen (Richard Quine); The Tender Trap (Charles Walters)
VINTAGE RATING (1955): 8.5****
NOTES: 'Picnic'--with William Holden at his best--is one of the better examples of the many "handsome-drifters-cause-upheaval-in-small-town" movies of the 1950s. It's also the only Joshua Logan film that's any good. I almost omitted Alain Resnais' famed Holocaust documentary "Night and Fog' (runner up) simply because so many more interesting films have been made on the subject since; it has the advantage of being closer to the horrific events. In addition to having the coolest title of all time, 'Shack Out on 101' is the best of all commie paranoia movies of the '50s--mainly for its shaggy dog plot and characters and the credible atmosphere it evokes of a remote Pacific Coast highway diner. It's easy to see why the widescreen, color Euro-art movie 'Lola Montes' is so admired, yet it's still mystifying why leading auteurist critic Andrew Sarris once called it the greatest movie ever made. The Ealing Studios' classic 'The Ladykillers' I find not terribly funny and full of squandered opportunities, but it should be seen for its clever premise, charm and vivid view of London in the '50s. Missing here is 'Rebel Without a Cause', which from my viewpoint traffics in teen angst in fairly hokey fashion. Juan Antonio Bardem's Spanish masterpiece, "Death of a Cyclist," was finally released after decades of hiding (by good ole Criterion, on DVD), and it is splendid.
1956 (89+)
A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson)
The Red Balloon (Albert Lamorisse)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel)
Street of Shame (Kenji Mizoguchi)
La Pointe-Courte (Agnes Varda)
Miyamoto Musashi: Ketto Ganryu-jima (Samurai III) (Hiroshi Inagaki)
Patterns (Fielder Cook)
The Railroad Man (Il Ferroviere) (Pietro Germi)
The Harder They Fall (Mark Robson)
The Ten Commandments (Cecil B. DeMille)
Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk)
The Killing (Stanley Kubrick)
7 Men From Now (Budd Boetticher)
Forbidden Planet (Fred M. Wilcox)
The Searchers (John Ford)
The Man Who Never Was (Ronald Neame)
Friendly Persuasion (William Wyler)
Aparajito (Apu Trilogy II) (Satyajit Ray)
The Great Man (Jose Ferrer)
The Court Jester (Norman Panama)
Jagte Raho (Shanbhu Mitra, Amit Maitra)
The Wrong Man (Alfred Hitchcock)
To Koritsi me ta mavra (A Girl in Black) (Michael Cacoyannis)
The Desperate Hours (William Wyler)
Design for Dreaming (Unknown, for General Motors)
And God Created Woman... (mambo scene) (Roger Vadim)
The Captain from Kopenick (Helmut Kautner)
For the record: Anastasia (Anatole Litvak); Around the World in 80 Days (Michael Anderson); Giant (George Stevens); Bigger Than Life (Nicholas Ray); Bus Stop (Joshua Logan); Gervaise (Rene Clement); The King & I (Walter Lang); Lust for Life (Vincente Minnelli); Moby Dick (John Huston); Teahouse of the August Moon (Daniel Mann); The Silent World (Louis Malle, Jacques-Yves Cousteau), Autumn Leaves (Robert Aldrich), The Burmese Harp (Kon Ichikawa); The Girl Can't Help It (Frank Tashlin); Death in the Garden (Luis Bunuel); The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (Nunnally Johnson); The Mystery of Picasso (Henri-Georges Clouzot); Four Bags Full (Claude Autant-Lara); A Kiss Before Dying (Gerd Oswald); Alexander the Great (Robert Rossen); The Bad Seed (Mervyn LeRoy); Carousel (Henry King); The Man Who Knew Too Much (Alfred Hitchcock); Ilya Muromets (The Sword and the Dragon) (Aleksandr Ptushko); Starik Khottabych (Old Khottabych) (Gennadi Kazansky); The Rainmaker (Joseph Anthony); Rock Around the Clock (Fred F. Sears); Love Me Tender (Robert D. Webb); Bride of the Monster (Ed Wood); The Conquerer (Dick Powell); etc.
To re-watch: The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (Nunnally Johnson); Private's Progress (John Boulting); Somebody Up There Likes Me (Robert Wise)
To see: Between Time and Eternity (Zwischen Zeit und Ewigkeit) (Arthur Maria Rabenalt); Hannibal tanar ur (Professor Hannibal) (Zoltan Fabri); A Town Like Alice (Jack Lee); The Killer Is Loose (Budd Boetticher); Slightly Scarlet (Allan Dwan); There's Always Tomorrow (Douglas Sirk); War and Peace (King Vidor); Bhowani Junction (George Cukor); Intimate Stranger (Joseph Losey); Tea and Sympathy (Vincente Minnelli); Hollywood or Bust (Frank Tashlin); Early Spring (Yasujiro Ozu); Voici le temps des assassins (Julien Duvivier); Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (Fritz Lang); Eine Berliner Romanze (A Berlin Romance) (Gerhard Klein); Bessmertnyy garnizon (The Immortal Garrison) (Zakhar Agranenko, Eduard Tisse); Calabuch (Luis Garcia Berlanga); Cela s'appelle l'aurore (Luis Bunuel); Chelovek rodilsya (A Man is Born) (Vasili Ordynsky); Chori Chori (Anant Thakur); Crime et chatiment (Crime and Punishment) (Georges Lampin); Dolina miru (The Valley of Peace) (France Stiglic); O Drakos (The Ogre of Athens) (Nikos Koundouros); En Dag i Staden (A Day in Town) (Pontus Hulten, Hans Nordenstrom); La escondida (Roberto Gavaldon); Die Halbstarken (Georg Tressler); Kein Platz fur wilde Tiere (Bernhard Grzimek, Michael Grzimek); The Last Hunt (Richard Brooks); Mahiru no ankoku (Darkness at Noon) (Tadashi Imai); Malva (Vladimir Braun); Mas alla del olvido (Beyond Oblivion) (Hugo del Carril); Mi tio Jacinto (Ladislao Vajda); Modesta (Benjamin Doniger); Neko to shozo to futari no onna (A Cat, Shozo, and Two Women) (Shiro Toyoda); Nightfall (Jacques Tourneur); Pervyj eshelon/Pervyy eshelon (The First Echelon) (Mikheil Kalatozishvili / Kalatazov); Private's Progress (John Boulting); Prolog (Efim Dzigan); Rekava (The Line of Destiny) (Lester James Peiris); Secrets of Life (James Algar); Shokei no heya (Punishment Room) (Kon Ichikawa); Taiyo to bara (The Rose on His Arm) (Keisuke Kinoshita); There's Always Tomorrow (Douglas Sirk); Torero (Carlos Velo); Toto, Peppino e la malafemmina (Camillo Mastrocinque); Vesna na Zarechnoj ulitse (Spring on Zarechnaya Street) (Marlen Khutsiyev, Feliks Mironer); Viva Revolution (Roberto Gavaldon); Vor Sonnenuntergang (Before Sundown) (Gottfried Reinhardt); War and Peace (King Vidor); Wushi Guan (Fifteen Strings of Cash) (Tao Chin); Zhu Fu (New Year's Sacrifice) (Sang Hu); Yield To The Night (J. Lee Thompson)
In the queue: While the City Sleeps (Fritz Lang); The Forty First (Grigori Chukrai); Fernandel the Dressmaker (Jean Boyer); The Twisted Cross (Henry Solomon); Flowing (Mikio Naruse); Together (Lorenza Mazzetti); Carnival Night (Karnavalnaya Noch) (Eldar Ryazanov); 1984 (Michael Anderson); Elena and Her Men (Jean Renoir); Invitation to the Dance (Gene Kelly); The Roof (Il Tetto) (Vittorio de Sica); Calle Mayor (Juan Antonio Bardem); Great Day in the Morning (Jacques Tourneur); The Battle of the River Plate (aka, Pursuit of the Graf Spee) (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger); The Green Man (Robert Day)
VINTAGE RATING (1956): 7***
Note: Although a lot of famous movies were released in 1956, I find most of them full of hot air (see: 'For the Record'). 1956 is a sort of nadir for old Hollywood; its products were more formulaic and artificial than ever, and most foreign films weren't faring much better--largely being commercially oriented, slick international co-productions. Signs of life, though, continued to come from Japan, and low-budget cult classics with attitude from Stanley Kubrick and Don Siegel showed that subversion and imagination were still around. Probably no film says more about 1956, though, than a 10-minute industrial advertising film, 'Design for Dreaming,' (runner up) highlighting GM's cars, Frigidaire appliances, homes of the future, etc. It's probably the strangest and most memorable filmic paean to materialism ever made. An ode to more transcendent things, 'A Man Escaped' by Robert Bresson, examines the human will to freedom perhaps more movingly than any other film--and does it within the watchable framework of a prison escape plot. Revered and protected as Mother by patriarchal censorship, the cinematic Woman was about to be ravished by emerging patriarchal prurience. Roger Vadim's cinematic gaze on not-quite-nude Brigitte Bardot in 'And God Created Woman' (runner up) opened the floodgates on cinematic sex. The film itself is a bore, watchable only for its Eastmancolor widescreen Mediterranean scenery and for Bardot -- whose girl-woman look was entirely new to the cinema and has pretty much defined the film-beauty aesthetic since. The only scene that approaches greatness is Bardot's mad mambo near the end, and it's nearly as iconic as Marilyn Monroe's blown upskirt scene in the previous year's 'The Seven Year Itch.' Ironically, sexual 'freedom' meant the loss of empowered women roles with the acceptance of the ogled Bimbo. For now, the pleasures of the movies' new sexual freedom were all men's.
1957 (106) (Claude Chabrol's 'Le Beau Serge' first film of French New Wave; Ingmar Bergman emerges)
Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman)
Throne of Blood (Akira Kurosawa)
Nights of Cabiria (Federico Fellini)
Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick)
Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick)
La Casa del angel (The House of the Angel) (Leopoldo Torre-Nilsson)
12 Angry Men (Sidney Lumet)
A Face in the Crowd (Elia Kazan)
A Matter of Dignity (To Telefteo psemma) (Michael Cacoyannis)
The Bachelor Party (Delbert Mann)
On the Bowery (Lionel Rogosin)
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (Frank Tashlin)
The Bridge on the River Kwai (David Lean)
RUNNERS UP:
The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman)
Witness For the Prosecution (Billy Wilder)
What's Opera, Doc? (Chuck Jones)
Yantra (James Whitney)
Man on the Tracks (Czlowiek na torze) (Andrzej Munk)
Love in the Afternoon (Billy Wilder)
Funny Face (Stanley Donen)
The Spirit of St. Louis (Billy Wilder)
Peyton Place (Mark Robson)
The Lower Depths (Akira Kurosawa)
The Cranes Are Flying (Mikhail Kalatozov)
3:10 to Yuma (Delmer Daves)
Forty Guns (Samuel Fuller)
A King in New York (Charles Chaplin)
Seven Waves Away (Abandon Ship!) (Richard Sale)
The Incredible Shrinking Man (Jack Arnold)
A Hatful of Rain (Fred Zinnemann)
The Tin Star (Anthony Mann)
The Ride Back (Allen H. Miner)
Heaven Knows Mr. Allison (John Huston)
Le Beau Serge (Claude Chabrol)
All the Boys are Called Patrick (Jean-Luc Godard)
Fear Strikes Out (Robert Mulligan)
Les Mistons (Francois Truffaut)
For the record: The Tall T (Budd Boetticher); Il Grido (Michelangelo Antonioni); The Three Faces of Eve (Nunnally Johnson); Desk Set (Walter Lang); The Pajama Game (George Abbott, Stanley Donen); Bitter Victory (Nicholas Ray); The Wide Blue Road (Gillo Pontecorvo); Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (John Sturges); Jailhouse Rock (Richard Thorpe); Man of a Thousand Faces (Joseph Pevney); Old Yeller (Robert Stevenson); Sayonara (Joshua Logan); Silk Stockings (Rouben Mamoulian); Les Sorcieres de Salem (The Crucible) (Raymond Rouleau); The Strange One (Jack Garfein); Woman in a Dressing Gown (J. Lee Thompson); Something of Value (Richard Brooks); Stage Struck (Sidney Lumet); Night Passage (James Neilson); and LOTS of really bad sci-fi monster movies
To re-watch: Curse of the Demon (Night of the Demon) (Jacques Tourneur); Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (John Sturges); Time Without Pity (Joseph Losey); The Golden Age of Comedy (Robert Youngson); Operation Mad Ball (Richard Quine); City of Gold (Wolf Koenig, Colin Low)
To see: The Man in the Raincoat (Julien Duvivier); Buye Cheng (City Without Night) (Tang Ziaodan); Wolf Trap (Vlci jama) (Jiri Weiss); Le cas du Dr Laurent (The Case of Dr. Laurent) (Jean-Paul Le Chanois); Lettre de Siberie (Chris Marker); The River's Edge (Allan Dwan); Decision at Sundown (Budd Boetticher); The Devil Strikes at Night (Richard Siodmak); Nine Lives (Arne Skouen); Barnacle Bill (Charles Frend); Jeanne Eagels (George Sidney); Absolutamente Certo (Absolutely Right) (Anselmo Duarte); Assassins et voleurs (Murderers and Thieves) (Sacha Guitry); Les aventures d'Arsene Lupin (Jacques Becker); Bakaruhaban (A Sunday Romance) (Imre Feher); Bakumatsu taiyoden (The Sun's Legend) (Yuzo Kawashima); Berlin - Ecke Schoenhauser (Berlin - Schoenhauser Corner) (Gerhard Klein); Devushka bez adresa (Girl Without an Address) (Eldar Ryazanov); Do Ankhen Barah Haath (Two Eyes, Twelve Hands) (Rajaram Vankudre Shantaram); Dom v kotoromu ya zhivu (The House I Live In) (Lev Kulidzhanov, Yakov Segel); Les espions (Henri-Georges Clouzot); Ila ayn (Whither?) (George Nasr); Jun'ai monogatari (A Story of Pure Love) (Tadashi Imai); Los Jueves, milagro (Every Thursday, a Miracle) (Luis Garcia Berlanga); Kiiroi karasu (Yellow Crow) (Heinosuke Gosho); Musafir (Traveller) (Hrishikesh Mukherjee); Nachts, Wenn der Teufel kam (The Devil Strikes at Night) (Robert Siodmak); The Naked Truth (Mario Zampi); Ni liv (Nine Lives) (Arne Skouen); Le notti bianche (White Nights) (Luchino Visconti); The One That Got Away (Roy Ward Baker); Pavel Korchagin (Aleksandr Alov, Vladimir Naumov); Perri (Paul Kenworthy Jr, Ralph Wright); Porte des Lilas (The Gates of Paris) (Rene Clair); Sait-on Jamais (Roger Vadim); Le Seine a rencontre Paris (The Seine Meets Paris) (Joris Ivens); Si qian jin (Our Sister Hedy) (Tao Qin); Snezhnaya koroleva (The Snow Queen)(Lev Atamanov); Tiger In The Smoke (Roy Baker); Time Limit (Karl Malden); Tizoc (Ismael Rodriguez); Tohoku no zunmu-tachi (Men of Tohoku) (Kon Ichikawa); Tokyo boshoku (Tokyo Twilight) (Yasujiro Ozu); El Ultimo cuple (The Last Song) (Juan de Orduna); Urok istorii (A Lesson in History) (Lev Arnshtam, Hristo Piskov, Mikhail Romm); El Vampiro (Fernando Mendez); Die Zurcher Verlobung (The Affairs of Julie) (Helmut Kautner)
In the queue: And Quiet Flows the Don (Sergei Gerasimov); Don Quixote (Grigori Kozintsev); Four Bags Full (Traversee de Paris) (Claude Autant-Lara); Every Day Except Christmas (Linday Anderson); Pot-Bouille (Julien Duvivier); Run of the Arrow (Samuel Fuller); He Who Must Die (Jules Dassin); Edge of the City (Martin Ritt); Mother India (Mehboob Khan); Pyaasa (Guru Dutt); Brothers In Law (Roy Boulting); Lucky Jim (John and Roy Boulting); Snow Country (Shiro Toyoda); The Passionate Stranger (Muriel Box); Teacher's Pet (George Seaton); An Affair to Remember (Leo McCarey); The Enemy Below (Dick Powell); Night Passage (James Neilson); The Story of Esther Costello (David Miller); Pyaasa (Guru Dutt); Time Without Pity (Joseph Losey); Band of Angels (Raoul Walsh); Operation Mad Ball (Richard Quine)
VINTAGE RATING (1957): 10*****
Note: After the dullness of 1956, a lot of pent-up creativity explodes in 1957. An incredible year internationally, with arthouse masterpieces in amazing abundance. Hollywood, too, offered up darker and edgy entertainment--noirs, crime films, and sharp satires--of the highest order. And a little thing called the "Nouvelle vague" had just been born in France. The most egregious MIA film never released on video in the US is Leopoldo Torre-Nilsson's exquisite 'La casa del angel,' a dark, brooding coming-of-age film set in a sexually repressed bourgeoise home in Argentina in the 1920s (I located a bootleg DVD online). At 70 minutes, the film is near perfection; its brevity and its young heroine's weary resignation in the unresolved finale only strengthen its quiet power. Finally available on video is Sam Fuller's baroque western 'Forty Guns,' probably the slickest A-calibre studio film he ever made. It turns out to be a pretty essential '50s western, shot with great elan in widescreen by Joseph Biroc and full of outrageous phallic innuendo involving the hero's gun (Barbara Stanwyck frequently expresses a desire to the hero to 'touch it.'). Still, I prefer Delmer Daves' simpler, less pretentious '3:10 to Yuma,' one of the better westerns with the old plot involving a lawman transporting a dangerous criminal across harsh terrain. 'Heaven Knows Mr. Allsion' (runner up) is John Huston essentially copycatting his own 'The African Queen,' except that I like this later picture better.
1958 (97) ('Look Back in Anger' signals birth of English 'kitchen-sink' new wave)
Touch of Evil (Orson Welles)
The Hidden Fortress (Akira Kurosawa)
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock)
Jalsaghar (The Music Room) (Satyajit Ray)
Ashes and Diamonds (Andrzej Wajda)
Giants & Toys (Yasuzo Masumura)
Some Came Running (Vincente Minnelli)
A Night to Remember (Roy Baker)
A Time to Love and a Time to Die (Douglas Sirk)
The Left Handed Gun (Arthur Penn)
Murder by Contract (Irving Lerner)
The Vikings (Richard Fleischer)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Richard Brooks)
RUNNERS UP:
I Was Monty's Double (John Guillerman)
I Soliti ignoti (Big Deal on Madonna Street) (Mario Monicelli)
Ansiktet (The Magician) (Ingmar Bergman)
Ascenseur pour l'echafaud (Elevator to the Gallows) (Louis Malle)
The Tarnished Angels (Douglas Sirk)
Nazarin (Luis Bunuel)
The Horse's Mouth (Ronald Neame)
Danger Within (Breakout) (Don Chaffey)
The Last Hurrah (John Ford)
The Goddess (John Cromwell)
The Rickshaw Man (Hiroshi Inagaki)
The Defiant Ones (Stanley Kramer)
Run Silent Run Deep (Robert Wise)
Bonjour Tristesse (Otto Preminger)
Damn Yankees! (George Abbott, Stanley Donen)
Dracula (Horror of Dracula) (Terence Fisher)
Auntie Mame (Morton DaCosta)
For the record: Ballad of Narayama (Keisuke Kinoshita); Bell, Book and Candle (Richard Quine); Carve Her Name With Pride (Lewis Gilbert); Chibideka monogatari (Skinny and Fatty) (N. Terao); Desire Under the Elms (Delbert Mann); Enjo (Kon Ichikawa); Gigi (Vincente Minnelli); God's Little Acre (Anthony Mann); Houseboat (Melville Shavelson); I Want to Live! (Robert Wise); Indiscreet (Stanley Donen); Le Beau Serge (Claude Chabrol); Les Amants (Louis Malle); Man of the West (Anthony Mann); Marjorie Morningstar (Irving Rapper); Mon Oncle (Jacques Tati); Naked and the Dead (Raoul Walsh); No Time for Sergeants (Mervyn LeRoy); Separate Tables (Delbert Mann); South Pacific (Joshua Logan); The Big Country (William Wyler); The Blob (Irvin S. Yeaworth); The Buccaneer (Anthony Quinn); The Fabulous World of Jules Verne (Karel Zeman); The Fly (Kurt Neumann); The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (Mark Robson); The Light in the Forest (Herschel Daugherty); The Long, Hot Summer (Martin Ritt); The Naked and the Dead (Raoul Walsh); The Old Man and the Sea (John Sturges); The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (Nathan Juran); The Young Lions (Edward Dmytryk); Thunder Road (Arthur Ripley); Too Many Crooks (Mario Zampi); Wind Across the Everglades (Nicholas Ray); Winter Carousel (Ladislaw Starewicz)
To see: Ajantrik (Pathetic Fallacy) (Ritwik Ghatak); L'eau vive (Girl and the River) (Francois Villiers); Fiend Without a Face (Arthur Crabtree); It Happened in Broad Daylight (Ladislao Vajda); Underworld Beauty (Seijun Suzuki); China Doll (Frank Borzage); Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys! (Leo McCarey); The Gentleman and the Gypsy (Joseph Losey); Machine-Gun Kelly (Roger Corman); Terror in a Texas Town (Joseph H. Lewis); The Lineup (Don Siegel); Buchanan Rides Alone (Budd Boetticher); Saddle the Wind (Robert Parrish); The Idiot (Ivan Pyryev); Les tricheurs (Marcel Carne); La Cesta Duga Godinu... (The Road a Year Long) (Giuseppe De Santis); Ciulinii Baraganului (Baragan Thistles) (Louis Daquin, Gheorghe Vitanidis); De Dodes tjern (Kare Bergstrom); Dorp aan de rivier (Village on the River) (Fons Rademakers); En cas de malheur (Love is My Profession) (Claude Autant-Lara); O Grande Momento (The Great Moment) (Roberto Pires, Roberto Santos); Hakuja den (Panda and the Magic Serpent) (Kazuhiko Okabe, Taiji Yabushita); Haz a sziklak alatt (The House Under the Rocks) (Karoly Makk); Helden (Arms and the Man) (Franz Peter Wirth); El Jefe (The Boss) (Fernando Ayala); Das Madchen Rosemarie (The Girl Rosemarie) (Rolf Thiele); Madhumati (Bimal Roy); Manbo guniang (Mambo Girl) (Yi Wen); Moi un noir Treichville (Jean Rouch); Motyli Tady Neziji (Butterflies Do Not Live Here) (Miro Bernat); Orders to Kill (Anthony Asquith); Osmy dzien tygodnia (The Eighth Day of the Week) (Aleksander Ford); Ostatni dzien lata (The Last Day of Summer) (Tadeusz Konwicki); The Philosopher's Stone (Satyajit Ray); Rosaura a las 10 (Rosaura at 10 O'Clock) (Mario Soffici); La Sfida (Francesco Rosi); Shirasagi (The White Heron) (Teinosuke Kinugasa); Shiroka Strana Moya Rodnaya (Great is My Country) (Roman Karmen); Sonnensucher (Sun Seekers) (Konrad Wolf); La tete contre les murs (The Keepers) (Georges Franju); Tjambuk Api (Whipfire) (D. Djajakusuma); Tom Thumb (George Pal); Une vie End of Desire (One Life) (Alexandre Astruc); L'uomo di paglia (Man of Straw) (Pietro Germi); La Venganza (Vengeance) (Juan Antonio Bardem); La vida por delante (Your Life Before You) (Fernando Fernan Gomez); Weddings and Babies (Morris Engel); Windjammer: The Voyage of the Christian Radich (Bill Colleran, Louis De Rochemont); Wir Wunderkinder (Aren't We Wonderful?) (Kurt Hoffmann); Yoru no tsuzumi (The Adulteress) (Tadashi Imai); Ah Q (The True Story of Ah Q)(Yuen Yang-an); Amore e chiacchiere (Alessandro Blasetti); Ewa chce spac (Eve Wants to Sleep) (Tadeusz Chmielewski); Goha (Jacques Baratier); The Hunters (Robert Gardner, John Marshall)
In the queue: Maigret Sets a Trap (Maigret tend un piege) (Jean Delannoy); The Square Peg (John Paddy Carstairs); Brink of Life (Nara Livet) (Ingmar Bergman); Montparnasse 19 (Jacques Becker); Equinox Flower (Yaujiro Ozu); Mirror Has Two Faces (Andre Cayatte); The Silent Enemy (William Fairchild); Desire Under the Elms (Delbert Mann); Cairo Station (Youssef Chahine); Party Girl (Nicholas Ray); Cowboy (Delmer Daves)
VINTAGE RATING (1958): 8.5****
Note: Filmmakers coast a bit after the explosion of 1957; it's a nice interlude with several high points (Hitchcock, Welles, Kurosawa, Wajda, etc.)--before the building magma dome explodes again in 1959 and 1960. The kindred-spirit productions 'Some Came Running' and 'The Tarnished Angels' (runner up) are sweeping character dramas with downbeat sensibilities in depicting Americana, both made by two of Hollywood's greatest masters of melodrama. Yasuzo Masumura's 'Giants & Toys" is a supercynical take on malicious corporate culture, and its ultracool style, made me think it was made around 1966. I was downright shocked to find it was made in 1958. No other 1950s film attacks the pathology of capitalism with as much gusto or acid vigor. Luis Bunuel's 'Nazarin' (runner up) is undoubtedly a masterwork; I wasn't in the mood when I saw it at a screening in college, so another viewing's due.
1959 (99) (Cassavetes' raw, pioneering indie 'Shadows' challenges slick commercial cinema)
Hiroshima mon amour (Alain Resnais)
The Human Condition (parts I and II) (Masaki Kobayashi)
I'm All Right, Jack (John Boulting)
Nobi (Fires on the Plain) (Kon Ichikawa)
North By Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock)
Destiny of a Man (Sergei Bondarchuk)
Les Cousins (Claude Chabrol)
Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk)
Room at the Top (Jack Clayton)
Anatomy of a Murder (Otto Preminger)
The 400 Blows (Francois Truffaut)
Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks)
Ballad of a Soldier (Grigori Chukrai)
The Nun's Story (Fred Zinnemann)
Window Water Baby Moving (Stan Brakhage)
The World of Apu (Apur Sansar) (Satyajit Ray)
RUNNERS UP:
Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder)
Black Orpheus (Orfeu Negro) (Marcel Camus)
La Grande Guerra (The Great War) (Mario Monicelli)
Shinel (The Overcoat) (Aleksei Batalov)
Science Friction (Stan VanDerBeek)
The Bridge (Die Brucke) (Bernhard Wicki)
Look Back in Anger (Tony Richardson)
Kapo (Gillo Pontecorvo)
The Horse Soldiers (John Ford)
Pociag (Night Train) (Jerzy Kawalerowicz)
Darby O'Gill and the Little People (Robert Stevenson)
Middle of the Night (Delbert Mann)
The Diary of Anne Frank (George Stevens)
Shadows (John Cassavetes)
Come Back Africa (Lionel Rogosin)
El Lazarillo de Tormes (Cesar Fernandez Ardavin)
Shake Hands With the Devil (Michael Anderson)
Odd Obsession (Kon Ichikawa)
The Devil's Disciple (Guy Hamilton)
Ohayo (Good Morning) (Yasujiro Ozu)
The Crimson Kimono (Samuel Fuller)
Porgy and Bess (Otto Preminger)
Plan 9 From Outer Space (Ed Wood)
For the record: Ben-Hur (William Wyler); Pickpocket (Robert Bresson); Verboten! (Samuel Fuller); Pull My Daisy (Robert Frank, Alfred Leslie); Warlock (Edward Dmytryk); Compulsion (Richard Fleischer); Eyes Without a Face (Georges Franju); Pillow Talk (Michael Gordon); Nazarín (Luis Bunuel); Ride Lonesome (Budd Boetticher); The Mouse That Roared (Jack Arnold); On the Beach (Stanley Krammer); Tiger Bay (J. Lee Thompson); Sleeping Beauty (Clyde Geronimi); Carlton-Browne of the F.O. (Roy Boulting); The Mummy (Terence Fisher); The Savage Innocents (Nicholas Ray); Suddenly Last Summer (Joseph L. Mankiewicz); Odds Against Tomorrow (Robert Wise); Operation Petticoat (Blake Edwards); The Tingler (William Castle); Journey to the Center of the Earth (Henry Levin); Blue Denim (Philip Dunne); The World, the Flesh and the Devil (Ranald MacDougall); Man on a String (Andre De Toth); A Hole in the Head (Frank Capra); Moonbird (John & Faith Hubley); The Testament of Doctor Cordelier (Jean Renoir)
To re-watch: Floating Weeds (Ukigusa) (Yasujiro Ozu); The Lovers (Les amants) (Louis Malle); Nazarin (Luis Bunuel); Middle of the Night (Delbert Mann)
To see: Araya (Margot Benacerraf); Picnic on the Grass (Jean Renoir); La Caida (The Fall) (Leopoldo Torre Nilsson); Kaagaz Ke Phool (Guru Dutt); La Legge (The Law) (Jules Dassin); Lin jia pu zi (The Lin Family Shop) (Choui Khoua, aka Shui Hua); The Scapegoat (Robert Hamer); Our Man in Havana (Carol Reed); The Cow and I (Henri Verneuil); Day of the Outlaw (Andre de Toth); Face of a Fugitive (Paul Wendkos); Al Capone (Richard Wilson); Ai To Kibo No Machi (A Town of Love and Hope) (Nagisa Oshima); Baza ludzi umarlych (Damned Roads) (Czeslaw Petelski); Le Bel age (Love Is When You Make It) (Pierre Kast); Belye nochi (White Nights) (Ivan Pyriev); Blind Date (Chance Meeting) (Joseph Losey); The Bridal Path (Frank Launder); Deux hommes dans Manhattan (Jean-Pierre Melville); Les Dragueurs (The Chasers) (Jean-Pierre Mocky); Feng-bao (Storm) (Jin Shan); En Fremmed banker pa (A Stranger Knocks) (Johan Jacobsen); Kazabana (Snow Flurry) (Keisuke Kinoshita); Kiku to Isamu (Tadashi Imai); Lin Zexu (The Opium Wars) (Zheng Junli, Qin Fan); Lotna (Andrzej Wajda); Un Maledetto imbroglio (The Facts of Murder) (Pietro Germi); Nianchan (My Second Brother) (Shohei Imamura); North West Frontier (Flame Over India) (J. Lee Thompson); Paw (Boy of Two Worlds) (Astrid Henning-Jensen); El Pisito (The Little Flat) (Marco Ferreri, Isidoro M. Ferry); Poema o more (Poem of the Sea) (Yuliya Solntseva, Alexander Dovzhenko); Rosen fur den Staatsanwalt (Roses for the Prosecutor) (Wolfgang Staudte); Sen noci svatojanske (A Midsummer Night's Dream) (Jiri Trnka); Serengeti Shall Not Die (Bernhard Grzimek); Shonen sarutobi sasuke (The Adventures of Little Samurai) (Taiji Yabushita, Akira Daikuhara); Sterne (Stars) (Rangel Vulchanov, Konrad Wolf); Sujata (Bimal Roy); Il Tempo si e fermato (Time Stood Still) (Ermanno Olmi); Waga ai (When a Woman Loves (Heinosuke Gosho); Hao men ye yan (Feast of a Rich Family) (Lee Tit, et. al.); Jago Hua Savera (Day Shall Dawn) (A.J. Kardar); Zamach (Answer to Violence) (Jerzy Passendorfer);
In the queue: The Sign of Leo (Signe du Lion) (Eric Rohmer); La Grande Guerra (Mario Monicelli); We are the Lambeth Boys (Karel Reisz); The Tiger of Eschnapur (and) The Indian Tomb (Fritz Lang); The Letter that Was Never Sent (Mikhail Kalatazov); Street of Love and Hope (Nagisa Oshima); Leda (A Double Tour/Web of Passion) (Claude Chabrol); Marie-Octobre (Julien Duvivier); Les liaisons dangereuses (Roger Vadim); Beloved Infidel (Henry King); Libel (Anthony Asquith); The Hanging Tree (Delmer Daves)
VINTAGE RATING (1959): 10*****
Notes: 'Window Water Baby Moving,' a poetic home movie about childbirth, is probably the only film of true worth from Stan Brakhage, who made hundreds of acclaimed but obscure avant-garde shorts from the 1950s to the 1990s, some of them skillful but most of them forgettable and undone by their home-movie amateurishness. Ed Wood's 'Plan 9 From Outer Space' (runner up) is inept in a different way, but not entirely from a production standpoint; the film actually has a professional Hollywood photographic sheen (Ed Wood's cameraman is probably the only person on the set who actually knows what he's doing). Although just a typical grade Z drive-in product of its era, its capturing of the zeitgeist and sheer fun-inducing hilarity make it irresistible. 1959, is one of the movies' greatest years, brimming with accomplished works--yet 'Plan 9...', one of its least accomplished, has captured our hearts (or maybe a smug need to mock and feel superior to the past). 'I'm All Right, Jack' is probably the first truly modern movie comedy, the first to brazenly skewer sacred cows of English society with an irreverence that would influence 'Dr. Strangelove,' 'MASH,' 'The Ruling Class' and more. The Japanese anti-war films 'The Human Condition' (a 3-part, 9-hour marathon) and 'Nobi' ('Fires on the Plain') are unrelentingly grim WWII epics in which the Japanese turn a severely critical eye on themselves. These monumental films are rewarding and unforgettable, once endured. David Shipman, author of The Story of Cinema, makes a good case for 'The Human Condition' being the greatest film ever made. The memories of WWII in Alain Renais' groundbreaking French New Wave masterwork 'Hiroshima Mon Amour' show that the war's pains were still very much alive in 1959; there were a slew of superior films about the epochal conflict during the year, including the two Japanese films already mentioned as well as Sergei Beondarchuk's immensely moving Soviet epic 'Destiny of a Man' and his compatriot's international hit 'Ballad of a Soldier.' The war also intercedes (offscreen) in Fred Zinnemann's remarkable study of a young nun, 'The Nun's Story,' which is probably Audrey Hepburn's finest work. Berhnard Wicki's 'The Bridge' (runner up) shows the final desperation of Nazi Germany in throwing its male children into the breech; 'Kapo' (runner up) is a dramatically interesting look at the concentration camps; and 'The Diary of Anne Frank' (runner up) is a good if obvious Hollywood treatment of the famous wartime diary.
Claude Chabrol's 'Les Cousins' has a silly moralistic/ironic ending, but up to that point it's the most purely fun film of the French New Wave. But the really essential films of that movement this year are the Resnais film and Francois Truffaut's 'The 400 Blows.' I list Otto Preminger's "Porgy and Bess" (runner up) not because it's a great film, but because it's nearly impossible to see, and if my having seen it tortures someone else then that's enough.
1960 (106) (Cinema verite born in 'Primary'; Euro art cinema reaches pinnacle)
Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti)
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (Mikio Naruse)
La Dolce Vita (Federico Fellini)
The Lady With the Dog (Joseph Heifetz)
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (Karel Reisz)
Breathless (A bout de souffle) (Jean-Luc Godard)
L'avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni)
The Virgin Spring (Ingmar Bergman)
Primary (Robert Drew)
Tunes of Glory (Ronald Neame)
The Cloud-Capped Star (Ritwik Ghatak)
General Della Rovere (Roberto Rossellini)
The League of Gentlemen (Basil Dearden)
The Entertainer (Tony Richardson)
Inherit the Wind (Stanley Kramer)
RUNNERS UP:
Two Women (Vittorio De Sica)
Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock)
Sons and Lovers (Jack Cardiff)
Les Bonnes Femmes (Claude Chabrol)
Jazz on a Summer's Day (Bert Stern)
Elmer Gantry (Richard Brooks)
The Bad Sleep Well (Akira Kurosawa)
The Island (Hadaka no shima) (Kaneto Shindo)
The Trials of Oscar Wilde (Ken Hughes)
The Angry Silence (Guy Green)
Afraid to Die (Yasuzo Masumura)
The Sky Above, the Mud Below (Pierre-Dominique Gaisseau)
Jigoku (Hell) (Nobuo Nakagawa)
Shoot the Piano Player (Tirez sur le pianiste) (Francois Truffaut)
Never On Sunday (Jules Dassin)
The Criminal (The Concrete Jungle) (Joseph Losey)
Zazie dans le metro (Louis Malle)
Devi (Satyajit Ray)
The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (Delbert Mann)
The Bellboy (Jerry Lewis)
Romeo, Juliet and Darkness (aka, Sweet Light in a Dark Room) (Jiri Weiss)
A Summer to Remember (Georgi Daneliya, Igor Talankin)
The Magnificent Seven (John Sturges)
Spartacus (Stanley Kubrick)
Expresso Bongo (Val Guest)
Macario (Roberto Gavaldon)
For the record: Sergeant Rutledge (John Ford); El Cochecito (Marco Ferreri); Peeping Tom (Michael Powell); Sink the Bismarck (Lewis Gilbert); The Young One (Luis Buñuel); Little Shop of Horrors (Roger Corman); Paris is Ours (Jacques Rivette); The Sundowners (Fred Zinnemann)
To re-watch: Cruel Story of Youth (Nagisa Oshima); The Testament of Orpheus (Jean Cocteau); The Savage Innocents (Nicholas Ray)
To see: Hand in Hand (Philip Leacock); Purple Noon (Rene Clement); Steamroller and the Violin (Andrei Tarkovsky); The Approach of Autumn (Mikio Naruse); The Housemaid (Kim Ki-young); Pollyanna (David Swift); The Savage Innocents (Nicholas Ray); The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (Fritz Lang); Mysterious Case of the Rygseck Murders (Matti Kassila); The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (Budd Boetticher); Los Golfos (Hooligans) (Carlos Saura); Classe tous risques (Claude Sautet); El Esqueleto de la senora Morales (Rogelio A. Gonzalez); L'Amerique insolite (America Through the Keyhole) (Francois Reichenbach); Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti (Herr Puntila and His Servant Matti) (Alberto Cavalcanti)
In the queue: Knights of the Teutonic Order (Aleksander Ford); La Verite (Henri-Georges Clouzot); Bad Luck (Zezowate szczescie) (Andrzej Munk); A Simple Story (Prostaja Istorija) (Yuri Yegorov); Love and the Frenchwoman (Jean Delannoy); Bandits of Orgosolo (Vittorio de Seta); Ocean’s 11 (Lewis Milestone); Black Sunday (Mario Bava; to re-watch)
VINTAGE RATING (1960): 10****
Notes: 'La Dolce Vita,' 'Breathless,' 'L'avventura,' 'Primary'--this is the birth of a new cinema on all fronts. And the other films rounding out the list are of equal calibre. A year with an impact that can never again be duplicated... Luchino Visconti's 'Rocco and His Brothers' is the kind of Italian family saga that Martin Scorsese has tried to make through the years, but hasn't quite surpassed. 'Le Trou' is one the greatest of all prison-breakout movies. 'Tunes of Glory' is a personal fave, a tour de force by Alec Guinness as a bastard Scotsman. The Soviet romance, 'The Lady With the Dog,' is one of the cinema's great love stories, on par with Lean's "Brief Encounter,' and far more frankly erotic. It's fashionable to bash the preachiness of old liberal Hollywood, but Tinseltown certainly had more guts than it does now when it came to deflating podunk yahoos and religious pigheadedness in films like 'Inherit the Wind,' a conventional but thrilling dramatic reenactment of the Scopes 'Monkey Trial.' Spencer Tracy as Clarence Darrow for the defense... Grab a beer and enjoy.
1961 (79+)
A Raisin in the Sun (Daniel Petrie)
West Side Story (Robert Wise)
A View From the Bridge (Sidney Lumet)
Splendor in the Grass (Elia Kazan)
The Girl with a Suitcase (La ragazza con la vaglia) Valerio Zurlini
Accatone (Pier Paolo Pasolini)
The Errand Boy (Jerry Lewis)
Il Posto (Ermanno Olmi)
Very Nice, Very Nice (Arthur Lipsett)
Pit and the Pendulum (Roger Corman)
For the record: Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais); Breakfast at Tiffany's (Blake Edwards); The Guns of Navarone (J. Lee Thompson); Two Daughters (Satyajit Ray); A Woman Is a Woman (Jean-Luc Godard); King of Kings (Nicholas Ray); El Cid (Anthony Mann)
To see: La mano en la trampa (Leopoldo Torre Nilsson); The Exiles (Kent Mackenzie); Alyonka (Boris Barnet); Two Daughters (Satyajit Ray/to re-watch); Underworld U.S.A. (Samuel Fuller); Pigs and Battleships (Shohei Imamura); The Misfits (John Huston); My Mother and Her Guest (Shin Sang-ok); Placido (Luis García Berlanga); Blast of Silence (Allen Baron)
In the queue: The Life of Adolph Hitler (Paul Rotha); Les Godelureaux (Claude Chabrol); Peace to Him Who Enters (Aleksandr Alov, Vladimir Naumov); Clear Sky (Chistoe Nebo) (Grigori Chukrai); Paris Blues (Martin Ritt); Too Late Blues (John Cassavetes); Leon Morin, Priest (Jean-Pierre Melville); A Siberian Lady Macbeth (Andrzej Wajda); Whistle Down the Wind (Bryan Forbes); Vanina Vanini (Roberto Rossellini); No Love for Johnnie (Ralph Thomas); The Hand in the Trap (La mano en la trampa) (Leopoldo Torre Nilsson); The Greengage Summer (Loss of Innocence) (Lewis Gilbert)
VINTAGE RATING (1961): 8***
Note: The French were right all along?! Jerry Lewis's famous handyman halfwit stumbles and bumbles through 'The Ladies Man' and 'The Errand Boy,' and somehow the sums of these films' parts are greater than their wholes. Every once in awhile there's some geniunely hilarious stuff, especially the Buddy Lester hat scene in the former; and Lewis' sense of the absurd elevates the films somewhat unexpectedly above standard slapstick fare.
As for French whimsy, albeit with a dark edge, there's Francois Truffaut's New Wave romantic triangle, 'Jules and Jim' (runner up), a film I've always felt to be artificially whimsical and calculated in its tragic arc. I include it on the 'runners up' list because of its general skillfulness, several memorable moments. Jacques Demy's beautifully shot 'Lola' seems to me a better French souffle meditating on modern woman. The Polish film 'Mother Joan of the Angels' is one of the cinema's most realistic evocations of the remote past and is probably the best film ever made about demonic possession, yet it never resorts to Hollywood horror pyrotechnics, leaving it to the viewer to decide if the cause is madness due to isolation, sexual frustration, mass hysteria, actual supernatural forces, or all of these. Ermanno Olmi's 'Il Posto' (runner up) retooled Italian neorealism in the wake of the French New Wave and looks forward to the Polish New Wave. I'm not sure if I liked it, but list it anyway for reconsideration. I found its companion piece 'I Fidanzati' (not listed) nearly unwatchable. Revamping neorealism too was Pier Paolo Pasolini in his brutish and sometimes melodramatic study of a street thug, 'Accatone,' (runner up) which at least shows a little more flair than Olmi's flick and makes you almost taste the blowing road dust in your nostrils. "West Side Story' (runner up) makes the cut for music and dance, not for plot, wax dummy leads (Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer), or for gang members who say, "Gloriosky."
1962 (91)
The Exterminating Angel (Luis Bunuel)
Harakiri (Seppuku) (Masaki Kobayashi)
Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean)
Knife in the Water (Roman Polanski)
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (Robert Enrico)
L'Eclisse (Eclipse) (Michelangelo Antonioni)
Il Sorpasso (The Easy Life) (Dino Risi)
The Trial (Le Proces) (Orson Welles)
Carnival of Souls (Herk Harvey)
Sanjuro (Akira Kurosawa)
Sundays and Cybele (Serge Bourguignon)
Only Two Can Play (Sidney Gilliat)
Lonely Are the Brave (David Miller)
Billy Budd (Peter Ustinov)
Damn the Defiant! (H.M.S. Defiant) (Lewis Gilbert)
Long Day's Journey into Night (Sidney Lumet)
A Kind of Loving (John Schlesinger)
RUNNERS UP:
Cape Fear (J. Lee Thompson)
Advise and Consent (Otto Preminger)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford)
Le Doulos (Jean-Pierre Melville)
The Longest Day (Ken Annakin, et. al.)
La Jetee (Chris Marker)
Le Joli mai (Chris Marker)
Nine Days of One Year (Mikhail Romm)
David and Lisa (Frank Perry)
Ride the High Country (Sam Peckinpah)
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (Tony Richardson)
The Wall (Walter de Hoog)
Being Two Isn't Easy (Watashi wa Nisai) (Kon Ichikawa)
The Counterfeit Traitor (George Seaton)
Playboy of the Western World (Brian Desmond Hurst)
The Miracle Worker (Arthur Penn)
Days of Wine and Roses (Blake Edwards)
Black Fox: The True Story of Adolf Hitler (Louis Clyde Stoumen)
Experiment in Terror (Blake Edwards)
The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan)
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (Robert Aldrich)
The War Lover (Philip Leacock)
The Quare Fellow (Arthur Dreifuss)
Jules et Jim (Francois Truffaut)
Dr. No (Terence Young)
La commare secca (Bernardo Bertolucci)
Transport from Paradise (Zbynek Brynych)
The Music Man (Morton Dacosta)
For the record: Mondo Cane (Gualtiero Jacopetti); Confessions of an Opium Eater (Albert Zugsmith); Gypsy (Mervyn LeRoy); Mamma Roma (Pier Paolo Pasolini); Birdman of Alcatraz (John Frankenheimer)
To re-watch: My Name is Ivan (Andrei Tarkovsky); The L-Shaped Room (Bryan Forbes)
To see: Tonight for Sure (Francis Ford Coppola); The Four Days of Naples (Le quattro giornate di Napoli (Nanni Loy); The Twelve Chairs (Tomas Gutierrez Alea); The Intruder (Roger Corman); Night of the Eagle (Sidney Hayers); Hell Is for Heroes (Don Siegel); A Monkey in Winter (Henri Verneuil); Dimka (Ilya Frez); Jigsaw (Val Guest)
In the queue: O Pagador de Promessas (Anselmo Duarte); Os Cafajestes (The Unscrupulous Ones) (Ruy Guerra); Abhijaan (Satyajit Ray); The Amphibian Man (Gennadi Kazansky); La Guerre des boutons (Yves Robert); Barravento (The Turning Wind) (Glauber Rocha); Two Weeks in Another Town (Vincente Minnelli); Salvatore Giuliano (Francesco Rosi); Adieu Philippine (Jacques Rozier); Requiem for a Heavyweight (Ralph Nelson); An Autumn Afternoon (Yasujiro Ozu); The Elusive Corporal (Jean Renoir); Cartouche (Philippe de Broca); Freud (John Huston); Phaedra (Jules Dassin); Le Soupirant (Pierre Etaix); Proces de Jean d’Arc (Robert Bresson); My Life to Live (Jean-Luc Godard); The L-Shaped Room (Bryan Forbes); Heaven and Earth Magic (Harry Smith)
VINTAGE RATING (1962): 8.5****
NOTES: It's heresy, but I'm not a big fan of 'To Kill a Mockingbird' or 'The Manchurian Candidate.' I'm listing them as runners up for their various strengths. The latter in particular always felt to me like a mechanical thriller, as robotic as its central character. '...Mockingbird' is a nice little movie that's unfortunately been overhyped as the emblemmatic great American anti-racist statement. Discussions of Peter Sellers' career invariably overlook 'Only Two Can Play,' in which he gives his finest, most understated dramatic performance. The film is a subtle, wry comedy with serious tones about a shy middle-aged librarian who imagines himself a lothario. The British Academy rightly nominated Sellers for best actor. The first three runners up here show Hollywood's new boldness in sexual themes (pedophilia, casual sex, rape, homosexuality). The two Blake Edwards films (runner up) are dark, bold dramas, interesting if not wholly successful. Walter de Hoog's powerful 'The Wall' (runner up), a short documentary about Berlin Wall atrocities, is possibly the most effective propaganda movie ever produced by the U.S. government. Robert Aldrich's campy, grotesque, distasteful 'Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?' is not exactly a favorite, but it is entertaining and recommendable; in any case, it must be seen to be believed. Any serious cinematic snob would rake me over the coals for preferring the all-star war epic 'The Longest Day' over Chris Marker's arthouse masterpieces 'La Jolie Mai' and 'La Jetee.' Indeed, it's so indefensible that I won't even bother.
1963 (90)
Crisis: Behind A Presidential Commitment (D.A. Pennebaker, et. al.)
A Child is Waiting (John Cassavetes)
These are the Damned (The Damned) (Joseph Losey)
Any Number Can Win (Henri Verneuil)
The Haunting (Robert Wise)
Lord of the Flies (Peter Brook)
Contempt (Le mepris) (Jean-Luc Godard)
Tom Jones (Tony Richardson)
Towers Open Fire (Antony Balch, William S. Burroughs)
From Russia With Love (Terence Young)
The Raven (Roger Corman)
The Nutty Professor (Jerry Lewis)
Jason and the Argonauts (Don Chaffey)
For the record: Flaming Creatures (Jack Smith); Muriel (Alain Resnais); The Insect Woman (Shohei Imamura); The Organizer (Mario Monicelli); The Boxer and Death (Peter Solan); Heavens Above! (John and Roy Boulting); It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (Stanley Kramer); The Victors (Carl Foreman); Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (Vittorio De Sica); The Great Chase (no director credit); Charade (Stanley Donen); I Fidanzati (The Fiances) (Ermanno Olmi); Shock Corridor (Samuel Fuller); The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock); Scotch Tape (Jack Smith)
To see: La baie des anges (Bay of Angels) (Jacques Demy); Le Petit Soldat (Jean-Luc Godard); The Whip and the Body (Mario Bava); Suzanne's Career (Eric Rohmer); Who's Minding the Store? (Frank Tashlin); I Step Through Moscow (Georgi Daneliya); Donovan's Reef (John Ford); 55 Days at Peking (Nicholas Ray); The Ugly American (George Englund); The Virgin of Nuremberg (Antonio Margheritti); Raven's End (Bo Widerberg); Gun Hawk (Edward Ludwig); 4 for Texas (Robert Aldrich); Monsieur Gangster (Georges Lautner); 15 From Rome (Dino Rosi)
In the queue: Landru (Claude Chabrol); El Verdugo (Luis Garcia Berlanga); Josef Kilian (Pavel Juracek); L'Immortelle (Alain Robbe-Grillet); Under the Yum Yum Tree (David Swift); America, America (Elia Kazan); Judex (Georges Franju); Kiss of the Vampire (Don Sharp); The V.I.P.s (Anthony Asquith); The List of Adrian Messenger (John Huston/to re-watch); Blonde Cobra (Ken Jacobs)
VINTAGE RATING (1963): 8.5****
Note: If the labyrinthine plot of Kon Ichikawa's "An Actor's Revenge" (runner up) were more accessible it would make the top list. As it is, it's one of the most beautiful examples of the Japanese mastery of the art of widescreen composition.
Counter to critical opinion I prefer the rough, tossed-off impertinence of Jean-Luc Godard's 'Les Caribiniers' to his slick, morose study of moviemaking and marriage, 'Contempt' ('Les mepris') (runner up). 'The Nutty Professor' may be Jerry Lewis' most admired film; but it's also his least funny. Still, I like the color, Lewis's self-reflexive incarnation as the arrogant Buddy Love and his downright-edible co-star Stella Stevens. I'm less interested in the James Bond movies lately, but it must be acknowledged that 'From Russia With Love' is the least outlandish of them; too bad the rest weren't like it. I'm pretty sure that in my more clinical "official" list of cinema greats (not listed here) Alain Resnais' "Muriel" (For the record), places highly, but you gotta remember, this blog list is about my favorites -- and it ain't one.
1964 (106)
6/64: Mama und Papa (Materialaktion Otto Mühl) (Kurt Kren)
Lilith (Robert Rossen)
The Night of the Iguana (John Huston)
The Caretaker (Clive Donner)
The Pumpkin Eater (Jack Clayton)
King and Country (Joseph Losey)
I Am Cuba (Soy Cuba) (Mikhail Kalatozov)
The Leather Boys (Sidney J. Furie)
The Masque of the Red Death (Roger Corman)
RUNNERS UP:
A Hard Day's Night (Richard Lester)
The Cool World (Shirley Clarke)
Topkapi (Jules Dassin)
The System (The Girl-Getters) (Michael Winner)
The Best Man (Franklin Schaffner)
Father of a Soldier (Rezo Chkheidze)
Seance on a Wet Afternoon (Bryan Forbes)
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy)
Dairy of a Chambermaid (Luis Bunuel)
Fail-Safe (Sidney Lumet)
The Naked Kiss (Samuel Fuller)
The Americanization of Emily (Arthur Hiller)
Seven Days in May (John Frankenheimer)
My Fair Lady (George Cukor)
Zorba the Greek (Michael Cacoyannis)
The Chalk Garden (Ronald Neame)
Woman in the Dunes (Hiroshi Teshigahara)
The Luck of Ginger Coffey (Irvin Kershner)
Nothing But a Man (Michael Roemer)
That Man from Rio (Philippe de Broca)
Manji (Yasuzo Masumura)
The Girl With Green Eyes (Desmond Davis)
Mary Poppins (Robert Stevenson)
The Gospel According to St. Matthew (Pier Paolo Pasolini)
Gertrud (Carl Dreyer)
The Disorderly Orderly (Frank Tashlin)
A Shot in the Dark (Blake Edwards)
For the record: Lady in a Cage (Walter Grauman); Man's Favorite Sport? (Howard Hawks); Dog Star Man (Stan Brakhage); Band of Outsiders (Jean-Luc Godard); Blow Job (Andy Warhol); Diamonds of the Night (Jan Nemec); The World of Henry Orient (George Roy Hill); Life Upside Down (Alain Jessua); The Last Man on Earth (Sidney Salkow); A Fistful of Dollars (Sergio Leone); Before the Revolution (Bernardo Bertolucci); The Strangler (Burt Topper)
To re-watch: Scorpio Rising (Kenneth Anger); Seduced and Abandoned (Pietro Germi); Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Sergei Paradjanov); Woman in the Dunes (Hiroshi Teshigahara)
To see: Nothing But the Best (Clive Donner); Pale Flower (Masahiro Shinoda); Black Peter (Cerny Petr) (Milos Forman); Yearning (Mikio Naruse); Tonio Kroger (Rolf Thiele); Intentions of Murder (Shohei Imamura); Blood and Black Lace (Mario Bava); Seven Up! (Paul Almond); The Enchanted Desna (Yuliya Solntseva); Marriage, Italian Style (Vittorio De Sica); Three Sisters (Tri sestry) (Samson Samsonov)
In the queue: Games of Angels (Walerian Borowczyk); I Am Twenty (Marlen Khutsiyev); Culloden (Peter Watkin); Ordinary Fascism (Mikhail Romm); Black God, White Devil (Glauber Rocha); Sangam (Raj Kapoor); Kiss Me Stupid (Billy Wilder); Robin and the Seven Hoods (Gordon Douglas); Dry Summer (Susuz yaz) (Metin Erksan); Send Me No Flowers (Norman Jewison); A Married Woman (Une femme mariee) (Jean-Luc Godard/to re-watch); Les jeux des anges (Walerian Borowczyk); The Cage (Shuji Terayama)
VINTAGE RATING (1964): 9.5*****
Note: By almost any standard, this is a '10' year, but fear of grade inflation prevents it. It is thus, perhaps, because only one of the masterworks in this formidable bunch--'Dr. Strangelove'--can truly be said to be well known. Lots of famous ones listed in the runners up, though. Upon great reflection, it now seems to me that Satyajit Ray's 'Charulata,' the study of a lonely upper-middle-class Indian wife, is one of the most perfect movies ever made and arguably the artistic superior of anything in this incredible year. That means I had to drop down the list one spot my former favorite, Grigori Kozintsev's moody, visually stunning version of Shakespeare's 'Hamlet,' maybe the best of all Bard film adaptations despite being in Russian! 'The Masque of the Red Death ' is rightly by wide consensus the best of Roger Corman's cheapie adaptations of Poe, with Vincent Price perfect as the satanic Prince Propero. 'The Gospel According to St. Matthew' (runner up) is undoubtedly a great film; I saw it once on the big screen in college, and am grateful to have seen it that way because I can't imagine having to sit through it again on a living room TV. It's a very minimalist, down-to-earth, Bresson-like view of Christ's life, and you can almost smell the donkey manure. Historically important for being the first, and maybe still the only, Jesus movie to shed itself of all histrionics and biased phony piety (maybe because Pasolini was a Marxist...) I'm wrestling with the notion of Carl Dreyer's 'Gertrud' being a great film--it's as uncompromising as its central heroine. The whole movie is a handful of static scenes of a woman basically explaining to several male suitors why she won't compromise her principles and wed or date any of them. The film has a certain integrity and seems greater in throughtful retrospect than while you're watching it.
Robert Shaw gives superb performances in two small-scaled kitchen-sink dramas: 'The Caretaker' and 'The Luck of Ginger Coffey' (runner up). My changing sensibilities have caused an old favorite, 'Goldfinger,' to drop off the list. It all seems so superficial, brainless and cheesy to me now.
1965 (100)
Simon of the Desert (Luis Bunuel)
Chronicle of a Boy Alone (Leonardo Favio)
The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo)
The Hill (Sidney Lumet)
Loves of a Blonde (Milos Forman)
Fists in the Pocket (Marco Bellocchio)
A Thousand Clowns (Fred Coe)
Now (Santiago Alvarez)
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (Martin Ritt)
The Shop on Main Street (Jan Kadar, Elmar Klos)
Darling (John Schlesinger)
Chimes at Midnight (Orson Welles)
Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (Russ Meyer)
Help! (Richard Lester)
The Epic That Never Was (Bill Duncalf/BBC)
RUNNERS UP:
Bunny Lake is Missing (Otto Preminger)
Mickey One (Arthur Penn)
The Sound of Music (Robert Wise)
King Rat (Bryan Forbes)
A High Wind in Jamaica (Alexander Mackendrick)
Von Ryan's Express (Mark Robson)
Le Bonheur (Agnes Varda)
The Tomb of Ligeia (Roger Corman)
The Collector (William Wyler)
The Cincinnati Kid (Norman Jewison)
It Happened Here (Kevin Brownlow, Andrew Mollo)
Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman & the Chess Expert (Kenji Misumi)
The Loved One (Tony Richardson)
The Sand Pebbles (Robert Wise)
The War Game (Peter Watkins)
The Ipcress File (Sidney J. Furie)
The Flight of the Phoenix (Robert Aldrich)
Two Stage Sisters (Wutai jiemei) (Jin Xie)
The Agony and the Ecstasy (Carol Reed)
For the record: Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard); The Saragossa Manuscript (Wojciech Has); Cat Ballou (Elliot Silverstein); Doctor Zhivago (David Lean); The Knack and How to Get It (Richard Lester); The Great Race (Black Edwards); The Bedford Incident (James B. Harris); Battle of the Bulge (Ken Annakin); For a Few Dollars More (Sergio Leone); The Family Jewels (Jerry Lewis); A Patch of Blue (Guy Green); Oh Dem Watermelons (Robert Nelson)
Need to re-watch: Viva Maria! (Louis Malle); Thunderball (Terence Young)
To see: Rapture (John Guillermin); The Shameless Old Lady (La vieille dame indigne) (Rene Allio); Yoyo (Pierre Etaix); Gumnaam (Raja Nawathe); Incubus (Leslie Stevens); Samurai Spy (Ibun Sarutobi Sasuke) (Masahiro Shinoda); My Hustler (Andy Warhol); I, A Woman (Jag - en kvinna) (Mac Ahlberg); Ride in the Whirlwind (Monte Hellman); Sandra of a Thousand Delights (Luchino Visconti); Young Cassidy (Jack Cardiff); Samurai (Kihachi Okamoto); What's New, Pussycat? (Clive Donner); There Was an Old Couple (Grigori Chukhrai); Tri (Three) (Aleksandar Petrovic)
In the queue: Come Drink with Me (King Hu); My Way Home (Miklos Jancso); Le Mystere Koumiko (Chris Marker); Subarnarekha (Ritwik Ghatak); The Adventures of Werner Holt (Joachim Kuner); Shakespeare-Wallah (James Ivory); 36 Hours (George Seaton); The Nanny (Seth Holt); Vinyl (Andy Warhol); The Tenth Victim (Elio Petri); The Sandpiper (Vincente Minnelli); The Man Who Had His Hair Cut Short (Andre Delvaux); Story Of A Prostitute (Seijun Suzuki)
VINTAGE RATING (1965): 7.5***
Note: Arthur Penn's 'Mickey One' is an semi-surreal feature that used to show up on TV and now has fallen into that vast, deep pit of lost, worthy movies unavailable on video. All I can remember about it now are images of Warren Beatty running and running, and running some more, from an unseen menace; then being subjected to some sort of claustrophic cross examination. During the formative years when I was developing a 'cinematic eye,' the film's flashy style bowled me over. Hard to know how it would play today. I used to swear by 'The Loved One' (runner up), a post-Dr. Strangelove bit of satirical irreverence poking fun at the funeral industry, but a recent re-viewing disappointed. Now it seems merely like a series of flamboyant star cameos (some of them quite funny). 'A High Wind in Jamaica' (runner up)--never available on video until its DVD reissue this past year--will be worthy of a re-screening. I saw it around 1970 on TV at my grandma's house and the film has remained in my memory. Because it had to do with kids kidnapped by pirates and facing tough life-and-death decisions it disturbed my 9-year-old psyche. I'm pretty sure too I had a prepubescent crush on same-aged actress Deborah Baxter at the time, who by all corroborating accounts gives an incredible performance as the little English gal who charms everything but the pants off the pirates. Another shipboard yarn that once seemed better but now strikes me as less accomplished is 'The Sand Pebbles' (runner up) with Steve McQueen, but Robert Wise's epic images still please. I remember being very impressed in college film class with Peter Watkins' nuclear-war-scare pseudo-documentary, 'The War Game' (runner up). Its impact was abetted by the then-palpable Cold-War angst. May have to give it another view someday. It took me two tries before I "got" Marco Bellochio's unique twisted Italian family psycho-drama 'Fists in the Pocket.' Now I can't wait to see it again.
1966 (100)
Rise of Louis XIV (Roberto Rossellini)
Lapis (James Whitney)
La Caza (The Hunt) (Carlos Saura)
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Mike Nichols)
Seconds (John Frankenheimer)
King of Hearts (Philippe de Broca)
The Fortune Cookie (Billy Wilder)
Castro Street (Bruce Baillie)
Au Hasard Balthazar (final scene/Robert Bresson)
Hare Krishna (Jonas Mekas)
The Naked Prey (Cornel Wilde)
The Silencers (Phil Karlson)
For the record: A Report on the Party and the Guests (Jan Nemec); A Man and a Woman (Claude Lelouch); The Pornographers (Shohei Imamura); Africa Addio (Gualtiero Jacopetti, Franco Prosperi); Tokyo Drifter (Seijun Suzuki); The Face of Another (Hiroshi Teshigahara); The Chelsea Girls (Andy Warhol); The Nun (Jacques Rivette); El Dorado (Howard Hawks)
To re-watch: The Round-Up (Miklos Jancso); The Wrong Box (Bryan Forbes)
To see: Violence at Noon (Nagisa Oshima); The Crazy-Quilt (John Korty); Black Tight Killers (Yasuharu Hasebe); Pearls of the Deep (Perlicky na dne) (Vera Chytilova, et. al.); Kill, Baby...Kill! (Mario Bava); Santa Claus Has Blue Eyes (Jean Eustache); Made in U.S.A. (Jean-Luc Godard); The Glass Bottom Boat (Frank Tashlin); Watch Out for the Automobile (aka, Uncommon Thief) (Eldar Ryazanov)
In the queue: Artists at the Top of the Big Top (Alexander Kluge): Long Happy Life (Dolgaya schastlivaya..) (Gennadi Shpalikov); Yesterday Girl (Alexander Kluge); Pharoah (Faraon) (Jerzy Kawalerowicz); Second Breath (Le deuxieme souffle) (Jean-Pierre Melville); Dragon Gate Inn (King Hu); Asya's Happiness (Andrei Konchalovsky); The First Teacher (Andrei Konchalovsky); Who are You Polly Maggoo? (William Klein); Trans-Europ-Express (Alain Robbe-Grillet); Syskonbadd 1782 (My Sister, My Love) (Vilgot Sjoman); Father (Diary of One Week) (Istvan Szabo); Funeral in Berlin (Guy Hamilton); Hawks and Sparrows (Pier Paolo Pasolini); John F. Kennedy: Years of Lightning, Day of Drums (Bruce Herschensohn); The Plague of the Zombies (John Gilling); Man is Not a Bird (Dusan Makavejev); 7 Women (John Ford); One Million Years B.C. (Don Chaffey); The Great St. Trinian's Train Robbery (Frank Launder, Sidney Gilliat); The Wrong Box (Bryan Forbes); Hold Me While I'm Naked (George Kuchar)
VINTAGE RATING (1966): 7***
Note: Roy Boulting's 'The Family Way' (runner up) stars ex-Disney starlet Hayley Mills, but beyond that fact and the innocuous title the film is as far away from Disney as a mainstream movie from 1966 could get. It is a surprisingly frank kitchen-sink drama of middle-class British tensions surrounding premarital sex and pregnancy. 'The Silencers' (runner up)--a Bond spoof with Dean Martin's loungy superspy Matt Helm--would not be included if not for Stella Stevens' inspired comic performance as a klutzy eye-candy bimbo. In 'Blow Up' Michelangelo Antonioni wants to explore the ambiguities of perception and reality, but by setting his study in swinging London and making his protagonist an interesting freewheeling photographer he makes me more interested in these latter aspects than in his overarching philosophical pretenses; and the film gets weaker as it goes because of it. As for swinging London films, I prefer the quirky comedy 'Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment' and the bittersweet 'Georgy Girl' (runner up).
1967 (90)
The Young Girls of Rochefort (Jacques Demy)
Titicut Follies (Frederick Wiseman)
Two or Three Things I Know About Her (Jean-Luc Godard)
Week End (Jean-Luc Godard)
Belle de Jour (Luis Bunuel)
Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn)
Don't Look Back (D.A. Pennebaker)
The Graduate (Mike Nichols)
Viy (Vij) (Georgi Kropachyov, Konstantin Yershov)
Elvira Madigan (Bo Widerberg)
A Guide For the Married Man (Gene Kelly)
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (David Swift)
The Flim-Flam Man (Irvin Kershner)
Wait Until Dark (Terence Young)
For the record: The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (Roger Corman); Mouchette (Robert Bresson); The Red and the White (Miklos Jancso); To Sir With Love (James Clavell); Wavelength (Michael Snow); Smashing Time (Desmond Davis); The Fireman’s Ball (Milos Forman); The Night of the Generals (Anatole Litvak)
To re-watch: The Fearless Vampire Killers (Roman Polanski); Hombre (Martin Ritt); Love Affair: or, The Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator (Dusan Makavejev)
To see: Kojiro (Hiroshi Inagaki); Violated Angels (Koji Wakamatsu); Scattered Clouds (Mikio Naruse); La Collectionneuse (Eric Rohmer); Peppermint Frappe (Carlos Saura); Bedazzled (Stanley Donen)The Thief of Paris (Louis Malle); Oedipus Rex (Pier Paolo Pasolini); Bedazzled (Stanley Donen); One-Armed Swordsman (Cheh Chang); The Stranger (Luchino Visconti); Funnyman (John Korty)
In the queue: Marketa Lazarova (Frantisek Vlasil); Happy Gypsies (Aleksandar Petrovic); Silence and Cry (Miklos Jancso); La Chinoise (Jean-Luc Godard); The Plea (Tengiz Abuladze); The Boys of Paul Street (Zoltan Fabri); Loin du Vietnam (Jean-Luc Godard, Joris Ivens, et. al.); A Countess from Hong Kong (Charles Chaplin); Hombre (Martin Ritt); The Shooting (Monte Hellman); The President's Analyst (Theodore J. Flicker/to re-watch); Charlie Bubbles (Albert Finney); Terra em transe (Glauber Rocha)
VINTAGE RATING (1967): 7.5***
Note: There are a handful of very strong films at the top, but then the quality drops and the pickings become sparse, thus the relatively low ranking. Joseph Losey's time-shifting, middle-age crisis chamber drama 'Accident' is a penetrating work, probably the best thing this fine director ever did. Jacques Demy's 'The Young Girls of Rochefort' has surpassed 'Singin' in the Rain' as my favorite film musical, not because the French movie is technically better (it isn't; see the choreography), but because it pushes the musical to its purest fantasy plane, choreographs color brilliantly and has one of the loveliest scores in film history, via Michel Legrand. Also using the widescreen ingeniously is Jacques Tati's pantomimic comedy, 'Playtime', a sort of musical in a different sense, choreographing complex movement and form to subtle comic effect. My two favorite Jean-Luc Godard epics 'Two or Three Things...' and 'Week End' use widescreen to great effect also. Perhaps the year's most formidable masterwork is Frederick Wiseman's 'Titicut Follies,' an unflinching cinema verite documentary shot inside a hellish mental hospital. 'The Flim-Flam Man' (runner up) probably shouldn't be on this list, yet I can't think of a more fondly remembered late-night TV memory than watching and enjoying the hell out of it back in the '70s. George C. Scott is memorable as a fast-talking con man, and my adolescent stirrings for cute Sue Lyon probably had a lot to do with my interest.
1968 (104)
Memories of Underdevelopment (Tomas Gutierrez Alea)
The Hour of the Furnaces (Octavio Getino, Fernando Solanas)
Faces (John Cassavetes)
My Night at Maud's (Eric Rohmer)
The Passion of Anna (Ingmar Bergman)
Downhill Racer (Michael Ritchie)
This Man Must Die (Claude Chabrol)
A Married Couple (Allan King)
Last Summer (Frank Perry)
The Battle of Britain (Guy Hamilton)
Age of Consent (Michael Powell)
The Learning Tree (Gordon Parks)
Zert (The Joke) (Jaromil Jires)
Take the Money and Run (Woody Allen)
For the record: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Ronald Neame); The Plot Against Harry (Michael Roemer; released 1989); Topaz (Alfred Hitchcock); Alice's Restaurant (Arthur Penn); A Touch of Zen (King Hu); The Cow (Gaav) (Dariush Mehrjui); Tchaikovsky (Igor Talankin); On Her Majesty's Secret Service (Peter R. Hunt); La femme infidèle (Claude Chabrol); Burn! (Gillo Pontecorvo); The Reivers (Mark Rydell); King Lear (Grigori Kozintsev and Iosif Shapiro); Une femme douce (Robert Bresson); Support Your Local Sheriff! (Burt Kennedy); True Grit (Henry Hathaway); Paint Your Wagon (Joshua Logan); Hello Dolly! (Gene Kelly); Cactus Flower (Gene Saks); Sweet Charity (Bob Fosse); Blind Beast (Yasuzo Masumura); Mondo Trasho (John Waters); Visual Training (Franz Zwartjes)
To re-watch: The Oblong Box (Gordon Hessler)
To see: Antonio das Mortes (Glauber Rocha); Calcutta (Louis Malle); Phantom India (L'inde fantome) (Louis Malle); The Honeymoon Killers (Leonard Kastle); The Italian Job (Peter Collinson); Diaries, Notebooks and Sketches (Jonas Mekas); Katzelmacher (Rainer Werner Fassbinder); Medea (Pier Paolo Pasolini); The Gypsy Moths (John Frankenheimer); The Rain People (Francis Ford Coppola); The Secret of Santa Vittoria (Stanley Kramer); The Witness (Peter Bacsó); The Sicilian Clan (Henri Verneuil); Mississippi Mermaid (Francois Truffaut); The Boys of Paul Street (Zoltan Fabri); Ådalen '31 (Bo Widerberg); Goodbye, Mr. Chips (Herbert Ross); A Walk With Love and Death (John Huston); Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (Paul Mazursky); Macunaíma (Joaquim Pedro de Andrade); Dong fu ren (The Arch) (Shu Shuen Tong)
In the queue: Boy (Nagisa Oshima); The Cremator (Juraj Herz); Army of Shadows (Jean-Pierre Melville); La choses de la vie (Claude Sautet); The Rite (Riten) (Ingmar Bergman); Dillinger is Dead (Marco Ferreri); The Structure of Crystals (Krzysztof Zanussi); That Cold Day in the Park (Robert Altman); Law and Order (Frederick Wiseman); All My Good Countrymen (Vojtech Jasny); The Bed Sitting Room (Richard Lester); Hamlet (Tony Richardson)
VINTAGE RATING (1969): 8.5****
NOTE: Haskell Wexler's 'Medium Cool' is alternately inept and brilliant, an invaluable time-capsule with a vivid, viseceral documentary feel that captures both the confusions of the age and the general uneasiness of filmmakers with the new modes of narrative filmmaking. Quite a number of critics put Tarkovsky's black-and-white medievel epic 'Andrei Rublev' among the greatest of all films, though I have to admit mostly puzzlement and boredom--except for the exquisite finale of art works shown in color. Many of its images have stuck with me, though. It's too substantial to ignore, so a second viewing is due.
1970 (86+)
Five Easy Pieces (Bob Rafelson)
Woodstock (Michael Wadleigh)
Days and Nights in the Forest (Satyajit Ray)
Tristana (Luis Bunuel)
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (Vittorio De Sica)
Trash (Paul Morrissey)
The Wild Child (Francois Truffaut)
M*A*S*H (Robert Altman)
Gimme Shelter (Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin)
Claire's Knee (Eric Rohmer)
The Spider's Strategem (Bernardo Bertolucci)
Diary of a Mad Housewife (Frank Perry)
RUNNERS UP:
Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (Jaromil Jires)
Little Big Man (Arthur Penn)
The Twelve Chairs (Mel Brooks)
Loving (Irvin Kershner)
Elvis: That's the Way It Is (Denis Sanders) (original version; not re-edit)
Quiet Days in Clichy (Jens-Jorgen Thorsen)
Patton (Franklin Schaffner)
Le Cercle Rouge (Jean-Pierre Melville)
Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx (Waris Hussein)
The Out of Towners (Arthur Hiller)
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (Russ Meyer)
Let It Be (Michael Lindsay-Hogg)
A Man Called Horse (Elliot Silverstein)
Husbands (John Cassavetes)
I Never Sang For My Father (Gilbert Cates)
The Lickerish Quartet (Radley Metzger)
Scrooge (Ronald Neame)
Viva la muerte (Fernando Arrabal)
La Rupture (Claude Chabrol)
Four Clowns (Robert Youngson)
Performance (Nicolas Roeg, Donald Cammell)
For the record: Even Dwarfs Started Small (Werner Herzog); Landcape After Battle (Andrzej Wajda); Le Boucher (Claude Chabrol); Dodes'ka-den (Akira Kurosawa); The Garden of Delights (Carlos Saura); Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? (Rainer Werner Fassbinder); The Watermelon Man (Melvin Van Peebles); Start the Revolution Without Me (Bud Yorkin); Multiple Maniacs (John Waters); Sodoma (Otto Muhl)
To re-watch: The Landlord (Hal Ashby)
To see: End of the Road (Aram Avakian); The Niklashausen Journey (RW Fassbinder); Cromwell (Ken Hughes); Love Film (Szerelmesfilm) (István Szabó); Ice (Robert Kramer); Four Moods (Hsi nou ai lueh) (King Hu); Zabriskie Point (Michelangelo Antonioni); Zorn's Lemma (Hollis Frampton); Goin' Down the Road (Donald Shebib); Cotton Comes to Harlem (Ossie Davis); Three Sisters (Laurence Olivier); Brewster McCloud (Robert Altman); The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (Dario Argento); Hatchet for a Honeymoon (Mario Bava); Five Dolls for an August Moon (Mario Bava); 14 Up (7 Plus Seven) (Michael Apted); Last Known Address (José Giovanni); Fast Company (David Cronenberg); Cotton Comes to Harlem (Ossie Davis); The Confession (Costa-Gavras); The Ballad of Cable Hogue (Sam Peckinpah); Something For Everyone (Harold Prince); Eden and After (L'éden et après) (Alain Robbe-Grillet)
In the queue: Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (Elio Petri); Once Upon a Time There was a Singing Blackbird (Otar Iosseliani); Kes (Ken Loach); Red Detachment of Women (uncredited); Eros Plus Massacre (Yoshishige Yoshida); Ucho (The Ear) (Karel Kachyna); Umut (Hope) (Yilmaz Guney); Mona the Virgin Nymph (Michael Benveniste, Howard Ziehm); Hi Mom! (Brian de Palma); The Boys in the Band (William Friedkin); Darling Lili (Blake Edwards); The Green Wall (Armando Robles Godoy); The Molly Macguires (Martin Ritt); One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Caspar Wrede); Where's Poppa? (Carl Reiner); Hospital (Frederick Wiseman); The Vampire Lovers (Roy Ward Baker); Kelly's Heroes (Brian G. Hutton); Chisum (Andrew McLaglen)
VINTAGE RATING (1970): 8.5***
NOTE: Some clueless slacker on the internet claims that 1970 is one of the worst years in cinema history--which might be true if money was the only factor. Hollywood was in a commercial dumpster in 1970, to be sure, but the year's arthouse and commercial fare is pretty impressive. A year that produced 'Five Easy Pieces,' 'MASH', 'Woodstock' and 'Patton'--not to mention several exceptional foreign and indie works--could hardly be considered lower echelon. The rollicking arthouse Europorn 'Quiet Days in Clichy' (runner up) suffers from excessive repetition of Country Joe's title theme on the soundtrack but visually and in raucous spirit comes closest to the raw misogyny of Henry Miller's source prose. It remains one of the more interesting underground, cult, taboo films of its time. I've made my peace with the anachronisms of 'M*A*S*H'; I fully realize the necessity at the time of ramrodding a Vietnam satire through channels by pretending it takes place in Korea. The film's sexism, though, is a little dicey. All the females seem to be regarded no more highly than the toilet-paper supply requisitions hustled up by Radar O'Reilly.
1971 (88+)
The Sorrow and the Pity (Marcel Ophuls)
The Devils (Ken Russell)
The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich)
Two English Girls (Francois Truffaut)
Carnal Knowledge (Mike Nichols)
Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti)
A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick)
Duel (Steven Spielberg)
The French Connection (William Friedkin)
Johnny Got His Gun (Dalton Trumbo)
Harold and Maude (Hal Ashby)
Klute (Alan J. Pakula)
WR: Mysteries of the Organism (Dusan Makavejev)
McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman)
The Music Lovers (Ken Russell)
RUNNERS UP:
Millhouse: A White Comedy (Emile De Antonio)
Murmur of the Heart (Louis Malle)
Little Murders (Alan Arkin)
The Boy Friend (Ken Russell)
Vanishing Point (Richard C. Sarafian)
Taking Off (Milos Forman)
Fiddler on the Roof (Norman Jewison)
Minnie and Moskowitz (John Cassavetes)
Walkabout (Nicolas Roeg)
Sunday Bloody Sunday (John Schlesinger)
Daughters of Darkness (Harry Kumel)
Summer of '42 (Robert Mulligan)
The Emigrants (Utvandrarna) (Jan Troell)
Mon oncle Antoine (Claude Jutra)
Nostalgia (Hollis Frampton)
The Abominable Dr. Phibes (Robert Fuest)
Shaft (opening credits w/Isaac Hayes' theme music) (Gordon Parks)
For the record: Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (Melvin Van Peebles); Beware of a Holy Whore (R.W. Fassbinder); Pink Narcissus (James Bidgood); The Hired Hand (Peter Fonda); Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (Mel Stuart); Fata Morgana (Werner Herzog); Two-Lane Blacktop (Monte Hellman); The Clowns (Federico Fellini); Macbeth (Roman Polanski)
To re-watch: The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (Wim Wenders); The Hospital (Arthur Hiller); They Might Be Giants (Anthony Harvey); Desperate Characters (Frank D. Gilroy)
To see: See No Evil (Blind Terror) (Richard Fleischer); Women in Revolt (Paul Morrissey); Just Before Nightfall (Juste avant la nuit) (Claude Chabrol); The Projectionist (Harry Hurwitz); Such Good Friends (Otto Preminger); Carriage Trade (Warren Sonbert); Play Misty for Me (Clint Eastwood); Whity (Rainer Werner Fassbiner); La Région Centrale (Michael Snow); The Cat o' Nine Tails (Dario Argento); Land of Silence and Darkness (Werner Herzog); Bay of Blood (Mario Bava); Vampyros Lesbos (Jesus Franco); The Touch (Ingmar Bergman); Bleak Moments (Mike Leigh); Nostalgia (Hollis Frampton)
In the queue: Le Chat (Pierre Granier-Deferre); How Tasty was My Little Frenchman (Nelson Pereira dos Santos); The Working Class Goes to Paradise (Elio Petri); Four Nights of a Dreamer (Robert Bresson); New One Armed Swordsman (Chang Cheh); One Armed Boxer (Chinese Professionals) (Yu Wang); Deep End (Jerzy Skolimowski); Le Mans (Lee H. Katzin); Wild Rovers (Blake Edwards); Who is Harry Kellerman...? (Ulu Grosbard); Raid on Rommel (Henry Hathaway); Basic Training (Frederick Wiseman); Family Life (Ken Loach); Blanche (Walerian Borowczyk); The Ceremony (Nagisha Oshima); Man in the Wilderness (Richard Sarafian); Big Jake (George Sherman); Don't Deliver Us From Evil (Joel Seria); A Safe Place (Henry Jaglom)
VINTAGE RATING (1971): 8.5***
Note: Of the year's two famous existentialist gearhead movies, I have to admit a critically incorrect preference for 'Vanishing Point' (runner up) over the more vaunted 'Two-Lane Blacktop' (not listed) In the latter case, Monte Hellman evidently filtered the car-chase movie through an Andrei Tarkovsky sensibility, with tepid results apart from memorable imagery (though it seems to resonate with a lot of aesthetes). 'Love' by Karoly Makk and 'La Salamandre' by Alain Tanner are two beautiful, little-known foreign gems. The Makk film in particular strikes me as one of the few truly perfect films ever made. 'The Sorrow and the Pity' is a pitiless, probing, epic talking-heads documentary burrowing into the core of the shame of French collaboration during WWII. It's an ordeal to be sure, but something worth seeing at least once. It's a good year for Ken Russell, who released three of his best films; 'The Devils' being the best of these, and arguably his masterpiece. Emile de Antonio's 'Millhouse: A White Comedy' (runner up) -- despite the title and the filmmaker's leftist bent -- is a surprisingly unbiased examination of Nixon's political rise; memorable partly for including most of his masterstroke "Checkers" speech. 'The Omega Man' (runner up) is strictly a guilty pleasure: Gun-toting Chuck Heston practicing what he preaches on Afro-pated zombies. Kidding aside, its vision of the apocalypse (the deserted streets of LA, circa 1970) captures the mood of the time of its making as well as any film ever made. So does the wonderful opening of 'Shaft', which begins promisingly with telephoto shots of Richard Roundtree walking around the city, set to Isaac Hayes' famous ultracool, funky earworm theme-music. Despite this fine opening, the rest of the movie is a standard, and fairly undistinguished policier. A similar disillusionment followed a recent viewing of an old childhood favorite, 'Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory' (not listed). Somehow, the magic was gone--which is my fault, not the film's.
1972 (93+)
Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Werner Herzog)
The Ruling Class (Peter Medak)
Cries and Whispers (Ingmar Bergman)
Payday (Daryl Duke)
Last Tango in Paris (Bernardo Bertolucci)
The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid (Philip Kaufman)
A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (Peter Medak)
Across 110th Street (Barry Shear)
The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (John Huston)
Fellini's Roma (Federico Fellini)
And Now For Something Completely Different (Ian McNaughton)
Tout va bien (Jean-Luc Godard)
The Heartbreak Kid (Elaine May)
Tomorrow (Joseph Anthony)
The Hot Rock (Peter Yates)
What's Up Doc? (Peter Bogdanovich)
The Cowboys (Mark Rydell)
Prime Cut (Michael Ritchie)
For the record: The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (R.W. Fassbinder); Marjoe (Sarah Kernochan, Howard Smith); Butterflies are Free (Milton Katselas); Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky); Heat (Paul Morrissey); The Score (Radley Metzger); Last House on the Left (Wes Craven); Sounder (Martin Ritt); Ciao Manhattan (John Palmer, David Weisman); The King of Marvin Gardens (Bob Rafelson); Pink Flamingos (John Waters)
To re-watch: Cat's Play (Karoly Makk); A Sense of Loss (Marcel Ophuls); Bad Company (Robert Benton); Play it Again, Sam (Herbert Ross)
To see: The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (Bruce Beresford); The Glass House (Tom Gries); The Valley Obscured by Clouds (La vallee) (Barbet Schroeder); Letter to Jane (Jean-Luc Godard); Bad Company (Robert Benton); Fritz the Cat (Ralph Bakshi); Bone (Larry Cohen); Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (Jonas Mekas); The Assassination of Trotsky (Joseph Losey); The Carey Treatment (Blake Edwards); Tales from the Crypt (Freddie Francis); Lucifer Rising (Kenneth Anger); We Will Not Grow Old Together (Maurice Pialat); The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (Paul Newman)
In the queue: The Goat Horn (Metodi Andonov); Female Convict Scorpion Jailhouse 41 (Shunya Ito); Ulzana's Raid (Robert Aldrich): Il Caso Mattei (Francesco Rosi); The Other (Robert Mulligan); The Seduction of Mimi (Lina Wertmuller); The Nightcomers (Michael Winner); Travels with My Aunt (George Cukor); Essene (Frederick Wiseman); My Childhood (Bill Douglas); Behind the Green Door (Artie and Jim Mitchell); Man of La Mancha (Arthur Hiller); Evil Roy Slade (Jerry Paris); Come Together (Tony Anthony); Red Psalm (Miklos Jancso); Ecstasy Of The Angels (Koji Wakamatsu)
VINTAGE RATING (1972): 9****
NOTE: In Rip Torn's career of mostly cult-film tours de force, 'Payday' could be the actor's ultimate explosion of 'fuck-everybody' rebellious energy as a road-calloused country singer. Ingmar Bergman's cancer-deathwatch family study 'Cries and Whispers' is the most profound film of the year and possibly the greatest, but, man, it's a difficult and disturbing watch. Not disimilar to one another are 'Aguirre..." and 'Deliverance,' two tales of descent into the leafy-green heart of darkness. 'The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean' (runner up) is a bit of a mess, but is full of funny, memorable scenes. Meat, misogyny and murderous revenge make up the deliciously weird cult item, "Prime Cut," (runner up) with Lee Marvin as the cold mob hit man with a soft spot and Gene Hackman as the ultimate chauvinist pig agri-capitalist (who likes raw entrails), a rivalry that seems to be going somewhere but peters out in conventional gunplay.
1973 (97+)
The Mother and the Whore (Jean Eustache)
Frank Film (Caroline & Frank Mouris)
A Brief Vacation (Vittorio De Sica)
Heavy Traffic (Ralph Bakshi)
The Last Detail (Hal Ashby)
The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman)
Mean Streets (Martin Scorsese)
The Friends of Eddie Coyle (Peter Yates)
Scenes from a Marriage (Ingmar Bergman)
O Lucky Man! (Lindsay Anderson)
American Graffiti (George Lucas)
Day of the Jackal (Fred Zinnemann)
Scarecrow (Jerry Schatzberg)
Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice)
RUNNERS UP:
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah)
Don't Look Now (Nicolas Roeg)
The Harder They Come (Perry Henzell)
Charley Varrick (Don Siegel)
Baby Cart in the Land of Demons (Sword of Vengeance, part 5) (Kenji Misumi)
La Nuit Americaine (Day for Night) (Francois Truffaut)
The Iceman Cometh (John Frankenheimer)
Save the Tiger (John G. Avildsen)
Emperor of the North (Robert Aldrich)
The Three Musketeers (Richard Lester)
Jesus Christ Superstar (Norman Jewison)
Westworld (Michael Crichton)
The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy)
Serpico (Sidney Lumet)
The Laughing Policeman (Stuart Rosenberg)
Dillinger (John Milius)
The Girl Most Likely to... (Lee Philips, TV movie)
Theatre of Blood (Douglas Hickox)
Harry in Your Pocket (Bruce Geller)
The Legend of Paul and Paula (Heiner Carow)
Papillon (Franklin Schaffner)
Enter the Dragon (Robert Clouse)
Cinderella Liberty (Mark Rydell)
For the record: The Exorcist (William Friedkin); Chronicle of the Burning Years (Mohammed Lakhdar Hamina); The Fantastic Planet (Rene Laloux); The Last of Sheila (Herbert Ross)
To re-watch: Sisters (Brian de Palma); Cops and Robbers (Aram Avakian); Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams (Gilbert Cates); Coffy (Jack Hill)
To see: Love and Anarchy (Lina Wertmuller); Wattstax (Mel Stuart); Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street (Samuel Fuller); Three Wishes for Cinderella (Tri orísky pro Popelku) (Vaclav Vorlícek); Casual Relations (Mark Rappaport); Some Call it Loving (James B. Harris); Reed: Insurgent Mexico (Paul Leduc); Season of the Witch (George A. Romero); Lisa and the Devil (Mario Bava); Flesh for Frankenstein (Paul Morrissey); The Hour-Glass Sanatorium (Wojciech Has); Battles Without Honor & Humanity (Kinji Fukasaku); Kid Blue (James Frawley); Allonsanfan (Paolo and Vittorio Taviani); State of Siege (Costa-Gravas); The Mackintosh Man (John Huston); Detroit 9000 (Arthur Marks); The Spook Who Sat by the Door (Ivan Dixon); The Mack (Michael Campus); Malizia (Salvatore Samperi); The Scarlet Letter (Wim Wenders); Blood Brothers (Cheh Chang); Snow of Blood (Toshiya Fujita); The Homecoming (Peter Hall); The Fate of Lee Khan (King Hu)
In the queue: Il n'y pas de fumee san feu (Where There's Smoke) (Andre Cayatte); Distant Thunder (Satyajit Ray); Can Dialectics Break Bricks? (Rene Vienet); L'emmerdeur (A Pain in the A) (Eduardo Molinaro); Wedding in Blood (Les Noces Rouges) (Claude Chabrol); Turkish Delight (Turks Fruit) (Paul Verhoeven); Themroc (Claude Faraldo); Society of the Spectacle (Guy Debord); Le Magnifique (Phillipe de Broca); The Invitation (Claude Goretta); My Name is Nobody (Tonino Valerii); Riddance (Marta Meszaros); Juvenile Court (Frederick Wiseman); The Asphyx (Peter Newbrook); Blume in Love (Paul Mazursky); The Holy Mountain (Alejandro Jodorowsky)
VINTAGE RATING (1973): 8.5****
NOTE: There's a great tendency among many critics now to overrate the 1970s, now that the decade looks like such a classical period for auteur filmmaking. That tendency is understandable because, in many ways, the achievements of the 1970s are still underestimated. Looking at gritty indies and low-budget studio-backed fare such as 'Scarecrow,' 'Mean Streets,' and 'The Friends of Eddie Coyle' bespeaks the untold richness of the early half of the decade and is doubly impressive considering how slick and dumbed-down much of the current cinema (including the so-called 'indie' sector that was so promising in the '90s) has become.
'Bobby' is one of my favorite Bollywood movies, with plenty of cheese, energetic musical numbers and a useless plot stolen from Love Story; it has everything that makes Indian commercial films frivolous fun. Dimple Kapadia, in her debut, looks like a younger, cuter Indian version of Sandra Bullock. The epic chamber piece 'Mother and the Whore' is the non plus ultra of French jabbermouth marathons, four hours of Parisian pseudo-Bohemian ennui. It's a highly rewarding journey, if you can hang on. 'Frank Film' is a 9-minute experimental film, probably the most impressive ever made, using thousands of elaborately animated magazine cutouts and two soundtracks with different information to tell a guy's life story. It's pretty amazing stuff. And it won an Oscar, one of the few times the Academy actually honored an artistically deserving film. 'A Brief Vacation'--about a downtrodden, tubucular Milanese wife who literally blooms after being sent to a sanitarium--has typically been written off unfairly as a lesser, later Vittorio de Sica film, even though it's one of his most mature, exquisite works. Earthy beauty Florinda Bolkan is one of De Sica's great feminist heroines; her performance is uncommonly moving and brilliant. In retrospect, the film is near perfection.
1974 (94+)
The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser (Werner Herzog)
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
White Heaven in Hell (Baby Cart 6: Go to Hell, Daigoro!) (Yoshiyuki Kuroda)
Edvard Munch (Peter Watkins)
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (Joseph Sargent)
Dark Star (John Carpenter)
For the Record: Celine and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette); Arabian Nights (Pier Paolo Pasolini); Murder on the Orient Express (Sidney Lumet); Toute une vie (And Now My Love) (Claude Lelouch); The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper); Sweet Movie (Dusan Makavejev); The Missiles of October (Anthony Page/TV)
To re-watch: Going Places (Les valseuses) (Bertrand Blier); Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (Martin Scorsese); Harry and Tonto (Paul Mazursky); Death Wish (Michael Winner)
To see: 11 Harrowhouse (Aram Avakian); At Home Among Strangers (Nikita Mikhalkov); Gone in 60 Seconds (HB Halicki); The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner (Werner Herzog); Death Dream (Dead of Night) (Bob Clark); Place de la République (Louis Malle); Black Christmas (Bob Clark); Blood for Dracula (Paul Morrissey); Mes Petites Amoureuses (Jean Eustache); Rabid Dogs (Mario Bava); Orderers (Michel Brault); Jacob the Liar (Frank Beyer); We All Loved Each Other So Much (Ettore Scola); Stavisky... (Alain Resnais); Ankur (Shyam Benegal); Nada (Claude Chabrol); The Fierce One (Tolomush Okeyev); Scent of a Woman (Dino Risi); The Tamarind Seed (Blake Edwards); Nightmare Circus (Alan Rudolph); Penthesilea (Laura Mulvey, Peter Wollen); Juggernaut (Richard Lester); Female Trouble (John Waters/to re-watch)
In the queue: Lancelot du Lac (Robert Bresson); Immoral Tales (Walerian Borowczyk); The Deluge (Potop) (Jerzy Hoffman); The Street Fighter (Shigehiro Ozawa); The Clockmaker (Bertrand Tavernier); Conversation Piece (Luchino Visconti); Vincent, Francois, Paul and the Others (Claude Sautet); Truck Turner (Jonathan Kaplan); It's Alive (Larry Cohen); Harry and Tonto (Paul Mazursky); Cat’s Play (Karoly Makk/to re-watch); Elektra, My Love (Szerelmem, Elektra) (Miklos Jancso); Double Agent 73 (Doris Wishman) (1974)
VINTAGE RATING (1974): 9
NOTE: 'Xala,' a sharp satire on machismo and modernization from Senegal, is the best African film I've seen--and the only one that has kept my full attention from beginning to end.
1975 (75+)
The Battle of Chile, Part I (Patricio Guzman)
Farewell, My Lovely (Dick Richards)
Fox and His Friends (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet)
Rancho Deluxe (Frank Perry)
F for Fake (Orson Welles)
The Day of the Locust (John Schlesinger)
Nashville (Robert Altman)
Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven (R.W. Fassbinder)
Mirror (Zerkalo) (Andrei Tarkovsky)
The Story of Adele H. (Francois Truffaut)
Love and Death (Woody Allen)
Swept Away... (Lina Wertmuller)
The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (Volker Schlondorff)
The Man Who Would Be King (John Huston)
Grey Gardens (Albert Maysles, et. al.)
Picnic at Hanging Rock (Peter Weir)
Overlord (Stuart Cooper)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Milos Forman)
The Naked Civil Servant (Jack Gold)
Shampoo (Hal Ashby)
Hester Street (Joan Micklin Silver)
Three Days of the Condor (Sydney Pollack)
Hearts of the West (Howard Zieff)
Rollerball (Norman Jewison)
A Boy and His Dog (L.Q. Jones)
The Stepford Wives (Bryan Forbes)
Innocents with Dirty Hands (Claude Chabrol)
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Jim Sharman)
The Switchblade Sisters (Jack Hill)
The Prisoner of Second Avenue (Melvin Frank)
Salo, or 120 Days of Sodom (Pier Paolo Pasolini)
Bucktown (Arthur Marks)
Smile (Michael Ritchie)
For the record: The Killer Elite (Sam Peckinpah): El Muerto (Hector Olivera); Cousin, Cousine (Jean-Charles Tachella); The Wind and the Lion (John Milius); Deewar (Yash Chopra); Friday Foster (Arthur Marks); Shivers (David Cronenberg); Seven Beauties (Lina Wertmüller); Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris (Denis Heroux)
To re-watch: The Passenger (Professione: reporter) (Michelangelo Antonioni)
To see: Los ninos abandonados (Danny Lyon); Chac: The Rain God (Rolando Klein); Let Joy Reign Supreme (Bertrand Tavernier); Milestones (Robert Kramer); A Woman's Decision (Bilans kwartalny) (Krzysztof Zanussi); Thundercrack! (Curt McDowell); Promised Land (Andrzej Wajda); Fear of Fear (Rainer Werner Fassbinder); Hustle (Robert Aldrich); Crazy Mama (Jonathan Demme); French Connection II (John Frankenheimer); Wrong Move (Wim Wenders); Une Partie de Plaisir (Claude Chabrol); The Old Gun (Robert Enrico); Fear Over the City (Henri Verneuil); Mandingo (Richard Fleischer); The Magic Flute (Trollflojten) (Ingmar Bergman)
In the queue: Manila, in the Claws of Neon (Lino Brocka); Jeanne Dielman... (Chantal Akerman); India Song (Marguerite Duras); The Most Important Thing is to Love (Andrzej Zulawski); Story of a Sin (Walerian Borowczyk); Breaking with Old Ideas (Wenhua Li); Atilla 74, The Rape of Cyprus (Michael Cacoyannis); The Valiant Ones (King Hu); Pinchcliffe Grand Prix (Ivo Caprino); Slade in Flame (Richard Loncraine); Lisztomania (Ken Russell); Cat and Mouse (Claude Lelouch); La Bete (The Beast) (Walerian Borowczyk); Welfare (Frederick Wiseman); Deep Red (Dario Argento); Keetje Tippel (Paul Verhoeven); Numero deux (Jean-Luc Godard); A Woman Called Sada Abe (Noboru Tanaka)
VINTAGE RATING (1975): 8.5****
NOTES: Andrei Tarkovsky's 'Mirror' is the Soviet director's most personal and possibly least accessible film. Even so, it's a beautiful puzzle of familial memory, and the finale is arguably the most poetic ever filmed--recognizable to anyone who dimly remembers a childhood picnic; capturing the elusive but universal qualities of a million lost summers. 'Salo' (runner up) is a Pandora's Box; nobody should open it. It may not even be a good film to begin with. But curiosity got the best of me and what I encountered was a uncompromising depiction of evil's banal face that made me feel nauseous, uneasy, voyeuristic and truly disturbed about violence and the idea of violence as entertainment. Whether art or exploitative trash, a film that elicits such feelings and reflection just might be important. The multi-part 'The Battle of Chile' is possibly the greatest piece of documentary reportage ever assembled, a massive coverage of the events before and after the Nixon-assisted coup of Chile's popularly elected socialist government. Like most Latin American verites, its POV is angry and pointedly left wing, and its cast of eyewitnesses is vast. Its crew shows an uncanny knack for being at the right places at the right times in capturing living history. Its 1977 and 1979 sequels (parts II and III) are not not listed under those years as I've decided to treat the three films as an organic whole (they should be viewed that way). 'Sholay" is the quintessential Bollywood epic, a so-called "curry western," tagged thusly for combining Sergio Leone's spaghetti western style with comedy, melodrama and musical numbers! Even more of a guilty pleasure is 'The Switchblade Sisters,' revived for video thanks to Quentin Tarantino, and therefore garnering far more attention the second-time around than it did on initial release. It's girl-gang exploitation trash with pretensions to Shakespeare--of its time but also foreshadowing Troma and other '80s cheese. It's not good, but the "train wreck" factor is high and main starlet Robbie Lee carries it without ever showing signs of acting talent. Far less dated--indeed, not dated at all--is Steven Spielberg's 'Jaws,' which, even with its no-longer-surprising shocks, still holds up nicely. Roy Scheider's harried cop/family man and his motley band of shark hunters (Shaw and Dreyfuss) seem more more fun and fascinating now as refreshing correctives to the cardboard heroes of our present age.
1976 (76+)
Harlan County, U.S.A. (Barbara Kopple)
Satan's Brew (Satansbratan) (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
Network (Sidney Lumet)
The Tenant (Le Locataire) (Roman Polanski)
Mikey and Nicky (Elaine May)
The Last Supper (La ultima cena) (Tomas Gutierrez Alea)
The Shootist (Don Siegel)
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (John Cassavetes)
Eraserhead (David Lynch)
The Street (Caroline Leaf; National Film Board of Canada short)
In the Realm of the Senses (Nagisa Oshima)
RUNNERS UP:
Bound for Glory (Hal Ashby)
Jana Aranya (The Middleman) (Satyajit Ray)
All the President's Men (Alan Pakula)
Stay Hungry (Bob Rafelson)
A Sunday in Hell (Jorgen Leth)
Cadaveri Eccellenti (Illustrious Corpses) (Francesco Rosi)
Small Change (L'argent de poche) (Francois Truffaut)
Mr. Klein (Joseph Losey)
The Eagle Has Landed (John Sturges)
Silver Streak (Arthur Hiller)
The Opening of Misty Beethoven (Radley Metzger)
For the record: Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000 (Alain Tanner); Heart of Glass (Werner Herzog); Voyage of the Damned (Stuart Rosenberg); Assault on Precinct 13 (John Carpenter); Cria Cuervos (Carlos Saura); Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands (Bruno Barreto); The Innocent (Luchino Visconti); Seven Beauties (Lina Wertmuller); Carrie (Brian De Palma); Chinese Roulette (Rainer Werner Fassbinder); 1900 (Bernardo Bertolucci); Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands (Bruno Barreto); Down and Dirty (Ugly, Dirty and Bad) (Ettore Scola); Buffalo Bill and the Indians (Robert Altman); Breakfast (Table Top Dolly) (Michael Snow)
To re-watch: The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (Herbert Ross)
To see: Leadbelly (Gordon Parks); Coup de Grace (Volker Schlondorff); I Only Want You To Love Me (Rainer Werner Fassbinder); God Told Me To (Larry Cohen); Insiang (Lino Brocka); Alice, Sweet Alice (Alfred Sole); The Marquise of O (Eric Rohmer); The Message (Moustapha Akkad); The Missouri Breaks (Arthur Penn); The Context (Francesco Rosi); A Matter of Time (Vincente Minnelli); Personel (Krzysztof Kieslowski); Barocco (Andre Techine); Hollywood Boulevard (Allan Arkush, Joe Dante); The Last Woman (Marco Ferreri); Face to Face (Ingmar Bergman); Private Eyes (Ban jin ba liang) (Michael Hui)
In the queue: Je t'aime moi no plus (Serge Gainsbourg); A Real Young Girl (Catherine Breillat); Shaolin Temple (Death Chamber) (Chang Cheh); Man on the Roof (Mannen pa taket) (Bo Widerberg); Duelle (une quarantaine) (Jacques Rivette); Kings of the Road (Wim Wenders; to re-watch); A Slave of Love (Nikita Mikhalkov); Xica (Carlo Diegues); The Outlaw Josey Wales (Clint Eastwood); Monkey Hustle (Arthur Marks); Bugsy Malone (Alan Parker)
VINTAGE RATING (1976): 7.5
NOTE: The critical side of me insists that David Lynch's relentlessly grim 'Eraserhead' is the year's most formidable work of art. As with many such things, engage at your own risk. Also weird but a lot more fun is Fassbinder's outlandish 'Satan's Brew,' the director's most outre bit of grotesque camp--impossible to forget once seen. OK, 'Taxi Driver' is only on the runners up list. So, I'm a heretic. This year's guilty pleasure is the cheese-laden but wry Roger-Corman-produced cross-country car-race comedy, 'Cannonball' (runner up), written and directed by cult fave actor-director Paul Bartel (and not to be confused with Burt Reynolds' 'The Cannonball Run'). I'm not sure how Francois Truffaut's 'Small Change' (runner up) would play for me today; I suspect it might be more cloying than I remember. I just know that it was a delightful view back around 1979 when I saw it at the old Vogue. Larisa Sheptiko's grim Soviet war film 'The Ascent' (runner up) has attained the sort of patina of legend that clings to major prize-winning (Berlin Golden Bear) films that subsequently become hard to find, thus making all debate the province of a privileged few vocal admirers. I just obtained a copy and found it curiously uninvolving and unmoving despite its admirably vivid, realistic depiction of wartime strife. I just felt I'd seen all this before in more dramatically interesting movies, including Soviet ones such as 'Come and See' (1985) and 'Komissar' (1967). The religious symbolism brings to mind better films also, such as Carl Dreyer's 'Ordet' (1955). I list it as a runner up to ponder. For most of the way Francesco Rosi's touted but obscure "Illustrious Corpses" (runner up) is a delicious enigma but then gets too literal and tidy near the end with an Evil One behind the conspiracy; I would have preferred it remain enigmatic.
1977 (64+)
The Turning Point (Herbert Ross)
Star Wars (George Lucas)
Amar Akbar Anthony (Manmohan Desai)
The Lacemaker (Claude Goretta)
The Late Show (Robert Benton)
Hardware Wars (Ernie Fossellius)
Sorcerer (William Friedkin)
For the record: The Devil, Probably (Robert Bresson); Allegro Non Troppo (Bruno Bozzetto); Martin (George A. Romero); The American Friend (Wim Wenders); Citizen's Band (Jonathan Demme); Outrageous! (Richard Benner)
To re-watch: Looking for Mr. Goodbar (Richard Brooks) (in the queue); The Duellists (Ridley Scott); Soldier of Orange (Paul Verhoeven)
To see: Why Shoot the Teacher? (Silvio Narizzano); News from Home (Chantal Akerman); 21 Up (Michael Apted); Tracks (Henry Jaglom); Local Color (Mark Rappaport); The Stationmaster's Wife (Rainer Werner Fassbinder); Rabid (David Cronenberg); The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover (Larry Cohen); Alambrista! (Robert M. Young); A Grin Without a Cat (Chris Marker); Twilight's Last Gleaming (Robert Aldrich); The Choirboys (Robert Aldrich); Desperate Living (John Waters/to re-watch); Rolling Thunder (John Flynn)
In the queue: Camouflage (Krzysztof Zanussi); The Man Who Loved Women (Francois Truffaut); Peppermint Soda (Diane Kurys); Le Crabe Tambour (Pierre Schoendoerffer); An Unfinished Piece for Player Piano (Nikita Mikhalkov); Padre Padrone (Paola & Vittorio Taviani); New York, New York (Martin Scorsese); Invisible Adversaries (Valie Export); Last Chants for a Slow Dance (Jon Jost)
VINTAGE RATING (1977): 8***
NOTE: Bunuel's last film, 'That Obscure Object of Desire,' (the story of a luscious, merciless man-tease) did not quite register on first view. But then I recently saw two earlier film versions of the story ("The Woman and the Puppet") on which it was based. The opportunity for comparison made the story more interesting, and Bunuel's version is the most explicit and wickedly ironic. Interestingly Robert Altman's '3 Women' and Mike Leigh's 'Abigail's Party' share the common thread of fantasist central characters who want glamor and order in their worlds despite the fact that everyone else won't cooperate. 'The Sand Castle' is a beautiful clay-animation short from the National Film Board of Canada that won an AA. My inner 15-year-old is just about dead, so it's hard to work up my old enthusiasm for 'Star Wars.' It's listed among the runners up in honor of those pre-jaded days of innocence. 'The Turning Point' (runner up) is silly women's tosh; an entertaining guilty pleasure. The Italian slasher film 'Suspiria' is an embarassment in the story and acting departments, yet visually it's one of the most strikingly stylish films of the '70s. (As it happens, it was the last film in the entire Western World made with an old three-strip Technicolor camera---and to its credit, looks it.) Far less colorful and more realistically violent is 'Short Eyes' (runner up) which, while not quite overcoming some of its theatrical origins, is probably the most shattering and grim prison film ever made (and no, I'm not forgetting 'Midnight Express,' 'Papillon' or Yilmaz Guney's 'The Wall'). Thanks to interlibrary loan I was able to snare Charles Burnett's 'Killer of Sheep,' a landmark of the African-American indie cinema and one of the most quietly devastating studies of a family man's desperation that I've ever seen. 'Sorcerer' (runner up) is a travesty as a remake of the 1953 French classic, 'The Wages of Fear;' lots of money thrown into it to mostly murky effect, but the bridge-crossing scene is harrowing and masterfully shot, enough to make the film a must-see for that alone.
1978 (67+)
Dawn of the Dead (George Romero)
Days of Heaven (Terence Malick)
Gates of Heaven (Errol Morris)
The Tree of Wooden Clogs (Ermanno Olmi)
Hitler - A Film from Germany (Our Hitler) (Hans-Jurgen Syberberg)
The Driver (Walter Hill)
Go Tell the Spartans (Ted Post)
The Last Waltz (Martin Scorsese)
A Wedding (Robert Altman)
Movie Movie (Stanley Donen)
House Calls (Howard Zieff)
For the record: The Place Without Limits (Arturo Ripstein); Coming Home (Hal Ashby): The Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino); Orchestra Rehearsal (Federico Fellini); The Buddy Holly Story (Steve Rash); Five Deadly Venoms (Cheh Chang); Scared Straight! (Arnold Shapiro)
To re-watch: In the Realm of Passion (Nagisa Oshima); The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (Fred Schepisi); Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Philip Kaufman)
To see: Top Dog (Wodzirej) (Feliks Falk); China 9, Liberty 37 (Monte Hellman); Divided Loyalties (Warren Sonbert); The Scenic Route (Mark Rappaport); Girlfriends (Claudia Weill); The Fury (Brian De Palma); California Suite (Herbert Ross); The Green Room (Francois Truffaut); Deutschland im Herbst (Germany in Autumn) (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, et. al.); Backyard (Ross McElwee); You Are Not Alone (Ernst Johansen and Lasse Nielsen); Alexandria, Why? (Youssef Chahine); The Medusa Touch (Jack Gold); Meetings with Anna (Chantal Akerman); Le Dossier 51 (Michel Deville); The Second Awakening of Christa Klages (Margarethe von Trotta); Remember My Name (Alan Rudolph); Knife in the Head (Reinhard Hauff); Can que (Crippled Avengers/Return of the 5 Deady Venoms) (Cheh Chang); The Master Killer (The 36th Chamber of Shaolin) (Chia-Liang Liu)
In the queue: Suru (The Herd) (Zeki Okten, Yilmaz Guney); Straight Time (Ulu Grosbard); L'immoralita (Massimo Pirri); Violette Noziere (Claude Chabrol); In a Year of 13 Moons (Rainer Werner Fassbinder); One Night Stand (Allan King); Revenge of the Pink Panther (Blake Edwards); Grease (Randal Kleiser); In the Realm of Passion (Empire of Passion) (Empire of Passion) (Nagisa Oshima/to re-watch); Newsfront (Phillip Noyce)
VINTAGE RATING (1978): 7***
NOTES: 1978 was a fairly dreary year for the movies, the mood seemed aimless and a sense of decline is evident. In addition, 1977's 'Star Wars' seemed to signal a new shift toward comic-book blockbusters. All the way down the list, the best movies are willfully dark and gloomy. 'Our Hitler' is one of the most ambitious performance-art films ever made, an exercise in non-narrative biography and broad visual essay that attempts to link Hitler's spirit to ongoing evils, including multinational capitalism. It's a grueling 8 hours long, but full of rewarding insights. If pure art were the measure, then it easily could be considered the year's greatest film. Getting through it earns a completists' badge of honor. 'The Tree of Wooden Clogs' is a documentary-like depiction of Italian peasant life. I only saw it once, in a theater in 1979, and found it an enriching experience. I'm afraid if I tried to watch it today on a little TV screen it would bore me. On the fun side, 'The Silent Partner' is a grimy '70s thriller with Christopher Plummer as one of the scariest villains in movie history. 'Northern Lights' is a fine indie film, shot stunningly in black and white, about the struggles of Scandinavian farm immigrants in North Dakota. It used to show up on PBS all the time back in the '80's and hasn't been seen since. 'The Deer Hunter' is not here; never liked it apart from Walken and the opening wedding sequence. Same for the melodramatic 'Coming Home.' Voigt and Dern good, though.
1979 (79+)
The China Syndrome (James Bridges)
Norma Rae (Martin Ritt)
Monty Python's Life of Brian (Terry Jones)
The Tin Drum (Volker Schlondorff)
Bye Bye Brasil (Carlos Diegues)
All That Jazz (Bob Fosse)
Breaking Away (Peter Yates)
The Great Train Robbery (Michael Crichton)
Time After Time (Nicholas Meyer)
...And Justice for All (Norman Jewison)
Hair (Milos Forman)
Head Over Heels (Chilly Scenes of Winter) (Joan Micklin Silver)
The Lady Vanishes (Anthony Page)
Faro Dokument 1979 (Ingmar Bergman)
Hardcore (Paul Schrader)
For the record: Woyzeck (Werner Herzog); Vengeance is Mine (Shohei Imamura); Rock 'n' Roll High School (Allan Arkush); Siberiade (Andrei Konchalovsky); When a Stranger Calls (Fred Walton); Real Life (Albert Brooks); Best Boy (Ira Wohl); Quadrophenia (Franc Roddam); The Brood (David Cronenberg); The Jerk (Carl Reiner); Laura (David Hamilton)
To re-watch: Buffet Froid (Bertrand Blier); The Marriage of Maria Braun (R.W. Fassbinder); Gal Young 'Un (Victor Nunez)
To see: Young Girls of Wilko (Andrzej Wajda); Plae kao (The Scar) (Cherd Songsri); Angi Vera (Pal Gabor); Mary My Dearest (María de mi corazón) (Jaime Humberto Hermosillo); The Driller Killer (Abel Ferrara); The Perfect Couple (Robert Altman); Scum (Alan Clarke/BBC version 77/theatrical: 79); We Were One Man (Nous etions un seul homme) (Philippe Vallois); Perceval (Eric Rohmer); Phantasm (Don Coscarelli); The Third Generation (Rainer Werner Fassbinder); Sympathy for a Sinner (George Kuchar); Sunstone (Ed Emshwiller); Bloody Kiss (Stephen Frears); Without Anesthesia (Andrzej Wajda); The Europeans (James Ivory); Fung gip (The Secret) (Ann Hui); Amor de Perdicao (Doomed Love) (Manoel de Oliveira)
In the queue: Mad Monkey Kung Fu (Chia-Liang Liu); The Butterfly Murders (Tsui Hark); Messidor (Alain Tanner); La Luna (Bernardo Bertolucci); Camera Buff (Krzysztof Kieslowski); City of Women (Federico Fellini); El Super (Leon Ichaso, Orlando Jimenez Leal); To Forget Venice (Franco Brusati); The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting (Raoul Ruiz); Dracula (John Badham); The Crippled Masters (Joe Law); Amor Bandido (Bruno Barreto); Buffet Froid (Bertrand Blier)
VINTAGE RATING (1979): 8.5***
NOTE: This was the year I got serious enough about flicks that I started writing reviews for the high school paper. Several of these made my 'published' top 10 list in early 1980. I'm kind of surprised by the low list count for this year because I went to the movies a lot in 1979. Then again, I was getting much more selective about what I went to see (and was seeing a lot of older classics).
1980 (78+)
Mon Oncle d'Amerique (Alain Resnais)
Breaker Morant (Bruce Beresford)
Deathwatch (La mort en direct) (Bertrand Tavernier)
Heartland (Richard Pearce)
The Stunt Man (Richard Rush)
The Long Good Friday (John Mackenzie)
Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese)
The Elephant Man (David Lynch)
Airplane! (Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker)
The Big Red One (Samuel Fuller)
Used Cars (Robert Zemeckis)
The Ninth Configuration (William Peter Blatty)
Stardust Memories (Woody Allen)
The Long Riders (Walter Hill)
Coal Miner's Daughter (Michael Apted)
From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China (Murray Lerner)
Dressed to Kill (Brian DePalma)
Hopscotch (Ronald Neame)
The Return of the Secaucus Seven (John Sayles)
On Company Business (Inside the CIA: On Company Business) (Allan Francovich)
Atlantic City (Louis Malle)
Lightning Over Water (Wim Wenders, Nicholas Ray)
Altered States (Ken Russell)
The Last Metro (Le dernier metro) (Francois Truffaut)
Bad Timing (Nicolas Roeg)
The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter (Connie Field)
The Lathe of Heaven (Fred Barzyk, David R. Loxton/TV)
The Blues Brothers (John Landis)
The Shining (Stanley Kubrick)
The Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner)
Caddyshack (Harold Ramis)
The Sea Wolves (Andrew V. McLaglen)
The Competition (Joel Oliansky)
HONORABLE MENTION:
Hollywood (UK miniseries on silent cinema) (Kevin Brownlow, David Gill)
For the record: From the Life of the Marionettes (Ingmar Bergman); Kagemusha (Akira Kurosawa); McVicar (Tom Clegg); Melvin and Howard (Jonathan Demme); Popeye (Robert Altman); Carny (Robert Kaylor); The Gods Must Be Crazy (Jamie Uys); Out of the Blue (Dennis Hopper); Hardly Working (Jerry Lewis); Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears (Vladimir Menshov); Young Master (Jackie Chan)
To see: Contract (Krzysztof Zanussi); The Fog (John Carpenter); The Hunter (Buzz Kulik); Stir (Stephen Wallace); Guns (Robert Kramer); Berlin Alexanderplatz (Rainer Werner Fassbinder); Maniac (William Lustig); The Changeling (Peter Medak); Voyage en Douce (Michel Deville); Pepi, Luci, Bom (Pedro Almodóvar); Inferno (Dario Argento); The Fog (John Carpenter); God's Angry Man (Werner Herzog); Health (Robert Altman); Every Man for Himself (Jean-Luc Godard); The Great Rock 'n Roll Swindle (Julien Temple); Shogun Assassin (Robert Houston); Solo Sunny (Konrad Wolf); La cicala (The Cricket) (Alberto Lattuada)
In the queue: Cruising (William Friedkin); Jupiter's Thigh (Philippe de Broca); Model (Frederick Wiseman); Tanya's Island (Alfred Sole); American Gigolo (Paul Schrader)
VINTAGE RATING (1980): 7.5***
Note: I vacillated on William Peter Blatty's cult movie, 'The Ninth Configuration'--moving it back and forth into the top list, down into the runners up, and back up again. It's been 20 years since I've seen it; I remember it being unconventional and intriguing, but also remember being confounded by it all at the end. Maybe another view would make me better understand the revelations about Stacey Keach's enigmatic army psychiatrist character.
1981 (114)
Mad Max 2 (The Road Warrior) (George Miller)
Das Boot (Wolfgang Petersen)
Marianne and Juliane (Die Bleierne Zeit) (Margarethe von Trotta)
Man of Iron (Andrzej Wajda)
Gallipoli (Peter Weir)
Escape from New York (John Carpenter)
Pennies From Heaven (Herbert Ross)
Prince of the City (Sidney Lumet)
Fort Apache, the Bronx (Daniel Petrie)
Whose Life Is It Anyway? (John Badham)
The Boat is Full (Markus Imhoof)
Gregory's Girl (Bill Forsythe)
Coup de Torchon (Bertrand Tavernier)
Blow Out (Brian De Palma)
Eye of the Needle (Richard Marquand)
True Confessions (Ulu Grosbard)
Possession (Andrzej Zulawski) (mainly for Adjani's mad miscarriage)
Clash of the Titans (Desmond Davis)
Chariots of Fire (Hugh Hudson)
Tattoo (Bob Brooks)
Circle of Deceit (Volker Schlondorff)
Roadgames (Richard Franklin)
For the record: Ms. 45 (Abel Ferrara); Pixote (Hector Babenco); Stripes (Ivan Reitman); Body Heat (Lawrence Kasdan); Taxi Zum Klo (Frank Ripploh); Agony (Elem Klimov); The Aviator's Wife (Eric Rohmer); Southern Comfort (Walter Hill); All the Marbles (Robert Aldrich); Rich and Famous (George Cukor); Modern Romance (Albert Brooks); They All Laughed (Peter Bogdanovich); The Evil Dead (Sam Raimi); Mommie Dearest (Frank Perry); An American Werewolf in London (Landis)
To see: Birgit Haas Must Be Killed (Laurent Heynemann); Vernon, Florida (Errol Morris); Scanners (David Cronenberg); Tree of Knowledge (Nils Malmros); Assassination Attempt (Aleksandr Alov, Vladimir Naumov); The Professional (Georges Lautner); Do You Remember Dolly Bell? (Emir Kusturica); Full Moon High (Larry Cohen); Eijanaika (Shohei Imamura); Bian yuen ren (Man on the Brink) (Gwok-Ming Cheung); Foo ji ching (Father and Son) (Allen Fong); Le pont du nord (Jacques Rivette); The Day After Trinity (Jon Else)
In the queue: Garde a vue (Claude Miller); Beau Pere (Bertrand Blier)
VINTAGE RATING (1981): 7.5***
Note: I was stuck in the post of 'second-string' movie critic for "The Marquette Tribune" in 1980-1982, which meant that editor Chris Foran got first dibs on the good stuff while I saw a lot of bad flicks--some of them among the worst ever made, including 'Inchon,' 'Monsignor,' 'Parsifal,' 'Q--the Winged Serpent,' and one I actually liked at the time, a Michael Crichton 'Coma'-rehash thriller called 'Looker.' If it wasn't so handsome looking I might be tempted to throw into the disappointment category 'Chariots of Fire' (runner up), in which 'Rocky' and MTV meet 'Masterpiece Theatre. As best picture winners go, it's at least not the suckiest. "Clash of the Titans' (runner up) has a fairly high cheese quotient but I give it a lot of credit for charm and sincerity, being true to the wonder of Greek legends. Yes, Bob Brooks' "Tattoo" is trash and not fair to the tattoo industry, but it has Bruce Dern as yet another nutcase, which is inherently fun, and Maud Adams in a red, white and blue bikini, and that's something I cannot forget.
1982 (to count)
Yol (Serif Goren, Yilmaz Guney)
Fanny and Alexander (Ingmar Bergman)
Sophie's Choice (Alan J. Pakula)
Victor/Victoria (Blake Edwards)
The Atomic Cafe (Kevin Rafferty, Jayne Loader, Pierce Rafferty)
Burden of Dreams (Les Blank)
Heatwave (Phillip Noyce)
The Return of Martin Guerre (Daniel Vigne)
The Verdict (Sidney Lumet)
Dimensions of Dialogue (Jan Svankmajer)
Diner (Barry Levinson)
My Favorite Year (Richard Benjamin)
Missing (Costa-Gavras)
The Grey Fox (Phillip Borsos)
La Balance (Bob Swaim)
A Question of Silence (Marleen Gorris)
The Secret of NIMH (Don Bluth)
Tootsie (Sydney Pollack)
Pink Floyd The Wall (Alan Parker)
Conan the Barbarian (John Milius)
For the record: E.T., the Extraterrestrial (Steven Spielberg); Poltergeist (Tobe Hooper); Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Amy Heckerling); Night of the Shooting Stars (Paolo and Vittorio Taviani); Liquid Sky (Slava Tsuckerman); Poltergeist (Tobe Hooper); Le beau mariage (Eric Rohmer); Identification of a Woman (Michelangelo Antonioni); Shoot the Moon (Alan Parker); One From the Heart (Francis Ford Coppola)
To see: Invitation au voyage (Peter Del Monte); Frances (Graeme Clifford); Cecilia (Humberto Solas); Time Stands Still (Megall az ido) (Peter Gothar); Labyrinth of Passion (Pedro Almodóvar); Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (Robert Altman); Passion (Jean-Luc Godard); On Top of the Whale (Raoul Ruiz); So Is This (Michael Snow); Barbarosa (Fred Schepisi); Shaolin si (The Shaolin Temple; not to be confused with 1976 same titled, see) (Xinyan Zhang); Legendary Weapons of China (Shi ba ban wu yi) (Chia-Liang Liu); Boat People (Tau ban no hoi) (Ann Hui); Chinese Super Ninjas (Ren zhe wu di) (Cheh Chang)
In the queue: Tenebre (Dario Argento); Made in Britain (Alan Clarke); Chan is Missing (Wayne Wang); The Go Masters (Ji-shun Duan, Junya Sato); Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die (Laurence Jarvik); Querelle (R.W. Fassbinder); The State of Things (Wim Wenders); Alsino and the Condor (Miguel Littin); Wend Kuuni (Gaston Kabore); Lookin' to Get Out (Hal Ashby); Hammet (Wim Wenders); The Entity (Sidney Furie); The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (Colin Higgins); Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains (Lou Adler); Too Early, Too Late (Trop tot, trop tard) (Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub); La Truite (Joseph Losey)
VINTAGE RATING (1982): 7.5***
Note: Despite my bias against the '80s, 1982 is a pretty eclectic year by the look of this list. The ringer here is Gary Sherman's trash exploitation 'b'-crime picture, 'Vice Squad,' kind of an amalgamation of all the sleazy R-rated grindhouse fare of the late '70s and early '80s (police recruit a hooker with a heart of gold to catch a psycho killer pimp). It's pretty nasty, compellingly earnest stuff, despite an ever-lingering cheese odor; a guilty pleasure enhanced greatly by topnotch gritty cinematography by Stanley Kubick's cameraman, John Alcott. Sam Fuller's 'White Dog' (runner up) shows the director again as perhaps the foremost American primitive, making a perplexingly disturbing movie about a rascist dog(!)out of a cheesy mis-en scene, heavy-handed mixed messages and exploitative subject matter. I'm not a big fan of 'Tootsie,' but I did like its mockery of daytime television and of gender double standards, even if the message was pounded home with a sledgehammer bigger than Tootsie's fake boobs. Spielberg's supremely manipulative kidshow 'E.T.' seemed to me to be a triumph of product placement, and little else. It ain't here. So call me Scrooge...
1983 (to count)
The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese)
Pauline at the Beach (Eric Rohmer)
Never Cry Wolf (Carroll Ballard)
Educating Rita (Lewis Gilbert)
Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (Tsui Hark)
Duvar (The Wall) (Yilmaz Guney)
RUNNERS UP:
The Dead Zone (David Cronenberg)
A nos amours (Maurice Pialat)
Zelig (Woody Allen)
The Big Chill (Lawrence Kasdan)
Tender Mercies (Bruce Beresford)
A Christmas Story (Bob Clark)
In the White City (Alain Tanner)
Another Time, Another Place (Michael Radford)
Lianna (John Sayles)
The Fourth Man (Paul Verhoeven)
One Deadly Summer (Jean Becker)
Nostalghia (Andrei Tarkovsky)
Heart Like a Wheel (Jonathan Kaplan)
Trading Places (John Landis)
And the Ship Sails On (Federico Fellini)
Star 80 (Bob Fosse)
Strange Brew (Dave Thomas, Rick Moranis)
Project A (Jackie Chan)
Risky Business (Paul Brickman)
Terms of Endearment (James Brooks)
For the record: L'Argent (Robert Bresson); Le dernier combat (The Last Battle) (Luc Besson); Ballad of Narayama (Shohei Imamura); Testament (Lynne Littman); Carmen (Carlos Saura); El Norte (Gregory Nava); Entre Nous (Diane Kurys); First Name: Carmen (Jean-Luc Godard); Sudden Impact (Clint Eastwood); Cracking Up (Jerry Lewis)
To re-watch: Personal Best (Robert Towne); Basileus Quartet (Fabio Carpi); A Woman in Flames (Die flambierte Frau) (Robert van Ackeren); The Meaning of Life (Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam)
To see: Spring Symphony (Frühlingssinfonie) (Peter Schamoni); Dark Habits (Pedro Almodovar); Can She Bake a Cherry Pie? (Henry Jaglom); Christine (John Carpenter); A Brutal Game (Jean-Claude Brisseau); Three Crowns of the Sailor (Raoul Ruiz); Faux-Fuyants (Alain Bergala and Jean-Pierre Limosin); Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (Nagisa Oshima); Exposed (James Toback); Life Is a Bed of Roses (Alain Resnais); Sugar Cane Alley (Euzhan Palcy); Abuse (Arthur J. Bressan Jr.); Boon bin yen (Ah Ying) (Allen Fong); La Traviata (Franco Zeffirelli); The Hunger (Tony Scott)
In the queue: Eight Diagram Pole Fighter (Gordon Liu); El Sur (Victor Erice); Streamers (Robert Altman); Danton (Andrzej Wajda); Tchao Pantin (Claude Berri); Le Bal (Ettore Scola); The Store (Frederick Wiseman; to re-watch); Utu (Geoff Murphy); Valley Girl (Martha Coolidge); Threshold (Richard Pearce); The Outsiders (Francis Ford Coppola); A Funny Dirty Little War (Hector Olivera); Confidentially Yours (Francois Truffaut)
VINTAGE RATING (1983): 5*
Note: 1983 is, in my opinion, the weakest year in modern film history (at least up to the 2000s), and one of the weakest ever. (Watch virtually any Hollywood hit from this year and notice the cheese smell). On the other hand, Chris Marker's multi-leveled essay film on the nature of time, memory, geographic place and culture, 'Sans Soleil,' is one of the most enriching and profound movies ever made. But it doesn't become that until you make it past the first 20 minutes and get your bearings. Among the flicks I actually screened at the time, though, Peter Yates' British backstage comedy-drama 'The Dresser' was my favorite picture of the year, sparked by two deliciously flamboyant performances by Albert Finney, as a provincial Shakespearean ham, and Tom Courtenay as his prissy manservant and protector--who defines his role in life in relation to an actor who defines his role in sheer fantasy.
1984 (to count)
Once Upon a Time in America (Sergio Leone)
The Wannsee Conference (Heinz Schirk)
Antonio Gaudi (Hiroshi Teshigahara)
A Soldier's Story (Norman Jewison)
Tightrope (Richard Tuggle)
The Times of Harvey Milk (Robert Epstein)
This is Spinal Tap (Rob Reiner)
Under the Volcano (John Huston)
RUNNERS UP:
The Element of Crime (Lars von Trier)
Cal (Pat O'Connor)
Body Double (Brian De Palma)
Stranger Than Paradise (Jim Jarmusch)
Dangerous Moves (Richard Dembo)
Places in the Heart (Robert Benton)
The NeverEnding Story (Wolfgang Petersen)
The Cotton Club (Francis Ford Coppola)
Dune (David Lynch)
Broadway Danny Rose (Woody Allen)
Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders)
Stop Making Sense (Jonathan Demme)
A Sunday in the Country (Bertrand Tavernier)
Wheels on Meals (Sammo Hung Kam-bo)
The Bounty (Roger Donaldson)
Crimes of Passion (Ken Russell)
Lulu in Berlin (Richard Leacock)
The Natural (Barry Levinson)
The Killing Fields (Roland Joffe)
For the record: Love Streams (John Cassavetes); The Brother from Another Planet (John Sayles); In the Company of Wolves (Neil Jordan); The Funeral (Juzo Itami); All of Me (Carl Reiner); Ghostbusters (Ivan Reitman)
To re-watch: Choose Me (Alan Rudolph); Repo Man (Alex Cox); The Long Arm of the Law (Johnny Mak); Iceman (Fred Schepisi)
To see: Next of Kin (Atom Egoyan); Before Stonewall (Greta Schiller, Robert Rosenberg); Carmen (Francesco Rosi); After the Rehearsal (Ingmar Bergman); What Have I Done to Deserve This? (Pedro Almodóvar); Full Moon in Paris; My Summer at Grandpa's (Hou Hsiao-hsien); Starman (John Carpenter); Kaos (Paolo and Vittorio Taviani); Gremlins (Joe Dante); Boy Meets Girl (Leos Carax); Fear City (Abel Ferrara); Ballad of the Little Soldier (Werner Herzog); Streetwise (Martin Bell); Threads (Mick Jackson); Eureka (Nicolas Roeg); Micki & Maude (Blake Edwards); Improper Conduct (Néstor Almendros and Orlando Jiménez Leal); Diary for My Children (Márta Mészáros); Der Riese (Michael Klier); Class Relations (Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub); The Legend of the Suram Fortress (Sergei Parajanov); Shanghai Blues (Tsui Hark); Homecoming (Si shui liu nian) (Ho Yim)
In the queue: My Friend Ivan Lapshin (Alexei Germain); Rendez-vous (Andre Techine): Repentence (Tengiz Abuladze); Cal (Pat O'Connor); Yellow Earth (Chen Kaige); The Family Game (Yoshimitsu Morita); Quilombo (Carlos Diegues); A Private Function (Malcolm Mowbray); Purple Rain (Albert Magnoli); Savage Streets (Danny Steinman); Secret Places (Zelda Barron); The Goodbye People (Herb Gardner); Dance with a Stranger (Mike Newell); Secret Honor (Robert Altman); The Home and the World (Satyajit Ray)
VINTAGE RATING (1984): 6.5**
NOTE: This year is a considerable improvement over 1983, and much more eclectic--yet virtually none of the movies could fairly be called a breathless masterpiece (except Leone's). 'The Wannsee Conference' was a German TV movie that received limited arthouse release in the U.S. a few years later. It's a real-time look at petty Nazi politics, a banal meeting over coffee and krullers in which the fates of 6-million+ doomed humans were sealed. 'Antonio Gaudi' is a hypnotic documentary using brilliantly fluid camerawork to track in, around, and through the stunningly conceived architecture of the Spanish master Gaudi. 'Marlene' is Maximillian Schell's ingenious attempt to make lemonade out of lemons after the subject of his documentary--Marlene Dietrich--backed out of her agreement to talk on camera. The resulting blend of her audiotaped bitter, venomous tirades and Schell's clever visual strategies offers a more revealing and ironic character study than the film's original conception would have allowed. 'Tightrope' is an under-the-radar Clint Eastwood vehicle that was perhaps too dark for the mainstream, probing the idea of a cop getting off on the dark side of his nature while on the beat in the city's underbelly. To call him merely corrupt or evil would be too simplistic; the film--among other things--ponders the law's relation to human desires. Both 'Dune' and 'The Cotton Club' (both runners up) are lavish messes, but also guilty pleasures. The intriguing opening sequences of 'Dune' promise a better film than the one that actually happens.
1985 (to count)
Memory of the Camps (Sidney Bernstein; footage from Hitchcock, et al.)
Plenty (Fred Schepisi)
Vagabond (San toit ni loi) (Agnes Varda)
Shoah (Claude Lanzmann)
A Zed and Two Noughts (Peter Greenaway)
Prizzi's Honor (John Huston)
Police Story (Ging chaat goo si) (Jackie Chan)
Mr. Vampire (Ricky Lau)
The Official Story (Luis Puenzo)
Come and See (Elem Klimov)
Police (Maurice Pialat)
Kiss of the Spider Woman (Hector Babenco)
Pee-wee's Big Adventure (Tim Burton)
L'effrontee (Claude Miller)
The Emerald Forest (John Boorman)
The Shooting Party (Alan Bridges)
The Falcon and the Snowman (John Schlesinger)
Defence of the Realm (David Drury)
My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears)
Day of the Dead (George Romero)
Year of the Dragon (Michael Cimino)
To Live and Die in L.A. (William Friedkin)
Fool for Love (Robert Altman)
Lost in America (Albert Brooks)
The Time to Live and the Time to Die (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
Dreamchild (Gavin Millar)
Spices (Mirch Masala) (Ketan Mehta)
Dust (Marion Hansel)
A View to a Kill (John Glen)
The Breakfast Club (John Hughes)
The Bride (Franc Roddam)
For the record: St. Elmo's Fire (Joel Schumacher); The Color Purple (Steven Spielberg); Hail Mary (Jean-Luc Godard); Himatsuri (Mitsuo Yanagimachi); After Hours (Martin Scorsese); Mask (Peter Bogdanovich); Re-Animator (Stuart Gordon); Blunt: The Fourth Man (John Glenister)
To see: 1919 (Hugh Brody); Saagar (Ramesh Sippy); 28 Up (Michael Apted); Always (Henry Jaglom); Chain Letters (Mark Rappaport); Mala Noche (Gus Van Sant); The Angelic Conversation (Derek Jarman); Desperately Seeking Susan (Susan Seidelman); Phenomena (Dario Argento); Flesh & Blood (Paul Verhoeven); Boycott (Mohsen Makhmalbaf); The Runner (Amir Naderi); Wuthering Heights (Jacques Rivette); Real Genius (Martha Coolidge); Angel's Egg (Mamoru Oshii); Sweet Dreams (Karel Reisz); Wetherby (David Hare); Taipei Story (Edward Yang); Insignificance (Nicolas Roeg); The Pied Piper of Hamelin (Jiri Barta); Hard Choices (Rick King)
In the queue: When Father Was Away on Business (Emir Kusturica); Colonel Redl (Istvan Szabo); Vampire Hunter D (Toyoo Ashida); Hour of the Star (Suzana Amaral); Silverado (Lawrence Kasdan); Letter to Brezhnev (Chris Bernard); Joshua Then and Now (Ted Kotcheff); Jagged Edge (Richard Marquand); Into the Night (John Landis); Dona Herlinda and Her Son (Jaime Humberto Hermosillo); The Coca Cola Kid (Dusan Makavejev); No Surrender (Pater Smith); Repo Man (Alex Cox/re-watch); The Shooting Party (Alan Bridges/re-watch)
VINTAGE RATING (1985): 5.5**
Note: 1985 is another weak movie year, yet it produced two of the best films ever about the Holocaust. Claude Lanzmann's 'Shoah' seems more like a workprint for a great documentary than a disciplined, honed work. At 9 hours, it's unreasonably long and padded. Inside the footage is a great movie wanting to get out; one that would do greater honor to the victims of the Holocaust than one that forces the audience to walk out and miss their testimonials. One man's poetry is another man's sleeping pill, yet it's too important a movie to dismiss. In contrast, the more stylistically conventional documentary 'Memory of the Camps' takes a pithier, impersonal and even more detached approach--exemplified in Trevor Howard's humorously ironic narration of newsreel footage. It is also the better film of the two. Akira Kurosawa's 'Ran,' his visually overwhelming rendering of "King Lear," is possibly the only true cinematic masterpiece of the decade, at least in conventional terms. It's the sure creation of a mature master in deep sync with the thematic meaning of the source text and an understanding of effectively placed spectacle. Fred Schepisi's "Plenty," starring Meryl Streep as an Englishwoman whose life peaks too early, is one of the finest overlooked films of the decade. Overlooked initially by me was Agnes Varda's uncompromising study of a homeless young woman, 'Vagabond,' but a second viewing put that right. What was closed and inaccessible to me on first viewing blossomed out on the second go-round. The austere film allows the audience its own conclusions: one of which must be that unpleasant compromises and hardships mark human existence, even if (like the young woman) we achieve seemingly complete freedom.
"Mr. Vampire' is a guilty pleasure; a kooky Hong Kong horror comedy with bouncing, kung-fu fighting vampires. Fun from first to last, and pretty darn scary at times--it's a perfect example of the energetic multi-genre hodepodge entertainments of HK's '80s golden age. The Cimino and Friedkin policiers I thought were good at the time, but not great; I think now they'd probably hold up nicely if given another viewing (partly because I've never forgotten them). And what would cable TV in the 80's have been without ad infinitum repeats of 'The Breakfast Club' (runner up)?' A Brat Pack guilty pleasure...
1986 (to count)
Jean de Florette (Claude Berri)
Manon of the Spring (Claude Berri)
'Round Midnight (Bertrand Tavernier)
Sid and Nancy (Alex Cox)
Down By Law (Jim Jarmusch)
Sherman's March (Ross McElwee)
Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen)
Peking Opera Blues (Tsui Hark)
Tampopo (Juzo Itami)
She's Gotta Have It (Spike Lee)
Betty Blue (37.2 le matin) (Jean-Jacques Beineix)
Menage (Tenue de soiree) (Bertrand Blier)
Blue Velvet (David Lynch)
The Color of Money (Martin Scorsese)
Working Girls (Lizzie Borden)
A Room with a View (James Ivory)
Le rayon vert (Summer) (Eric Rohmer)
A Little Princess (Carol Wiseman)
A Better Tomorrow (John Woo)
Absolute Beginners (Julien Temple)
84 Charing Cross Road (David Hugh Jones)
Salvador (Oliver Stone)
The Decline of the American Empire (Denys Arcand)
The Fly (David Cronenberg)
Ruthless People (Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker)
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (John Hughes)
Something Wild (Jonathan Demme)
Aliens (James Cameron)
For the record: Melo (Alain Resnais); Children of a Lesser God (Randa Haines); A Girl from Hunan (U Lan, Fei Xie); The Lightship (Jerzy Skolimowski); The Hitcher (Robert Harmon); Platoon (Oliver Stone); The Horse Thief (Tian Zhuangzhuang); Two Friends (Jane Campion); Angry Harvest (Agnieszka Holland); Devil in the Flesh (Marco Bellocchio); Trouble in Mind (Alan Rudolph); The Mission (Roland Joffe)
To re-watch: Mona Lisa (Neil Jordan); Rosa Luxemburg (Margarethe von Trotta); The Mosquito Coast (Peter Weir); Two Friends (Jane Campion); Bliss (Ray Lawrence)
To see: Golden Eighties (aka, Window Shopping) (Chantal Akerman); Matador (Pedro Almodovar); Rita, Sue and Bob Too (Alan Clarke); Mauvais Sang (Leos Carax); Laputa: Castle in the Sky (Hayao Miyazaki); Shadows in Paradise (Aki Kaurismaki); Scene of the Crime (Andre Techine); Big Trouble in Little China (John Carpenter); Mona Lisa (Neil Jordan); God's Country (Louis Malle); The Terrorizer (Edward Yang); Therese (Alain Cavalier); Landscape Suicide (James Benning); Lucas (David Seltzer); Dei ha ching (Love Unto Waste) (Stanley Kwan)
In the queue: Charlotte For Ever (Serge Gainsbourg); Castaway (Nicolas Roeg); The Wolf at the Door (Henning Carlsen); Caravaggio (Derek Jarman); Comrades (Bill Douglas); Hey Babu Riba (Jovan Acin); The Clan of the Cave Bear (Michael Chapman); Gonza the Spearman (Masahiro Shinoda); Crimes of the Heart (Bruce Beresford); Bandits (Claude Lelouch); The Dead Father (Guy Maddin)
VINTAGE RATING (1986): 7**
NOTE: There's some life in this year's fulsome offerings; quite a bit of enjoyment, in fact. Claude Berri's two-part epic ("Jean de Florette" and "Manon of the Spring') reinvigorated the French commercial cinema internationally and made the dubiously charming Provence tales of Marcel Pagnol actually watchable. Lots of good indies from the likes of Alex Cox, Jim Jarmusch and others put the kick into this year, as do some spirited films from Japan and Hong Kong. Only the Hollywood '80s high-cheese quotient dragged this year down. Otherwise there's much to admire.
Andrei Tarkovsky's 'The Sacrifice' is filled with unforgettable images, but the "sacrifice" alluded to in the title turns out to be a pretty silly one. I'm still struggling with this film. Similarly, I'm not sure what I think about Lynch's 'Blue Velvet' anymore. I'm leaving it on the list until I can reconcile my conflicted thoughts. Lizzie Borden's 'Working Girls'--an ultra low-budget indie study of a New York prostitution loft--manages to leave in the dust most other films about hookers and their johns (despite some iffy acting and dialogue). It is not to be confused with the almost same-titled Mike Nichols film of 1988. 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' is the John Hughes guilty pleasure for this year, pandering and preachy it becomes, but breezy and funny along the way.
1987 (to count)
Boyfriends and Girlfriends (L'ami de mon amie) (Eric Rohmer)
Full Metal Jacket (Stanley Kubrick)
Conspiracy: The Trial of the Chicago 8 (Jeremy Kagan/TV)
An Autumn's Tale (Chou tin dik tong wah) (Mabel Cheung)
The Big Easy (Jim McBride)
Swimming to Cambodia (Jonathan Demme)
La Vie est belle (Benoit Lamy, Mweze Ngangura)
Kangaroo (Tim Burstall)
The Last Emperor (Bernardo Bertolucci)
The Untouchables (Brian De Palma)
Eastern Condors (Sammo Hung Kam-Bo)
Project A, Part II (Jackie Chan)
Anna (Yurek Bogayevicz)
The Peddler (Dasforoush) (Mohsen Makhmalbaf)
Wall Street (Oliver Stone)
Border Radio (Allison Anders, et. al.)
For the record: Yeelen (Souleyman Cisse); The Running Man (Paul Michael Glaser); Cry Freedom (Richard Attenborough); Gaby: A True Story (Luis Mandoki); Intervista (Federico Fellini); Empire of the Sun (Steven Spielberg); Hope and Glory (John Boorman); RoboCop (Paul Verhoeven); Radio Days (Woody Allen); Under Satan's Sun (Maurice Pialat); A Taxing Woman (Juzo Itami); Lethal Weapon (Richard Donner)
To re-watch: Housekeeping (Bill Forsythe); Wish You Were Here (David Leland); Red Sorghum (Zhang Yimou)
To see: Good Morning, Babylon (Taviani brothers); Opera (Dario Argento); Law of Desire (Pedro Almodóvar); Where Is the Friend's House? (Abbas Kiarostami); Near Dark (Kathryn Bigelow); Someone to Love (Henry Jaglom); The Kitchen Toto (Harry Hook); The Stepfather (Joseph Ruben); O.C. & Stiggs (Robert Altman); Dark Eyes (Nikita Mikhalkov); Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (Eric Rohmer); The Cry of the Owl (Claude Chabrol); The Camp at Thiaroye (Ousmane Sembene, Thierno Faty Sow); The Belly of an Architect (Peter Greenaway); Made in Heaven (Alan Rudolph); Winter Ade (Helke Misselwitz); Shy People (Andrei Konchalovsky); The Sicilian (Michael Cimino)
In the queue: The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On (Kazuo Hara); Blind Chance (Krzysztof Kieslowski); Au revoir les enfants (Louis Malle); Maurice (James Ivory); Missile (Frederick Wiseman); High Tide (Gilliam Armstrong); The Ten-Year Lunch (Aviva Slesin); Planes, Trains and Automobiles (John Hughes); Dead of Winter (Arthur Penn); Black Widow (Bob Rafelson)
VINTAGE RATING (1987): 6.5**
NOTES: Wim Wenders' 'Wings of Desire' is every hipster's favorite art film of the year--sort of like Capra filtered through German angst and Rainer Maria Rilke's poetry. It's a grand folly, a mess, but full of memorable images and moments. I'm still wrestling with it. Similarly, I've had mixed feelings about John Huston's adaptation of James Joyce's 'The Dead,' which seemed a bit tedious at first until the devastatingly haunting final scenes. The final scenes of the ghostly Hong Kong art film 'Rouge' leave nearly as deep a resonance. 'Gardens of Stone,' Francis Coppola's flipside to 'Apocalypse Now,' is perhaps the director's quietest, most delicate film. 'Radio Bikini' is an engrossing, powerful documentary about the tragic costs of America's nuke bomb tests in the Pacific in the '40s and '50s. Part-docudrama and essay, Todd Haynes' brilliantly multilayered 'Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story' wryly comments on consumerism, public and self image, pop culture and even film form and biopic conventions--with a cast of Barbie dolls. It proves that a few dollars and imagination can beat a $100-million Hollywood piece of tripe any day.
1988 (to count)
The Vanishing (Spoorloos) (George Sluizer)
The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris)
The Last Temptation of Christ (Martin Scorsese)
Salaam, Bombay! (Mira Nair)
Grave of the Fireflies (Isao Takahata)
Tetsuo: The Iron Man (Shinya Tsukamoto)
Bird (Clint Eastwood)
Story of Women (Claude Chabrol)
A World Apart (Chris Menges)
A Fish Called Wanda (Charles Crichton)
Talk Radio (Oliver Stone)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Philip Kaufman)
RUNNERS UP:
The Accidental Tourist (Lawrence Kasdan)
Akira (Katsuhiro Otomo)
Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie (Marcel Ophuls)
Eight Men Out (John Sayles)
My Neighbor Totoro (Hayao Miyazaki)
The Naked Gun (David Zucker)
Another Woman (Woody Allen)
Distant Voices, Still Lives (Terence Davies)
A Handful of Dust (Charles Sturridge)
Bull Durham (Ron Shelton)
Running on Empty (Sidney Lumet)
A Cry in the Dark (Fred Schepisi)
Hairspray (John Waters)
Cane Toads: An Unnatural History (Mark Lewis)
Tucker: The Man and His Dream (Francis Ford Coppola)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (Robert Zemeckis)
Gorillas in the Mist (Michael Apted)
Torch Song Trilogy (Paul Bogart)
Frantic (Roman Polanski)
The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey (Vincent Ward)
For the record: Alice (Jan Svankmajer); 36 Fillette (Catherine Breillat); School Daze (Spike Lee); Mississippi Burning (Alan Parker); The Legend of the Holy Drinker (Ermanno Olmi); Miracle Mile (Steve De Jarnatt); Working Girl (Mike Nichols); Alice (Jan Svankmajer); Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodóvar)
To re-watch: Time of the Gypsies (Emir Kusturica); Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodóvar); A Short Film About Killing (Krzysztof Kieslowski); A Short Film About Love (Krzysztof Kieslowski); As Tears Go By (Wong kar-wai)
To see: Medea (Lars Von Trier); Landscape in the Mist (Theo Angelopoulos); Days of Eclipse (Aleksandr Sokurov); Hanussen (István Szabó); Candy Mountain (Robert Frank and Rudy Wurlitzer); Cannibal Tours (Dennis O'Rourke); Ashik Kerib (Sergei Parajanov); Little Dorrit (Christine Edzard); Dragons Forever (Sammo Hung Kam-bo); Painted Faces (Alex Law); The Big Heat (Johnny To)
In the queue: Bagdad Cafe (Percy Adlon); Little Vera (Vasili Pichul); Chocolat (Claire Denis); The Moderns (Alan Rudolph); Pascali's Island (James Dearden); Pelle the Conquerer (Bille August); The Last of England (Derek Jarman); The Wizard of Loneliness (Jenny Bowen); Lady in White (Frank LaLoggia); Hawks (Robert Ellis Miller); Emma's Shadow (Soeren Kragh-Jacobsen); Blood Relations (Graeme Campbell); Beaches (Garry Marshall); Without a Clue (Thom Eberhardt); Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (Frank Oz); The Big Blue (Luc Besson); The Lair Of The White Worm (Ken Russell)
VINTAGE RATING (1988): 6.5**
Note: I've only read about the travesty that apparently is George Sluizer's Hollywood remake of his eerie, disturbing and masterful European thriller 'The Vanishing.' The original is an uncompromising and bleak examination of a killer's slow preparation for a gruesome crime and the subsequent mindgames he plays with the victim's lover. Where the first ends darkly, the remake apparently ties up all the knots for the happy ending. Counterintuitively, Sluizer's sell-out evidently didn't help his subsequent career. I find something slightly shallow, mechanical and emotionally hollow about Philip Kaufman's movies; his painterly distance seems more suited to commercials, but 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' has a certain ersatz poetic pizzaz that balances the self importance. The South African apartheid period drama 'A World Apart' has electrifying performances by Barbara Hershey and Jodhi May, as mother and daughter, respectively.
1989 (to count)
Roger and Me (Michael Moore)
Drugstore Cowboy (Gus Van Sant)
Dekalog (Krzysztof Kieslowski)
Crimes and Misdemeanors (Woody Allen)
Enemies, a Love Story (Paul Mazursky)
Leningrad Cowboys Go America (Aki Kaurismaki)
Mystery Train (Jim Jarmusch)
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (Terry Gilliam)
Santa sangre (Alejandro Jodorowski)
sex, lies, and videotape (Steven Soderbergh)
The Architecture of Doom (Peter Cohen)
Central Park (Frederick Wiseman)
Kiki's Delivery Service (Hayao Miyazaki)
Jesus of Montreal (Denys Arcand)
Henry V (Kenneth Branagh)
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (John McNaughton)
Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee)
Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (Charlotte Zwerin)
The Icicle Thief (Ladri di Saponette) (Maurizio Nichetti)
Cinema Paradiso (Giuseppe Tornatore)
Riki-Oh (The Story of Ricky) (Ngai Kai Lam)
Freeze, Die, Come To Life (Vitali Kanevsky)
My Left Foot (Jim Sheridan)
God of Gamblers (Shen nu) (Jing Wong)
Born on the 4th of July (Oliver Stone)
Licence to Kill (John Glen)
Driving Miss Daisy (Bruce Beresford
Last Exit to Brooklyn (Ulrich Edel)
For the record: Rain Man (Barry Levinson); Monsieur Hire (Patrice Leconte); The War of the Roses (Danny DeVito); Sex and Buttered Popcorn (Sam Harrison); Steel Magnolias (Herbert Ross); Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman); Batman (Tim Burton); Sea of Love (Harold Becker); A Better Tomorrow III: Love and Death in Saigon (Tsui Hark); The Music Teacher (Gerard Corbiau); Fat Man and Little Boy (Roland Joffe)
To re-watch: The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (Peter Greenaway); Speaking Parts (Atom Egoyan); Sweetie (Jane Campion)
To see: Route One USA (Robert Kramer); Casualties of War (Brian De Palma); New Year's Day (Henry Jaglom); La Chiesa (Michele Soavi); Heathers (Michael Lehmann); How to Get Ahead in Advertising (Bruce Robinson); Cat Chaser (Abel Ferrara); Violent Cop (Takeshi Kitano); The Mighty Quinn (Carl Schenkel); The Seventh Continent (Michael Haneke); The Reincarnation of Golden Lotus (Clara Law); Pedicab Driver (Sammo Hung Kam-bo)
In the queue: The Asthenic Syndrome (Kira Muratova); Triumph of the Spirit (Robert M. Young); She-Devil (Susan Seidelman); Eat a Bowl of Tea (Wayne Wang); The Fabulous Baker Boys (Steve Kloves); Black Rain (Shohei Imamura); Valmont (Milos Forman); Scandal (Michael Caton-Jones); My Twentieth Century (Ildiko Enyedi); My Nights Are More Beautiful Than Your Days (Andrzej Zulawski); Sweetie (Jane Campion) 1989; Cheap Shots (Jeff Ureles, Jerry Stoeffhaas); That's Adequate (Harry Hurwitz); Look Back in Anger (Judi Dench/TV); Heavy Petting (Obie Benz, Joshua Waletzky); The Fabulous Baker Boys (Steve Kloves); Dead Calm (Phillip Noyce)
VINTAGE RATING (1989): 7**
Note: 'Last Exit to Brooklyn' (runner up) is one of the grimiest and grimmest films I've ever seen--relentless, uncompromising and depressing. I'm pretty sure I hated it, but have never shaken it from my head. It made many top ten lists including Ebert's, and still holds much critical cred, so I haven't given up on it yet. A second viewing could be the breakthrough, though Edel reminds me a little too much of another filmmaker I find hard to stomach: Abel Ferrara. Giuseppe Tornatore's easy-to-take bit of nostalgia and movie worship 'Cinema Paradiso' became the template for the ideal Miramax foreign import of the '90s--intelligent, painterly, cute and wistful without being too cerebral. Many confused it for a cinematic masterpiece, as they would with the similarly beloved 'Life is Beautiful' nearly 10 years later. The success of it and of similar spawn more or less killed the chances for American distribution of challenging or innovative foreign fare thereafter. Kindred spirits Jim Jarmusch and Aki Kaurismaki share an uncannily mutual artistic aesthetic, so not surprisingly each made funny and haunting homages to the spirit of rock n' roll: 'Mystery Train' and 'Leningrad Cowboys Go America,' each presenting a skewed and vivid eye on the American scene. Another eye on America was offered by Frederick Wiseman, continuing his prolific four-decade career effort to document the nation in 'Central Park,' a three-hour, detached cinema verite' of unnarrated sights and sounds of New York City. Most people will bail on any Wiseman film after a few minutes, and this one may be his slowest ever. It's also a beautiful record that will probably be cherished 100 years from now.
1990 (88)
The Nasty Girl (Michael Verhoeven)
An Angel at My Table (Jane Campion)
Paris is Burning (Jennie Livingston)
La Discrete (Christian Vincent)
Reversal of Fortune (Barbet Schroeder)
Metropolitan (Whit Stillman)
The Match Factory Girl (Aki Kaurismaki)
The Russia House (Fred Schepisi)
Miller's Crossing (Joel Coen)
White Hunter, Black Heart (Clint Eastwood)
RUNNERS UP (alphabetical order):
The Godfather, Part III (Francis Coppola)
Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese)
The Handmaid's Tale (Volker Schlondorff)
Henry and June (Philip Kaufman)
Ju Dou (Zhang Yimou, Yang Fengliang)
The Last Butterfly (Karel Kachyna)
Life is Sweet (Mike Leigh)
Mr. and Mrs. Bridge (Paul Newman)
My Mother's Castle (Yves Robert)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (Tom Stoppard)
Sure Fire (Jon Jost)
A Tale of Springtime (Conte de printemps) (Eric Rohmer)
Vincent and Theo (Robert Altman)
Wild at Heart (David Lynch)
Honorable Mention: The Civil War (Ken Burns) (TV)
For the record: Dances with Wolves (Kevin Costner); Edward Scissorhands (Tim Burton); Jacob's Ladder (Adrian Lyne); Sink or Swim (Su Friedrich); Pretty Woman (Garry Marshall); Dreams (Akira Kurosawa); After Dark, My Sweet (James Foley); La Femme Nikita (Luc Besson); All the Vermeers in New York (Jon Jost); Farewell China (Clara Law); Total Recall (Paul Verhoeven); Tongues Untied (Marlon Riggs); To Sleep With Anger (Charles Burnett); The Disenchanted (Benoît Jacquot); (many more)
To re-watch: King of New York (Abel Ferrara)
To see: Strangers in Good Company (Cynthia Scott); Trust (Hal Hartley); Close Up (Abbas Kiarostami); Eating (Henry Jaglom); Daddy Nostalgia (Bertrand Tavernier); Berkeley in the Sixties (Mark Kitchell); Bonfire of the Vanities (Brian De Palma); The Hot Spot (Dennis Hopper); Texasville (Peter Bogdanovich); Nouvelle Vague (Jean Luc Godard); Queen of Temple Street (Lawrence Ah Mon); The Little Gangster (Jacques Doillon); Miami Blues (George Armitage); No, Or The Vain Glory Of Command (Manoel de Oliveira); The Second Circle (Krug vtoroy) (Aleksandr Sokurov); Journey of Hope (Xavier Koller)
In the queue: The Ages of Lulu (Bigas Luna); Toto le heros (Jaco van Dormeal); Without You I'm Nothing (John Boskovich); May Fools (Louis Malle); Everybody's Fine (Giuseppe Tornatore); My Father's Glory (Yves Robert); Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (Pedro Almodovar); Postcards From the Edge (Mike Nichols); The Reflecting Skin (Philip Ridley); A Shock to the System (Jan Egleson); Joe vs. the Volcano (John Patrick Shanley); Dark Man (Sam Raimi)
VINTAGE RATING (1990): 8.5***
Note: Overall film quality seemed already on the upswing in 1989, and 1990 followed the trend, thanks to the Disney company's renewed vigor as well as the powerful emergence of Sundance and the indie scene and strong prestige productions from Hollywood. An eclectic and strong body of international work also bode well for the coming decade. The big omission here is 'Dances With Wolves.' I didn't care for it (contemporary attitudes overlaid on the past often bothers me), but may have to give it another viewing just to be fair. On the other end, we have E. Elias Merhige's uber-weird art movie, Begotten; which I can't describe, but which gets points for making an indelible mark.
1991 (83)
A Woman's Tale (Paul Cox)
Slacker (Richard Linklater)
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (Fax Bahr,
Eleanor Coppola, George Hickenlooper)
Delicatessen (Marc Caro, Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
JFK (Oliver Stone)
Jacquot (Jacquot de Nantes) (Agnes Varda)
The Man in the Moon (Robert Mulligan)
Impromptu (James Lapine)
The Indian Runner (Sean Penn)
RUNNERS UP:
City of Hope (John Sayles)
Agantuk (The Stranger) (Satyajit Ray)
Madonna: Truth or Dare (Alek Keshishian, Mark Aldo Miceli)
Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio (Ken Burns)
All the Mornings of the World (Alain Corneau)
Barton Fink (Joel Cohen)
Beauty and the Beast (Gary Trousdale, Kirk Wise)
The Fisher King (Terry Gilliam)
Deadly Currents (Simcha Jacobovici)
The Prince of Tides (Barbra Streisand)
Europa (Zentropa) (Lars Von Trier)
Dogfight (Nancy Savoca)
Night on Earth (Jim Jarmusch)
Once a Thief (John Woo)
Kafka (Steven Soderbergh)
A Little Stiff (Caveh Zahedi)
Prospero's Books (Peter Greenaway)
A Midnight Clear (Stuart Gordon)
Chameleon Street (Wendell B. Harris Jr.)
Niaz (The Need) (Alireza Davoudnejad)
The Doors (Oliver Stone)
For the record: La Belle Noiseuse (Jacques Rivette); Dead Again (Kenneth Branagh); Cape Fear (Martin Scorsese); The Lovers on the Bridge (Les Amants du Pont-Neuf) (Leos Carax); My Own Private Idaho (Gus Van Sant); The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme); Thelma and Louise (Ridley Scott); Terminator 2: Judgement Day (James Cameron); Boyz N the Hood (John Singleton), Night and Day (Chantal Ackerman); The Rapture (Michael Tolkin); Until the End of the World (Wim Wenders); Days of Being Wild (Wong Kar Wai); Bugsy (Barry Levison); Homicide (David Mamet); Oscar (John Landis); New Jack City (Mario Van Peebles); Defending Your Life (Albert Brooks); etc.
To re-watch: Raise the Red Lantern (Zhang Yimou)
To see: Life on a String (Chen Kaige); 35 Up (Michael Apted); Toto le heros (Jaco van Dormael); Proof (Jocelyn Moorhouse); Rhapsody in August (Akira Kurosawa); Idiot (Mani Kaul); La Mujer del puerto (Woman of the Port) (Arturo Ripstein); Hangin' With the Homeboys (Joseph P. Vasquez); And Life Goes On... (Abbas Kiarostami); Van Gogh (Maurice Pialat); High Heels (Pedro Almodóvar); Urga (Close to Eden) (Nikita Mikhalkov); A Scene at the Sea (Takeshi Kitano); J' entends plus la guitare (Philippe Garrel); Paris s'eveille (Olivier Assayas); Surviving Desire (Hal Hartley); Kasba (Kumar Shahani); The Commitments (Alan Parker); The Other (Bernard Giraudeau); Swordsman II (Siu-Tung Ching and Stanley Tong); The Fall of Otar (Ardak Amirkulov); Antonia and Jane (Beeban Kidron); Billy Bathgate (Robert Benton); Mississippi Masala (Mira Nair); Rush (Lili Fini Zanuck); Daughters of the Dust (Julie Dash); Vacas (Cows) (Julio Medem); Sango Malo (Bassek Ba Kobhio); North on Evers (James Benning); Lamhe (Yash Chopra); Once Upon a Time in China (Tsui Hark); L.A. Story (Mick Jackson); Lyrical Nitrate (Peter Delpeut); Hear My Song (Peter Chelsom); Alias 'La Gringa' (Alberto Durant)
In the queue: A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang); Homo Faber (Volker Schlondorff); Merci la vie (Bertrand Blier); Volere Volare (Maurizio Nichetti, Guido Manuli); Mediterraneo (Gabriele Salvatores); The Double Life of Veronique (Krzysztof Kieslowski); What About Bob? (Frank Oz); Switch (Blake Edwards); Liebestraum (Mike Figgis); London Kills Me (Hanif Kureishi); Regarding Henry (Mike Nichols); Shattered (Wolfgang Petersen); A Kiss Before Dying (James Dearden); Flight of the Intruder (John Milius); The Conviction (Marco Bellocchio); Point Break (Kathryn Bigelow); Poison (Todd Haynes); Johnny Stecchino (Roberto Benigni)
VINTAGE RATING (1991): 7.5
Note: 'Black Robe' is one of the finest movies of the last quarter century, certainly the best I've ever seen about the colonizing of the continent and the sense of mystery and danger of the first contacts between whites and Indians. Perhaps someday the critics and scholars who set the cinema canon will come to realize it. Paul Cox's profoundly moving examination of a dying woman, 'A Woman's Tale,' is one of the bravest films I've ever seen. Both of these films, coincidentally, are made by two of Australia's best directors. It's really a toss-up between them for my top spot. Fuck Jacques Rivette for making me sit through a four-hour movie ("La Belle Noiseuse"/For the record) about the creation of a painting and not letting me see it. (I know I miss the point; so what? It's still four hours of my life.)
1992 (92)
The Crying Game (Neil Jordan)
Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media
(Mark Achbar, Peter Wintonick)
Husbands and Wives (Woody Allen)
Centre Stage (The Actress) (Stanley Kwan)
The Lover (Jean-Jacques Annaud)
Brother's Keeper (Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky)
A Brief History of Time (Errol Morris)
These Hands (Flora M'mbugu-Schelling)
Glengarry Glen Ross (James Foley)
Naked Killer (Clarence Fok Yiu-leung)
Red Rock West (John Dahl)
RUNNERS UP:
Man Bites Dog (Remy Belvaux, Andre Bonzel, Benoit Poelvoorde)
Singles (Cameron Crowe)
Rock Hudson's Home Movies (Mark Rappaport)
The Last of the Mohicans (Michael Mann)
Conte d'hiver (A Tale of Winter) (Eric Rohmer)
A Few Good Men (Rob Reiner)
Careful (Guy Maddin)
The Panama Deception (Barbara Trent)
Strictly Ballroom (Baz Luhrmann)
The Long Day Closes (Terence Davies)
Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer (Nick Broomfield)
Daens (Stijn Coninx)
Police Story 3 (aka, Supercop) (Stanley Tong)
One False Move (Carl Franklin)
Bad Lieutenant (Abel Ferrara)
Indochine (Regis Wargnier)
For the record: Lessons of Darkness (Werner Herzog); Rebels of the Neon God (Ming-liang Tsai); Under Siege (Andrew Davis); Wayne's World (Penelope Spheeris); The Hairdresser's Husband (Patrice Leconte); Like Water for Chocolate (Alfonso Arau); A River Runs Through It (Robert Redford); The Waterdance (Neal Jimenez, Michael Steinberg); The Living End (Gregg Araki); Savage Nights (Cyril Collard); The Oak (Lucian Pintilie); The Best Intentions (Bille August); The Last Days of Chez Nous (Gillian Armstrong); Gas, Food Lodging (Allison Anders)
To re-watch: Damage (Louis Malle); Luna Park (Pavel Lungin); Romper Stomper (Geoffrey Wright)
To see: Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies Under America (Craig Baldwin); Another Girl Another Planet (Michael Almereyda); El sol del membrillo (The Dream of Light/The Quince Tree Sun) (Victor Erice); In the Land of the Deaf (Nicolas Philibert); Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (David Lynch); Venice/Venice (Henry Jaglom); Little Noises (Jane Spencer); Baraka (Ron Fricke); Raising Cain (Brian De Palma); The Stolen Children (Gianni Amelio); Dead Alive (Peter Jackson); The Second Heimat (Edgar Reitz); A Heart in Winter (Claude Sautet); Kairat (Darezhan Omirbayev); The Last Bolshevik (Chris Marker); Guelwaar (Ousmane Sembene); Laws of Gravity (Nick Gomez); The Public Eye (Howard Franklin); Deep Cover (Bill Duke); Benny's Video (Michael Haneke); Betty (Claude Chabrol); Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (Shinya Tsukamoto); Swoon (Tom Kalin); A Place in the World (Un lugar en el mundo) (Adolfo Aristarain); 89 mm od Europy (89mm from Europe) (Marcel Lozinski)
In the queue: Lorenzo's Oil (George Miller); Tokyo Decadence (Ryu Murakami); Quartier Mozart (Jean-Pierre Bekolo); Olivier Olivier (Agnieszka Holland); The Long Day Closes (Terence Davies; to re-watch); La Vie de Boheme (Aki Kaurismaki)
VINTAGE RATING (1992): 7.5
Notes: 'These Hands' is an African documentary about the worst kind of Third World drudgery, done with slow pans a la Andrei Tarkovsky. Simple, but poetic and powerful. No, "My Cousin Vinny" is not on here. Yes, I've seen it. Yes, Marisa Tomei was cute. I'm not sure who Regis Wargnier is, or why he gets such big budgets, but so far I haven't been too impressed by his lovely but conventional trans-hemispheric epics, including "Indochine" (runner up), but it's good enough as such things go and won a lot of awards, including an AA.
1993 (89)
The Remains of the Day (James Ivory)
Dazed and Confused (Richard Linklater)
32 Short Films About Glenn Gould (Francois Girard)
Menace II Society (Allen and Albert Hughes)
Blue (Three Colors: Blue) (Krzysztof Kieslowski)
King of the Hill (Steven Soderbergh)
Carlito's Way (Brian De Palma)
Six Degrees of Separation (Fred Schepisi)
Iron Monkey (Yuen Woo-ping)
The Age of Innocence (Martin Scorsese)
RUNNERS UP:
The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl (Ray Muller)
Backbeat (Iain Softley)
In the Name of the Father (Jim Sheridan)
Blue (Derek Jarman)
The Cement Garden (Andrew Birkin)
Ruby In Paradise (Victor Nunez)
Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis)
Farewell My Concubine (Chen Kaige)
My Favorite Season (Andre Techine)
Shadowlands (Richard Attenborough)
Mein Krieg (Harriet Eder, Thomas Kufus)
Eye of Vichy (Claude Chabrol)
Fong Sai-Yuk (Corey Yuen)
What's Eating Gilbert Grape (Lasse Hallstrom)
The War Room (Chris Hegedus, D.A. Pennebaker)
Short Cuts (Robert Altman)
Manhattan Murder Mystery (Woody Allen)
A Perfect World (Clint Eastwood)
It's All True (Bill Krohn, Myron Meisel w/Orson Welles' footage)
Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey (Steven M. Martin)
The Blue Kite (Zhuangzhuang Tian)
The Piano (Jane Campion)
Rocking Poponguine (Twist a Popenguine) (Moussa Sene Absa)
Kalifornia (Dominic Sena)
Helas pour moi (Jean-Luc Godard)
In the Line of Fire (Wolfgang Petersen)
The Bride with White Hair (Ronny Yu)
True Romance (Tony Scott)
Wallace & Gromit in The Wrong Trousers (Nick Park)
Gettysburg (Ronald F. Maxwell)
For the record: Boxing Helena (Jennifer Chambers Lynch); My Life and Times with Antonin Artaud (Gerard Mordillat); Cafe au lait (Matthieu Kassovitz); Stalingrad (Joseph Vilsmaier); Sommersby (Jon Amiel); Matinee (Joe Dante); Sonatine (Takeshi Kitano); The Snapper (Stephen Frears); Remains of a Woman (Clarence Ford (Fok Yiu-Leung); Ethan Frome (John Madden); Caro Diario (Nanni Moretti); The Untold Story: Human Meat Roast Pork Buns (Danny Lee, Herman Yau)
To re-watch: The Scent of Green Papaya (Tran Anh Hung); Love & Human Remains (Denys Arcand)
To see: The Bed You Sleep In (Jon Jost); Bad Behaviour (Les Blair); Dangerous Game (Abel Ferrara); Mercedes (Yousry Nasrallah); Latcho Drom (Tony Gatlif); Totally F***ed Up (Gregg Araki); Being Human (Bill Forsyth); Bhaji on the Beach (Gurinder Chadha); What's Love Got to Do With It (Brian Gibson); Map of the Human Heart (Vincent Ward); The Red Squirrel (Julio Medem); Dottie Gets Spanked (Todd Haynes); Cronos (Guillermo del Toro); Madadayo (Akira Kurosawa); Executioners (Ching Siu-Tung, Johnny To); Once a Cop (Stanley Tong); Germinal (Claude Berri); Anna (Nikita Mikhalkov); Body of Evidence (Uli Edel)
In the queue: D'Est (Chantal Akerman); Le Journal de Lady M (Alain Tanner); Raining Stones (Ken Loach); Mi Vida Loca (Allison Anders); The Joy Luck Club (Wayne Wang); Kika (Pedro Almodovar); Sliver (Phillip Noyce); Alive (Frank Marshall); Little Buddha (Bernardo Bertolucci)
VINTAGE RATING (1993): 8.5***
Note: There are two films named 'Blue' this year, and both -- to say the least -- are not for all tastes. Chen Kaige's robust period epic of the Chinese opera, 'Farewell My Concubine' is probably the most accessible of the acclaimed '90s dramas to come from China. Spielberg's "Schindler's List" is not by any stretch the best film of the year. I'd say there at least 20 movies ahead of it. And Eastern European filmmakers covered this ground, better, in the 1960s.
1994 (98)
Ashes of Time (Wong Kar-wai)
C’est la vie, mon cherie (Tung-Shing Yee)
Speed (Jan de Bont)
Cobb (Ron Shelton)
For the record: Through the Olive Trees (Abbas Kiarostami); The Shawshank Redemption (Frank Darabont); Blue Sky (Tony Richardson); Farinelli (Gerard Corbiau); Forrest Gump (Robert Zemeckis); Natural Born Killers (Oliver Stone); Nell (Michael Apted); Oleanna (David Mamet); L'Enfer (Claude Chabrol); Blue Sky (Tony Richardson); I Can't Sleep (Claire Denis); Amateur (Hal Hartley)
To see: Starting Place/Point de départ (Robert Kramer); Serial Mom (John Waters); Casa de Lava (Pedro Costa); Crooklyn (Spike Lee); Boy Meets Girl (Ray Brady); Wing Chun (Yuen Woo-Ping); Cold Water (Olivier Assayas); An Unforgettable Summer (Lucian Pintilie); Faust (Jan Svankmajer); He's a Woman, She's a Man (Peter Chan, Chi Lee); The Day the Sun Turned Cold (Yim Ho); Burnt By the Sun (Nikita Mikhalkov); Eat, Drink, Man, Woman (Ang Lee); Lisbon Story (Wim Wenders); The Cow (Krava) (Karel Kachyna); Joan the Maid (parts 1 & 2) (Jacques Rivette); Keita! Voice of the Griot (Keita! L'héritage du griot) (Dani Kouyate); Three Tales from Senegal (compilation of shorts: Le Franc; Picc Mi; Fary l'Anesse) (Djibril Diop Mambety, Mansour Sora Wade)
In the queue: Satantango (Bela Tarr); The Tit and the Moon (Bigas Luna); The Mystery of Rampo (Rintaro Mayuzumi, Kazuyoshi Okuyama); Red Firecracker, Green Firecracker (Ping He); In the Mouth of Madness (John Carpenter); Il Postino (Michael Radford); The Low Life (George Hickenlooper); Clear and Present Danger (Phillip Noyce); The Great Conqueror's Concubine (Stephen Shin, Clara Law); Disclosure (Barry Levinson); Color of Night (Richard Rush); China Moon (John Bailey)
VINTAGE RATING (1994): 9
Note: 1994 is the best film year of the decade, and one of the best in a generation. Wonderful indies all up and down the board -- Tarantino's especially -- give Hollywood a needed kick in the pants. As per the usual cycle, though, Tinseltown would overreact, backing all kinds of young directors offering pseudo-edgy violent fare in an attempt to regenerate the Tarantino electricity. Wong kar-wai's "Ashes of Time' (runner up, bottom) is hopelessly confusing, but is arguably the decade's most beautifully photographed film.
1995 (100)
The Gate of Heavenly Peace (Richard Gordon, Carma Hinton)
Spin (Brian Springer)
Hate (La Haine) (Mathieu Kassovitz)
Kicking and Screaming (Noah Baumbach)
Fallen Angels (Duoluo tianshi) (Wong Kar-wai)
Se7en (David Fincher)
A Single Girl (La Fille seule) (Benoit Jacquot)
Welcome to the Dollhouse (Todd Solondz)
Dead Man Walking (Tim Robbins)
RUNNERS UP:
The Bridges of Madison County (Clint Eastwood)
Nixon (Oliver Stone)
A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (Martin Scorsese)
Casino (Martin Scorsese)
Murder of the Century (Carl Charlson/TV)
From the Journals of Jean Seberg (Mark Rappaport)
Living in Oblivion (Tom DeCillo)
Rendezvous in Paris (Eric Rohmer)
To Die For (Gus Van Sant)
The Underneath (Steven Soderbergh)
Nelly & Monsieur Arnaud (Claude Sautet)
Smoke (Wayne Wang)
Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam (Nick Broomfield)
Get Shorty (Barry Sonnenfeld)
Ghost in the Shell (Mamoru Oshii)
Angels and Insects (Philip Haas)
Notes from Underground (Gary Walkow)
Toy Story (John Lasseter)
Sense and Sensibility (Ang Lee)
Mighty Aphrodite (Woody Allen)
I Just Wasn't Made For These Times (Don Was)
A Little Princess (Alfonso Cuaron)
Land and Freedom (Kenneth Loach)
Heat (Michael Mann)
The White Balloon (Jafar Panahi)
Babe (Chris Noonan)
Rumble in the Bronx (Hong faan kui) (Stanley Tong)
Beyond Rangoon (John Boorman)
Apollo 13 (Ron Howard)
Deseret (James Benning)
For the record: An Awfully Big Adventure (Mike Newell); Braveheart (Mel Gibson); Devil in a Blue Dress (Carl Franklin); Empire Records (Allan Moyle); Carrington (Christopher Hampton); Leaving Las Vegas (Mike Figgis); Heavy (James Mangold); Antonia's Line (Marleen Gorris); The Convent (Manoel de Oliveira); La Ceremonie (Claude Chabrol); Jefferson in Paris (James Ivory); A Walk in the Clouds (Alfonso Arau); Restoration (Michael Hoffman); The Usual Suspects (Bryan Singer); Outbreak (Wolfgang Peterson); Funny Bones (Peter Chelsom); Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam (Nick Broomfield); Jupiter's Wife (Michel Negroponte); Gamera: The Guardian of the Universe (Shusuke Kaneko); Underground (Emir Kusturica); Safe (Todd Haynes); Showgirls (Paul Verhoeven); The Addiction (Abel Ferrara); Antonia's Line (Marleen Gorris); The Brothers McMullen (Edward Burns); Dead Presidents (Albert and Allen Hughes); etc.
To re-watch: Safe (Todd Haynes); The Addiction (Abel Ferrara)
Lumpy Gravy Award for Worst Movie of the Century (1995 edition): The Convent (Manoel de Oliveira)
To see: Good Men, Good Women (Hou Hsiao-hsien); Whisper of the Heart (Yoshifumi Kondo); Waati (Souleymane Cissé); Love Letter (Shunji Iwai); American Job (Chris Smith); Les Miserables (Claude Lelouch); Up Down Fragile (Jacques Rivette); JLG/JLG (Jean-Luc Godard); Salaam Cinema (Mohsen Makhmalbaf), Like Grains of Sand (Ryosuke Hashiguchi); Wild Bill (Walter Hill); L'Appat (Bertrand Tavernier), Getting Any? (Takeshi Kitano); Rangeela (Ram Gopal Varma); Spiritual Voices (Aleksandr Sokurov); Le Garcu (Maurice Pialat); Institute Benjamenta... (Quay Brothers); The Young Poisoner's Handbook (Benjamin Ross); The Flor Contemplacion Story (Joel Lamangan)
In the queue: The Neon Bible (Terence Davies); Picture Bride (Kayo Hatta); Bombay (Mani Ratnam); To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything Julie Newmar (Beeban Kidron); TenBenny (Nothing to Lose) (Eric Bross); Open Season (Robert Wuhl); My Family (Gregory Nava); The Prophecy (Gregory Widen);`Species (Roger Donaldson); Indictment: The McMartin Trial (Mick Jackson); Flirt (Hal Hartley); The Doom Generation (Gregg Araki)
VINTAGE RATING (1995): 7.5****
Big Night (Stanley Tucci, Campbell Scott)
My Sex Life...or How I Got Into An Argument (Arnaud Desplechin)
When We Were Kings (Leon Gast)
Lone Star (John Sayles)
The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century
(Carl Byker, Lyn Goldfarb, et. al., TV)
Les Voleurs (Thieves) (Andre Techine)
Bound (Andy & Larry Wachowski)
Everyone Says I Love You (Woody Allen)
I Shot Andy Warhol (Mary Harron)
Secrets and Lies (Mike Leigh)
Citizen Ruth (Alexander Payne)
Waiting For Guffman (Christopher Guest)
The West (Stephen Ives/TV)
Box of Moonlight (Tom DeCillo)
Shall We Dansu? (Shall We Dance?) (Masayuki Suo)
Female Perversions (Susan Strietfield)
The Cable Guy (Ben Stiller)
The Daytrippers (Greg Mottola)
Chronicle of a Disappearance (Elia Suleiman)
Bottle Rocket (Wes Anderson)
The Portrait of a Lady (Jane Campion)
Swingers (Doug Liman)
Fear and Favor in the Newsroom (Beth Sanders)
Trainspotting (Danny Boyle)
When the Cat's Away (Cedric Klapisch)
Trees Lounge (Steve Buscemi
Conspirators of Pleasure (Jan Svankmajer)
The People vs. Larry Flynt (Milos Forman)
The Line King: The Al Hirschfeld Story (Susan Warms Dryfoos)
The Crucible (Nicholas Hytner)
Kingpin (Peter Farrelly, Bobby Farrelly)
La Promesse (Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne)
Hamsun (Jan Troell)
Prisoner of the Mountains (Sergei Bodrov)
Capitaine Conan (Bertrand Tavernier)
Microcosmos (Claude Nuridsany, Marie Perennou)
Jude (Michael Winterbottom)
Jazz '34 (Robert Altman's Jazz '34) (Robert Altman)
Flirting With Disaster (David O. Russell)
Hard Eight (Paul Thomas Anderson)
A Time to Kill (Joel Schumacher)
The English Patient (Anthony Minghella)
Looking for Richard (Al Pacino)
Breaking the Waves (Lars von Trier)
Beaumarchais the Scoundrel (Edouard Molinaro)
Gray's Anatomy (Steven Soderbergh)
Children of the Revolution (Peter Duncan)
Small Faces (Gilles McKinnon)
Basquiat (Julian Schnabel)
Hype! (Doug Pray)
For the record: Will it Snow for Christmas? (Sandrine Veysset); Ransom (Ron Howard); Bastard Out of Carolina (Anjelica Huston); Irma Vep (Olivier Assayas); Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky); Mission: Impossible (Brian De Palma); Good Will Hunting (Gus Van Sant); Fargo (Joel Coen); Kansas City (Robert Altman); Kolya (Jan Sverak); Sling Blade (Billy Bob Thornton); Black Mask (Daniel Lee); The Funeral (Abel Ferrara); Nenette et Boni (Claire Denis); Lumiere and Company (David Lynch, et. al); Gabbeh (Mohsen Makhmalbaf); Crash (David Cronenberg); The Pillow Book (Peter Greenaway)
To re-watch: Mon homme (My Man) (Bertrand Blier); The Funeral (Abel Ferrara); Crash (David Cronenberg); Schizopolis (Steven Soderbergh); Ponette (Jacques Doillon)
To see: Beyond Silence (Jenseits der Stille) (Caroline Link); Bitter Sugar (Leon Ichaso); Carla's Song (Ken Loach); Color of a Brisk and Leaping Day (Christopher Munch); The Delicate Art of the Rifle (D.W. Harper); The Delta (Ira Sachs); Drifting Clouds (Aki Kaurismäki); Eastern Elegy (Aleksandr Sokurov); Encore (Pascal Bonitzer); Forgotten Silver (Peter Jackson); Get on the Bus (Spike Lee); A Girl Called Rosemarie (Das Mädchen Rosemarie) (Bernd Eichinger); God of Cookery (Stephen Chow and Lik-Chi Lee); Killer Condom (Martin Walz); Kissed (Lynne Stopkewich); Lilies (John Grayson); Mahjong (Edward Yang); Mahjong (Edward Yang); A Moment of Innocence (Mohsen Makhmalbaf); Non-Stop (Hiroyuki Tanaka); Perfect Love (Catherine Breillat); A Summer’s Tale (Eric Rohmer); Three Lives & Only One Death (Raul Ruiz)
In the queue: That Thing You Do! (Tom Hanks); Tierra (Julio Medem); The Long Kiss Goodnight (Renny Harlin); Michael Collins (Neil Jordan); Moll Flanders (Pen Densham); Night Falls on Manhattan (Sidney Lumet); My Fellow Americans (Peter Segal); Broken Arrow (John Woo); Evita (Alan Parker); Bad Moon (Eric Red)
VINTAGE RATING (1996): 6.5****
Note: 1996 continues the decline in overall quality that began in 1995, and is one of the weakest years of the decade. Still, there's plenty to enjoy, and the American indie scene is still vibrant, as evinced by audacious films like Alexander Payne's 'Citizen Ruth' and a slew of similarly quirky low-budget comedies such as 'Waiting for Guffman, 'Bottle Rocket,' 'The Daytrippers,' 'Box of Moonlight,' 'Swingers' and 'Flirting With Disaster.'
'My Sex Life...' is a bit of a train wreck as far as three-hour epic French talkfests go, but the flavorful moments are tasty and numerous enough to add up a memorable evening's viewing. Think 'Mother and the Whore' meets 'Metropolitan' and you get some idea of what to expect. It was at the top of my list until I fessed up and admitted that 'Big Night' is vastly more fun.
1997 (129)
Hands on a Hardbody, the Documentary (S.R. Bindler)
Public Housing (Frederick Wiseman);
Love and Death on Long Island (Richard Kwietniowski)
Affliction (Paul Schrader)
Little Dieter Needs to Fly (Werner Herzog)
The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers'
Struggle (Rick Tejada-Flores, Ray Telles)
Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist
(Kirby Dick)
The Butcher Boy (Neil Jordan)
Happy Together (Wong Kar-wai)
Fast, Cheap and Out of Control (Errol Morris)
Who the Hell Is Juliette? (Carlos Marcovich)
The Boxer (Jim Sheridan)
Cadillac Desert (Jon Else, Linda Harrar/TV)
Clockwatchers (Jill Sprecher)
The Tango Lesson (Sally Potter)
Message to Love: The Isle of Wight Festival (Murray Lerner)
Jackie Brown (Quentin Tarantino)
Waco: The Rules of Engagement (William Gazecki)
Unmade Beds (Nicholas Barker)
I Went Down (Paddy Breathnach)
The Crazy Stranger (Tony Gatlif)
The Big One (Michael Moore)
In the Company of Men (Neil LaBute)
Chasing Amy (Kevin Smith)
Blood and Wine (Bob Rafelson)
Fairytale: A True Story (Charles Sturridge)
4 Little Girls (Spike Lee)
Bad Manners (Jonathan Kaufer)
Soul in the Hole (Danielle Gardner)
Eye of God (Tim Blake Nelson)
The Ad and the Ego (Harold Boihem)
Contact (Robert Zemeckis)
East Side Story (Dana Ranga)
U-Turn (Oliver Stone)
Ma vie en rose (Alain Berliner)
Mrs. Brown (John Madden)
Smilla's Sense of Snow (Bille August)
Gattaca (Andrew Niccol)
I Know What You Did Last Summer (Jim Gillespie)
For the record: She's So Lovely (Nick Cassavetes); Taste of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami); Absolute Power (Clint Eastwood); As Good as it Gets (James L. Brooks); L.A. Confidential (Curtis Hanson); The Full Monty (Peter Cattaneo); The Spanish Prisoner (David Mamet); Washington Square (Agnieszka Holland); Wag the Dog (Barry Levinson); Princess Mononoke (Hayao Miyazaki); Eve’s Bayou (Kasi Lemmons); Pretty as a Picture: The Art of David Lynch (Toby Keeler); Starship Troopers (Paul Verhoeven); more
To see: Cure (Kiyoshi Kurosawa); Men with Guns (John Sayles); Ulee's Gold (Victor Nunez); Deja Vu (Henry Jaglom); Histoire(s) du cinéma (Jean-Luc Godard); Life of Jesus (Bruno Dumont); Live Flesh (Pedro Almodovar); The Mirror (Jafar Panahi); Nowhere (Gregg Araki); Oscar and Lucinda (Gillian Armstrong); Regeneration (Gillies MacKinnon); The Silver Screen: Color Me Lavender (Mark Rappaport); Mumia Abu-Jamal: A Case for Reasonable Doubt? (John Edginton); Same Old Song (Alain Resnais); Winter Sleepers (Tom Tykwer); Fragments: Jerusalem (Ron Havilio); Love Walked In (Juan Jose Campanella)
In the queue: Open Your Eyes (Abre los ojos) (Alejandro Amenabar); The Fruit is Swelling (Chin Man Kei); The Winter Guest (Alan Rickman); The End of Violence (Wim Wenders); Mrs. Dalloway (Marleen Gorris); Sudden Manhattan (Adrienne Shelly); A Life Less Ordinary (Danny Boyle); The Relic (Peter Hyams); Seven Years in Tibet (Jean-Jacques Annaud); Face/Off (John Woo); The Devil's Advocate (Taylor Hackford); Bandits (Katja von Garnier)
Note: 1997 is a fantastic year for indies, especially documentaries. 'The Sweet Hereafter' is an emotionally ambitious townie epic about a community seemingly frozen in grief. I'm not sure where I stand on it, but have listed it while I work through the issues in my head. There's no clearly superior film this year, but the video-film home-movie documentary 'Hands on a Hardbody' provided me the most intensely memorable experience in this bunch--though its impact now may be blunted by the glut of competitive-style reality TV shows. It, and Harmony Korine's 'Gummo' are just about the only movies of recent vintage that provide disturbingly accurate views of Bible Belt mindsets. 'Gattaca' (runner up) was on pace to be a great sci-fi film, but blew it by trying to peddle off as poetic an audience-pandering ending. "I Know What You Did Last Summer" was my guilty pleasure of the year. I was actually moved by the kids' feelings of guilt.
VINTAGE RATING (1997): 8****
Richter the Enigma (Bruno Monsaingeon)
The Celebration (Festen) (Thomas Vinterberg)
The Hole (Dong) (Tsai Ming-liang)
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Terry Gilliam)
A Simple Plan (Sam Raimi)
The General (John Boorman)
Your Friends & Neighbors (Neil LaBute)
Bulworth (Warren Beatty)
Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train (Patrice Chereau)
The Cruise (Bennett Miller)
The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg (Aviva Kempner)
Surviving the Dust Bowl (Chana Ghazit/TV)
Conte d'automne (Autumn Tale) (Eric Rohmer)
Show Me Love (Fucking Amal) (Lukas Moodysson)
My Name is Joe (Ken Loach)
The Opposite of Sex (Don Roos)
A Place Called Chiapas (Nettie Wild)
A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries (James Ivory)
Trance (The Eternal) (Michael Almereyda)
Primary Colors (Mike Nichols)
Saving Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg)
Croupier (Mike Hodges)
Louise Brooks: Looking for Lulu (Hugh Munro Neely)
Celebrity (Woody Allen)
Shakespeare in Love (John Madden)
Run Lola Run (Tom Tykwer)
Last Night (Don McKellar)
The Big Lebowski (Joel Coen)
pi (Darren Aronofsky)
The Last Days of Disco (Whit Stillman)
The Mask of Zorro (Martin Campbell)
Out of Sight (Steven Soderbergh)
Living Out Loud (Richard LaGravenese)
The Impostors (Stanley Tucci)
American History X (Tony Kaye)
There's Something About Mary (Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly)
The Apple (Samira Makmalbaf)
I Stand Alone (Gaspar Noe)
Gia (Michael Cristofer)
Ringu (Hideo Nakata)
Windhorse (Tony Wagner)
For the record: Besieged (Bernardo Bertolucci); The Dreamlife of Angels (Erick Zonca); Rushmore (Wes Anderson); Late August, Early September (Olivier Assayas); Buffalo '66 (Vincent Gallo); Babe: Pig in the City (George Miller); Pleasantville (Gary Ross); Happiness (Tod Solondz); The Truman Show (Peter Weir); The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick); Flowers Of Shanghai (Hou Hsiao-hsien); Gods And Monsters (Bill Condon); Central Do Brasil (Walter Salles); Blade (Stephen Norrington); Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (Guy Ritchie); The Horse Whisperer (Robert Redford); The Gingerbread Man (Robert Altman); Elizabeth (Shekhar Kepur); Provocateur (Jim Donovan); Star Trek Insurrection (Jonathan Frakes); etc.
To re-watch: The Book of Life (Hal Hartley)
To see: 42 Up (Michael Apted); All the Little Animals (Jeremy Thomas); Another Day in Paradise (Larry Clark); Antz (Eric Darnell); A Bug's Life (John Lasseter); Dr. Akagi (Shohei Imamura); Hideous Kinky (Gilles MacKinnon); The Idiots (Idioterne) (Lars von Trier); The Inheritors (Stefan Ruzowitzky); Inquietude (Manoel de Oliveira); The Last Days (James Moll); The Legend of 1900 (Giuseppe Tornatore); Life on Earth (La vie sur terre) (Abderrahmane Sissako); Lovers of the Arctic Circle (Julio Medem); The Power of Kangwon Province (Hong Sang-soo); Sitcom (Francois Ozon); The Silence (Mohsen Makhmalbaf)
In the queue: Khrustalyov, My Car! (Alexei Germain); The Third Reich in Color (Michael Kloft); A Bright Shining Lie (Terry George); Such a Long Journey (Sturla Gunnarsson); My Name is Joe (Ken Loach); Black Cat, White Cat (Emir Kusturica); The Newton Boys (Richard Linklater); Palmetto (Volker Schlondorff); Wadd: The Life & Times of John C. Holmes (Wesley Emerson, Alan Smithee)
VINTAGE RATING (1998): 8****
Note: Spielberg's 'Saving Private Ryan' proves again the director's mastery of emotional manipulation, thus very powerful while it's on but not very resonant--for me, anyway--once over. I feel cheated too when it turns out all that hardship was endured to rescue smarmy Matt Damon. Conversely, all the films listed above it turned out to have special, lasting merit (again, for me, anyway). 'The Cruise' is an indie gem documentary about an eccentric New York bus-tour guide, with an eerie premonition in the finale about the fate of the World Trade Center. This year's quirky treasure is the Taiwanese film, 'The Hole,' yet another bleak Tsai Ming-liang urban alienation study, except that this one is helped by its wryly humorous visual ideas, charming daydream musical scenes and its vivid sense of place and mood. Jay Rosenblatt's indie avant-garde documentary essay, 'Human Remains' is novel, too, looking at the lives of Hitler, Stalin and other dictators from a wholly original perspective--humanizing them via their own bodily failings (constipation, insomnia, etc.). Stephen Soderbergh's 'Out of Sight' (runner up) might be the smartest and best-made commercial film of the year, and it probably ought to be ranked higher, but the replay factor is less to me than with the other titles listed. Personal preference...
1999 (102)
Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick)
American Movie (Chris Smith)
New York: A Documentary Film (Ric Burns)
Fight Club (David Fincher)
The Straight Story (David Lynch)
eXistenZ (David Cronenberg)
The Sixth Sense (M. Night Shyamalan)
Sound and Fury (Josh Aronson)
RUNNERS UP:
The Winslow Boy (David Mamet)
My Voyage to Italy (Martin Scorsese)
My Best Fiend (Werner Herzog)
Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. (Errol Morris)
The Thomas Crown Affair (John McTiernan)
Jesus' Son (Alison Maclean)
The Iron Giant (Brad Bird)
The Limey (Steven Soderbergh)
Sing Faster: The Stagehands' Ring Cycle (Jon Else)
The Virgin Suicides (Sofia Coppola)
Tumbleweeds (Gavin O'Connor
The End of the Affair (Neil Jordan)
Human Resources (Laurent Cantet)
Clara Bow: Discovering the It Girl (Hugh Munro Neely)
Buena Vista Social Club (Wim Wenders)
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (Jim Jarmusch)
Girl, Interrupted (James Mangold)
The Circle (Dayereh) (Jafar Panahi)
The Greeks (The Greeks: Crucible of Civilization) (Cassian Harrison) (TV)
Yi Yi (Yi yi: A One and a Two) (Edward Yang)
State and Main (David Mamet)
Amores Perros (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu)
The House of Mirth (Terence Davies)
The Heart of the World (Guy Maddin)
Joe Gould's Secret (Stanley Tucci)
Ginger Snaps (John Fawcett)
In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai)
RUNNERS UP:
The Eyes of Tammy Faye (Fenton Bailey, Randy Barbato)
La Veuve de Saint-Pierre (The Widow of Saint-Pierre) (Patrice Leconte)
Gladiator (Ridley Scott)
The Filth and the Fury (Julien Temple)
Almost Famous (Cameron Crowe)
You Can Count on Me (Kenneth Lonergan)
Innocence (Paul Cox)
Bread and Roses (Ken Loach)
Lumumba (Raoul Peck)
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee)
Wonder Boys (Curtis Hanson)
Urbania (Jon Matthews, aka Jon Shear)
Calle 54 (Fernando Trueba)
Pollock (Ed Harris)
Meet the Parents (Jay Roach)
For the record: Code Unknown (Michael Haneke); Songs from the Second Floor (Roy Andersson); Faithless (Liv Ullmann); Battle Royale (Kenji Fukasaku); Dancer in the Dark (Lars Von Trier); Erin Brockovich (Steven Soderbergh); O Brother Where Art Thou? (Joel Coen); Platform (Zhang-Ke Jia); Quills (Philip Kaufman); Requiem for a Dream (Darren Aronofsky); Traffic (Steven Soderbergh); George Washington (David Gordon Green); Shadow of the Vampire (E. Elias Merhige); U-571 (Jonathan Mostow); The Perfect Storm (Wolfgang Petersen); Pitch Black (David Twohy); Songcatcher (Maggie Greenwald); The Cell (Tarsem Singh); J.S.A. (Joint Security Area) (Chan-Wook Park); Cast Away (Robert Zemeckis); Chuck & Buck (Miguel Arteta), High Fidelity (Stephen Frears), Before Night Falls (Julian Schnabel), Unbreakable (M. Night Shyamalan); Best in Show (Christopher Guest); Waking the Dead (Keith Gordon); X-Men (Bryan Singer); Titan A.E. (Don Bluth); Girls Can't Swim (Anne-Sophie Birot); etc.
To see: Anatomie (Stefan Ruzowitzky); At the Height of Summer (Tran Anh-Hung); The Big Animal (Jerzy Stuhr); Blackboards (Iran/Samira Makhmalbaf); Boesman and Lena (John Berry); ); The Captive (Chantal Akerman); Charlie's Angels (McG); Chicken Run (Peter Lord, Nick Park); The Child and the Soldier (Seyyed Reza Mir-Karimi); Chunhyang (Im Kwon-Taek); The City of Lost Souls (Takashi Miike); Common Wealth (Alex de la Iglesia); The Day I Became a Woman (Marzieh Makhmalbaf); Devils on the Doorstep (Jiang Wen); Dinner Rush (Bob Giraldi); Esther Kahn (Arnaud Desplechin); Fighter (Amir Bar-Lev); The Gleaners and I (Agnes Varda); Gormenghast (Andy Wilson); Gulag (Angus MacQueen); Happy Accidents (Brad Anderson); Hollow Man (Paul Verhoeven); I'm The One That I Want (Lionel Coleman); La Commune (Paris 1871) (Peter Watkins); Land of the Wandering Souls (Rithy Panh); Le Gout des Autres (Agnès Jaoui); Litte Otik (Jan Svankmajer); Malèna (Italy/Giuseppe Tornatore); Merci Pour Le Chocolat (Claude Chabrol); Mission To Mars (Brian De Palma); Mysterious Object at Noon (Thailand/Apichatpong Weerasethakul); O Fantasma (Joao Pedro Rodrigues); 101 Reykjavík (Baltasar Kormakur); Paragraph 175 (Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman); Paris Commune, 1871 (Peter Watkins); The Ruination of Men (Arturo Ripstein); The Smell of Camphor, the Scent of Jasmine (Bahman Farmanara); Soldiers in the Army of God (Marc Levin, Daphne Pinkerson); Suzhou River (Lou Ye); Tears of the Black Tiger (Thailand/Wisit Sasanatieng); A Time for Drunken Horses (Bahman Ghobadi); Together (Lukas Moodysson); Vengo (Tony Gatlif)
In the queue: Billy Elliot (Stephen Daldry); Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors (Sang-soo Hong); Werckmeister Harmonies (Bela Tarr); Baise Moi! (Virginie Despentes, Coralie Trinh Thi); Vampire Hunter D (Yoshiaki Kawajiri); Vertical Ray of the Sun (Tran anh Hung); Our Lady of the Assassins (Barbet Schroeder); Pandaemonium (Julien Temple); Eureka (Shinji Aoyama); Happenstance (Le battement d'ailes du papillon) (Laurent Firode); The Golden Bowl (James Ivory); Loser (Amy Heckerling); Coyote Ugly (David McNally); Pauline and Paulette (Lieven Debrauwer); Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (Joe Berlinger); Freeze Me (Takashi Ishii); An Everlasting Piece (Barry Levinson); Divided We Fall (Jan Hrebejk)
VINTAGE RATING (2000): 7****
Note: OK, so maybe I cheat a little putting a PBS documentary mini-series (The Greeks) on the list, but there was nothing better I saw all year. It proved that ancient Greek history could be presented in a fascinating and sensible way. 'Maelstrom' (runner up) is a creepy, weird Canadian indie that bears some resemblence to Herk Harvey's 1962 cult classic 'Carnival of Souls.' I'm not sure what I think about it, or even if I understood it, or whether the Cronenberg-like bloody talking fish really works as a linking device. But it's the movie equivalent of an earworm -- I can't quite get it outta my head. Yes, I saw "Requiem for a Dream" and "Dancer in the Dark" and a lot of other nose-in-shitters I don't care to revisit.
2001 (62+)
All About Lily Chou-Chou (Shunji Iwai)
Waking Life (Richard Linklater)
A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg)
Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch)
The Man Who Wasn't There (Joel Coen)
Amélie (Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain) (Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
Last Orders (Fred Schepisi)
Dogtown and Z-Boys (Stacy Peralta)
The Others (Alejandro Amenabar)
Series 7: The Contenders (Daniel Minahan)
Tape (Richard Linklater)
Black Hawk Down (Ridley Scott)
Late Marriage (Dover Koshashvili)
Hedwig and the Angry Inch (John Cameron Mitchell)
I'm Going Home (Manoel de Oliveira)
RUNNERS UP:
No Man's Land (Danis Tanovic)
What Time Is It There? (Tsai Ming-liang)
Time Out (L'emploi du temps) (Laurent Cantet)
Kandahar (Mohsen Makhmalbaf)
The Anniversary Party (Alan Cumming, Jennifer Jason Leigh)
The Son's Room (La stanza del figlio) (Nanni Moretti)
Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (Shusuke Kaneko)
Ocean's 11 (Steven Soderbergh)
Startup.com (Chris Hegedus, Jehane Noujaim)
The Lady and the Duke (Eric Rohmer)
Storytelling (Todd Solondz)
Lovely and Amazing (Nicole Holofcener)
The Tailor of Panama (John Boorman)
L.I.E. (Michael Cuesta)
Heartbreakers (David Mirkin)
No Such Thing (Hal Hartley)
Not sure what the fuss was about: Y tu mama tambien (Alfonso Cuaron); The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson): Training Day (Antoine Fuqua): The Piano Teacher (Michael Haneke): Gosford Park (Robert Altman): In the Bedroom (Todd Field); The Pledge (Sean Penn); Fat Girl (Catherine Breillat): Fast and the Furious (Rob Cohen); Vanilla Sky (Cameron Crowe); A Beautiful Mind (Ron Howard); Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson); Moulin Rouge! (Baz Luhrmann); Shallow Hal (Bobby & Peter Farrelly); Monster's Ball (Marc Foster)
For the record: Shrek (Andrew Adamson, Vicky Jenson); My Wife is an Actress (Yvan Attal); The Accountant (Ray McKinnon); The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (Woody Allen); Bully (Larry Clark); The Score (Frank Oz); From Hell (Albert & Allen Hughes); I am Sam (Jessie Nelson); Enemy at the Gates (Jean-Jacques Annaud); Bandits (Barry Levinson); My First Mister (Christine Lahti); Queen of the Damned (Michael Rymer); Under the Sand (Francois Ozon); The Cat's Meow (Peter Bogdanovich)
To see: Pulse (Kairo) (Kiyoshi Kurosawa); ABC Africa (Abbas Kiarostami); Ali (Michael Mann); Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (Zacharias Kunuk); Band of Brothers (various); The Believer (Henry Bean); Brief Crossing (Catherine Breillat); Le cas Pinochet (The Pinochet Case) (Patricio Guzman); Children Underground (Edel Belzberg); CQ (Roman Coppola); The Deep End (Scott McGehee, David Siegel); The Devil's Backbone (Guillermo Del Toro); Domestic Violence (Frederick Wiseman); Éloge de l’Amour (Jean-Luc Godard); Hell House (George Ratliff); Home Movie (Chris Smith); In a Land of Plenty (David Moore, Hattie MacDonald); Intacto (Juan Carlos Fresnadillo); Intimacy (Patrice Chereau); Invincible (Werner Herzog); La Cienaga (Lucrecia Martel); Lagaan (Ashutosh Gowariker); The Lawless Heart (Neil Hunter, Tom Hunsinger); Lost and Delirious (Léa Pool); The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein (John Gianvito); Millennium Actress (Satoshi Kon); Nowhere in Africa (Caroline Link); Ou git votre sourire enfoui? (Where Lies Your Hidden Smile?) (Pedro Costa); Oui, mais (Yves Lavandier); Perfect Strangers (Stephen Poliakoff); Pistol Opera (Seijun Suzuki); Pulse (Kiyoshi Kurosawa); Quo Vadis? (Jerzy Kawalerowicz); 'R Xmas (Abel Ferrara); Read My Lips (Sur Mes Levres) (Jacques Audiard); Roberto Succo (Cédric Kahn); Schlock! The Secret History of American Movies (Ray Greene); Session 9 (Brad Anderson); Silence…on tourne (Youssef Chahine); Sobibor, Oct. 14, 1943, 4 p.m. (Claude Lanzmann); Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki); 13 Conversations About One Thing (Jill Sprecher); Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (Shohei Imamura)
In the queue: Sex and Lucia (Julio Medem); Festival in Cannes (Henry Jaglom); Pinero (Leon Ichaso); Lantana (Ray Lawrence); Spy Kids (Robert Rodriguez); Visitor Q (Takeshi Miike); Trouble Every Day (Claire Denis); Millenium Mambo (Hsiao-hsien Hou); Pinero (Leon Ichaso); Josie and the Pussycats (Harry Elfont); Get Over It! (Tommy O‘Haver); Baran (Majid Majidi); Alias Betty (Claude Miller); Angel Eyes (Luis Mandoki); Dil Chata Hai (Farhan Akhtar); Pornstar: The Legend of Ron Jeremy (Scott J. Gill); Life and Debt (Stephanie Black)
Note: For more than half the way I'm loving Gosford Park as a rich class study and then it degenerates into a Hercule Poirot mystery. Sigh.
2002 (to count)
Far From Heaven (Todd Haynes)
Bowling for Columbine (Michael Moore)
The Man Without a Past (Aki Kaurismaki)
Solaris (Steven Soderbergh)
City of God (Fernando Meirelles)
25th Hour (Spike Lee)
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Peter Jackson)
Bloody Sunday (Paul Greengrass)
The Quiet American (Phillip Noyce)
24 Hour Party People (Michael Winterbottom)
About Schmidt (Alexander Payne)
Talk to Her (Hable con ella) (Pedro Almodovar)
Insomnia (Christopher Nolan)
Road to Perdition (Sam Mendes)
The Rules of Attraction (Roger Avary)
The Kid Stays in the Picture (Nanette Burstein, Brett Morgen)
The Weather Underground (Sam Green, Bill Siegel)
RUNNERS UP:
The Secret Lives of Dentists (Alan Rudolph)
Adaptation (Spike Jonze)
The Trials of Henry Kissinger (Eugene Jarecki)
Blind Spot. Hitler's Secretary (Andre Heller, Othmar Schmiderer)
Dark Water (Hideo Nakata)
The Mothman Prophecies (Mark Pellington)
28 Days Later. . . (Danny Boyle)
Secretary (Steven Shainberg)
Dirty Pretty Things (Stephen Frears)
Ju-on (Takashi Shimizu)
For the record: Ten (Abbas Kiarostami); Panic Room (David Fincher); Gangs of New York (Martin Scorsese); Punch-Drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson); Signs (M. Night Shyamalan); Frida (Julie Taymor); Star Wars Episode II - Attack of the Clones (George Lucas); Chicago (Bill Condon); Hero (Zhang Yimou); Queen of the Damned (Michael Rymer); Daughter From Danang (Gail Dolgin, Vicente Franco); Femme Fatale (Brian De Palma); Unfaithful (Adrian Lyne); Spider (David Cronenberg); Jackass the Movie (Jeff Tremaine); Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (George Clooney); Auto Focus (Paul Schrader); The Truth About Charlie (Jonathan Demme); Assassination Tango (Robert Duvall); Standing in the Shadows of Motown (Paul Justman); Better Luck Tomorrow (Justin Lin); Searching for Debra Winger (Rosanna Arquette); etc.
Lumpy Gravy Award for Worst Movie of All Time (2002 edition): Gangs of New York (Martin Scorsese)
In the queue: The Sea (Baltasar Kormakur); The Ring (Gore Verbinski); Together (Chen Kaige); 8 Mile (Curtis Hanson); Empire (Franc Reyes); Maid in Manhattan (Wayne Wang); My Big Fat Greek Wedding (Joel Zwick)
To see: Abouna (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun); All or Nothing (Mike Leigh); Balseros (Carlos Bosch and José María Doménech); Bend It Like Beckham (Gurinder Chadha); Blissfully Yours (Apichatpong Weerasethakul); Blue Car (Karen Moncrieff); Bus 174 (Jose Padilha); Cabin Fever (Eli Roth); The Century Of The Self (Adam Curtis); Chihwaseon (Im Kwon-taek); Choses secretes (Secret Things) (Jean-Claude Brisseau); Cremaster 2 (Matthew Barney); Cremaster 3 (Matthew Barney); Daniel Deronda (Tom Hooper); The Decay of Fiction (Pat O'Neill); The Decomposition of the Soul (Nina Toussaint, Massimo Iannetta); Derrida (Kirby Dick); Distant (Turkey/Nuri Bilge Ceylan); Divine Intervention (Elia Suleiman); Dracula: Pages From a Virgin's Diary (Guy Maddin); Etre et avoir (To Be and To Have) (Nicolas Philibert); The Good Girl (Miguel Arteta); Heaven (Tom Tykwer); Heremakono (Waiting for Happiness) (Abderrahmane Sissako); ); The Hours (Stephen Daldry); House Of Fools (Andrei Konchalovsky); Hukkle (Gyorgy Palfi); In America (Jim Sheridan); In the Mirror of Maya Deren (Martina Kudlacek); In This World (Michael Winterbottom); Kannathil Muthamittal (Mani Ratnam); Ken Park (Larry Clark, Ed Lachman); Le Fils (Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne); Lilya 4-Ever (Lukas Moodysson); Love and Diane (Jennifer Dworkin); Love and Diane (Jennifer Dworkin); The Magdalene Sisters (Peter Mullan); Marooned in Iraq (Bahman Ghobadi); Morvern Callar (Lynne Ramsay); Open Hearts (Susanne Bier); Out of Control (Dominic Savage); Process (C.S.Leigh); Raising Victor Vargas (Peter Sollett); Springtime in a Small Town (Xiao cheng zhi chun); Sweet Sixteen (Ken Loach); Sympathy for Mr Vengeance (Park Chan-wook); Tipping the Velvet (Geoffrey Sax); Trilogy: On the Run, An Amazing Couple, After Life (Lucas Belvaux); The Uncertainty Principle (Manoel de Oliveira); Unknown Pleasures (Zhang-Ke Jia); Vendredi Soir (Claire Denis); We Were Soldiers (Randall Wallace); Whale Rider (Niki Caro)
2003 (to count)
Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola)
Capturing the Friedmans (Andrew Jarecki)
American Splendor (Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini)
The Company (Robert Altman)
Down With Love (Peyton Reed)
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (Chavez: Inside the Coup) (Kim Bartley, Donnacha O'Briain)
Kill Bill, Vol. 1 (Quentin Tarantino)
Intolerable Cruelty (Joel Coen)
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Peter Weir)
RUNNERS UP:
The Barbarian Invasions (Denys Arcand)
Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter…and Spring (Kim Ki-Duk)
Gods and Generals (Ronald F. Maxwell)
Tarnation (Jonathan Caouette)
Monster (Patty Jenkins)
In the Cut (Jane Campion)
For the record: Mystic River (Clint Eastwood); The Dreamers (Bernardo Bertolucci); Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (Gore Verbinski); The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Peter Jackson); Matchstick Men (Ridley Scott); The Station Agent (Thomas McCarthy); Owning Mahowny (Richard Kwietniowski); Pieces of April (Peter Hedges); Out of Time (Carl Franklin); Identity (James Mangold); The School of Rock (Richard Linklater); Open Range (Kevin Costner); The Cooler (Wayne Kramer)
I really tried, but..: The Saddest Music in the World (Guy Maddin)
To see: Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (Nick Broomfield, Joan Churchill); All the Real Girls (David Gordon Green); Ana and the Others (Celina Murga); At Five in the Afternoon (Samira Makhmalbaf); BAADASSSSS! (Mario Van Peebles); Bad Santa (Terry Zwigoff); The Best of Youth (Marco Tullio Giordano); Big Fish (Tim Burton); The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi (Takeshi Kitano); Bright Leaves (Ross McElwee); The Brown Bunny (Vincent Gallo); Café Lumière (Hou Hsiao-Hsien); Coffee and Cigarettes (Jim Jarmusch); Cowards Bend the Knee (Guy Maddin); Doppelganger (Kiyoshi Kurosawa); Elephant (Gus van Sant); Festival Express (Bob Smeaton); Finding Nemo (Andrew Stanton, Lee Unkrich); The Fog of War (Errol Morris); Girl With a Pearl Earring (Peter Webber); The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai (Mitsuru Meike); Goodbye Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-liang); Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-Liang); Goodbye, Lenin! (Wolfgang Becker); Histoire de Marie et Julien (Jacques Rivette); The Last Letter (Frederick Wiseman); Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Andersen); L’Esquive (Abdel Kechiche); Masked and Anonymous (Larry Charles); Memories of Murder (Joon-ho Bong); My Architect (Nathaniel Kahn); My Architect: A Son's Journey (Nathaniel Kahn); Oldboy (Park Chan-wook); Osama (Siddiq Barmak); The Same River Twice (Robb Moss); Saraband (Ingmar Bergman); Schultze Gets the Blues (Michael Schorr); Seabiscuit (Gary Ross); The Shape of Things (Neil LaBute); Since Otar Left (Julie Bertucelli); Son Frere (Patrice Chereau); State of Play (David Yates); The Story of Marie and Julien (Jacques Rivette); Swimming Pool (François Ozon); A Talking Picture (Manoel de Oliveira); The Triplets of Belleville (Sylvain Chomet); Tokyo Godfathers (Satoshi Kon); Touching the Void (Kevin MacDonald); Twentynine Palms (Bruno Dumont); Veronica Guerin (Joel Schumacher); Young Adam (David Mackenzie); Zatoichi (Takeshi Kitano); Zero Day (Ben Coccio)
In the queue: Cold Mountain (Anthony Minghella); Crimson Gold (Jafar Panahi); 21 Grams (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu); The Last Samurai (Edward Zwick); Confidence (James Foley); The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Marcus Nispel)
2004
Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (Alexandra Cassavetes)
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (Kerry Conran)
Eh, whatever (for the record): The Aviator (Martin Scorsese); Hero (Zhang Yimou); Kill Bill Vol 2 (Quentin Tarantino); Spider Man 2 (Sam Raimi); Maria Full of Grace (Joshua Marston); Spartan (David Mamet); Man on Fire (Tony Scott)
To see: Aftermath (Denmark/Paprika Steen); Anatomy of Hell (Catherine Breillat); The Assassination Of Richard Nixon (Niels Mueller); Bad Education (Pedro Almodóvar); The Bourne Supremacy (Paul Greengrass); Brotherhood (South Korea/Kang Ge-Gyu); Brothers (Denmark/Susanne Bier); Cellular (David R. Ellis); Closer (Mike Nichols); The Consequences of Love (Paolo Sorrentino); Control Room (Jehane Noujaim); Crash (Paul Haggis); Crimen Ferpecto (Álex de la Iglesia); Darwin's Nightmare (Hupert Sauper); The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream (Gregory Greene); Finding Neverland (Marc Forster); Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (Mamoru Oshii); Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Alfonso Cuaron); Head-On (Fatih Akin); Head-On (Fatih Akin); Heimat 3 (Edgar Reitz); HellBent (Paul Etheredge); Henri Langlois: The Phantom of the Cinematheque (Jacques Richard); A Hole in My Heart (Lukas Moodysson); The House of Flying Daggers (China/Zhang Yimou); Howl’s Moving Castle (Hayao Miyazaki); The Incredibles (Brad Bird); Intimate Strangers (Patrice Leconte); The Ister (Australia/David Barison, Daniel Ross); Kekexili: Mountain Patrol (Lu Chuan); The Keys to the House (Gianni Amelio); Kinsey (Bill Condon); Kontroll (Hungary/Nimrod Antal); Kung Fu Hustle (Stephen Chow); La Nina Santa (Argentina/Lucrecia Martel); Layer Cake (Matthew Vaughn); Le Porte du Soleil (Yousry Nasrallah); The Libertine (Lawrence Dunmore); Look at Me (Agnès Jaoui); Los Muertos (Lisandro Alonso); Machuca (Andrés Wood); The Manchurian Candidate (Jonathan Demme); Michelangelo Eye to Eye (Michelangelo Antonioni); Mila from Mars (Bulgaria/Sophia Zornitsa); Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood); Millions (Danny Boyle); Moolaadé (Ousmane Sembene); The Motorcycle Diaries (Walter Salles); My Summer of Love (Pawel Pawlikowski); Mysterious Skin (Gregg Araki); Nobody Knows (Hirokazu Kore-Eda); North & South (Brian Percival); Notre Musique (Jean-Luc Godard); Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism (Robert Greenwald); Private (Saverio Costanzo); The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear (Adam Curtis); Raja (Jacques Doillon); Rois et Reine (Arnaud Despletchen); Rois et reine (Kings and Queen) (Arnaud Desplechin); The Sea Inside (Alejandro Aménabar); Sex Traffic (David Yates); Star Spangled To Death (Ken Jacobs); The Terminal (Steven Spielberg); 13 Lakes (James Benning); Three Rooms of Melancholia (Pirko Honkasalo); Tropical Malady (Thailand/Apichatpong Weerasethakul); Turtles Can Fly (Iran/Bahman Ghobadi); Undertow (David Gordon Green); Vera Drake (Mike Leigh); A Very Long Engagement (Jean-Pierre Jeunet); When Will I Be Loved (James Toback); The White Diamond (Werner Herzog); WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception (Danny Schechter); The World (South Korea/Zhang Ke-Jia); Yes (Sally Potter)
In the queue: Innocence (Lucile Hadzilhalilovic); 9 Songs (M Winterbottom); Collateral (Michael Mann); De-Lovely (Irwin Winkler); The Sisters (Tiwa Moeithaisong); L'intrus (The Intruder) (Claire Denis)
2005
The New World (Terrence Malick)
Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog)
Land of the Dead (George Romero)
Good Night and Good Luck (George Clooney)
No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (Martin Scorsese)
The Squid and the Whale (Noah Baumbach)
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005/Alex Gibney)
RUNNERS UP:
Walk the Line (James Mangold)
March of the Penguins (Luc Jacquet)
The Producers (Susan Stroman)
Broken Flowers (Jim Jarmusch)
The World of Tomorrow (Kerry Conran's original 6-minute short; see 2004's Sky Captain...)
Eh, Whatever (for the record): Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee); Match Point (Woody Allen); A History of Violence (David Cronenberg); Capote (Bennett Miller); King Kong (Peter Jackson); Munich (Steven Spielberg); Jarhead (Sam Mendes); Me and You and Everyone We Know (Miranda July)
In the queue: Syriana (Stephen Gaghan); Joyeux Noel (Christian Carion); The Interpreter (Sydney Pollack); The Aristocrats (Paul Provenza)
To see: Adam's Apple (Anders Thomas Jensen); Au dela de la haine (Beyond Hatred) (Olivier Meyrou); Ballets Russes (Daniel Keller, Dayna Goldfine); Batman Begins (Christopher Nolan); Battle in Heaven (Carlos Reygadas); Bleak House (Justin Chadwick, Susanna White); Caché (Michael Haneke); The Constant Gardener (Fernando Meirelles); Corpse Bride (Tim Burton); Days of Glory (Rachid Bouchareb); The Death of Mr Lazarescu (Romania/Cristi Puiu); Duma (Carroll Ballard); Fateless (Hungary/Lajos Koltai); Fever Pitch (Bobby and Peter Farrelly); 51 Birch Street (Doug Block); Fratricide (Yilmaz Arslan); Funland (Dearbhla Walsh, Susan Tully, Brian Kirk); Gabrielle (Patrice Chéreau); The Girl from Monday (Hal Hartley); Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Mike Newell); Hustle & Flow (Craig Brewer); I for India (Sandhya Suri); Into Great Silence (Die grosse Stille) (Philip Groning); Joy of Madness (Hana Makhmalbaf); Junebug (Phil Morrison); The King (James Marsh); Kingdom of Heaven (Ridley Scott); Last Days (Gus Van Sant); Linda Linda Linda (Nobuhiro Yamashita); Longing (Valeska Grisebach); L’Enfant (Jean-Luc Dardenne, Pierre Dardenne); Man Push Cart (Ramin Bahrani); Manderlay (Lars Von Trier); The Midnight Pilgrims (Kankuro Kudo); Mongolian Ping Pong (Ning Hao); Murderball (Henry Alex Rubin); Nine Lives (Rodrigo García); Odete (Two Drifters) (João Pedro Rodrigues); Our Daily Bread (Nikolaus Geyrhalter); Pride & Prejudice (Joe Wright); Red Eye (Wes Craven); Regular Lovers (Philippe Garrel); Romantico (Mark Becker); The Secret Life of Words (Isabel Coixet); Sin City (Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller, Quentin Tarantino); Sir! No Sir! (David Zeiger); Sophie Scholl: The Last Days (Marc Rothemund); Star Wars Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith (George Lucas); Street Fight (Marshall Curry); The Sun (Aleksandr Sokurov); Syriana (Stephen Gaghan); Tale of Cinema (Hong Sang-soo); 13 Tzameti (Gela Babluani); The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (Tommy Lee Jones); Three Times (Hou Hsiao-Hsien); Twenty-Thousand Streets Under the Sky (Simon Curtis); V for Vendetta (James McTeague); Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (Nick Park); Wolf Creek (Greg McLean); Yaji and Kita: Don't Come Knocking (Wim Wenders)
2006
An Inconvenient Truth (Davis Guggenheim)
Fast Food Nation (Richard Linklater)
Eh, whatever (for the record): The Departed (Martin Scorsese); Casino Royale (Martin Campbell); Scoop (Woody Allen)
In the queue: Black Snake Moan (Craig Brewer); Pulse (Jim Sonzero); Idiocracy (Mike Judge); Find Me Guilty (Sidney Lumet)
To see: Absolute Wilson (Katharina Otto-Bernstein); Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film (Ric Burns); Ask the Dust (Robert Towne); Away from Her (Sarah Polley); Babel (Mexico/Alejandro González Iñárritu); Bamako (Abderrahmane Sissako); The Banquet (China/Feng Xiaogang); Black Book (Netherlands/Paul Verhoeven); The Black Dahlia (Brian de Palma); Blood Diamond (Edward Zwick); Bobby (Emilio Estevez); The Bridge (Eric Steel); The Bubble (Eytan Fox); Bug (William Friedkin); Children of Men (UK/Alfonso Cuarón); Citadel (Atom Egoyan); Climates (Nuri Bilge Ceylan); The Dead Girl (Karen Moncrieff); Deja Vu (Tony Scott); Deliver Us from Evil (Amy Berg); The Fall (Tarsem Singh); Flags of our Fathers (Clint Eastwood); Fong juk (Exiled) (Johnnie To); Forever (Heddy Honigmann); The Fountain (Darren Aronofsky); Ghosts (Nick Broomfield); Half Nelson (Ryan Fleck); The Golden Door (Italy/Emanuele Crialese); Happy Feet (George Miller); High School Musical (Kenny Ortega); Hollywoodland (Allen Coulter); The Host (South Korea/Bong Joon-ho); I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone (Malaysia/Taiwan/Tsai Ming-Liang); I Served the King of England (Czech Republic/Jiri Menzel); The Illusionist (Neil Burger); Inland Empire (David Lynch); Inside Man (Spike Lee); Iraq in Fragments (James Longley); Jane Eyre (Susanna White); Jesus Camp (Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady); Jindabyne (Australia/Ray Lawrence); Knocked Up (Judd Apatow); Kodak (Tacita Dean); La Morte Rouge (Victor Erice); Lady Chatterley (Pascale Ferran); The Last King of Scotland (Kevin MacDonald); Letters from Iwo Jima (Clint Eastwood); The Life of Reilly (Barry Poltermann, Frank Anderson); Little Children (Todd Field); Little Miss Sunshine (Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris); The Lives of Others (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck); Longford (Tom Hooper); Monster House (Gil Kenan); Mukhsin (Yasmin Ahmed); Neil Young: Heart of Gold (Jonathan Demme); Notes on a Scandal (Richard Eyre); Offside (Iran/Jafar Penahi); Once (Ireland/John Carney); Once (John Carney); Opera Jawa (Garin Nugroho); The Page Turner (Denis Dercourt); The Painted Veil (John Curran); Pan’s Labyrinth (Mexico/Guillermo del Toro); Paprika (Satoshi Kon); Paris Je T'Aime (Olivier Assayas); Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Tom Tykwer); A Prairie Home Companion (Robert Altman); The Prestige (Christopher Nolan); Private Fears in Public Places (Alain Resnais); The Queen (Stephen Frears); Quinceanera (Richard Glatzer, Wash Westmoreland); Razone (Denmark/Christian Christiansen); Red Road (Andrea Arnold); Reprise (Norway/Joachim Trier); Requiem (Hans-Christian Schmid); Rescue Dawn (Werner Herzog); A Scanner Darkly (Richard Linklater); The Science of Sleep (Michel Gondry); Shortbus (John Cameron Mitchell); The Singer (Xavier Giannoli); Southland Tales (Richard Kelly); Still Life (Hong Kong/China/Zhang-Ke Jia); Stranger Than Fiction (Marc Forster); Summer '04 (Stefan Krohmer); Summer Palace (Ye Lou); Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul); Taxidermia (Gyorgy Palfi); Tell No One (Guillaume Canet); This Film Is Not Yet Rated (Kirby Dick); This is England (Shane Meadows); Triad Election (Johnnie To); The Trials of Daryl Hunt (Ricki Stern, Anne Sundberg); 12:08 East of Bucharest (Corneliu Porumboiu); Volver (Pedro Almodóvar); The War Tapes (Deborah Scranton); When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (Spike Lee); Where the Truth Lies (Atom Egoyan); Who Killed the Electric Car? (Chris Paine); The Wind That Shakes the Barley (Ken Loach)
2007
Viewed (list placement to be determined):
American Gangster (Ridley Scott)
Into the Wild (Sean Penn)
No Country for Old Men (Joel Coen, Ethan Coen)
Ratatouille (Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava)
For the record: Zodiac (David Fincher); Albert Fish:In Sin He Found Salvation (John Borowski)
In the queue: There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson)
To see: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Romania/Cristian Mungiu); A Girl Cut in Two (Claude Chabrol); A Secret (Claude Miller); Across the Universe (Julie Taymor); Alexandra (Russia/Aleksandr Sokurov); The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Andrew Dominik); Atonement (Joe Wright); Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (Sidney Lumet); Beowulf (Robert Zemeckis); The Bourne Ultimatum (Paul Greengrass); Boy A (John Crowley); Breach (Billy Ray); Broken English (Zoe Cassavetes); California Dreamin' (Cristian Nemescu); Cargo 200 (Aleksey Balabanov); Chop Shop (Ramin Bahrani); Chouga (Darezhan Omirbaev); Chris & Don: A Love Story (Tina Mascara, Guido Santi); Control (Anton Corbijn); The Counterfeitors (Stefan Ruzawitsky); The Darjeeling Limited (Wes Anderson); Descent (Talia Lugacy); The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel); Don’t Touch the Axe (Jacques Rivette); The Duchess of Langeais (Jacques Rivette); Eastern Promises (David Cronenberg); The Edge of Heaven (Fatih Akin); En la ciudad de Sylvia (In the City of Sylvia) (José Luis Guerín); Encounters at the End of the World (Werner Herzog); Fados (Carlos Saura); Fengming: A Chinese Memoir (Wang Bing); The Flight of the Red Balloon (Hou Hsiao-Hsien); Forbidden Lie$ (Anna Broinowski); Ghosts of the Cité Soleil (Asger Leth); Gone Baby Gone (Ben Affleck); The Great Debaters (Denzel Washington); Grindhouse (Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino); Hallam Foe (David McKenzie); Honeydripper (John Sayles); Import/Export (Ulrich Seidl); In the Shadow of the Moon (David Sington); In the Valley of Elah (Paul Haggis); I’m Not There (Todd Haynes); Jimmy Carter Man from Plains (Jonathan Demme); Juno (Jason Reitman); Juventude Em Marcha (Colossal Youth) (Pedro Costa); Katyn (Andrzej Wajda); La Vie en Rose (Olivier Dahan); The Last Mistress (Catherine Breillat); The Lookout (Scott Frank); Lost in Beijing (Li Yu); Love in the Time of Cholera (Mike Newell); Lust, Caution (Ang Lee); Michael Clayton (Tony Gilroy); Mongol (Sergei Bodrov); Munyurangabo (Lee Isaac Chung); My Father My Lord (David Volach); My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin); Nightwatching (Peter Greenaway); No End in Sight (Charles Ferguson); Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant); Persepolis (Vincent Paronnaud, Marjane Strapi); Rendition (Gavin Hood); Roman de Gare (Claude Lelouch); The Romance of Astrea and Celadon (Eric Rohmer); RR (James Benning); The Savages (Tamara Jenkins); The Secret of the Grain (Abdellatif Kechiche); Secret Sunshine (Lee Chang-dong); Sicko (Michael Moore); The Silence Before Bach (Pere Portabella); Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas); The Simpsons Movie (David Silverman); Superbad (Greg Mottola); Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Tim Burton); Taxi to the Dark Side (Alex Gibney); Terror's Advocate (Barbet Schroeder); There Will be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson); United Red Army (Koji Wakamatsu); Up the Yangtse (Yung Chang); Up the Yangtze (Yung Chang); The Visitor (Thomas McCarthy); Waitress (Adrienne Shelly); The Witnesses (André Téchine); Yasukuni (Ying Li); You, the Living (Roy Andersson); Young@Heart (Stephen Walker)
2008
Religulous (Larry Charles)
Viewed: Valkyrie (Bryan Singer); Taken (Pierre Morel)
To see: The Baader Meinhof Complex (Uli Edel); Ballast (Lance Hammer); Bathory (Juraj Jakubisko); Be Kind Rewind (Michel Gondry); The Beaches of Agnes (Agnès Varda); Bronson (Nicolas Winding Refn); Changeling (Clint Eastwood); Che: Parts I & II (Steven Soderbergh); A Christmas Tale (Arnaud Desplechin); The Class (Laurent Cantet); The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (David Fincher); The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan); Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About his Father (Kurt Kuenne); Defiance (Edward Zwick); The Devil’s Whore (Marc Munden); The End of Poverty? (Philippe Diaz); Flame and Citron (Denmark/Ole Christian Madsen); Frost Nixon (Ron Howard); Frozen River (Courtney Hunt); Fuel (Joshua Tickell); Gomorrah (Matteo Garrone); Goodbye Solo (Iran/Rahmin Bahrani); Gran Torino (Clint Eastwood); Great Speeches from a Dying World (Linas Phillips); Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh); The Headless Woman (Argentina/Lucrecia Martel); Hunger (Steve McQueen); The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow); Il Divo (Paolo Sorrentino); In Bruges (Martin McDonagh); Iron Man (Jon Favreau); Jerichow (Christian Petzold); Julia (Erick Zonca); Kisses (Ireland/Lance Daly); Kit Kittredge: An American Girl (Patricia Rozema); Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson); Let’s Talk About the Rain (Agnès Jaoui); Linha de Passe (Walter Salles, Daniela Thomas); Lithuania and the Collapse of the USSR (Jonas Mekas); Little Dorrit (Adam Smith, Dearbhla Walsh, Diarmuid Lawrence); Liverpool (Lisandro Alonso); Lorna's Silence (Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne); Man on Wire (James Marsh); Mesrine: Parts I & II (Jean-François Richet); Milk (Gus Van Sant); Momma's Man (Azazel Jacobs); Night and Day (Bam gua nat) (Sang-soo Hong); Of Time and the City (Terence Davies); Ponyo (Hayao Miyazaki); Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme); The Reader (Stephen Daldry); Revanche (Gotz Spielmann); Revolutionary Road (Sam Mendes); Seraphine (Martin Provost); Serbis (Brillante Mendoza); Sex Positive (Daryl Wein); Shine a Light (Martin Scorsese); Shirin (Abbas Kiarostami); The Silence of Lorna (Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne); Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle); Standard Operating Procedure (Errol Morris); Still Walking (Hirokazu Kore-Eda); Stop-Loss (Kimberly Pierce); The Strangers (Bryan Bertino); Sugar (Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck); Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas); Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman); 35 Shots of Rum (Claire Denis); Three Monkeys (Turkey/Nuri Bilge Ceylan); Tokyo Sonata (Kiyoshi Kurosawa); Tony Manero (Pablo Larrain); Treeless Mountain (So Yong Kim); Trouble the Water (Tia Lessin and Carl Deal); Tulpan (Sergei Dvortsevoy); Tulpan (Sergei Dvortsevoy); 24 City (Zhang Ke Jia); Two Lovers (James Gray); Tyson (James Toback); Una vida mejor (Andrew James); Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen); W. (Oliver Stone); Wall-E (Andrew Stanton); Waltz with Bashir (Ari Folman); Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt); The Window (La ventana) (Carlos Sorin); The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky)
2009
Watchmen (Zack Snyder)
In the queue: Antichrist (Lars Von Trier); Knowing (Alex Proyas)
To see: Agora (Alejandro Aménabar); American Casino (Leslie Cockburn); Avatar (James Cameron); Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (Werner Herzog); Big Fan (Robert D. Siegel); The Box (Richard Kelly); Bright Star (Jane Campion); Broken Embraces (Pedro Almodóvar); A Call to Arms (Scott Miller); Capitalism: A Love Story (Michael Moore); Coraline (Henry Selick); Crazy Heart (Scott Cooper); Drag Me to Hell (Sam Raimi); Drag Me to Hell (Sam Raimi); Face (Tsai Ming-Liang); An Education (Lone Scherfig); Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson); Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold); Five Minutes of Heaven (Oliver Hirschbiegel); The Girlfriend Experience (Steven Soderbergh); Halloween II (Rob Zombie); Les Herbes Folles (Alain Resnais); Home (Yann Arthus-Bertrand); The House of the Devil (Ti Wes); In the Beginning (Xavier Giannoli); In the Loop (Armando Iannucci); La Danse (Frederick Wiseman); The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch); Looking for Eric (Ken Loach); Loren Cass (Chris Fuller); The Lovely Bones (Peter Jackson); The Messenger (Oren Moverman); Min Ye (Souleymane Cissé); Moon (Duncan Jones); 1939 (Stephen Poliakoff); Passing Strange (Spike Lee); A Perfect Getaway (David Twohy); Police, Adjective (Corneliu Porumboiu); A Prophet (Jacques Audiard); Public Enemies (Michael Mann); Red Riding: 1974, 1980 & 1983 (Julian Jerrold, James Marsh, Anand Tucker); A Serious Man (Ethan Coen); Sherlock Holmes (Guy Ritchie); Shutter Island (Martin Scorsese); Star Trek (J.J.Abrams); Tetro (Francis Ford Coppola); That Evening Sun (Scott Teems); Thirst (Park Chan-wook); Tree of Life (Terrence Malick); The Unloved (Samantha Morton); Up (Pete Docter, Bob Peterson); Up in the Air (Jason Reitman); Where the Wild Things Are (Spike Jonze); The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke)
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| Clint Eastwood |
What is the name of Southampton FC's home ground? | POTPOURRI 3D (and 2D in select browsers) - Vern's Reviews on the Films of Cinema Vern's Reviews on the Films of Cinema
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POTPOURRI 3D (and 2D in select browsers)
Okay fellas, it seems the other “talk about whatever off topic gibberish you want” threads have been overloaded with said off topic gibberish, so here is a fresh new one to use.
possible topics include:
* Movies that came out this week
* Older movies I should review
* Some new quote from Stallone about EXPENDABLES 2
* How much you love The Clash
* Why you don’t like Zack Snyder
* Out-of-the-blue befuddling opinions by Paul that somehow still manage to surprise us all despite previous history
* What distinct markings could be used to identify your ex
* Hot new recipes for the summer
* Home safety
* Why I should apologize for teasing because I genuinely appreciate all of you coming here and posting
* But let’s stay clear of complaining about George Lucas shit, please. Just so there’s one spot on the internet, you know?
VERN
VERN has been reviewing movies since 1999 and is the author of the books SEAGALOGY: A STUDY OF THE ASS-KICKING FILMS OF STEVEN SEAGAL, YIPPEE KI-YAY MOVIEGOER!: WRITINGS ON BRUCE WILLIS, BADASS CINEMA AND OTHER IMPORTANT TOPICS and NIKETOWN: A NOVEL. His horror-action novel WORM ON A HOOK will arrive later this year.
Reddit
This entry was posted on Saturday, May 7th, 2011 at 5:50 pm and is filed under Blog Post (short for weblog) . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Previous Post
For a second I was thinking it would be funny to close the comments on this post, but I decided against it.
Gwai Lo
Please Review Phantom of the Paradise, KTHNX <3
JTraveller76
And Vern, review Falling Down already.
Mouth
May 7th, 2011 at 6:30 pm
Paul has officially been put in his place. This pleases me a great deal.
Now I’m off to find my Rad Racer glasses so I can appreciate the imagery of this new historic corner of the internet.
RRA
May 7th, 2011 at 6:53 pm
Mr. Subtlety – I brought up Clash because the Beastie Boys was on radio the other day (well two of them at least, MCA still fighting his cancer) and they listed The Clash as a big influence of theirs.
In retrospect this is pretty damn obvious, but for whatever reason I was bowled over with this small revelation. It makes me respect those guys even more, and I respect the world fuck out of them already.
Hell their new reggae-inspired song “Don’t Play No Game That I Can’t Win,” I can absolutely imagine Joe Strummer’s ghost bobbing his head to that groovy shit.
Seriously dudes, HOT SAUCE COMMITTEE more than likely will be the best new album out this month. Or you could wait a few weeks for Lady Gaga’s BORN THIS WAY. It’s your choice.
Caoimhín
May 7th, 2011 at 7:04 pm
Is it ok if I don’t really care one way or the other about Zack Snyder?
Perchance you could have a series of reviews of films with the word down in the title, including I WENT DOWN, about the only half decent film made in this country for ages other than RAWHEAD REX and PRIMER.
RRA
May 7th, 2011 at 7:16 pm
Re: EXPENDABLES 2 Screen Rant claims that Sheldon Lettich heard from Sir JCVD that he will be involved this go round. As a villain no less. I hope this pulls through; he hasn’t played a villain enough and he has always had a great look for it like when he took on Sho Kosugi or that stupid Bruce Lee stan that moved to seattle. Now all this movie needs is some Michael Biehn, a little Lance, some Dudikoff and throw in some Scott Adkins as well
Broddie
May 7th, 2011 at 7:19 pm
Holy shit @ that pic. I totally remember HONEY, I SHRUNK THE AUDIENCE being the best iteration of that franchise for sure. Good times at good ol MGM studios. Oh 1995 how I miss you.
RE: HOT SAUCE COMITTEE this is like a modern take on CHECK YOUR HEAD. Don’t know if I like it more than TO THE 5 BOROUGHS yet but I’ve been stuck on that song they did with Santigold pretty viciously these past couple of days. Best hip hop album I’ve heard this year though is still ONEIROLOGY by Cunninlynguists but that new DJ Quik was pretty good at times as well.
May 7th, 2011 at 7:32 pm
Okay guys, apparently if you freestyle rap vaguely coherently in a topic while requesting something, Vern will come through (and name the topic after your request/make the same obvious joke you did).
So, if you REALLY want him to review Falling Down…get to rhyming, boys. I’d do it, but I’ve already dropped a few gems today.
Mouth
No, RRA. I’ll be bumping the new Musiq Soulchild album most heavily this month.
I’m also a big fan of about 4 tracks on the new Airborne Toxic Event album.
Honestly, I have no clue if I’ve ever even heard a Lady Gaga song, though I’m pretty sure I saw her featured on 60 Minutes a few weeks ago. People in the front row of her concerts were crying and whatnot, so that means she must be pretty good.
May 7th, 2011 at 7:40 pm
Lady Gaga is pretty good, especially when she’s ripping off David Bowie instead of Madonna. Seriously, go peep “Brown Eyes.” Also, she’s weirdly sexy in a, she-really-doesn’t-look-like-a-pop-star kinda way. In fact, If you mixed her and Ellen Page with a little bit of actually-having-hips, a dash of oversized back tattoo, and a smattering of tattoos you can’t see when she’s fully dressed, you’d have the spitting image of my ex.
So really, what I’m saying is, she writes some fun songs and resembles my “type.”
*smattering of piercings you can’t see when she’s fully dressed
Broddie
May 7th, 2011 at 7:43 pm
For the longest time I was under the impression that Lady Gaga was just a conscious burning candle with a wig on. Till some younger chick I was boning (19 to 20ish) told me that she’s essentially her generation’s answer to Madonna. All I could ask was “what’s the difference?”
Mouth
May 7th, 2011 at 8:33 pm
Alright, I’m gonna try to end this gibberish that is already corrupting the multidimensional potpourri variation that we have been given like worthy American mothers of Vern on this holiday weekend and say that, although Hunter good-naturedly somehow bamboozled me into popping my Lady Gaga listenership cherry, this is an unacceptable route for the sacrosanct comments/jibber-jabber section of the premiere BADASS CINEMA website/web sight.
Okay, man, the Bowie influence is there (or is it merely a T-Rex influence I’m hearing? Hmm?), and “Brown Eyes” is decent enough, but then I made the mistake of listening to most of the next song on the Rhapsody queue because it was called “Paper Gangsta” and because I have a weakness for listening to songs called “Paper Gangsta,” and so anyway now I am striking L**y G**a from my online badass vocabulary from now on. No offense. Not my cup of Gaga.
Here is a surprisingly awesome picture to wipe the bad taste out of my ears: http://www.imdb.com/media/rm2009708800/rg3580795392
No 3D glasses necessary. You’re all welcome.
http://www.dailyblam.com/news/2011/05/06/eight-promo-posters-for-haywire-starring-gina-carano
My favorite is the one where she kicked the guy through the glass door. But I also like the one where she’s on the bed because at first glance it looks like a sex thing and then you realize she’s gonna break a dude’s arm.
When are they gonna make a damn trailer for this thing? It’s been finished and test screened for a while, and dumped by a distributor. But it never sounded like a big commercial movie anyway, so I still got hopes. One article said it might be released in August, if so it will continue the tradition of my most anticipated summer movie coming out in August.
Mouth
May 7th, 2011 at 9:16 pm
She’s not likely to break dude’s arm there in pic #7. That’s the triangle, Vern. It’s a move you can perform when you have an opponent in your guard; if she can keep her legs strongly connected while getting her right leg a little closer to dude’s left ear and continue to pull on his right arm, she’ll cut off blood to his brain or make him tap. Looks like she’s already bloodied, so I doubt she’ll honor his tap.
I’ll watch any Soderbergh film, August or whenever. Judging by the cast at the bottom of picture #2, this one looks like a must-see in the theatre.
Paul
May 7th, 2011 at 9:22 pm
Vern – please review “Juggernaut”, starring Richard Harris and Anthony Hopkins. It is a ridiculously good 1970s big-budget seafaring movie that was unlucky enough to come out at a similar time as “The Poseidon Adventure” (which is also an excellent movie) came out. It is quite simply one of my favorite thrillers of all time, one of the tensest movies ever made, and features a great badass performance from Richard Harris to boot. It also has one of the most parodied final scenes of any film ever, but most people can’t even remember what film that particular device originally came from nowadays.
Mouth – I can see what you’re talking about here, that young lady does have a massive pair of shiny earrings, doesn’t she? They are somewhat eye-catching.
Broddie – I can only remember JCVD playing a villain (and a fairly minor one, as far as I can recall) in some action movie with an Asian guy as the lead. Can’t remember what the heck it was called but it bored the hell out of me.
And sorry, but JCVD playing a villain strikes me as a terrible idea. Unless he can do a miracle repeat of “Unisol: Regeneration” I just don’t see him pulling it off. You look at the other big-name action stars and their efforts at villainy are almost universally bad. (Ok, there was the Terminator. But he wasn’t a villain in the sequels and anyway it doesn’t count if you’re playing a cybernetic organism. New rule.) “Batman and Robin”? “Spy Kids 3”? “Machete”? The films may not have been terrible (well, “Batman and Robin”…) but the characters and performances by Arnold, Stallone and Seagal respectively were pretty damn bad.
Mouth
May 7th, 2011 at 9:38 pm
Sigh. And he doesn’t even acknowledge his notoriety here.
I refuse to acknowledge the existence of Paul or any of his posts, no matter how harmless or clever, until he sees THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS and admits to me that it’s awesome.
jsixfingers
May 7th, 2011 at 9:46 pm
Who has seen Thor and what are the thoughts? I saw it today and it’s been a few hours and I still can’t quite formulate an opinion. I thought Asgard was amazing, I thoroughly enjoyed the fight with the ice giants and the warriors three (more Ray Stevenson please), and of course everything involving Natalie Portman being on screen, but I can’t decipher yet how I feel about it as a whole.
jsixfingers
Of course theres a Thor review up now. Nevermind.
A.J. MacReady
May 7th, 2011 at 9:57 pm
Just saw Adaptation and while there is NOT an abundance of mega-acting in any way, it’s pretty fucked up and amazing all at once. About writing, about movies, and about writing movies. . .and then maybe even having a passion for something in life that you say “fuck the rest, THIS is what matters” or some shit like that I think. So, you know, it’s a thinker and everything. But it’s pretty awesome all the same. Guess that means I think you should review it, Vern, cause I wanna see what you gotta say as always.
A.J. MacReady
Meant to say that I saw it AGAIN. Although it’d be pretty cool if I knew to save something that kickass for a night where I had nothing else to watch.
RRA
May 7th, 2011 at 10:48 pm
Hunter D. – I loved FIVE BOROUGHS but apparently I’ve read the HOT SAUCE reivews and I guess I was asleep or something back in ’04, but FIVE BOROUGHS was a “creative flop.” I missed that memo. Which I yell bullshit. Sure not as good as their earlier records, but their weakest efforts are still better than most assholes’ best.
I’m trying to refuse the idea that the Boys have gone back to basics or went back to CHECK YOUR HEAD or ILL COMMUNICATION or HELLO NASTY or whatever the fuck cliches I’ve read in too many reviews. Some legends have made so much good music, their worst enemies become their past. I’ll just say for white Jewish graying dudes in their 40s, one fighting cancer, they still enjoy music and the exploration of it. Still pull off some potent beats.*
And of course, rap some nonsensical as nonsensical lyrics can be.
I must say, Ms. Gaga just didn’t leave an impression for me. Some people are sample and make art out of it. Modest Mouse, among others. Some sample because they’re just fucking lazy and don’t know anybody. Or can’t play instruments. She’s very popular, maybe one of the world’s biggest pop stars. If not #1.
Which means she’s rather generic, or too much for my taste. (also losing a PR news cycle to Weird Al was hilarious inept on her part. Accidental or not, she lost a fight to a novelty musician. Opps!)
*=Which begs the obvious question: How come the Beastie Boys haven’t collaborated yet with Eminem? Jesus Eminem admitted years back that the Boys (among others) were a big influence on him. Imagine that team-up. It could even steer Eminem from the same old blame mom/ex-wife/I’m clean/I’m clean again/I’m clean again again/kill celebrities lyrics he usually writes up when he’s on creative autopilot.
JTraveller76
May 8th, 2011 at 1:09 am
RAA:
I hadn’t actually posted anything about the Beastie Boys, but I WAS considering the purchase of HSC2, so I appreciate your thorough, if unmotivated advice.
Paul:
in my world, Arnold, Sly, and Seagal WERE playing robots in those movies. They just never reference it overtly. That’s how I choose to interpret a lot of movies. It makes them better.
May 8th, 2011 at 1:12 am
JTraveller76:
Potpourri 3D/homie G/”give us us free”/for you and me/a place to discuss irony/misogyny/cinematography/ and various oddities/it oughta be/made to be/because you hosting service is spot-tit-ty/ironically/cause you’re always spot on with your commentary/I need a place to spill my mental dysentery/so drop a new spot so we can pop the cherry/hilar-ity will ensue/like a misplaced order at the apothecary/we’ll be merry/till we OD and foam at the mouth it’ll get quite scary/cause we’re unaware we/ popped a pill designed to turn a badass into a fairy.
Not my best work, but good enough, I suppose.
I still would’ve appreciated a Potpourri WITH A VENGEANCE thread to stay badass with the part threes. That was my favorite sequel name ever, until LIVE FREE which I think is even better because it’s so blatantly patriotic.
SDAL
I recently bought an ex-rental DVD of Demolition Man, which makes me want to see Wesley Snipes as the bad guy in Expendables2.
Though I also want to see JCVD and all those guys Brodie mentioned.
Griff
I’ve always wanted Vern to review more Spielberg movies, Close Encounters, Jurassic Park, Empire of The Sun etc etc
maybe you could have a Spielberg marathon leading up to Super 8 perhaps?
or maybe Vern’s just waiting for the blu rays of all those movies, like me, in which case he needs to revisit AI and review The Color Purple
Griff
May 8th, 2011 at 3:28 am
and I remember HONEY, I SHRUNK THE AUDIENCE as well
man, I haven’t been to Disney World in almost ten years, I wish I could go this summer
Griff
some other movies I’d love Vern to review simply because they are awesome movies are Jacob’s Ladder and The Never Ending Story, both of which are on blu ray
Griff
May 8th, 2011 at 3:45 am
also sorry to quadruple post, but before I forget I’d like to plug my own review blog
I’ve had it for almost a year now, but I’ve been hesitant to mention it until now, I figure a new potpourri is as good a time as any
http://griffsrandomreviews.wordpress.com/
I don’t really review movies (at least not so far), mainly I review anime, books and video games, I like to think of myself as the Vern of video games (or at least I’m trying to be), so if that sounds interesting to you check it out, a word of warning though, I don’t update all that often
Paul
May 8th, 2011 at 4:18 am
Hunter D: Bad shot, in Seagal’s case. In most of his films he might as well BE a robot because we almost never see him scar, bruise, or get cut (despite him having practically a fetish for throwing people through panes of glass). Machete’s one obvious exception to that rule.
(Executive Decision’s another one, but does anybody notice that we never see his body after he [SPOILER] gets sucked out of the tube at 30,000 feet? ANYTHING could’ve happened to the guy. They were over the ocean – who’s to say he didn’t land in it, survive, and physically subdue a killer whale or giant squid, forcing it to give him a lift back to dry land? This is what I choose to believe.)
Stu
May 8th, 2011 at 5:11 am
Vern, please review IN BRUGES already. You like movie about Hitmen with soft spots and badass juxtapositions, right? And weird touches, like…being set in Bruges, a bitter dwarf actor predicting a race war, paintings depicting Hell…and lots of dark humour.
Chuck Norris rejoins Delta Force: 10:31am. Osama Bin Laden dead : 10:32am.
Broddie
I’m with Hunter on the robot interpretation tip when it comes to those “hero turned villain” turns. Good call.
Oh and now that Vern mentions August; anybody see the new trailer for NEW CONAN yet?
It actually makes it look watchable which is saying something for a Marcus Nispel joint.
Knox Harrington
May 8th, 2011 at 9:01 am
I second that IN BRUGES suggestion. I also think it’s about time vern reviews THE LOSERS. Furthermore, I think Marcus Nispel deserves to get sodomised by those scary indians mentioned in Blood Meridian.
And finally, why hasn’t Vern reviewed Deadly Crossing yet? I think it’s the latest Seagal movie, as it appeared at my local video store a few weeks ago. I’m sure as hell not gonna watch it, since I don’t really like those DTV Seagal movies (sorry, but I’ve yet to see one that I considered to actually be, you know, good), but I do love love reading Vern’s reviews of these movies.
Stu
May 8th, 2011 at 9:22 am
“Oh and now that Vern mentions August; anybody see the new trailer for NEW CONAN yet?”
Yes, it looks good, though oddly Conan feels like a supporting character in it from the lack of lines he has in the trailer.
What about COLOMBIANA? I posted the trailer in the fallen Potpourri 2 thread, but we had the problems with that soon after, so I don’t know how many of you saw…
http://youtu.be/W-oV-GRBj5Q
Could be good, but I fear the post-action plague that Vern said TRANSPORTER 3 by the same director had, in addition to a bit of Tony Scott avid fart”the filmreel I’m using killed my father and raped my mother, so I’m gonna fuck up the image with all sorts of double exposure and colour saturation shit!” type shananigans. Also, could have done with a better male lead than Guy From Alias.
dna
– know
Is The Loosers any good? As in, should I spend five of my hardearned bucks on it?
Inspector Li
May 8th, 2011 at 11:53 am
Thirding IN BRUGES. The whole “black comedy with humanized hitmen” genre has become a big red flag, but Stu’s right – there are a lot of nice touches to this one that are carried off gracefully (as opposed to the standard OMG Isn’t This Outrageous quirkitude.) The cast is all aces too, which is something I never imagined I’d say about Colin Farrell. Even if you don’t feel like writing it up, Vern, you ought to check it out sometime.
May 8th, 2011 at 12:29 pm
Fun In Bruges fact; that painting of hell, it describes the entire rest of the movie. Trufax.
Also, Mouth, I’m sorry that you listened to Paper Gangster. I only made it about 45 seconds into that song before I deleted it from Itunes, It’s a truly terrible little thing. Low point of her career.
Broddie
May 8th, 2011 at 1:42 pm
Stu that trailer looked very annoying to me. The repetition of “remember who you are” whatever the fuck was irritating but mostly It was all the pseudo-Tony Scott rapid edit shit that really did put me off. I was hoping this would’ve looked cooler I mean it’s a flick about an ass kicking chick written by Besson after all but yeah not very impressed.
jsixfingers
May 8th, 2011 at 1:50 pm
Broddie; FOUR TIMES. Thats how many times her father/trainer/mentor loudly whispers REMEMBER WHERE YOU CAME FROM. The first time I thought it was kinda cool. I was even willing to go with it the second time. By the time the third and the fourth rolled around I was pretty much officially unsold on Colombiana. Might be good, I’ll generally see annnnnything with Besson’s name attached (even knowing full well it could be absolute shit), but man somebody at the trailer cutting office needs some schooling on how taking something potentially badass and then BEATING IT TO DEATH does not a more badass tagline make.
marlow
Hey, while we are being random anyone else want to take bets that Junior Dos Santos will defeat Brock Lesnar via Sensei Seagal Crane Kick?
I give it a 2-1 shot.
May 8th, 2011 at 2:44 pm
It’s funny that you recently mentioned avoiding Cuba Gooding, Jr. movies in the same week that I noticed just how many damn DTV movies he’s done. Since the last time he appeared on theater screens (2007’s American Gangster), he’s done over a dozen movies, most of them action vehicles. And in one of the four DTVs he’s got listed for 2011, he co-stars with Dolph Lundgren. On paper, a seeming candidate for the Expendables sequel. Of course, I haven’t seen any of them, even Shadowboxer. So, your mission, should you choose to accept it…
May 8th, 2011 at 2:55 pm
Why were you guys ever excited for Columbina? Did you not see Megaton’s first feature, Transporter 3? Utterly lifeless. I have no idea what Besson sees in him. His staging is uninspired, his composition predictable, and he was unable to pull a memorable performance from any of his actors. The man killed the franchise dead. He couldn’t even shoot hot European women properly.
Mouth
Yeah, but he has “Megaton” in his name.
I’m sold.
Did any of the reviewers bother to write a “Megaton bombs” headline when Transporter 3 came out. If not, critics really aren’t doing their jobs anymore.
And yes, The Losers is worth five of hard earned bucks, my friend. Worth every penny.
May 8th, 2011 at 3:37 pm
Making Matters worse, Transporter 3 had a budget about 100% more than the original and 25% more than the first sequel and yet it has significantly less action than either of those films. It just looks and feels cheap on every level, in spite of the fact that it is one of the most expensive movies that Statham has ever toplined.
Vern
May 8th, 2011 at 4:00 pm
I agree about Megaton, but Columbiana looks pretty good. Maybe you guys already covered this, but was it really written first as a Leon sequel? It seems to fit other than her wanting to avenge her parents. Even has her wearing Leon hat and sunglasses in one part of the trailer.
He’s doing Taken 2 also, so hopefully he improves.
May 8th, 2011 at 4:03 pm
This seems like as good a place as any to let you boys know that I won’t be around to blow your minds about the hot shit for the next couple weeks because I’ll be in Jamaica on business, getting paid to interview nearly naked models and drink complimentary mixed beverages. So I’m sort of like Mouth but without the code names and political assassinations. Do try to enjoy yourselves without me.
jsixfingers
May 8th, 2011 at 4:07 pm
I like to pretend the Transporter movies stopped after the first one. Then watch the second as an unrelated film that has buckets more cheese but still largely works. All prints and copies of the third should be burned in a square somewhere, preferably while villagers with torches and pitchforks look on.
And it’s already been said, but yeah, the Losers is absolutely worth a rental. If I ever find it on sale on blu I’ll even pick it up for my collection. Slightly forgettable, entirely enjoyable while you are watching it.
Stu
May 8th, 2011 at 4:29 pm
I prefer the first TRANSPORTER as well. It seems more…classy. 2 is fun, but I’m just too annoyed at how the only real link to the first film is the french cop. And why would he dump Qi Shu for an affair with some housewife?
“He’s doing Taken 2 also, so hopefully he improves.”
I hope his daughter doesn’t get kidnapped again in that. I don’t think the character is really built for McClaine-esque “How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice!” type scenarios.
marlow
May 8th, 2011 at 4:32 pm
Oh shit, there was a 3rd Transporter movie wasn’t there? Judging from these comments I’m glad I missed it completely. Then I watched the trailer for Columbiana and it lost me forever with that whole “i watched my parents get killed when I was 9” or whatever the fuck Uhura said. Did Paul Haggis write that shit? It reminds me of Sean Penn’s “I have Mike’s heart!” over emoting from 21 Grams. That right there is my least favorite thing someone can put into a movie.
Anyway, in an attempt to say something nice, Cliff Curtis is awesome in everything, and has an ability to play multiple races that puts Seagal to shame.
Mouth
Your presence has been and will continue to be missed, Mr. Majestyk. Jamaica has been very good to me, though my ODA’s field trips there have never involved enough babes & beverages. Or any assassinations. (Officially.)
Take lots of pictures, brotherman.
May 8th, 2011 at 4:46 pm
Mouth, it might be dishonorable and all, but you do realize that if you ever met Vanessa Hudgens you could totally tell her, or at least *heavily imply* that you plugged Osama. Sure, it would be morally reprehensible and against everything you stand for, but you just might get a blowjay out of it…just sayin’.
Stu
The villains in MARKED FOR DEATH were Jamaican, so be carefull not to piss off any twin brother voodoo practitioning drug dealers.
Mouth
May 8th, 2011 at 5:03 pm
I was thinking I would wow Vanessa by grabbing a basketball and then dancing with it. (It worked for Zac Efron.) If that didn’t work, I was gonna just headbutt the floppy out of Zac Efron’s stupid hair.
Or I guess I could find a way to lose my shirt and let her see the dog tags and then tell her some ‘Stan stories.
But really I prefer it when the girl makes the first move.
Broddie
May 8th, 2011 at 5:24 pm
Majestyk in light of what Stu has said may I also say to make sure never to get involved with any jamaicans that look like Steve James or the non-Keith David or Basil Wallace MARKED FOR DEATH black guy in WEEKEND AT BERNIE’S II. Those aren’t the type of people to invite to a BBQ. Unless of course WEEKEND AT BERNIE’S II did not take place in jamaica then I’d just say enjoy the fine rum out there.
Broddie
I just smoked my first blunt in over a month cause I take breaks like a responsible toker. So that reference was completely random. I seriously haven’t seen that movie since like 1994. Perhaps I should netflix that.
Deano
Just review John Carpenter’s Vampires, and re-review Hard Target…classics
Broddie
Speaking of Carpenter I think an ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 review is long overdue around here. PRINCE OF DARKNESS too.
Griff
May 8th, 2011 at 5:55 pm
since it’s directed by Marcus Nispel I’m sure the New Conan (is that like the new Coke?) will have utterly incomprehensible action sequences that will make you think Conan himself has knocked you on the head
but hey, on the bright side there’ll probably be lots of boobs, that Friday The 13th remake has I think the most tits I’ve ever seen in a movie in theaters and is the only reason to bother with that POS
May 8th, 2011 at 6:42 pm
The new CONAN being a big budget movie with Conan fighting LORD OF THE RING extras and magic NARNIA monsters, I really doubt we’ll see any boobs. But on the bright side I’d say that at least from the trailer it doesn’t really look too awful, especially compared to Nispel’s terrible PATHFINDER.
May 8th, 2011 at 8:16 pm
Griff, OMG, Neverending Story. That movie blows my mind. I just realized that it’s about me watching Bastian read about Atreyu and that someone will hear my story and then someone will hear their story and then THEIR story and then my head explodes.
Also, I think Transporter 3 is an amazing script because it includes the line “I want to feel sex one last time.”
Griff
May 8th, 2011 at 8:33 pm
but Toxic, isn’t it going to be R rated? if so I’m sure they’ll be some titties in there somewhere because like I said this is the same guy that directed the boob filled Friday The 13th remake
dna
May 8th, 2011 at 11:57 pm
– Vern
Now the era of reboots is officially over, I would love to see some doublefeature reviews of remakes like Yojimbo/A Fistfull of Dollars/Last Man Standing and The Virgin Spring/Last House on The Left.
You could do the classic Columbia horrors and it`s remakes; Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolfman, The Invisible man (Hollow Man) and The Mummy.) Or how about Scarface (`32) , King Kong (`33) and Wages of fear? Or The Hunchback of Notre Dame vs the Disney version?
I’d like a review of PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID.
Stu
“Now the era of reboots is officially over, I would love to see some doublefeature reviews of remakes like Yojimbo/A Fistfull of Dollars/Last Man Standing and The Virgin Spring/Last House on The Left.”
He’s done those already, the Virgin Spring review being subtitle “Max Von Sydow’s Badass Revenge”.
Cassidy
May 9th, 2011 at 3:04 am
Random musing: How in the world did the direct to DVD (I think) movie The Big Bang (starring Antonio Banderas) get as many recognizable actors as it does into it? It’s basically a quirky detective noir “thriller” but with a ridiculous amount of cameos for something that really does not really deserve it. I would ask Vern to review except I think it’s terrible.
Speaking of Antonio Banderas, what the hell happened to his career?
Oh dear… I just checked IMDB and he’s playing Dali in the movie of the same name… directed by Simon West. Those three things don’t seem like a good match at all. However, the script is written by the writer of Kill the Irishman which I have heard is good (and stars Punisher #3 Ray Stevenson) and I am planning to watch it soon.
Speaking of which, can you review Kill the Irishman, Vern?
dna
May 9th, 2011 at 3:58 am
– Stu
I know, that`s why I suggested he did some more like that and his Yojimbo/A fistfull of dollars/Last man standing reviews.
May 9th, 2011 at 4:53 am
@Griff: I think at some point the writer said something like “Don’t worry you guys, I’m totally gonna keep it R-Rated cause I respect the CONAN franchise so much!” so that the Internet would calm down. Then a producer was like “hey, that’s a cute idea, but I’m spending a hundred million dollars on this, so it’s gonna be family friendly whether the Internet likes it or not, thank you very much”.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t remember seeing any decapitation or severed limb or even a single drop of blood in the teasers/trailers/etc. So if there is no real violence in the movie, I can’t imagine that there’s gonna be boobies.
It’s ok. 3D boobies enthusiasts like you and me will always have Piranha 3D.
Knox Harrington
May 9th, 2011 at 5:17 am
Finally watched Fast Five today. Really enjoyed it, even though I think it came dangerously close to crossing that line between brilliantly absurd and just plain stupid. Actually, it did cross that line a few times.
One thing I didn’t like at all though was (SPOILER! WATCH OUT!) that mid-credits “surprise scene” where Eva Mendes tells Dwayne that Michelle Rodriguez is still alive. Sorry, but that was a little lame. Are all movies turning into goddamn soap operas these days. Isn’t that what TV is for? “She’s dead!” “No, she’s alive! Just like Gandalf!”
Guess I’m getting fed up with how movies can’t just stand on their own anymore. Everything has to be part of a series. I know it’s a silly complaint since Fast and Furious is, you know, a franchise. But shouldn’t these stories come to an end eventually? A few decades from now James Bond won’t be the only franchise with dozens of films in its back catalogue. There will be tons of them: Fast and Furious, Saw, Harry Potter, Twilight (you better believe there will be more of those), Bourne, Transporter, Transformers, Terminator, Iron Man, X-men, every other superhero out there, Shrek. Can you imagine a world with dozens of Shrek movies? Because that’s the future, my friend.
When was the last time a franchise came to a satisfying end and that was that? No more sequels. No spin-offs. Just “Well, that’s it. Thanks for watching. Now go find something else.”
May 9th, 2011 at 5:46 am
Now that he’s doing more EXPENDABLES, I think Stallone has accepted the fact that there shouldn’t be a FIRST BLOOD: JOHN RAMBO KILLS AGAIN, or a ROCKY BALBOA: THE ITALIAN STALLION. So I guess you could count ROCKY and RAMBO for now. Of course they’ll get reboots in 10 years but until then, that’s 2 franchises that came to a satisfying end.
Stu
May 9th, 2011 at 7:47 am
“Correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t remember seeing any decapitation or severed limb or even a single drop of blood in the teasers/trailers/etc. So if there is no real violence in the movie, I can’t imagine that there’s gonna be boobies.”
It wasn’t a redband trailer though, so what do you expect? Also the guy playing Conan, Jason Momoa says “We start off with Conan like this pirate thief, kind of charming and banging all kinds of ladies. He’s just self-interested”.
Even if they do tone it down, I could see them double dipping with an uncut version on DVD.
Knox- Wait until 20 years from now when they REBOOT the Fast and the Furious series, and people of our generation complain that the new guy playing O’Conner doesn’t say “Bro” enough, and think using hovercars ruins the purity of the original’s chase scenes.
Griff
May 9th, 2011 at 8:43 am
Sorry, I just forgot that you guys had that redband/all audiences thing over there.
Still, when they spend that much money on a movie they tend to go for a PG13 rating, don’t they? It’s not like it’s a $30M comedy.
Knox Harrington
May 9th, 2011 at 9:32 am
You’re right, Toxic. Rocky Balboa and John Rambo are two very good examples (damn, I love those movies).
Yeah, O’ Conner’s “Bro” is like McClane’s “Yippee Ki-yay”. Did he even say Bro once in Fast Five? Think I heard him call someone Dog once.
Knox Harrington
May 9th, 2011 at 9:37 am
Speaking of Die Hard, I was recently quite shocked to find out that there are tales of John McClane outside the realm of cinema. Apparently there’s this comic book called Die Hard: Year One and it tells the story of McClane as a rookie cop back in the 70’s.
There’s even a picture of him sporting a hairdo like the one my dad still has (think Daniel Craig in Munich). Really fucking strange.
atzfratz
May 9th, 2011 at 1:40 pm
The only movie i ever wrote Vern an email to review is A PROPHET and you still haven’t done it.
Figgured a french badass movie about a young kid rising the ranks in prison might be right up your alley.
It still has a 8.0 imdb rating after 22.000 votes.
” As Epic as THE GODFATHER. A Must See ” – The Times
Give it a try.
May 9th, 2011 at 2:01 pm
Un prophète is good stuff, definitely worthy of a 7 or 8 out of 10, but it didn’t quite rock my world like it did to some critics. The Nas song scene hit hard, the intensity of dude’s first kill is some hardcore prison not-afraid-to-go-gay shit, and the sidewalk/SUV hit in broad daylight is very memorable. Paul’s gonna love that slo-mo.
Un prophète is a good bit better than, for example, the Mesrine films, in my opinion, so that should get Vern’s attention.
Oddly, I put it at the top of my NetFlix DVD queue for no reason other than that I happened to have just seen & really enjoyed THE BEAT THAT MY HEART SKIPPED. Then, like 2 weeks later, all these critics were popping up on the internet telling me Un prophète was, like, one of the top 8 films of the year.
The director, Jacques Audiard, is 2 for 2 from what I’ve seen, and I’ll be checking his older stuff ASAP.
Casey
May 9th, 2011 at 6:54 pm
IN BRUGES is good enough but wraps up way too neatly. It was too clever for its own good. It’s not bad and I have a friend who adores it, but I don’t understand the hyperbole over it.
I also really enjoyed A Prophet. Again, it’s one of those films I enjoyed but wasn’t as good to me as it should have been because some well meaning friends talked it up to much.
One movie I do get nuts in love with is VALHALLA RISING. I emailed Vern about it but seriously, he should review it. It’s like GHOST DOG with Vikings instead of Forrest Whitacker. I hope I can ruin VALHALLA RISING like my friends ruined IN BRUGES and A PROPHET.
Speaking of GHOST DOG I remember a local comic store having an RPG of it. I need to go check it out again to see if it’s still there. I kind of want to own it now.
I liked THOR. I didn’t care for the spectacle or the imagery. I mean, it was good but I was too impressed with the acting, character development, and drama. It could have been a much smaller movie and I would have liked it just as much.
Why bother with an EXPENDABLES sequel? Stallone would be better off being the villain in 7HE FAS7 AND 7HE FURIOUS. Or Paul Walker’s dad. MAYBE BOTH??? Seriously, FAST FIVE did what the EXPENDABLES wanted to do but a thousand times better.
I like Zach Snyder. I have yet to see SUCKER PUNCH but his other means have been decent to good. I don’t understand the hatred of him, though. Nerds are awful.
My best friend remarked to me last year that for years I had dated variations on the same woman. They were all quirky and had big gum lines shown when they smile. It’s true! So, yeah, you could tell my ex girlfriends by that. If you see a girl with a gummy smile and with a hand made eco friendly purse there’s a good chance she’s an ex of mine. They were all sweet girls, though, so treat them nice.
You guys are the best. I’ve been lurking here for a while. I hope my awful comments don’t make this site too much worse.
FIGHT THE POWER
May 9th, 2011 at 7:24 pm
I saw A PROPHET and I liked it, but it’s not fresh enough on my mind to write about. Most brutal prison stabbing I’ve seen in a movie, I remember that much. I thought it was very well made but not all-time classic stuff like the hype was at the time. I guess I’m more of a MESRINE man.
Casey
May 9th, 2011 at 7:38 pm
Also, the new Beastie Boys album is rad. I like it a lot more than To The Five Boroughs. It’s not as great as the classic trinity of Paul’s Boutique / Check Your Head / Ill Communication but I’d put it up next to Hello Nasty! in terms of quality.
I’m usually a death metal kind of guy but I’ve been on a real big Beastie Boys kick and I’ve recently rediscovered the Wu Tang Clan.
Man, I can’t wait for the Man with an Iron Fist.
Griff
May 9th, 2011 at 10:14 pm
for any gamers here, is anyone getting excited for LA Noire coming out soon?
it’s been in development for like 6 years or something and I remember the debut trailer was first shown in early 2007
for the uninitiated it’s basically a James Ellroy game, where you play as a police detective in late 40’s LA and solve crimes based supposedly on stuff that really happened
Knox Harrington
May 10th, 2011 at 5:31 am
The one thing about L.A. Noire that has me interested is the Mad Men influence. Apparently some of the writers on the show helped write the game. Also, some of the cast from Mad Men are in the game. Looks like one classy game.
Anyone else hear about the potential cast of Django Unchained? At the moment it looks like Will Smith, Christoph Waltz and Sam Jackson. About time Smith got back to making good movies. Ali was too long ago.
May 10th, 2011 at 6:42 am
Not trying to start a war here Casey, but considering Vern thought BRONSON was just okay, I can’t imagine that he would enjoy VALHALLA RISING more. It’s more pretentious and it’s the same kind of “Hey don’t you think that my main character is awesome? You know, cause he beats the crap out of a lot of dudes for no specific reason and that’s basically all he does but who needs character development or motivation” deal, except at least that Charlie Bronson guy had some charm to him, while Mr One Eye Muddy Face is just some caveman who beats up and chops up people in a “Visit Scotland” postcard. Oh and he drinks water in slow motion I guess. Sure the cinematography is really pretty but the fights are really poorly filmed, and you don’t want that in a movie that’s all about “My man here sure can fight a lot”. Unless you consider that the movie also really says meaningful things about Nature and Religion (SPOILERS Nature: good, Religion: bad)
Then again, who knows, maybe I’m totally wrong and he’d love it. Sorry, it’s just that I hated that movie so much, I couldn’t keep it to myself.
RRA
May 10th, 2011 at 7:45 am
Knox Harrington – I’ll care about NOIRE when PSN gets back on-line.
~Sony’s incompetence leading up, during, and the PR handling of that PSN shut down/hacking has got to be in the Top 10 fiascos ever in the video game industry.
Inspector Li
RRA, is there expected to be multiplayer for Noire? It sounds too linear for that, unless they’re going to cut out what makes the gameplay unique. Then again, more of anything is still more.
Ghost
May 10th, 2011 at 9:54 am
Conan is going to be R rated. There has been several behind the scenes pictures with a lot of nudity. There was a scene where Conan is in a village and all of the women are topless. Even the ugly ones. Marcus Nispel also said in the Conan article in Empire that it was going to be R. I’m pretty sure Lions Gate knows that most of the cash they will earn will come from Europe and the rest of the world as films like Troy, Alexander and Kingdom of Heaven did a hole lot better in the rest of the world, then America.
–
I’m not that big fan or The Transporter, mostly because it feels like half of the second act has been cut out. The first act is cool, and ends with him getting a new car and ending up a woman he doesn’t know what to do. 10 minutes later you got the attack of his house, and you think it’s awesome. But after they go to the office and met her father act 2 suddenly just end, by him being hit in the head and arrested. There is no big mid point action scene, or an all is lost action scene at the end of act 2. They just jump straight into act 3, something that also was the case with Transporter 2, but not Transporter 3. Finally they understand how to make a script with a mid point and an all is lost moment, before giving us the third act big final. Transporter 3 was a lot better on paper then the others films. Too bad Megaton blew it up crappy editing and composition and lifeless performance. Is just too much to ask for to get 2 action scenes in act 1, one in the beginning and one in the end, then get 3 in act 2, and then get a big one in act 3 (or three smaller one like James Cameron likes to do).
Mickey
May 10th, 2011 at 12:22 pm
Ghost:
I prefer my action films to have action scenes when it is motivated by the story and characters. Yes, a big midpoint action scene is cool, but the way you spell that all out makes me feel queasy. Like you’re missing the forest through the trees, man. I mean, I just watched A Clockwork Orange last night and there are 4 action scenes in act one, a character based moment at the midpoint, and no real “action” scenes in act 3. But at the same time, the entire movie is a palindrome. Everything that happens in act one up through the moment he goes to prison is repeated in after he is left out. Good screenwriting is a lot more complex and nuanced than you’re letting on there.
Also, we shouldn’t have this discussion predicated upon The Transporter films, because the writing in them was never the star. The Choreography was.
Jareth Cutestory
May 10th, 2011 at 12:33 pm
Toxic: I don’t know if we are supposed to watch a film like VALHALLA RISING with the usual set of character expectations that we’d bring to something like EXPENDABLES. I see the film as more of an allegory than a straight narrative, populated more by expository figures than actual characters. It’s sort of like complaining that we don’t get to know the characters in Kubrick’s 2001.
I don’t really know if that was the intention behind the film. The existential paranoia really worked for me, and the filmatism was intoxicating. It was like a Bosch painting. I’ll let better minds than mine decide whether or not that is pretentious.
May 10th, 2011 at 1:52 pm
Jareth: the thing is, as I started watching VALHALLA RISING, I really didn’t have any expectations at all, other than “It’s going to be about Vikings” and “It’s not going to be a cool, entertaining movie about Vikings like OUTLANDER, it’s more like your arthouse Viking movie”. I certainly wasn’t expecting EXPENDABLES or BEOWULF MEETS THE UFC, and I think I can accept an arthouse movie about Vikings, but I just didn’t “get” that particular one. It just seemed to me that, just like for BRONSON, the director was just fascinated by his protagonist because he was such a badass and really wanted the audience to think Mute Muddybeard was fascinating too, except he forgot to give him any interesting character trait or to make his feats look awesome.
Broddie
Casey when was the last time you really fucked with the Wu prior to getting back into them recently? and what have you heard from the more recent stuff? cause I may just have some ill recommendations.
Casey
May 10th, 2011 at 2:14 pm
I can definitely see your perspective on VALHALLA RISING, Toxic. I can’t even give you a coherent defense of the film.
It was completely hypnotic to me and grabbed my attention and didn’t let it go. I think the movie is less BRONSON and more GHOST DOG, though. It’s Vern’s love of GHOST DOG that made me think he would enjoy it.
I really can’t refute your points. I agree with Jareth in that it’s more like a painting. I can understand how someone does not appreciate Guernica but it works for me.
VALHALLA RISING is like a Terrence Malick film with Vikings. I’m not a Terrence Malick fan, all of his movies have really bored me, but VALHALLA RISING just had something that really kept me enthralled.
No worries about a war, Toxic. I think I understand your perspective but I think it’s just an instance where it had an emotional resonance that it didn’t for you. Nothing to get upset about. Hell, if I got upset at people who disagreed with me I’d never get along with anyone for my general dislike of Tarantino, Blade Runner, Dark Knight, and Inception while I harbor a great amount of love for Fast Five, Speed Racer, and Starship Troopers.
First time commenting on Vern’s site. I love this place, and I visit daily.
A few points…
1) I emailed Vern about the not-on-DVD “Exposure” (aka “A Grande Arte”) last year, and I hope he finds time to review that. Peter Coyote is a photographer in Rio who finds out a local prostitute has been killed, but when he investigates, they knife up his girlfriend. So he decides to get revenge by going underground and learning to knife-fight from Tcheky Kayro. It’s the first film from Walter Salles (“The Motorcycle Diaries” and the upcoming “On The Road”) and it’s super pulpy, like an action-y giallo. The very first shot is slow pullback from a dead body in a bed to realize she’s on something like the 80th floor of a giant skyscraper in Rio. Also, one of the coolest trailers ever, and the hotness of Amanda Pays. It’s a MUST.
2) I just saw The Big Bang, that IS getting a theatrical release on Friday, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Anchor Bay engagement before a DVD release in the states on the 24th. It’s… well, shit, it’s terrible. Sam Elliot spends the movie looking like Edgar Winters. Snoop Dogg plays a porn producer named Puss. The giant from Sherlock Holmes gets waaaay too many lines. James Van Der Beek tag teams groupies with a midget. Jimmi Simpson in drag. It’s a YouTube treasure trove, but an absolute chore to sit through.
3) We DO see Seagal’s body get shot out of the plan and into the air for a brief moment in Executive Decision. He’s a CGI blur. It’s very weird, but it’s there. The speed suggests he did not survive the fall. Then again, Seagal.
4) “The Losers” is the very definition of, “Oh, it’s a Sunday, and this is starting on FX, and we’re 20 minutes in.” To some, that is not a recommendation. To me it is!
May 10th, 2011 at 4:20 pm
“I can understand how someone does not appreciate Guernica but it works for me.”
Really, because I can’t. How do you not like Guernica (okay, like is a strong word for a 30 foot long mural of genocide) it’s one of the most utterly hypnotic and totally punk rock things ever made.
Stu
May 10th, 2011 at 4:27 pm
About that dinosaurs vs. aliens thing. Yeah, the concept sounds dumb and hollywood lazy, but I see it’s going to be written by Grant Morrison, so I expect a few insane twists and features to it(insane by the standards of a dinosaurs vs. aliens movie that is). Grant Morrison once wrote a comic called WE3, which was basically HOMEWARD BOUND…but the animals are part cyborg experimental government soldiers…and from what I hear, it’s fantastic!
Broddie
WE3 is definitely one of his bests which considering how many classics Morrison has in the comic book medium that says quite a lot.
RRA
Oh since apparently I’m stereotyped as only caring about money and box-office (damn you Mouth/Mr. Majestyk) around here, some good news: HOT SAUCE COMMITTEE dropped in at #2 on Billboard.
*happy dance*
May 10th, 2011 at 8:13 pm
Hey Broddie, sorry I missed your comment before!
It’s been a few years. Probably a decade. Right now I’m just going through their albums chronologically and giving them a good listen for a few weeks before getting the next. It’s been really awesome so far. I’m even diving into a lot of the side projects I missed.
I originally got into them back in the mid 90s when I was in school in Norfolk. A few months ago I heard Da Mystery of Chessboxin’ and remembered really enjoying the hell out of the Wu and decided to start listening to them again. I even went out and saw them when they played up here in DC a few months ago.
I’ve been listening to The W and Iron Flag lately. I’m also liking Digital Bullet.
Any recommendations you have would be awesome! Thanks a lot for helping out.
I’ve also been listening to some Australian grind. Fuck…I’m Dead and Intense Hammer Rage are pretty brutal. I’ve also been listening to a lot of Sigh recently. Their Imaginary Sonicscape is really one of the best albums I’ve ever heard. I saw them live a few years ago in Baltimore and there were maybe 4 people at the venue but they still put on a killer show.
But, yeah, thanks man!
May 10th, 2011 at 8:47 pm
Well Casey DIGITAL BULLET was disappointing I must say. The first Bobby Digital album was way better. However when it comes to the post-IRON FLAG stuff RZA does have an album called BIRTH OF A PRINCE that was pretty good and made up for DIGITAL BULLET’s missteps.
Then you have GZA’s PRO TOOLS as well as his collabo album GRANDMASTERS featuring DJ Muggs from Cypress Hill on the boards. that were both quite solid. Masta Killa’s NO SAID DATE is probably the closest any Wu solo album ever got to recapturing that 36 CHAMBERS vibe, very good stuff. Method Man has the solid 4:21…THE DAY AFTER which was his best solo album since TICAL. As well as BLACKOUT!2 with Redman which isn’t a bad sequel album.
Speaking of sequel albums; Raekwon’s ONLY BUILT 4 CUBAN LINX…2 is highly regarded as a modern classic. I don’t personally think so I think it’s a bit overrated. Many critics and rap fans would be like “how dare you!!!”. Even though I did like it I don’t think anything could ever top the original. That’s probably along with DEATH CERTIFICATE and IT TAKES A NATION… the greatest rap album ever in my eyes. So maybe my expectations for part 2 were too high but if you ask me his follow up to that one which is titled SHAOLIN VS. WU-TANG is just as solid as CUBAN LINX…2 at least I slightly prefer it anyway.
Ghostface had a great Double KO of bangers with THE PRETTY TONEY ALBUM and FISHSCALE so those are also worth looking into when it comes to post-IRON FLAG stuff. Many people didn’t like the IRON FLAG follow up 8 DIAGRAMS much. They didn’t really feel it cause RZA really branched out and expanded his sound beyond the typical “Wu” audio scope. If you’re a fan of different genres which I’m sure like any respectful music fan you definitely are though I think you’d appreciate it.
Mouth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klByHG-dKR4
I gotta admit the Ne-Yo song is one of the ones I skip over. And I didn’t even know that was Ne-Yo, who gives Flo-Rida, Chamillionaire and Rappin’ 4-Tay a run for the money in the “dorkiest nickname of all time” competition. I like the harder shit I guess. But I’m glad somebody likes those R&B crossover songs since they’ve been sticking them on every hip hop album of the past 10-15 years.
Did you get his love song album? It actually has a couple great songs and maybe you’d like the R&B shit I can’t handle. Also it has a brilliantly convoluted title: Ghostface Killah Presents Ghostdini Wizard of Poetry in Emerald City.
I’m not gotta lie, I just listened to that Ne-Yo feature, and I could barely make it through. Vern’s suggestion is much better, imo.
Mouth
May 10th, 2011 at 10:43 pm
Now, now, let’s not go & call “Back Like That” soft, Vern. You heard the lyrics? The delivery? I think it hits hard. Like I said, it’s especially hard for a widely radio-released track. Okay, I admit I’m guilty of supporting the “token R&B flavor track or 2” that’s been diminishing the purity of great rappers’ output of, indeed, the last 10-15 years. But let’s admit that those are the songs that often have the hottest videos, what with the female contributions and whatnot.
Yeah, I do enjoy that Ghostdini LP alright, even though it’s marked as much by what could have been as it by its success, in my opinion. For example, Fabolous came off sleepy as hell, like a Dr. Dre after too many blunts trying to back up Eminem on “Guilty Conscience” on one of the last gasping stops of the old Up In Smoke tour. Used to be, I see a Fab guest verse on the line-up, I get excited. But it’s hit & miss.
[Here’s my favorite Fabolous off the top of my head, mainly from 1:30 to 1:42 and then the scratching at the end:
I think I’d kill someone to see a We3 movie directed by David Cronenberg. No, I wouldn’t kill someone. I’d probably go so far as sexually assault or something.
Ghost
May 11th, 2011 at 7:52 am
Tawdry Hepburn
I the end it was really the action that was the problem. In Terminator 2 the mid point is when the film slows down. Maybe problem is there is no valley and peaks. They seem to jump true to the most interesting conflict in the Transporter film. I just feel that there is something missing when the act 1 is 30 minutes long, act 2 is 30 minutes long and then you have 20 minutes long act 3. I feel Terminator, Lethal Weapon films, Aliens, Die Hard is so much better with the high and lows. Transporter becomes action porn because of the poor script and structure.
I think all the best action films are made with tight structure. I think the worst you see they jump over several plot points. I feel if they would space out the action more and develop the characters and relationship and really build the relationship between the hero and the villain the film would be easy. Die Hard could jump straight into a 3 act after the police attacked. But they didn’t like the Transporter did and instead they build up the action and the characters, and we got a powerful ending and third act. Transporter didn’t and we got a poor action film. With four cool action scenes, the opening car chase, Frank goes back for payback, the attack of the house and garage fight. I don’t think is too much to ask for a couple more good action scenes, when you go to see an action film.
In the end I think the Transporter only jumps over one plot point and that is the mid point. When Frank gets arrested that’s the low point. The all is lost. Okay, a lot of films have crappy all is action scenes like Blade trinity so I can forgive that, but I can’t forgive just jumping over the powerful mid point with is suppose to be the opposite of the all is lost.
I think if you look at the action films you love and the action films you dislike you start to find a pattern for why you like something. It doesn’t need to have 6 action scenes, but it does need to have plot points. Just look at films like Lethal Weapon. Not much action there, but it got some good mid point and low points, in the house being blown up and they know they deal with special force soldier, and the low point in Riggs getting shot and the kidnapping of Murtaugh’s daughter. Some might call the attack of the house a mid point, but I think it comes to close to be consider a good midpoint. Kinda like with Jonah Hexx sucks so much. It goes too fast, and doesn’t develop much.
I starting to regret what I written, but the main point is study the action films you like and find the reason why you like it. Good action scenes are fine, but there is also plot, character and structure. And I think if the film had worked more on that it would worked better.Yes, for me Transporter 3 works better on a story and structure level. Too bad the action is terrible shot.
May 11th, 2011 at 12:35 pm
Say, Vern, have you ever reviewed IMMORTAL COMBAT? It’s a 1994 DTV action flick starring the one and only Roddy Piper teamed with – get this – the one-er and only-er Sonny Chiba!
Truth is, it’s cheesier than all hell, but it’s a lot of fun if watched in the right spirit.
It’s also got Meg Foster in it so you even got a They Live reunion in there.
Charles
May 11th, 2011 at 2:46 pm
So I saw HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN last night, there was a lot to like, but unfortunately I was left feeling a little underwhelmed. Maybe I am being unfair, and my reaction to the movie has been affected by unrealistic expectations generated by the buzz on the net, but I was a little disappointed. It works great as a tribute to the grindhouse genre films that influenced it and I thought it was a good film, but I didn’t like it as much as I wanted to. Huaer is great in it and he really carries the picture. He understand the type of film HOBO is and his performance is pitch perfect, and often adds a good deal of weight to scenes that would have fallen flat or come across as completely ridiculous in a lesser performers hands. One of the other highlights of the film is the bounty hunter duo of The Plague. They don’t have that much screen time but they are so awesome they flirt with stealing the film from Huaer. However, in the end there is barely enough movie to fill HOBO’s hour and twenty six minute runtime. This film even more then MACHETE felt like it struggled to stretch out a concept that made for a fun trailer into a feature length film. In some ways HOBO feels like NIGHT AT THE ROXBURY, THE LADIES MAN or any other SNL film where they unsuccessfully try to turn a 2 to 3 minute sketch into an feature length narrative. It is also an extremely sick and twisted film. For some that may be a plus and I don’t have a problem with sick and twisted, but HOBO is exhaustingly cruel and sadistic.
Charles
May 12th, 2011 at 1:11 am
Oh, god, Hobo With A Shotgun is BY FAR my favorite movie of the year. I loved every minute of it. And yes, it does get plenty sick and sadistic, and I loved it – it genuinely plays like a lost video nasty, something grotesque and forbidden, and sitting there in the theater brought me back to when I’d watch those sleazy, violent movies from god knows where in my house and I’d keep peering behind me to see if my mom caught me. The Canadian-ness certainly helps with that.
May 12th, 2011 at 1:59 am
I’m bored, you guys wanna hear a joke?
ok so an old lady is in Church and she farts, she turns to her husband and says “I just farted and it SMELLS LIKE THE DEVIL! but it was silent so don’t worry”
and the husband says “you need to get your hearing aid fixed because it wasn’t so silent”
Darryll
HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN was the most fun I’ve ever had in a theater. Period.
Charles
May 12th, 2011 at 9:23 am
Gabe & Darryll, I am glad you guys enjoyed HOBO so much, I wish I could say I liked it as much as you guys. Like I said in my post I really want to like it more, but in the end I only found it to be OK. I will say that the experience could have been enhanced if I had watched it in a theater with a good audience that got the genre that HOBO is playing in, but I watched in on demand with my brother in his home theater. His set up is really nice with a good HD projector, but there is something about seeing a film with a hot audience that really enhances the experience. Case and point I can remember seeing ID4 on opening day with a packed house and the crowed was so into the movie it really made the movie for me, but then a year or so later when I watched the movie on VHS at home by myself it sucked.
Darryll
May 12th, 2011 at 9:58 am
Charles, The theater I saw it in had maybe 12 – 16 people in attendance but it was still a party. Afterward, folks were acknowledging each other with big goofy grins and laughter right out to the lobby. It was the best. HOBO should definitely be enjoyed with as many like-minded friends as possible and with as many beers as possible. I hope Vern takes this advice. For some reason I always picture him watching these things alone and then pondering them in solitude. Vern, I hope this is not the case. Gather your buddies together for HOBO. You’re gonna need to look at each other in awe and wonder at what you are witnessing.
Charles
May 12th, 2011 at 11:49 am
Darryll, there are a number of moments in HOBO were my brother and I both turned to each other with big grins on our faces. I especially liked when we got to see the Plague in action at the hospital, and (SPOILER) when Abby gets all badass and builds her shotgun/axe weapon and lawnmower shield. I am smiling right now just thinking about it.
I have also wondered how Vern watches the majority of the films he reviews. I am sure he goes to the theater a lot but I imagine he often watches the movies he reviews alone at home. I say that because as I get older and have more responsibility it gets harder and harder to get out to see movies with my friends in the theater, and the more I find myself watching movies alone at home. The problem with that is, as much as I love my home theater setup, there is something lost when viewing a movie by yourself. Some films, more then others are best watched with an audience, but films in general are meant to be viewed as part of a communal experience. That is why I have always thought it was cool that Robert Rodriguez often adds an audience reaction audio track to most of his films when they are released on DVD, so even if you are at home by yourself or with just a friend or two you can add the audio from the Austin premier of the film and feel like you are experiencing the film in a packed theater with a rowdy crowd. However, I do have to confess that I have a personal bias toward the idea and feature, because I was part of the audience they recorded for the feature on the SIN CITY, GRINDHOUSE, and MACHETE DVD’s.
Jim Bolo
May 12th, 2011 at 12:14 pm
Okay Folks, is it okay to discuss Tucker & Dale vs Evil? Of course, it seems the only way to see it are by “other means” which I think may go against the Serious Film Watcher’s Code, or something, however, the film-makers seem to be aware of this and accept donations from people who have managed to “obtain” it, which seems pretty cool to me. If the film can’t get distribution, acknowledging this sees a good way to get a little profit, while word of mouth spreads…
And it should because it’s great! It really manages to twist the horror genre in far more entertaining ways than Scream managed. It deserves Shaun Of The Dead levels of fanboy hype.
(Of course, if the film has already been talked about to death on here and I’ve missed it, I apologise).
May 12th, 2011 at 12:20 pm
TUCKER & DALE got a limited release here in Germany a few months ago. It’s apparently coming out on DVD here soon. Since I first saw a trailer for it, it was on my watchlist. I also like Tyler Labine. (So CHUCK gets renewed again, but REAPER got cancelled after two seasons? That’s just sad.)
Darryll
I just checked out the TUCKER & DALE trailer. Looks hilarious. What’s the problem with the distribution?
ThomasCrown442
May 12th, 2011 at 1:15 pm
I’m on the opposite side as Charles as far as movie setting. I feel, in order to review a movie objectively, you should watch the movie by yourself. Sometimes the crowd can cloud your judgement. A good crowd can make a movie seem better than it is and a bad crowd can make it seem worse. Yes, you do kind of miss out on the entire experience as far as the huge screen and what not but as long as you have a good home theater setup (and few distractions such as kids, etc.) viewing a movie at home, by yourself, is the best way to watch a movie (for review purposes). If its a good time you’re after by all means, see it with a crowd.
It would be like trying to review a new brand of whiskey at a crowded bar with loud music playing vs. reviewing it at home where you are more likely to notice the subtleties. You would be able to let the taste wash over you and not be infuenced by the zillion distractions going on at a crowded bar (music, loud drunks, tits, etc.).
Darryll
May 12th, 2011 at 1:44 pm
ThomasCrown442, it really depends on the movie, doesn’t it? I wouldn’t bother watching a comedy by myself, no matter how good my home theater system. Some films require, as Charles so aptly put it, that “communal experience,” . We are social animals and the movies have, for the most part, always been a social art form. We enjoy watching them together, then comparing our experiences afterward. Granted, there are many films I’m quite happy to watch alone (ALIEN, VANISHING POINT, Kubrick films, David Lynch films) but my mode of thought is usually more analytical and introspective. This may be useful when preparing to review a film but it’s not the same experience.
ROCKY III was one of my favorite theater experiences as a kid. It was fist pumping, cheerful fun but it’s just not the same at home. I remember, vividly, during RETURN OF THE JEDI, the entire theater breathing a deep collective breath following the speeder bike chase. Everyone was holding their breath. It was a magical, connective moment. I made out with a girl for the first time during FOOTLOOSE, surrounded by all my buddies. I was the fuckin’ king that night. Now, mind you, I might’ve gotten further than first base that night if we’d rented a video, but probably not. In fact, absolutely not. I’m pretty sure I had Kevin Bacon to thank for that one, at least in part.
Mouth
May 12th, 2011 at 2:04 pm
Charles, Darryll, Thomas, everyone, you all make good points. And thank you, Darryll, for somehow reminding me of my king-for-a-night night in the lobby & parking lot & later in Cynthia’s friend’s backseat on opening night of BRING IT ON, which is somehow less badass but as equally magical as FOOTLOOSE.
Personally, my ideal is like Vern’s approach, or luck, when he watched BROOKLYN’S FINEST. http://outlawvern.com/2010/04/01/brooklyns-finest/ **You guys know I love DTV, but Wesley is too powerful for DTV. He’s not as good in those. I would’ve felt like an asshole if I missed a chance to see him projected again, so I went and saw it. And by the way, I’m the only person in Seattle who did that yesterday. It’s down to one show at one theater and I was the one guy who showed up that day.**
Maybe it’s because I’m a hopeless misanthrope, but there’s nothing better than solitude in a theatre auditorium when a good movie takes over my undivided attention.
Mouth
I’m gonna go call Cynthia.
Darryll
Yeah! Rekindle that flame, Mouth. Ask her if she wants to come over and watch BRING IT ON again.
ThomasCrown442
Or you can watch the sequels!
Jake
May 12th, 2011 at 3:16 pm
Or THE SWINGING CHEERLEADERS, which is even better than BRING IT ON, in my opinion. Anyone know of any other great cheerleader movies besides those two? I’d seen Tarantino recommending THE POM POM GIRLS so I plan on getting around to that one. Any others worth checking out?
May 12th, 2011 at 5:46 pm
I did not like Hobo With a Shotgun. The nonstop over the top sadism with no counterpoint became numbing and boring. I appreciated that they went hardcore with the beatings though. There were a few scenes where I totally thought they were gonna kill off the female lead.
Also, there were two huge missed opportunities in the film.
1: They showed the Plague fighting a giant squid monster just off screen. If you show the squid monster’s tentacles, you have to have the hero fight him! Come on! It’s almost like the makers of Hobo with a Shotgun haven’t read Chekhov’s theories on drama! (:P)
2: At the end, they should have had like 30 money shots in a row. The Hobo shoots the badguy, then the cops shoot the hobo, then the crowd shoots the cops while the cops shoot the crowd. It would have been EPIC, instead it’s much too short.
Darryll
May 12th, 2011 at 6:57 pm
Careful with the spoilers there, Tawdry. We don’t want to ruin it for the American masses. Since you brought it up, though, I’ll just say the squid is not to be taken literally. HOBO is high surrealism and the squid is a huge wink and a nudge to the audience that this is all ridiculous. Especially considering it’s close proximity to the school bus scene. We’ll say no more about that, though.
As to the ending. I would argue that here is a movie that knows to get out while the gettin’ is good. I was satisfied.
May 12th, 2011 at 7:10 pm
curse my virginity, I’m major jealous of Mouth and Darryll now
anyway I’m actually fine with watching movies by myself no matter what movie it is, I’ve seen a lot of movies in theaters, but I’ve seen so many great movies only at home and so many times that there are some movies I couldn’t imagine actually watching in a theater (although that’d be cool)
of course it may have something to do with being an only child, when you’re an only child you get more accustomed to hanging out with yourself (I don’t mean that as a euphemism) and don’t get as lonely easily
also, I’ve got some fantastic fucking news for you guys
Citizen Kane, Conan The Barbarian, The Blues Brothers and Animal House are all coming to blu ray
Animal House is a movie I’ve been wanting to see come out on blu ray for years
Charles
May 13th, 2011 at 12:40 pm
Tawdry, it sounds like you and I had a similar reaction to HOBO. As I said in my original post I found the film to be exhaustingly cruel and sadistic. At some point (and that point had to be early in the film) it just wore me out, and I became indifferent to it. It was so sadistic that I just could not get invested in it, and as a result it really prevented me from enjoying HOBO.
Is HOBO more or less uncomfortable in terms of violence than WANTED? Because that was the first movie in years, that made me feel really dirty while watching it.
Charles
May 13th, 2011 at 3:26 pm
CJ, HOBO is way more violent & gory then WANTED. However, it is not the violence it self that I had a problem with. What I really did not care for is how cruel the characters are and how awful they are to each other, that combined with the extreme violence wore me out.
I would agree that both HOBO and WANTED are both cruel films, but as mean spirited and cruel as WANTED is it is no where near as cruel or sadistic as HOBO.
Mouth
May 13th, 2011 at 3:32 pm
PRIEST 3D: A tale of 2 films (spoiler-free as always, I promise):
The 1st hour sucked. No sugar-coating. I regretted not going along with my girlfriend & her friends to “wedding plan” or “shop” or whatever the fuck they’ve been up to since we left the sushi bar. The filmatism is decent, but every shot & every scene is an unimaginative cliche, and it’s all made worse by the impending PG-13ness that you know will ruin and that indeed ruins any action scenes before they even get going. Also, out of nowhere, we learn that Mr. Priest can jump really high and, worse, jump down a dark pit with no discernible bottom without fear of injury. And we don’t even see him stick the landing. Does he have a Batman cape? Does he deploy a parachute & then PLF? Does he have super strong knees? And then after this shitty cheat of a cut, somehow Mr. Priest & the sadly unglamourized Maggie Q end up right next to their fellow protagonist, the guy who just a minute before had been left in a place like 400 feet above where Mr. Priest landed. It makes absolutely no sense.
Also, the [tattoo?] cross on Paul Bettany’s face changes complexion every other scene.
Then there’s the other film I saw today after I bought a ticket for PRIEST 3D. The climax to PRIEST 3D. From the moment of the movie’s first decent use of the 3rd visual dimension until the last shot, it’s actually a pretty good action movie. The evil guy has a mega moment, there’s floating sparks involved, the good guys finally succintly articulate why we should give a shit about anything, and the momentum of the narrative very suddenly matches the velocity of the speeding train that serves as the centerpiece of a relatively impressive climax.
So I advocate watching a better movie and then sneaking into the last 30 minutes of PRIEST 3D. Or maybe doing drugs and then reading the PRIEST funny papers.
May 13th, 2011 at 4:13 pm
yeah, Priest is based on a Korean manga I believe, I first heard they were doing a movie of it ages ago
I also remember reading a looooong time ago that there was going to be a live action Astro Boy movie, which eventually materialized into a less risky CGI movie
May 13th, 2011 at 4:15 pm
wait a minute, it might have a manga done by an American guy who was of Korean descent, or something like that
anyway it reminds me heavily of the anime (and manga) Trinity Blood, which also has bad ass Nuns in it
May 14th, 2011 at 11:44 am
I am still awaiting a THE MARINE 3 starring John Cena, returning as Triton. Also returning is Robert Patrick as twinbrother to Rome. but his name is Paris. I don´t care about the plot as long as it´s as ridicoulous as the first. The second movie was shit, even if it was technically better,too damn generic and not as fun.
They had a real chance of creating a stupid but fun franchise,then ruining it. Hopefully, a third installment can make it right.
Vern
May 14th, 2011 at 12:06 pm
I’m not gonna review it ’cause I don’t usually like writing about comedies, but I wanted to say something about BRIDESMAIDS in case any of you are gonna see it. I thought it was pretty good, some funny parts, some relatable parts, some likable flawed characters. The crowd I saw it with seemed to love it, especially the dumbest parts (shitting, a fat person eating a giant sandwich).
But if anybody’s planning on seeing it please get the hyperbolic reviews out of your mind. I think this is that KICK-ASS thing where all the people on the internet all saw it at some magical screening at SxSW where some sort of psychotropic gas was pumped in that made it seem like a powerful life-changing experience that they had to evangelize about for the rest of their lives.
Also they’re making way too big of a deal about gender, both in the marketing and the reviews. Of course fucking men can see it, it’s not like women refuse to see all the other movies that aren’t about women. It’s great to see women in roles that Kate Hudson could never play, but it’s not anything revolutionary. The standout character is the fat lady and that’s good but they still give her a few “look at the funny fatty” jokes. Just less than in most movies.
Also this is unscientific but I saw it with two women and neither of them liked it very much.
May 14th, 2011 at 12:13 pm
I never heard of BRIDESMAIDS, so I got no idea what hype you are talking about. (ATTACK THE BLOCK on the other hand…)
Also I just did some googleing about that movie and I guess that “Fat Lady” is Melissa McCarthy, who always is a scene stealer, both in funny and dramatic roles. Unfortunately because of her weight, she doesn’t get much chances to play anything else than “the best friend” or “the funny fatty” or both. Right now she is in one of those unfunny Chuck Lorre sitcoms. (The one where fat people sit on chairs that break down under their weight, but the writers still claim that they are not making fun of them.)
Paul
May 14th, 2011 at 4:07 pm
Seeing “Attack the Block” this week for sure. Aliens attack a London council estate? Sounds epic. Plus I haven’t seen such a familiar location in film since “Human Traffic” (if you look at the pan at the end of the movie, you can actually see where I used to live when this film was made).
BUT I come with a different sort of review. Just saw the Ukranian film “Silent House”. This is the film that was famously filmed in one single take, “Blair Witch”-style, on handheld video camera. A girl and her father are buying a house from their friend. Nobody’s been in the house for a long time. The friend, rather ambiguously, warns them not to go upstairs. They hear strange noises, and one of them disobeys that advice. Then the shitstorm starts. This is a slow-burn film, so don’t expect an action-fest; but if you come in the mood to see something a bit more psychologically affecting, this is a brilliant movie to watch. I saw it in my local arts centre, subtitled in English.
I have to say that this is one of the most genuinely scary films I’ve seen for a LONG time. All of the nasty stuff happens offscreen, the camera constantly follows the daughter (Laura) as she begins to discover exactly what’s going on. A lot of the film is shot in darkness, and if you’re going to do that, this is the way to do it. It’s sort of the anti-“Buried” (which you may remember I reviewed on this very site, calling it a pandering, moronic, manipulative piece of shit that has the audience stuck in a coffin with an unlikeable arsehole for two hours, and my most disliked film of last year.)
The film is shown completely from Laura’s perspective, but occasionally the camera stops showing us what she’s looking at, and turns the audience into voyeurs. Both times it works very well. It also has one of the most disturbing “happy” endings I’ve seen for a long time. Some people don’t like the ending, but I thought it was masterful. Also, when the credits start to roll, the film isn’t over. DON’T leave until you’ve seen the last scene. You’ll know what I mean when it comes.
Remember I said about “Kairo” that it perfectly portrayed the fear of being along in the dark with something that wants to do you harm? Well, this film does as well.
If you see a screening of “Silent House” anywhere near you, especially one subtitled (I haven’t seen it dubbed but I can’t imagine it would be improved, although there’s not that much dialogue anyway) and you’re into slow-burn horror movies, this is an excellent example. It’s not that well-known but has an excellent and well-deserved reputation. See this movie!
man, you went with TWO women? damn, Vern is a pimp
Mouth
May 14th, 2011 at 8:50 pm
Hey Vern, I couldn’t find your review for ALIENS, which I rewatched today, and I considered posting this comment on the PREDATOR thread for some reason, but then out of respect I have abstained from busting that cherry, but I gotta ask the Verniverse here, does anyone else find it fucked up that Ripley totally unnecessarily (SPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERforoneofthebestactionbadassfilmsofcinemaofthelast25.5yearsSPOILER) wrecks the baby batch of big bitch Alien mom?
Ripley had a truce going with the lil alien henchmen off to the side, and it looked like big mama was vulnerable and willing to let her walk out, no questions asked no bullets fired no acid blood sprayed. And Ripley was on her way, backing up out the door with Newt, with the countdown getting closer & closer to point of unlikely return, but then she got all flamey and torched the fuck out of the helpless surrendering big mama alien’s lil egg kids, yo! Whiskey Tango Fuck?
So, the ending of ALIENS is not a happy one, and it is neither pro-Marines nor pro-android, and neither pro-human nor pro-life, in my opinion. I bet the Pope disapproves.
Not that it excuses the many terrible sequels, but on some level I’m glad the sequels are happening b/c mama Alien didn’t deserve to go out like that. She was just doing her evolutionary imperative, protecting her kids, et cetera.
Also, I could do more chin-ups than Vasquez.
RRA
~Don’t worry about Mr. Majestyk. He’s quietly sobbing in the corner. He’ll be back to awesome normal in the morning.
Mouth
http://www.filmlinc.com/film-comment/article/never-the-twain-shall-meet
A great article, an article about everything that we’ve ever considered as art critics and as acolytes or contributors to OutlawVern.
From about 1/3 of the way through the piece until about the next to next to next to last paragraph, Bordwell seems to want to look backward toward earlier 20th century (and also understandably to highlight the origin of film criticism’s influence on academia & vice versa), but in most of the article it is incredibly easy (and correct, I would argue) for us to plug in the name, ideas, & ideals of our favorite specialized cinephile and see that Vern’s approach is well defined & beautifully articulately passionately defended by Mr. David Bordwell.
You have to read somewhat between the lines, Vern, but you, sir, have just been validated by a slightly more respected critic.
What’s crazy is that this Bordwell article, which obviously is months in the making and went through multiple editors on its way to publication, is only barely the equal of any given tri-weekly OutlawVern review in terms of being a transcendent statement on the world of film & film criticism.
Vern
http://outlawvern.com/2007/07/27/aliens/
RRA: Capone reviewed it on Ain’t It Cool, he said they were in it but toned down. Then again if it’s anything like the other two movies it would be hard to tell which characters are in it so he probly just saw something shiny that looked like a gold tooth.
Mouth
May 14th, 2011 at 10:29 pm
Damnation, why didn’t I think to look at the “related posts” of AVATAR?
Though the search function here should be more intuitive, this is a sad day for my web detective abilities. {hangs head, single tear drop}
RRA
It will be out on DVD over here next month. I’ll try to check it out then.
Paul
May 15th, 2011 at 4:20 am
Mouth – I can see Bordwell’s point. There’s definitely a difference between theory-driven academic criticism, that is suspicious of film and the social conditions that created it; and evaluation-driven cinephile criticism. I’d like to think that I personify both in my own amateur way though (I studied film as part of my degree, including postmodern, feminist and other interpritations of film; but it’s not something I usually focus on in my reviews, although I can do so if the film warrants it).
Vern, RRA, and Mouth – So we have a second sequel to a film that I thought was beyond bad, which the “fan”-sided critics are saying is a big improvement over the previous two. This sounds horribly familiar. The last time I ignored all of my sceptical instincts and went to see a film like this, I ended up suffering through one and a half hours of shit, culminating in that fucking lava-surfing scene that has come to epithomise everything that’s wrong with big dumb CGI-driven blockbusters to me. Never again, thanks!
neal2zod
May 15th, 2011 at 5:33 am
Capone’s review clarifies that the actual “twins” are not in TF3, but there’s NEW jive-talking robots instead. Oh joy.
Paul – thank you. I maintain to this day that Episode III is the “worst” of the prequels and I have no idea why so many people said it was such an improvement over the first two. At least Episode I had the amazing fight at the end and a pretty good race sequence. Episode II’s entire last 45 minutes was wall-to-wall action, and the stuff with Anakin killing the sand people was surprisingly powerful. But there was NOTHING to recommend about Episode III. It was like a giant checklist of “shit we need to have happen before this series ends” culminating in TWO CGI fights where we already know the outcome to both of them. And say what you will about Jar Jar Binks – he’s fucking terrible but I think any supposed fans of “mega-acting” on here can appreciate how terrible he is, if that makes any sense.
Paul
Neal – Agree on ep. 3 but I think this is an argument that doesn’t need to happen. I was making an example, that’s all!
Vern – sorry, didn’t mean to start a “Star Wars” thing going.
SEE “SILENT HOUSE”. (If I put this at the end of every post, maybe people will get it hard-wired into their brains.)
Vern, PLEASE REVIEW “JUGGERNAUT”. (Ditto.)
May 15th, 2011 at 6:30 am
One more thing about EPISODE III: I guess it’s very obvious that fanboys loved it, because it was daaaaaaaaaark. I mean, ROTJ had Ewoks, ROTS had dead kids and a badly burned Anakin. I’m not trying to beat on the nerds too much, but they will like the worst pieces of shit*, as long as you make it dark, brooding and probably violent, so that they can point at all that and tell their parents: “See? It has violence. It is not for kids and so fucking mature!”
*To be fair, I don’t think that EPISODE 2 is THAT bad.
Broddie
I think I’ll skip BRIDESMAIDS and just watch TRUE LEGEND instead. For some reason I just can’t stand the sight of any person that joined SNL after 1999. Let alone bear with watching them headlining an entire feature.
Broddie
May 15th, 2011 at 7:36 am
CJ it’s funny cause even though I thought the prequels all pretty much were lackluster EPISODE II was probably the one that entertained me the most. The dialogue sucked just as much as the others & it had some seriously suspect performances but at least the badly structured romance had a nice campy vibe to it. That shit really makes me laugh. In the third one everybody took it WAY too seriously. I enjoyed it mostly though cause of Christopher Lee and the climax but Natalie Portman in a top didn’t hurt either. Not that I’ll ever see any of those movies again but it’s funny to me how people could prefer EPISODE I to EPISODE II with a straight face.
That was a typo, I meant “episode 3”, not “episode 2”. I’m pretty much okay with all the prequels, although I too think that 3, which is meant to be “the good one” is imo the least satisfying.
Paul
May 15th, 2011 at 11:18 am
**Shakes head sadly…**
I’m sorry Vern. I never meant for this to happen. Sometimes actions have consequences that you don’t quite realise until it’s too late.
Vern
I tried to warn you.
Paul
May 15th, 2011 at 5:21 pm
It’s not my fault! I didn’t even mention the film by name! I only said “lava surfing”! Am I to be blamed because there’s no other film franchise that’s dumb enough to use this stupid, stupid idea for its big climatic moment?
Vern and everybody, respectively: Review “Juggernaut”. Watch “Silent House.” Thankyouverymuch.
Jake
I honestly wasn’t sure what you were talking about, I thought you had a grudge against ESCAPE FROM LA for some reason. Anyway don’t claim innocence now, you already apologized.
RRA
What’s to grudge against EFLA?
Paul
RRA – it also had an extremely silly surfing scene. As did “Batman and Robin” for that matter. Although neither involved lava.
Watch “Silent House”, review “Juggernaut”.
Vincento
Game of Thrones – Brilliant Series.
Miguel Sancho
May 16th, 2011 at 6:04 pm
Recommendations to review (just thinking on ’em right now, slightly drunk on vodka, wouldn’t post if else, hi everybody this site rules you rule Vernhoeven rules!):
-Alan Clarke films: ‘Scum’, ‘Made in Britain’, ‘The firm’ (there are more, but these are relatively easy to get. Clarke would be now as big as Mike Leigh had he not died so soon. It’s the closest TV stuff has ever got to art besides ‘The Simpsons’, and Winstone, Roth and Oldman respectively have never been better)
-‘Runaway train’ (watched it tonight, wow, Golan-Globus + VGIK + the fucking train!)
-‘Second breath’ (Jean-Pierre Melville’s magnum opus, IMHO, if only because it is his longest crime film and ex-con José Giovanni’s screenplay rings truer than the others)
Eddie Lummox
May 17th, 2011 at 8:38 pm
Btw, not that you guys care, but the new Gaga album is as bad as your probably imagined her first record was*. Weirder, but less kinky. No thematic through line. More piano…but none of it is catchy. The music is more queer friendly (which I count as a good thing) but less authentic. Poker Face was interesting because it was a hetero-normative song with a gay subtext…here the music all sounds like it could be Perez Hilton’s personal theme song, so there are no layers.
*The Fame is actually A-level pop music.
May 17th, 2011 at 11:15 pm
So far the MORTAL KOMBAT series failed to really convince me, but I agree that #6 is one of the best epsiodes. (On my own blog, which you can reach by clicking on the link in my name, you will find short and badly written review of each episode.)
Also I don’t care for Lady Gaga, but while we are talking about pop music, the new Sophie Ellis-Bextor album is her finest record to date.
May 18th, 2011 at 12:39 pm
Thanks to one of those traffic tracker plug ins on my blog, I saw that someone not just visited it after he was here, but also that he apparently sits pretty close to where I live. So Kreis Recklinghausen represent! Wenn du öfter hier bist, sag mal was. (Keine Angst, bin kein großer Chatter oder Social Networker, bin nur Neugierig!)
I confess to liking a few of Lady Gaga’s songs
I’m disappointed to hear her new album is not any good
Paul
Sophie Ellis-Bextor is officially on my top five of “celebrities I would happily kill for the sake of mankind”, and this thread has officially gone to Hell.
Stu
I like MK: Legacy #6 too. It seems one of the trendy things this season is having fallen thunder gods shot with tasers, only Raiden actually got a boost from his encounter with one.
First Trailer for Tintin is out:
http://youtu.be/Rg8uQ-L62V0
Liking it. They seem to be staying faithfull to the semi-pulpiness of having Tintin being able to knock guys the fuck out and use a gun, despite the fact this will be intended as a family film. Not sure about the depiction of the human characters though from it, as they don’t make a point of showing very long shots or showing Tintin’s face till the end. So it’s hard to tell. I’m reading that Guillermo Del Toro and David Fincher guest directed a scene each as well. Can’t imagine how those’ll come across, but I’m intrigued.
I’m getting super fucking excited for Tintin
I wish it was coming out this summer instead of December
RRA
Griff – TINTIN, a movie that will need absolutely no orgy of trailers/TV spots/mindless overdrive to sell that fucker in Europe. The title is the advertizement. Spiderman, Batman, Superman, Tintin, just one word and that’s all you need.
In America….”What?” It’ll need all that help.
~I’ve never understood why the comics never broke out in the states like it did in all of Europe. I hate to say it, but it must be the American tradition of not giving a fuck about a comic unless it involves spandex and supervillain’s broken jaws.
RRA
Don’t know about the title, but in the sequel they should arrive in the 80’s and fight those cartoony street gangs, that you could see in so many movies of that era.
RRA
May 19th, 2011 at 4:35 pm
Griff – Funny, that was my introduction too. (and funny enough, Nicklodeon is involved with the TINTIN movie.)
CJ – Then in part 3 they go to then 1990s and team up with those 90s movie slackers who have jobs but can afford apartments and party all the time. They tag together against your usual 90s baddies: Ex-KGB, ultra right wing anti-government militia, industrial polluters, Triads, and Arab terrorists*.
*=Actually save them for the 2000s in part 4, where they team up with Emo and Hipster kids.
Stu
May 19th, 2011 at 5:48 pm
Over here in the UK, there were plenty of Tintins to read in the libraries. That and Asterix.
As for buddy movies…I’d love to see a movie where the second coming of Jesus teams up with The Anti-Christ. Anti-Christ would be a bit of a dick with violent tendencies, but ultimately not really want to destroy the world in Armageddon, so revolt against daddy Lucifer, while Jesus would be the the reserved, upstanding one, until he sees some moneychangers and flips right out. Also as a swerveball, he’d be the bad cop in interrogations, threatening bad guys with eternal damnation, while the Anti-Christ tries to tempt them into co-operating by offering them all sorts of shit with his powers.
CJ Holden – I actually picture them fighting cartoony 70’s era street gangs like the ones in The Warriors
Broddie
May 19th, 2011 at 6:57 pm
There was a TINTIN cartoon that used to air on HBO in the morning when I was a kid. I don’t know if it’s the same as the nick one but that was MY intro to all this stuff. Since then my American ass did his best to track down the actual books. Lots of fun stuff in there. Unfortunately I have no faith in Spielberg whatsoever anymore (I think MUNICH may have been a fluke) so I will be skipping this one.
May 19th, 2011 at 7:45 pm
I’m pretty sure it was the same one, since as far as I know there was only one cartoon
and why do you have no faith in Spielberg? I actually re-watched the blu ray of A.I. recently, first time I’ve seen that movie in like 9 years and it’s excellent, very, very underrated movie, Minority Report is good too
I will concede however that War of The Worlds is only ok
RRA
May 19th, 2011 at 8:07 pm
Griff – to be fair, I can’t exactly blame Broddie. I mean the 2000s when we got good shit like AI or MUNICH (most of it) or MINORITY REPORT or CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, he also did the very loud/meh WOTW, the forgettable waste of time TERMINAL, and the sloppy as fuck INDY IV.
That said, I like to think TINTIN will be decent. Spielberg’s been itching for that shit since the early 1980s and considering all the lengthy, epic pre-production history, I would hate to think it’ll be all for a waste.
~Of course he also had an itch for ALWAYS (pitched that shit to Dreyfuss back on JAWS 14 years earlier) and INDY IV (been developing since the mid 1990s.)
Ugh, LAST CRUSADE is maybe the worst Indy movie, among other things thanks to a sitcomish Father/Son team-up and special effects that were way below 1989 AND Indiana Jones standard.
But that was a topic that has been discussed to death.
What I really wanted to say is: Did you hear about that upcoming TRANSPORTER TV show? They replaced Statham with the guy who played Whistler in Season 3 of PRISON BREAK and the show is produced by HBO and German TV station RTL. Which means thanks to HBO we might get a certain amount of production values, nudity and violence (nothing the movies are really famous for, but it’s nice to have the possibility) and thanks to RTL, the show might have some seriously breathtaking over the top stunts, that even put the movies to shame. (RTL is that channels who produces these crazy ass action series like LASKO – The Fist Of God or THE CLOWN)
May 20th, 2011 at 10:15 am
Transporter the series has a budget of 5 million an episode and a 13 episode order. I don’t think HBO owns the US distribution rights, but it’s a cable show, not a network. They presold the rights to this some time ago.
Jareth Cutestory
I’m not a fan of wrestling, but even I know who the Macho Man was.
Stu
Yeah, really sad to hear. If I had a Slim Jim I’d snap into it right now in tribute.
Darryll
May 20th, 2011 at 10:55 am
MINORITY REPORT would have been great if it hadn’t been for some massive plot holes. LAST CRUSADE has not aged well. It’s barely watchable now. ALWAYS, on the other hand, has aged rather well. It’s smaller scale and sweet-hearted themes have amplified it’s charms over the years. CATCH ME and TERMINAL are just boring. They don’t even feel like Spielberg. I enjoyed WAR OF THE WORLDS, once or twice. I found MUNICH to be a bit of a stylish mess. INDY IV was sloppy fun but it didn’t make me want to revisit that character again.
All this is to say that while Spielberg has been uneven this past decade I certainly haven’t lost faith in his ability to entertain me. I’m a little disappointed he’s bothering with this motion capture nonsense but his penchant for kinetic action sequences and genuine pathos should serve TIN TIN well. I’ll be in line.
INDY IV was sloppy fun but LAST CRUSADE is barely watchable? Madness.
RRA
May 20th, 2011 at 11:16 am
Several of the wrestlers and industry figures, past and present, are posting their thoughts on the Macho Man death. The current generation of stars who grew up on Savage are really taking it hard.
You all should check out one of today’s best, CM Punk’s twitter. He posted earlier today “Hearing a horrible rumor. Hope it’s BS.”
Then just a few minutes later he posts “Fuck.” Sums up what fans thought when they heard the news.
I heard the news today / oh boy
Stu
May 20th, 2011 at 11:19 am
That was a bit of “Huh?” for me too. TEMPLE OF DOOM is the weakest of the original three for me because it feels, I dunno, more a random romp than a real story, plus since they made it set before RAIDERS, Indy’s a lot less fleshed out and there’s not as much build to his character as the first one, which went into his whole awkward history with Marian, and how he was a cynic who didn’t really believe in the Ark or its power until the end. LAST CRUSADE on the other hand has the fun romp but also explores the relationship with his dad, and the fun of fighting Nazis again!
May 20th, 2011 at 6:27 pm
Last Crusade is awesome, I’m sorry but I just can’t imagine why someone would think it sucks, Sean Connery was great in it as his dad, the interplay between him and Indy did not ruin the movie at all, if there’s one complaint I can think of with Last Crusade it’s that the female love interest is pretty inconsequential
I will admit though that Last Crusade holds a special place in my heart because when I was a little kid, I was only aware of Raiders of The Lost Ark and Temple of Doom, until one day while browsing the video store I came across all three of the Indy movies and holy shit! there’s a third one I’ve never seen! whaaaaaaat!? so I had a blast getting to watch another Indy adventure I had never seen before, you better believe that next time I was on the school playground I tried to re-enact the tank sequence with my friends, I even said “where’s Marcus?” at one point
I don’t think I’ve ever had the experience of discovering a totally unknown sequel to a beloved film franchise again
anyway I guess I’m just the resident giant Spielberg fan here huh?
May 20th, 2011 at 6:29 pm
and yeah, I heard about Randy Savage
I’ve never been a wrestling fan (even as a kid, which was rare), but I’ve always liked Macho Man Randy Savage due to his fun, larger than life persona and awesome voice, I’m very saddened to hear of his death
Broddie
May 20th, 2011 at 7:14 pm
Yeah LAST CRUSADE is cool with me I love TEMPLE OF DOOM more though. That movie is just straight up fucking nuts. I was a kid that grew up watching R-rated movies. TEMPLE’s darkness appealed to me more than LAST CRUSADE’s campiness. But LAST CRUSADE is very entertaining. One of the reasons I never bothered to see part 4 is because to me that series will always be a trilogy. One of the best of all time.
Well that and because the trailers sucked balls. From what people tell me; I didn’t miss much.
A.I. would’ve been brilliant if the last 25 min didn’t completely negate it. Everything up to the little pinocchio allegory robot boy drowning in the water always making his wish to the blue fairy was pitch perfect. That shit felt very much like what I expected from a Spielberg and Kubrick directed flick. Dark, dystopian, hopeless but still heartfelt and filled with endearing characters. A great modern day fairy tale.
I mean it has like the only Jude Law performance I ever liked cause Gigolo Joe was such an awesome fucking character. It’s been 11 years since I’ve seen this and I still remember him and Teddy. Then comes the last moments which I’m almost positive were pure Spielberg based on the high level of cheese delivered. Man it completely obliterated the rest of the movie in my eyes. I haven’t watched it since the cinema for that reason.
The less said about THE TERMINAL the better. I didn’t enjoy any of his Cruise collabos. MINORITY REPORT felt pretty bland and on top of that the Max Von Sydow reveal has to be one of the most transparent things ever put in modern blockbuster filmmaking. The minute you see it’s Max Von Sydow you know what’s up.
CATCH ME IF YOU CAN was brilliant though I’ll give him that. Between that and MUNICH you had the only 2 movies of the lot from his 00 ventures that are worthy of being spoken of in the same sentence as RAIDERS, JAWS, ET, JURASSIC PARK, THE COLOR PURPLE and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS.
May 20th, 2011 at 7:49 pm
Broddie – I think you really need to give A.I. another chance and keep an open mind about the ending
I’ve never understood the complaints about the ending of A.I., it’s a bittersweet ending, it’s not the usual happy ending, *SPOILER* David does get reunited with his mother, but only for one day and she dies, then David himself dies
and the stuff with the super advanced robots seemed pretty Kubrick to me
I thin A.I. is a movie that everyone needs to rewatch and need to get reappraised
anyway I re-watched War of The Worlds last year and enjoyed it, but it had been 5 years since I’d seen it, when I watched it again a few weeks ago I was less impressed, it doesn’t really hold up to very many viewings, it’s still better than anything Michael Bay has done however
it’s been a long time since I’ve seen Catch Me If You Can and The Terminal, but I remember Catch Me If You Can being a lot of fun, The Terminal was not bad but definitely pretty weak as far as Spielberg goes
unfortunately, but Munich is one I’ve missed, I’ll have to check that one out when it comes out on blu ray
RRA
May 20th, 2011 at 10:26 pm
Griff – LAST CRUSADE is like INDY IV certainly watchable with some highlight scenes from the prologue to the Venice boat chase to “No ticket!”to that tank fight. But ultimately each time I watch it, I feel “OK.” And that’s it, nothing more than “OK.” Of course I suppose it would be nice more “OK” movies were as well-shot and cut as a LAST CRUSADE.
As for your surprise sequel, I had a similar story but ironically enough it was another Spielberg production: BACK TO THE FUTURE PART 3. Of course I was 5-6, didn’t understand the back-to-back shooting shit or the release schedule so literally I was stunned when I found part 3 instead of #1 and #2 both which I had rented ad nauseum already. Hell I was sick of #2 and loved #3 even more in my youth. Except now as an adult, I must say I dig #2 much more for I get what Zemeckis was going for, plus #3 felt more like a glorified TV episode this side of DOCTOR WHO or STAR TREK than a movie.
I also give mad props to A.I. I wonder if Kubrick was right ultimately that the Beard was the right guy to make that sorta movie because lets admit it guys, with Kubrick’s critical street cred….would the critics have forgiven Kuby for making such a sentimental movie (if told in his usual cold style)? I don’t know if they would.
Of course I’m one of the weirdos who thinks 2001 is incredibly emotional, even though most would laugh at the mere idea.
May 20th, 2011 at 11:08 pm
ya know RRA, I had the exact same experience with BACK TO THE FUTURE PART 3 (I was around the same age too), but that was before I discovered Last Crusade
and while I like 3 a lot, it does basically feel like an extended epilogue, good end for the series though
anyway I also remember being shocked to discover there was a 4th Jaws movies when it played on tv once as a kid and then I was even more shocked to learn how awful it was, even as a kid I thought it sucked, that might have been the first time I discovered an awful sequel to a classic movie
PacmanFever
May 21st, 2011 at 5:17 am
so guys, out of curiosity, how old are you and what was the movie that made you into a movie buff?
I am 21 years old, which means I like some movies that a lot of you probably don’t, like Duck Tales: The Movie, Jumanji and Toys (both of which are Robin Williams movies not coincidentally)
and the movie that made me a movie buff was Jurassic Park, which I saw in theaters at the age of 3, I only very, very vaguely remember seeing it in theaters of course, but I bought the VHS when it came out and watched it endlessly as a kid, I’ve literally must have seen that movie a couple of hundred times
keep in mind Jurassic Park was pretty much my generation’s Star Wars, that is to say a huge grossing blockbuster adventure movie with cutting edge special effects and lots of toys, every boy I knew was also obsessed with it
May 21st, 2011 at 6:36 am
I’m 33, and my earliest movie-going memory is of seeing the James Bond gun barrel logo from the foldout bed in the back of my mom’s airbrushed custom van (she was named Samantha Sue—the van, not my mom) when I was supposed to be asleep. I had no idea what the fuck it was, but the image stuck with me.
My earliest memory of watching a full movie, though, was a tape my family had of STAR WARS and SUPERMAN II. (It also had BLUE LAGOON on it but I wasn’t watching that shit.) I watched that thing over and over again on our giant metal and wood VCR with the top-loading tray. It was taped off TV and the opening scene of STAR WARS was cut off, so for years I thought the movie started with a couple of robots randomly wandering through the desert. Maybe that’s how it started before De Palma made Lucas add the scrawl.
Other memories that stick with me: Seeing ROBOCOP in the theater when I was nine, crying when Optimus died, watching COMMANDO at a sleepover, and opening a cabinet in my favorite uncle’s house and finding what seemed at the time to be a massive cache of R-rated movies. The idea that I could have a library of tits and blood and swears at my fingertips turned me into a movie hoarder, and since I got my own VCR at age 11, I’ve been obsessively building my collection.
In short, I can’t ever remember not being all about movies. When I go through a period when I’m not enjoying the movies that come out, I feel like I’m fighting with a loved one.
RRA
May 21st, 2011 at 6:54 am
CJ – Yeah and I think its interesting alot of the same complaints at POTC4, the could be used against the first one. Or #2 and #3. They’re all overlong, too much storytelling reliance on exposition dialogue, and really there probably isn’t that much to see outside of the freak show that is Depp.*
I’ve seen it, I’m not bashing or supporting it, I’m just giving observation on the critical group think. Different situation, I’m reminded of alot of the same people who liked the first TRANSFORMERS then hated the shit out of #2. Huh? I wonder if sequel fatigue is what’s leading the backlash against POTC 4?
(On the flipside, why did THOR get insanely better reviews across the board than it really deserved? Were people on that one just damn desperately hungry for Cape Action?)
Griff – the young kids today have no clue what so ever of how much JURASSIC PARK meant to us. When we as tots saw it, my god we saw DINOSAURS! When they see it, they see early 1990s CGI. I’ve bitched before about there not being that much magic in Movie FX, no mystery behind any CGI crafted by some fat asshole behind a laptop. When CGI was still a novelty and not everyday life, JURASSIC PARK was magical in that regard. Even if it is a not so creative remake of Crichton’s own WESTWORLD.
Also I remember JUMANJI as being decent. Maybe the only serious drawback was Williams, and god knows the fucker can be grating. Until that magical deux ex machinas reboots everything, I liked how the movie was about the unfairness of life. And even back then back in the day, I dug the WIZARD OF OZ/Peter Pan stunt casting with the villain.
As for the movie(s) that made me a buff, high school was when I finally understood cinema as an artform and those three movies directly responsible for ruining my life are PULP FICTION, Frakenheimer’s RONIN, and BRAZIL. Hell w/ RONIN, I was prompted to check out the rest of the Frakenheimer filmography including MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (a still potent classic), SEVEN DAYS IN MAY, the very exciting THE TRAIN, his obscure gem SECONDS, etc.
*=I do find it amusing at somehow he roped in Keith Richards into this series. A guy’s looks now that definately are scarier than any of those monsters shown in that franchise.
Stu
May 21st, 2011 at 7:18 am
I’m 26 and probably the INDY Movies and all the James Bond reruns made me love movies. I think I have more of an appreciation for older stuff than a lot of guys my age because I was sorta raised on seeing all sorts of repeats of old tv and films, as well as stuff taped on VHS and kept for years, like the BLUES BROTHERS and other stuff starring the likes of Dan Ackroyd and John Candy.
May 21st, 2011 at 8:42 am
I think from all the problems (and I say that as a huge fan!) that the POTC series has, the runtime of each movie isn’t one of them. Especially part 1 has exactly the right length and I still hope that the 3+hours cut of part 3 will be released one day.
One of the things that I keep repeating over and over on various message boards and comment sections these days, is that Gore Verbinski doesn’t get enough credit for being an awesome action director. I realized that when I recently re-watched part 2, whichs last 30 minutes are basically one long and convoluted action scene, where a half dozen different people fight each other up and down and round and round all over a small island, which leads to another long and convoluted action scene where the kraken eradicates pretty much the whole crew of a ship, which explosions, screaming and running people and tentacles everywhere!
And yet those scenes are somehow never confusing and most important engaging and fun to watch! Most modern directors can’t even stage something simple as a car chase or a fist fight without confusing the audience. So I really wonder how the series will work with a new director.
About me and the movies: I’m 29 and the two that I always credit for making me love movies are BEETLEJUICE and CLERKS. I was 11 when I watched BEETLEJUICE over and over, almost on a daily base. I still have huge parts of the German dubbing memorized. (Later I saw it in English and was shocked how losely translated it was. Especially when I found out that one of my favourite quotes shouldn’t exist at all!) While it didn’t make me want to watch every single movie that existed, it was my first favourite movie and definitely shaped my interest in thinking of and telling stories.
CLERKS was weird. I watched it when I was 16, when I recorded it from TV. Something made click on that day and from then on I started to religiously watch all kinds of movies. I guess my brain suddenly noticed that a non-mainstream film, that looks weird and is basically one 90 minutes long dialogue, can be good too. I hate to say it, but I was some kind of a snob around that time and pretty much only watched the huge blockbuster movies, like ID4 or stuff like that. But after CLERKS I not just learned that another world of movies exists, I also learned that the best films run on TV, weekdays around 1 or 3 am on German public television. (A rule that still counts, btw.)
Some random movie watching memories:
Oh yeah, JURASSIC PARK. That was the scariest movie I ever saw back then. My sister and I wanted to watch it on the first day, but they didn’t want to let me in, because I was 11 and the movie was rated “12”. Which was weird, because German theatres, especially that one, weren’t really known for controlling the age of their audience. (And I can imagine the distributor gave the theatres order to check the ages this time, because the newspapers where full of stories about kids from all over Germany and how they managed to sneak into the movie. Something that usually nobody cares about.) Anyway, so my mother, who initially didn’t want to see it, had to come with us and they somehow let us in, although there was no such thing as a PG rule at that time. Damn, that was one scary ride. I kept chewing on my money bag all the time, but yeah, it was fucking awesome!
That movie theatre was pretty much around the corner from the house where I grew up. (It recently closed and got turned into a stage theatre. Some people take 3D way too far…) Thankfully when I was a kid, a ticket was much cheaper, so my mother could effort to let my sister and me watch movies sometimes up to five times. I remember seeing films like THE SECRET OF THE SWORD (The animated He-Man/She-Ra movie), SHORT CIRCUIT, GHOSTBUSTERS 2 or SANTA CLAUS: THE MOVIE (which ran every year) there. Good times, good times. I always wanted to buy and run it by myself, in case it would ever close. But y’know, opening a business is in reality way more complicated.
Okay, I just said that JURASSIC PARK was the scariest movie for me at that age. Forget that, it was THE ‘BURBS! One afternoon my mother walked together with me, my sister and one or two of her friends past the cinema and saw on the marquee the German title of it, which translates MY DIABOLIC NEIGHBOURS. She made a joking remark about how fitting the title was, because she seriously didn’t get along with any of her neighbours. (In fact, the neighbours didn’t get along with her!) I can’t remember how it happened, but suddenly we were all sitting in the theatre and watched it. It wasn’t funny for my 6 years old me and I got no idea how my mother, who was very strict about what we see and even thought that BEETLEJUICE and JURASSIC PARK are not exactly appropriate for us, could think it was a good movie to take her kids to. The only moment where I noticed that I was watching a comedy, was this: http://youtu.be/cSyX02ZaXWY
Later, I caught it again on TV and totally got it and it’s still one of my favourite films to this date.
I also remember that when we were watching THE ADDAMS FAMILY, during the scene when Gomez makes his model trains collide, someone forgot to change the reel and just before the trains crashed, the whole theatre turned dark.
I know, I shouldn’t hit the submit button before I have checked everything I wrote before, but I have to go. Don’t hate me.
Stu
May 21st, 2011 at 10:21 am
Stu – I think people are more apt for “old” movies if they see them as kids, at that precious innocent age when they take movies at face value and not be hip, snarky. For example, I remember at that very age being rather fond of 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA and SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON, those two 50s/60s Disney movies. Of course I think anyone at anytime at that age likes SWISS, if simply for that treehouse. What boy didn’t dream of living in one?
And I saw that Bruckheimer pisser. Its true, and yet as much as I despise BruckBoy, we have to give him credit: That dick knows how to make assloads of money. Still unlike his former associate Michael Bay, Bruckheimer here and there produced some movies I genuinely enjoyed: THIEF, those PIRATES pictures, BEVERLY HILLS COP 1 and 2, CRIMSON TIDE (when Tony Scott was still a competent director), and something else I’m surely forgetting.
CJ – Considering the stereotype that American comedies don’t play well overseas, I’m intrigued whenever I hear “foreign” reaction to one of them. Of course we’ve had that debate before about how I thought GB2 is sorta worthless, yet the REAL GHOSTBUSTERS was and still is the bomb. Did anyone play the video game which came out in recent years?
Oh and SANTA CLAUS: THE MOVIE. I forgot about that turkey. You all realize John Carpenter almost directed it? Yeah he apparently wanted Brian Dennehy as the Fat Guy himself. Go figure. At least I’ll give SC this: It introduced me to the awesomeness that is John Lithgow. I wish that fucker would do more movies and not just TV or Internet videos reading out Newt Gingrinch’s Press releases.
(also ADDAMS FAMILY was very good. Hell in some ways the sequel might even be better. Never invite Ricci to your family Thanksgiving dinner.)
*=I like that we all grew up when we took for granted that Batman or Ghostbuster video games sucked. Yet now we’ve gotten good ones, with ARKHAM ASYLUM a genuine classic, first 10 minutes better than all Batman games combined.
Broddie
May 21st, 2011 at 10:30 am
Griff – I’ll see if I revisit it soon but somehow I doubt my opinion on the ending will change. It was just so glaringly annoying to me especially considering what a perfect ending the lead up to it all would’ve been.
CJ – I don’t think DEAD MAN’S CHEST was good AT all. It was actually one of the worst cinematic experiences I’ve had during the past 10 years. Up there with TRANSFORMERS, TERMINATOR SALVATION the third X-MEN and THE MATRIX RELOADED. I really did like THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL a lot but that second movie completely turned me away from the franchise for good. Another reason I wouldn’t bother with the new one is that it’s directed by Rob Marshall.
RRA – I think you may be on to something. I was born in ’83 so there are a lot of movies I saw during the mid to late 80’s and throughout the 90’s and then revisited and just went “Why the fuck did I ever like this?”
I noticed this with the movie THE GATE recently. When it was released I used to love the shit out of it. Watching it now though while it has some good moments I do find a lot of it quite dull.
I think as you grow older and become more critical of art and such that face value outlook you have as a kid becomes non-existent. The only thing I did keep from those days though is my ability to watch any new IP with an open mind. I give almost anything a chance at least once. As far as sequels go though generally if I really didn’t like the predecessor at all and the sequel is made by the same crew I pretty much do pass on em most of the time.
Broddie
ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES is one of the best comedy sequels ever made. Personally I find it superior to the original in everyway. Matter of fact it makes the original pretty boring in retrospect.
Broddie
May 21st, 2011 at 10:48 am
Oh BTW first movie I saw at the cinema was KICKBOXER. People laugh when I tell them that cause it’s so out of the blue considering I was 5 when I saw it. But I was conditioned on bad ass cinema & horror my whole life up to that point so it was a lot more appropriate than seeing a Disney movie as my cherry popper. Conversely for those reasons my second theatrical experience was THE FLY II.
May 21st, 2011 at 12:37 pm
My main problem with POTC 2 is plain and simple that I don’t like movies that are shot back to back with their sequel(s), and just stop the story cold when the first movie ends, without having any questions answered. Okay, it’s not bad when you got them all on DVD and just can watch them “as one”, but still. the BACK TO THE FUTURE SEQUELS did it right. By the end of part 2 its story is solved and then a cliffhanger happens, that leads us to the next story. That’s cool. Even the LOTR films have one theme for each movie, that is solved by the end of it. But DEAD MAN’S CHEST, MATRIX RELOADED and maybe a million other movies these days don’t. Call me old fashioned, but if I wanna watch a movie, I wanna watch it complete and don’t want to stop in the middle of the story and wait till the next part.
I can’t speak for every European country, but American comedies do VERY well here in Germany, doesn’t matter if we are talking about the broad slapstick ones or a subtle indie charmer. Not all of them are successful, but even if the fail in theatres, they will most likely become a success on DVD or even on TV!
SANTA CLAUS: THE MOVIE. I remember when I watched it again on TV a few years ago and was downright disgusted by the first 45 minutes, that only consists of happily singing and dancing elves! Incredible how little standards you have a s a kid, eh? But John Lithgow saved it for me.
ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES: I totally agree! That one is fucking awesome! As much as I love the first movie, compared to part 2 it feels like they were restraining themself to a degree and then, when it became a success just thought “Oh fuck it, let’s go crazy!” I still don’t like what happens to Fester’s wife in the end, though. While she turned to ashes in a comedic way, it was too “graphic” to work for me. The fate of the villains in part 1 was funnier, because it was only implied that they might be buried alive.
Interesting fact: After it became clear that Barry Sonnenfeld wouldn’t be available as director for part 3, he suggested Christina Ricci for the job, because she came across to him as clever enough for that. (Part 3 then was made DTV, with Daryl Hannah and Tim Curry.)
ThomasCrown442
May 21st, 2011 at 2:07 pm
I too adore both Adam’s Family movies, even though the central plot is ostensibly identical.
I’m 22 and I became a film buff because of Tim Burton. I saw The Nightmare Before Christmas so many times that I destroyed the VHS copy I got for my 6th birthday. I had talked about the movie for MONTHS when it came out in theaters, even going so far as to tell my mother bedtime stories based upon my bizarre interpretations of the trailer (yeah, I didn’t get bedtime stories, I was giving em out) but I didn’t get to see the film in theaters because my parents thought it would be too scary.
Soon after getting the VHS, I began to consume all things Burton, starting with Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands. When I saw the Touchstone logo, I actually thought it was Tim Burton’s logo. I had seen a bunch of Hitchcock and he had that silhouette thing at the beginning, so I thought all directors had a weird little image at the beginning of the movie*. I don’t know why I thought this since A: Burton DIDN’T direct TNBC, B: Touchstone DIDN’T release all of his films, but all the same, it was the moment I became aware of a filmmaker as a specific force.
About a year later, I was watching the Disney Channel and I saw a “making-of” feature on TNBC and it was the first time I discovered that making movies was actually a job. And that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do since. Seeing Burton degenerate as an artist has been really painful for me. I count him, along with Lee Tamohari, Roland Joffe, The Hughes Brothers and John Singleton as the biggest disappointments of this generation.
*Note how bizarre my parents were; I was watching lots of Hitchcock movies with no worry that they would be inappropriate, and I was allowed to watch Scissorhands and Beetlejuice even though they were clearly VASTLY more inappropriate than TNBC.
Oh, and somewhere along the way I saw Batman Returns. Catwoman made me feel funny and I didn’t understand why. So, Tim Burton did a LOT to affect my childhood psychology.
RRA
May 21st, 2011 at 3:10 pm
CJ – Yeah you had told us how PAUL BLART: MALL COP was a license to make money over in the Deutchland basically because KING OF QUEENS was heavily syndicated over there.
re: ADDAMS FAMILY: But didn’t the stripper getting cooked in the cake in the first FAMILY bother you? Just asking. Except I’m sure Vern prefers the first ADDAMS, because you know the sequel made fun of Michael Jackson and his troubles at the time.
Anyway I thought personally DMC was the best of that series? Verbinski came off as having more fun, more disciplined, not as rambling chaotic script? Hell Bloom and Keira had much better material and scenes to work with than the first one. Bloom isn’t Luke Skywalker 2.0 and dull as hell at it, but shown to use some cunning strategy in outsmarting the villain.
I say its inbetween BTTF 2 and MATRIX RELOADED regarding how it finishes if you ask me.
Tawdry – BATMAN RETURNS might be the first movie where as a small boy, I understood a “romantic interest” in the film definition or the basic idea behind it. Or other words I subconciously discovered sex, which I didn’t realize until later of course.
Broddie – I remember Roger Ebert’s review back in the day for I think it was GAMERA: GUARDIANS OF THE UNIVERSE where he basically argues that every would-be movie buff starts out as a child, accepting shit at face value and without necessarily a high set of standards. Then you get older, you try to put yourself “above” such dumb drivel, no junk but smart art baby. Then you get much older and you strike a balance between art/smarts and junk/mindless. And I think he might have a point there.
May 21st, 2011 at 3:24 pm
To be honest, the dead stripper joke always came across as way too cruel for me. At least in terms of ADDAMS FAMILY, which has despite its dark humor always been pretty light hearted. It was like a cartoon, where nobody ever died, even if an anvil landed on their head.
RRA
May 21st, 2011 at 3:36 pm
CJ – fair enough. Thanks.
Stu – Oh and not know if this will get to you in time mate, but apparently tonight’s WHO episode is a loser. At least based off the early reviews from the UK vieweres. Wowzers.
May 21st, 2011 at 4:33 pm
Tawdry Hepburn – Batman Returns is actually probably the first movie I’ve ever seen, but I was so young I don’t remember it, Batman has always been my favorite Superhero though and when I saw Batman Returns later on when I was a bit older Catwoman definitely gave me “funny feelings” too
and yeah, I was a huge Tim Burton fan too as a kid, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Mars Attacks and especially Pee Wee’s Big Adventure got frequent airtime in my house
PacmanFever
May 22nd, 2011 at 6:03 am
RRA- I would say that alot of the criticims of POTC2 also applied to the first but were ignored ala REVENGE OF THE FALLEN, but I really do think the latest one is considerably weaker than the others. Not that I was a huge fan of any of the previous films, I enjoyed them about as much as CUTTHROAT ISLAND at the end of the day, but they all had some really good moments. I liked AT WORLD’S END the most _because_ it was so blatantly bombastic, messy and overindulgent, but this one is neither the kind of lean, stripped down B-Movie romp this series could provide, nor is it more overblown spectacle. It just sits there for a couple of hours; the odd cute line here and there, and to my mind only one good scene.
Virgin Gary
May 22nd, 2011 at 7:39 am
hey sorry if this has been covered elsewhere on this sight or thread, but did y’all see the teaser trailer for TINTIN? i hate to say it, but i got a bad feeling about it.
i grew up with the books, that and asterix were actually the only comics a i really read as a kid (though i dabbled with spider-man), since i would spend summers bored out of my mind in my grandparents house in india, and both series were popular and available there, though they are not well-known at all in my native america (that phrase sounds weird, but you get me).
anyway, in recent years, whenever i visit my parents in the house i grew up in, i’ll read some of those old tintin books (i collected every one published in english and some published in french), and they still hold up. there’s a lot of fun adventure, entertaining humor, etc., and the artwork is really quite beautiful. you can really see the way it influenced spielberg in the indiana jones series, with that sense of fun, globetrotting adventure.
i have to admit, i was a bit dismayed when i saw the original released shots from the upcoming movie and i saw that they were going for a quasi-realistic approach. i was really hoping they would just try and translate the look of the books into an animated from, but oh well, i was still willing to give it a shot because of all the talent involved. in addition to spielberg, of course you got peter jackson, edgar wright, stephen moffat, simon pegg and nick frost, and i’m fan of all of them. but the trailer isn’t helping assuage my fears of a dead-eyed zemeckis uncanny valley nightmare.
and also, lest we forget, the last time spielberg tried to do a fun adventure movie, we got KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULLS. i know vern liked it, but it’s one of the somewhat rare times i had to respectfully disagree with him. it felt forced and somewhat clueless to me, and i was bored by it. i only really like the first two movies in the series, though. RAIDERS is almost a perfect action-adventure movie, one of my favorite movies of all time (which is i’m sure true of most of us here at this sight). TEMPLE OF DOOM, while sloppy and a bit too ridiculous at times, is still a hell-of-a-lot of fun, with some great lines of dialogue and a whole bunch of iconic moments. extremely underrated (including by spielberg and lucas). LAST CRUSADE i absolutely loved when it came out (i was in junior high at the time) and watched it probably a hundred times, but i find it close to unwatchable now, due to the juvenile slaptsitcky humor (much worse than in the first two) and the over-sentimentality of the father-son stuff. and i’m clearly not alone in being massively disappointed but the fourth movie, but i don’t have the energy to go through all the ways right now.
anyway, what are everyone’s thoughts about the upcoming tintin movies? i really hope that i am wrong in my apprehensions…
Stu
Dammit folks, trying to get a job is maybe the most fucked up annoying thing in the world! It’s a miracle that I’m not an alcoholic at this point.
Caoimhín
Any chance of seeing some Vincent Price reviews? Friday of this week would have been his 100th birthday.
Casey
May 22nd, 2011 at 6:02 pm
Hey Broddie, thanks for the recommendations! I’m slowly working my way through them. I’m keeping myself to one album a week so I can better digest anything new I hear but so far I’m really digging what you suggested. Thanks for that!
I’m 27 and I liked the Last Crusade. I’m young enough so that Raiders, Temple, and Crusade are all part of the same series to me. As an adult I enjoy Raiders the most but am torn on Temple and Crusade. I think Temple has some better parts than Crusade but so much of it just drags for me and is totally boring. Crusade doesn’t have as many peaks but there are no valleys in it for me, either.
I’m also looking forward to Tintin. I remember it as a kid and thought it was fun.
I’m totally confused about people’s dislike of WotW. There are a few scenes in that movie that are totally terrifying. The scene with them getting carjacked in the van and people killing each other as everyone mobs it is horrifying. That and the train that goes by on fire? Man, that stuff is really affecting to me. I never understood the complaints that Spielgerg became too soft and had a “happy” ending. Sure, the son is alive at the end but what happens in the movie shows the ugliest and worst of people and there’s nothing that can take that away. I appreciate it is all I’m trying to say.
Since everyone is being autobiographical here I will as well! My father loved Westerns and that rubbed off on me as well. I grew up on military bases overseas or in the states and between renting some awesome Westerns and my father’s love of action / horror I grew up on some great movies. I think my first memory of watching a movie is the Road Warrior. That and AFRTS showed some really awesome movies. I think that’s why my tastes skew a bit towards older epics than anything else.
May 22nd, 2011 at 6:53 pm
I never said War of The Worlds was bad, just that it’s not the kind of movie that you can watch over and over again like most of Spielberg’s movies (this is a guy that’s seen Jurassic Park hundreds of times, remember?)
dna
May 23rd, 2011 at 2:01 am
I think War of the Worlds is one of Spielbergs best in the last 2 decades. Scary as hell, with some awesome set-pieces and some outlandish beatiful cinematography. The ending is kind of meh, but didn`t ruin the movie for me like most of Spielbergs recent movies; Munich, Saving Private Ryan, Minority Rapport..
I`m 35 and saw Starwars in the cinema when I was 6-7 when it was re-released. That sort of sealed the deal, and made me fall in love with everything fantasy-related; aliens, indiana jones, james bond, robocop, terminator, batman, bladerunner etc. I wanted to act or make sfx, at least till I saw Evil Dead 2 and realised that the director was the real star of the movie. And then I rented Apocalypse Now by mistake and it warped my fragile little mind. I watched 3 times in a night, high on coffee, and finally realised the real power of the art of cinema. And then, on the steps on adulthood, this guy Tarantino made me realize that I could become a director if I watched a lot of movies. Thanks, Tarantino…
That must be the tentpoles in my lifelong obsession with cinema, and the reasons why I can enjoy a great spectacle like The Matrix as much as arthouse-stuff like Bergman and Tarkovsky.
Casey
May 24th, 2011 at 7:06 am
I came here to promote an interesting German independent movie. It’s called PIXELSCHATTEN and is about a blogger and his friends. His whole life is dedicated to telling the world what he and his friends do every day, but then he gets doubts and something happens.
It’s an interesting project, shot in (very good looking) 1st person perspective, that is only interrupted by single blog entries and the following comments. You can watch it UNTIL MAY 29 (Sunday) for free and with English Subtitles (It’s a German movie) at http://www.pixelschatten.com .
And no, I’m not associated with it in any kind. (Although the name of the Gaffer sounds familiar. I think went to job school with him a few years ago.) I’m just helping out a German independent filmer.
May 24th, 2011 at 7:04 pm
holy fucking shit you guys, look what I found http://www.cracked.com/article_16308_the-6-least-plausible-jobs-held-by-steven-seagal-characters.html
this is an old article on Cracked.com written by VERN! how have I not known about this? I’m a frequent visitor to Cracked and I think I’ve actually read that article before, but didn’t notice at the time it was by Vern, this is seriously tripping me out
and Vern, if you’re reading this, how come you never wrote another article for Cracked?
Vern
May 24th, 2011 at 8:19 pm
They wrote to me and said they were big fans, we should work together, blah blah blah. Then they rewrote what I sent them so that it was making fun of Seagal more than appreciating his absurdity, and added in a joke about Stallone being stupid, which I didn’t agree with. When I politely wrote to say that I wish they hadn’t done that the editor never responded and never paid me the money I was promised.
May 24th, 2011 at 9:01 pm
oh my God, are you serious? that’s not right, I actually thought re-reading the article that it didn’t really seem like your style
no wonder you never wrote for them again, they’re actually a pretty mediocre site, I really only bother with them because they post articles daily and it’s a good time waster while waking up in the morning
they used to have a really good writer on that site named David Wong (a pseudonym), but he’s pretty much unofficially stopped writing for them, I wonder if they screwed him over too? and they also used to have a funny series of videos by a guy named Michael Swaim and then they idiotically insisted on ending them and replacing them with shitty ones
so basically fuck those guys, they don’t know what they’ve missed by screwing you over, I’m sorry Vern
May 25th, 2011 at 12:08 am
I blocked cracked a while ago from my browser. It happened more than once that I clicked on a link to something, which sounded like an article with an interesting topic, just to land on cracked.com, where that interesting topic is used as an excuse for a string of lame jokes.
I’m not surprised that they seem to be assholes, too.
May 25th, 2011 at 12:44 am
yeah, I’m not surprised either and I’ve been reading it for years, since it began pretty much
it used to be pretty good, there were some cool articles, but these days really good articles on there are almost nonexistent
Casey
May 25th, 2011 at 7:44 am
Yeah, that article seemed a little more mean spirited than Vern is. Occasionally I’ll look at Cracked and read a bunch of articles. They’re usually pretty funny but last night I didn’t laugh once after 5 or 6.
Their article on how Australia is a deathtrap still makes me laugh, though.
Stu
May 26th, 2011 at 8:17 am
Just got back from THE HANGOVER:PART II. I enjoyed it a lot. Even though they do sorta rehash the first film and reuse some jokes, I liked some of the newer bits and there was a definite feeling of them being more ambitious and trying to raise the stakes. It’s actually a bit darker than the original, and there’s a real feeling of things being bad, which the first movie sorta promised with the foreboding title scenes, but didn’t quite pay off on. Here though, the missingroup member actually seems to be in real danger, the local criminals actually seem more of a threat, and Stu’s marriage/life really seems poised to be completely fucked by the events of it. It’s also a bit impressive AND sad that a comedy movie of all things has such a solid, well put together, coherently shot and edited car chase scene, complete with guys on motorbikes shooting at the vehicle their chasing.
Casey
May 26th, 2011 at 8:39 am
I’m glad it’s enjoyable, Stu. I’m hoping to get out to see it this weekend.
I could literally see a movie of nothing but Ed Helms screaming and being hysterically upset. It’s that funny to me.
May 26th, 2011 at 9:33 am
I love formulas can always be applied to different places and different details. I like seeing a concept explored in every possible way through a franchise. I’m certainly not ready to give up on it in the first sequel. (Whew, been waiting to say that…)
Sure, some of the new versions of old jokes aren’t as funny but it’s interesting how they tried. Not everything worked in the first one either, that’s the nature of comedy. I think it’s why I like TV shows like House too. It’s been seven years, I know that the first diagnosis before the commercial isn’t going to be right, but I want to see every possible way he violates medical ethics and taunts people to get his way. Plus I never cared about the medical part of House. It’s just the funniest show on television.
May 26th, 2011 at 9:35 am
Vern, that Cracked thing is unconscionable. How hard did you pursue them to get paid? I know at a certain point the time spent becames too great for the money… I’ve been there, unfortunately, sometimes with a long invoice of work completed and published.
May 26th, 2011 at 9:39 am
I say we fucking carpetbomb Cracked with comments until they pay him.
Let’s keep it simple. PAY VERN! over and over and over again should get the point across.
Stu
May 26th, 2011 at 11:10 am
“I could literally see a movie of nothing but Ed Helms screaming and being hysterically upset. It’s that funny to me.”
It’s funny how it’s sorta generally the same character arc for him, but this time around he feels more like the central character than just part of the ensemble. Considering how Bradley Cooper’s got to be a bigger star since the first movie’s release, you’d excuse them for having more focus for his character, but they do the right thing and keep him at just the right level and importance that works for the story, though it is a bit of a shock for a moment when he gets [SPOILER] outside of the strip club.
May 26th, 2011 at 11:34 am
Guys, I am dead-ass serious. Let’s turn the full might and majesty of the outlaw army on Cracked’s cheeseball ass so they can’t wax hyperbolic about the size of Ghengis Khan’s nutsac in a civilized fashion until they’ve ponied up the 75 bucks or whatever the fuck they owe our man Vern. He’s given us all a home, the least we can can do is cowboy up and be his cavalry.
FUCK CRACKED! PAY VERN!
Shit, if it works, let’s target AICN next.
REGULATORS! MOUNT UP!
May 26th, 2011 at 11:47 am
Well Cooper was in the A-TEAM(which gave his character more to do than the tv show generally did), and he starred in LIMITLESS(which I liked). I just meant the first HANGOVER was a bit of a breakthrough for him that made him a bit more of a name. Before that, I didn’t know him by “Bradley Cooper”, but “one of the friends of the main character from ALIAS”, and there seems to be more of a buzz around him and he’s taken to being a leading man pretty comfortable in film. It’s not like Kevin James, where you think “jesus, just demote him back to TV already. He’s not cut out for movies”, and I say that confidently without ever having watched a full Kevin James film.
Vern
May 26th, 2011 at 12:03 pm
Yeah, I should’ve gone Point Blank on ’em, but to be honest I didn’t press them about paying me the money. I was more pissed about them making it look like I called Stallone dumb. Somebody in the comments criticized me for it too, and I had to agree with them. So when the guy who claimed he was such a fan didn’t respond to my email I just said “fuck it” and forgot about it.
I should’ve known not to do it because the sight in general is more smarmy than I like, but I just thought it would be funny to say that I wrote for the websight of a Mad Magazine knockoff. I bet alot of people get lured in by the Sylvester P. Smythe glamour.
I just set up an account and have started working my way through all the articles on the frontpage.
They just fucked with the wrong comment board.
Casey
All of us in Outlaw Nation will rally around our man Vern and fight the good fight.
I just made an account and will bug my wife to follow along tonight.
May 26th, 2011 at 12:14 pm
Stu, don’t diss Kevin James, especially not when I’m reading it! I definitely won’t watch that upcoming talking animals movie with him, but he has the charisma and the chops and I think he slipped rightfully into this degree of stardom, even if his films say otherwise. But you know what? At this point of his career, I don’t blame him for his choices! I think it’s totally okay for anybody to play it save and earn some money for a while, he just should make sure that he isn’t overdoing it.
But to be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if he pops up soon in a Coen Brothers movie or something like that.
“Say, Majestyk, why didn’t you get your work done today?”
“Well, the thing is, I was busy terrorizing a popular humor website. You understand.”
Stu
May 26th, 2011 at 12:40 pm
What would you say is James’ “thing” though, CJ? Fat, bumbling guy who’s deep down really nice? I mean, I know that can work, and I could actually at times watch KING OF QUEENS, but I just don’t see him as “21st Century John Candy”, like I get the feeling they’re going for with him, more a poor man’s Jon Favreau. I don’t mean to be hating on the guy, I just mean I wouldn’t see myself going to one of his movies on the strength of him being in it is all.
RE: Cracked. That’s terrible, what they did, but wouldn’t spamming their comments just increase their hits with easily ignored complaints? I’ve seen their comments section and it’s kindler gentler version of the AICN ones at times. Plus this call to arms makes me worried we’re turning into some sort of low-tech version of ANONYMOUS, and who wants that?
oh my God, this is crazy, I can’t believe I’ve started a war between Cracked and us
what have I done?
May 26th, 2011 at 5:18 pm
Hey guys…while I like that we’re a Really Mean Joy Luck Club, or a Totally Badass Oprah’s Book Club, or whatever, I don’t want us to become an Open-Minded and Considerate 4Chan.
This board is great because it’s like Switzerland, (but without the blood money from the Holocaust…I think), let’s not be gettin’ all Dubya on Cracked’s ass…crack. “They tried to gyp my buddy!” and all that. Instead, why don’t we all just use Vern’s nifty Amazon link to buy more shit we don’t need with money we don’t have so that he can get a little kickback.
Also, was the original Fuck Cracked! Pay Vern! thing supposed to sound like OFWGKTA? Because…I’m not sure I’m down with that…
Vern
May 26th, 2011 at 7:17 pm
If you tell them to pay me they won’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. This was a couple years ago. I don’t even remember what the amount was or what the name of the guy was that promised it to me. It wasn’t Sylvester P. Smythe, it was some other guy.
About Kevin James – when I saw the trailer for Hitch I thought it was cool they had an unknown guy starring with Will Smith. Somebody had to explain to me that he was a huge sitcom star. I’ve never seen his movies, they don’t look funny to me, but I’ll probly have to watch the MMA comedy he’s working on now. Bas Rutten is in it, and I think that guy’s hilarious. Kevin James is actually in the crowd in some of the old UFCs too.
May 26th, 2011 at 11:30 pm
Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All
It’s a “hip” rap group that rants about rape and murder on very single one of their chorus-less, minimalist beats. Also, they released like 11 albums for free over the last year and they’re all between 17-22. They’re a lot like Eminem or Insane Clown Posse, but less fun and with less creative beats. I mean, I guess it’s better than Relapse. But frankly, if you *must* listen to Horrorcore music, ICP is the way to go. At least they sound like they’re having fun.
That said, The dudes in Odd Future are actually very talented. They just have nothing to say, whatsoever.
Stu
May 27th, 2011 at 4:49 am
“I don’t plan on making this kind of tomfoolery a habit. I was just feeling feisty and I thought we needed a field trip.”
Phew. I was worried this was becoming like the League of Shadows from BATMAN BEGINS, with you as Liam Neeson, and I suppose Darryll would be Cillian Murphy. Not sure who’s Ken Watanabe in this situation though.
“Gentlemen, time to spread the word. And the word is…”Fuck Cracked! Pay Vern!”.
I would obviously be Ken Watanabe
Casey
May 27th, 2011 at 5:40 am
Can I be someone in a better movie? ZING!
I’ll echo Stu on the Hangover Strikes Back. It’s good and if you liked the first one you will likely enjoy this one. There’s a little more “fan service” than I would have cared for, but I’m probably alone in my dislike of overt pandering. I also don’t think the monkey jokes were as funny as they thought they were and I really do love me some Zach Galifianakis but I think they overplayed his character some and it got in the way of some scenes. Still, it’s solid and enjoyable. I’d give it an 85% in my scale of Fast Five with 100% being Fast Five. Thor was around 80%. I hope The Six and the Furious is about 150%.
Darryll
May 27th, 2011 at 7:06 am
Wait. I thought I was Starscream. Now I’m Cillian Murphy? This sidekick gig is a tough racket. Well, at least I helped induce some fear into those Cracked bastards. They may not know who they’re messin’ with or why or even care that much but, damn it, they been messed with. Vern, the cheque is practically in the mail.
Stu
May 27th, 2011 at 8:02 am
David O. Russell’s quit the UNCHARTED movie. I’m kinda mixed in how I feel about it. While I didn’t like the sound of the changes he’d be making to the plot, he did seem serious about trying to do a good job with whatever idea of the film he planned to make, and god knows who’ll get the job now.
ThomasCrown442
May 27th, 2011 at 8:51 am
David O. Russell was always a weird choice for that movie. Kinda like Michael Gondry with The Green Hornet. Take someone with weird tastes who usually sticks to smaller, more personal movies, and have them direct an action adventure movie. Usually, it doesn’t turn out too well. Russell had a higher than normal chance to to succeed because he showed he can direct action scenes with Three Kings but it was still an odd choice. The downside is, they’ll probably grab some vanilla director who’ll make a vanilla action movie now. The Uncharted Series has a real chance to “reboot” the Indiana Jones/Romancing the Stone genre.
Uncharted will probably never be made. Someone’s gonna wake up and realize spending 100 million on a video game movie is bad business.
Casey
May 27th, 2011 at 12:00 pm
I’ve never even heard of this Uncharted game. I’m not a big video gamer even though we own a Wii and an XBox 360. I’d rather paint some miniature toy soldiers and play games with those.
I really, really, really like Three Kings, though. I’d be game to see what he did with a video game movie. The only reason I was excited for Thor was because I wanted to see what Branagh would do with it. I never did get around to seeing The Green Hornet, Gondry’s Science of Sleep put me to sleep with its boringness, but is it worth seeing? As a tall, chubby, ginger Jew with glasses I have nothing but love for Seth Rogen.
May 27th, 2011 at 12:07 pm
Casey:
Try watching Science of Sleep with a lady friend. It’s an incredible aphrodisiac, seriously. I donno why, but it’s way more effective than Sex Panther.
ThomasCrown442
May 27th, 2011 at 12:19 pm
Uncharted is a PS3 game and its basically an Indiana Jones type story about a relic hunter who chases ancient artifacts. I’ve only played the first game but it was pretty fucking awesome. Good story, the dialogue was funny and engaging, the gameplay/action was good, even the romance aspect of it worked. The main character reminds me of Nathan Fillion in Firefly/Serenity. Any story that inolves guns, treasure hunting, Nazi U boats (with dead nazi’s inside), pirates, lots of violent deaths, puzzles, and conquistadors, is bound to be pretty good. This from a videogame no less.
Charles
May 27th, 2011 at 1:26 pm
Has anyone here seen CHAWZ? It is a Korean JAWS remake featuring a giant boar instead of a shark. I really enjoyed it and much like JAWS and THE HOST, it is the strong cast of well developed characters that make the film so good. I would say THE HOST is a slightly better film overall but CHAWZ features way more badass moments. The other thing that is fun about the film is the creative way they adapted JAWS, a film about a shark, that takes place in a small coastal town to a film about a giant killer boar with a taste for human flesh that terrorizes a small farming village. CHAWZ does show the limit of its budget at times, but when you finally see the killer boar you will not be disappointed. I highly recommend checking it out.
Stu
Tawdry Hepburn: I like SCIENCE OF SLEEP and asked a girlfriend to watch it with me once. She replied: “Fuck that AMELIE shit” and put on Miike’s AUDITION.
Casey
May 27th, 2011 at 1:37 pm
Wow, that does look really cool. Sort of reminds me of Half Life in that it really tries to set up its battles to feel as cinematic as possible.
I wanted to like Science of Sleep. The girl I saw it with didn’t even like it and she spoke French. It just didn’t work. Also, I’m a huge fan of Amelie but has anyone else seen Micmacs? Boy, that movie just did not click for me and I so wanted it to. A French movie about a gang of misfits with different abilities taking on a capitalist death merchant? I really dislike it when a movie that has a premise tailor made for me doesn’t work out as well as I hope it will.
Darryll
Jareth, marry that girl. And then sleep with one eye open.
Casey, Micmacs was fun. And that’s it. light comedy. Nothing more required.
I played the original Uncharted over 3 years ago, it was pretty awesome, but I still have not got around to playing the second and now they’re already coming out with the third
anyway as the resident hardcore gamer here, I have some strong opinions on video game movies
an unarguably good video game movie is a pipe-dream that has eluded gamers for decades now, so much so that it makes me wonder whether it can be done and whether it should even be attempted at all
one hand I think that if you just get the right talent, the right cast, the right director and the right script it could happen, someone of the caliber of Spielberg could probably do it, but on the other hand there’s a fundamental problem with adapting a video game and that’s you’re taking an INTERACTIVE medium and turning into a NON-interactive experience and a lot is lost in translation, video games tell their stories in a totally different way than movies, they have their own story styles and beats and that jazz, but to put it in another way there’s a fundamental difference between BEING Master Chief from Halo and kicking ass and just WATCHING Master Chief kick some ass
so I figure that the only way to do it is to just take the basic premise and setting of a game and go in your own direction, but plenty of video game movies do just that and they still suck, is that just because they have a bad director and script? or is it just plain impossible? what you get at the end of the day is a lot of video game movies are just bad knockoffs of the movies that inspired them, Tomb Raider is just a bad Indiana Jones with a woman, Resident Evil is just a ripoff of Romero’s zombie movies etc etc
but the biggest problem with video game movies and the biggest reason that makes me think they shouldn’t be done at all is that for whatever bizarre reason, once a movie of a game is made it fundamentally changes the game series itself and often ruins it, I’d rather just have the games remain good instead of ruined by a bad movie
some examples are
after the Resident Evil movies the Resident Evil video games went from slow methodical survival horror to glorified action games with tank controls
Silent Hill: the example that hurts me the most, the Silent Hill series was from brilliant Japanese horror in an American setting and then after they mad a westernized movie the series went through it’s “fat Elvis” period and the games became bad westernized games, the recent Wii Silent Hill was pretty good, but the series was never the same after the movie and rumor has the movie may have had something to do with why the original developers quit
still, I can’t help but fantasize about what a good video game movie could be like, there was a period in the early 2000’s where video games were hot shit in Hollywood, countless game series got snapped up by studios but many of those were never made, I think one problem is that Uwe Boll ruined video game movies respectability, he turned what Hollywood saw as potential blockbusters into Godawful B-movies, had it not been for Uwe Boll maybe the Peter Jackson produced Neill Blomkamp directed Halo movie would have been made and it would have been the first greta video game movie
also, I apologize for such a long post, but at least it gives you guys something to read
Charles
May 27th, 2011 at 2:04 pm
Griff, it took Hollywood a long time to figure out how to make good films based on comic books and not just undervalue them as properties with a very small limited market. Look how long it took to make a truly great Batman film that was not campy or completely over the top. Video games are treated in similar regard, and I bet it will be some time before someone with real skill and passion for the material nails it and makes a great video game film. Then after that the flood gates will be open, and the market will be flooded with quality video game films the way the market is with comic book films now.
I hope that happens one day Charles, that would be really cool
off the top of my head two video game series I think could make good movies are
Fallout: because Fallout has such a cool and fleshed out setting (basically a retro-futuristic 1950’s post apocalyptic wasteland) you could have just about any story or characters you wanted in it, I could easily see a talented director making an awesome action movie out of it
Bioshock: the only way to do Bioshock justice would be to make it basically like Metropolis, a story of this fantastic city and it’s downfall rather than just trying a straight adaption of the games storyline, that could work
Charles
May 27th, 2011 at 2:31 pm
Griff, I have played Fallout 3 and both of the Bioshock games, and I agree that either has the potential to be made into a good film. However, Bioshock would need a massive budget and some talented people working on it to properly capture the scale and design of the Bioshock world.
Jake
I would argue that two very good video game movies already exist. Miike’s LIKE A DRAGON and Corey Yuen’s DOA: DEAD OR ALIVE. Hollywood just needs to make some more like those.
Stu
May 27th, 2011 at 3:18 pm
Ubisoft announced recently they were going to start developing movies based on Tom Clancy’s SPLINTER CELL, ASSASSIN’S CREED and something else that I can’t remember right now. ASSASSIN’S CREED excites me the most, as I’m a big fan of the series and would love to see it done right, a complex sci fi historical conspiracy thriller action adventure movie with big budget realisations of the Crusades and the Renaissance eras. I also think they should consider different formats/mediums for game adaptations other than film. TV miniseries, animation, shorts. A PORTAL adaptation could work well as either of the second two, as no way could I see a 90+ minutes film version keeping faithfull with stuff like Chell not talking and there no “action”, other than her surviving the tests.
Speaking of video game movies, that reminds me I’ve been wondering if Vern plans to review the TEKKEN movie…
ThomasCrown442
May 27th, 2011 at 3:29 pm
I’m afraid a Fallout 3 movie would just end up being another generic post apocalyptic movie like Book of Eli or something. Part of the appeal of that game was its rpg elements and the sheer amount of things to do in the game. Bioshock on the other hand could be an incredible movie. Its mostly a first person shooter but with its achitecture, setting, and mood, it could be a cross between Metropolis and an awesome sci-fi action flick. It also has a suprisingly deep story. Charles is right though, it would need like a $150 million dollar budget to do it justice.
By the way, am I the only one who liked Hitman? Maybe its because Olga Kurylenko is unbelievably hot but I enjoyed that one (even though a lot of it doesnt make sense). It kept me entertained the whole time which is more than i can say for about 99% of most videogame adaptations.
May 27th, 2011 at 4:58 pm
Jareth Cutestory:
During my first year of college, I went on a first date with a girl to go see American Gangster. I picked the movie, so I figured that I owed her one. The preview for Definitely, Maybe played and I leaned over and said, “That looks…cute.” Without skipping a beat, she turned to me and said, “What are you, a fucking retard?” It was then that I knew she was a keeper.
tawdry hepburn
May 27th, 2011 at 5:04 pm
Video game movies are fatally flawed for several reasons, not the least of which is that no one has ever played a video game for the story. Sure, it’s a nice bonus, but narrative is antithetical to video games as a medium: novels, plays, movies and tv shows are all predicated upon internal and external conflict. A video game cannot create internal conflict. They exist to facilitate physical action. As such, an accurate translation of a video game cannot function as a narrative.
The medium is the message/massage.
tawdry hepburn
May 27th, 2011 at 5:19 pm
I don’t want to start a big debate about the artistic merits of video games, but I just want to say tawdry hepburn that I’ve played video games for the story and story matters a whole lot to me in video games
anyway I think the easiest games to adapt into a movie would be those classic point and click adventure games, like those Lucasarts ones (Monkey Island, Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, The Dig etc), since those games were all about story, dialogue and characters, but to the best of my knowledge there’s never been a movie based on an adventure game, strange
wasn’t Spielberg actually gonna make a movie of The Dig at some point?
tawdry hepburn
I’m not saying that video games cannot be art. I’m saying that the internal dilemma is transfered to the player and is not actually represented within the game itself.
Casey
May 27th, 2011 at 5:26 pm
There are plenty of good stories in the games of video. I picked up Dead Space a few months ago for $5 at the Game Stop and thought there was an interesting story there. I remember Homeworld, Half Life, and a bunch of other games having really good storylines as well.
I’m going to do something I hate doing but feel forced to do. I have to admit that I actually like Uwe Boll. I saw House of the Dead in college at the theatre and had a few 40s in the parking lot with some friends before seeing it. That movie is INSANE. It’s never for a second boring and is just stupid, loud, offensive, and just totally ridiculous. Alone in the Dark has some insane and stupid moments but doesn’t go to the same lengths. I don’t know, he doesn’t make good movies and if I was all caught up in video game culture I guess I would be annoyed that he has hurt the respectability of that subculture, although much less than someone like Penny Arcade or general racist / homophobic / women hating video game online culture, but his movies are never boring. How he gets so much hate and those Underworld movies get a pass, or at least not as much bile, is totally beyond me.
I know I’m a pretty one note guy but my go to film makers are the Coen Brothers. They’ve been so varied and able to do so many genres that I’d be game (intended) for them to make a movie based on Chrono Trigger or Metroid or something.
tawdry hepburn
May 27th, 2011 at 5:29 pm
Griff:
You’ve preferred games with good stories. But you would never play a game with shitty gameplay just because of the story. Or YOU might, but the game itself would be failure.
Individual chess pieces can be art. The design of the board can be art. But a game of chess itself cannot be art. Of course, Alice in Wonderland and one of the Harry Potter books DID turn a game of chess into an emotionally resonant work of art (if only for a single sequence each). But even then, it was a deconstruction of the game that worked, not a recreation or adaptation of the game itself.
May 27th, 2011 at 5:36 pm
Honestly Casey, would you rather see the Coen Brothers make a Chrono Trigger movie…or an original Coen Brothers movie.
In 20 years you will have a generation of filmmakers who grew up on video games. This will change the approach, just like you now have a generation of talented filmmakers who grew up on B-movies and gooey horror films. Maybe I will be proven wrong then, but based upon current evidence and my interpretation of art (as based on McLauren and Truffaut), I don’t think it is possible to make a good video game adaptation…unless it’s a good movie and a shitty adaptation.
Casey
May 27th, 2011 at 5:46 pm
Tawdry, I’m totally up for whatever the Coen Brothers want to do. Like Clint Eastwood they have earned a lifetime pass from me and they’ll get my $10 (although our Digital Experience showing of Hangover 2 was $15.50 last night) for whatever they make.
I used to be a fan of PA, Griff. I was on board from the beginning when they were making fun of SiN. At a certain point it became really obvious that they were not as smart or as funny as they thought they were. They also love to knock down strawmen, really don’t like women, are privileged white bourgeois nerds who don’t know anything outside of their incredibly narrow set of interests, and are just otherwise terrible.
I remember when Israel had its war in Lebanon a few years ago and I worked in a shop with a bunch of Lebanese guys. I had an idea of working with the local university to get a bunch of old Game Boys and other toys to send to these kids. When I brought this up the guys I worked with were shocked that my response to war was to send video games to children who were living through death and destruction.
So, yeah, I guess it’s a nice thing they do with their Child’s Play charity. It’s just not nearly as awesome of a thing to do as they make it out to be and they’ve been pretty shameless about bringing it up all the time as a way to deflect any criticism against them when they’ve otherwise been terrible.
It’s less that they’re bad and more that they represent the very worst of that culture. I just dislike people who come from relative privilege and they get so wrapped up in a fight against some random asshole who wants to outlaw video game violence that they can’t be bothered to look up real issues that actually matter. That’s part of why I like Vern so much, he enjoys movies and has a life but he also knows what’s up in this crazy world of ours.
tawdry hepburn
May 27th, 2011 at 6:08 pm
Casey:
You make good points about the shallowness of their charity work. It’s almost like Evangelizing at a point. But I still think that there can be some catharsis in creating a fiction out of a real trauma. I know that some of my best writing, probably the majority of my best writing, came from turning incredibly traumatic actions into comedies and fantasy action. As I’ve brought up before, I’ve almost been murdered, twice, in hate crimes and I still love ultraviolent movies…possibly more than before the assaults.
Also, I’d say that fighting the banning of video game violence is indeed a noble cause. The First Amendment is central to our culture and ANY cracks in that armor could be carcinogenic to everything that is good about America. I am passionate about anti-censorship of film. I am passionate about anti-censorship of pornography (even though I am not a regular consumer). I am a strong supporter of Nazis right to march peaceably, even though I am a Jew. I am basically a three issue voter: I am pro-first amendment, anti-violence toward women and minorities, and anti-genocide.
post script: I trust we’re all adult enough to not turn this into a discussion of Israel/Lebanon.
Casey
May 27th, 2011 at 6:21 pm
I totally agree with your points. I’m also completely against censorship and all that jazz. I just get the impression that PA, and a lot of that culture, only cares because it directly affects them personally. I don’t think they care much for anything outside of what they see. But I agree, as a Jewish person as well I believe that a democracy can only exist when all parties are free to express their views.
I agree with how games and books can be very helpful. I’ve also been assaulted, was stabbed and was in the hospital for a few days because of a mugging, and violent movies are just as appealing to me as before. I’ve become a lot more politically minded as I’ve grown older and I become really wary of movies that glamorize violence or shows individuals of privilege inflicting violence against lower classes and does so in an exploitive way.
Yeah, I don’t care to get into a conversation about Israel and all that jam. I just think it’s all incredibly sad and there’s just so much hatred and tragedy and I think it’s just one of those conversations that goes no where because of a total breakdown of empathy on all sides.
May 27th, 2011 at 6:34 pm
well Casey, I’m not a big fan of Penny Arcade or anything, I’m only very casually familiar with them (video game magazines used to love to print their comics), but they seem funnier than most video game centric webcomics especially considering most webcomics are Godawful (like Control Alt Delete and it’s infamous miscarriage plot)
I guess it makes sense though that they would simply start that charity as a way to deflect criticism considering the nature of the internet and all that (people take stuff on the interne waaaaaay too seriously)
tawdry hepburn
May 27th, 2011 at 6:35 pm
Fuck you, I like jazz. Unless you meant the movie Chicago, in which case, yeah, fuck that.
As for PA only caring about about video game censorship…I’m cool with that. I never play video games. I’ve never owned a system that hooks up to a television. Hell, I don’t even own a tv. As such, I’d prefer that PA and their ilk fight for the issues about which they are passionate. They’re undoubtedly better advocates for video game’s first amendment rights than I could ever hope to be.
Casey
May 27th, 2011 at 6:50 pm
I don’t think PA started Child’s Play as a cynical ploy. I think they started it because I’m sure they had an idea and it made them feel good. It’s just the kind of charity that doesn’t really matter and doesn’t really do a whole lot except make them and their community feel good.
Unfortunately I know some of the feminists side of the Dick Wolves fiasco and seeing the PA guys use Child’s Play as a shield against their overt ugliness and it then became cynical, to me at least.
I hope I didn’t offend anyone here, Griff. My experience with most people into gaming in one form or another is that they’re incredibly myopic, a little racist, and don’t understand their privilege and oftentimes show a total lack of empathy. That’s not everyone, but it’s easy to see just by going online to different video game forums and looking at various webcomics like PA.
Vern
May 27th, 2011 at 10:53 pm
Don’t mean to change the topic but I was sad to hear that Gil Scott-Heron died today. He had some real devils to deal with since the ’80s but managed to squeeze out one last album last year and it’s a pretty moving one to me, lots of songs about being a fuckup and trying to be better.
You guys might’ve heard of “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” I got a special place in my heart for a more obscure early 80s album he did called Reflections. There’s this great song “B Movie” that’s all about Reagan. “This ain’t really your life, ain’t really ain’t nothin but a movie.” And “Gun” which is about understanding why somebody would want a gun but not wanting one himself. And “Is That Jazz” is a deep one about overanalyzing and losing track of the true meaning of something. “What it has will surely last… but is that jazz?”
In those days he was such a strong voice and so full of positivity, making it seem so cool to be political. I heard some bad/sad stories about him in the later years and I guess he lost all his teeth. But I hoped he would pull it together one of these days. As they say, he will be missed.
Anyway I’m out of town right now, I won’t have anything new for a couple days but coming up soon I’m gonna unveil a major new review series in my ongoing study of the evolution of the Big Summer Popcorn Movie. So look forward to that maybe, hopefully it will be of interest.
sounds exciting Vern, but what are gonna be out of town for ehhh?
Casey
May 28th, 2011 at 5:21 am
Wow that really sucks, Vern. I remember my step father listening to some of him when I was a kid. I think it’s one of those things that laid dormant in my that really sparked political consciousness in the last few years.
I’m looking forward to your study of the Big Summer Popcorn Movie!
Jareth Cutestory
May 28th, 2011 at 9:34 am
I like the SILENT HILL movie. I’m not a video gamer guy at all, but I can appreciate that the fans of the game aren’t much impressed with the movie. I always hear how the film fails to capture everything that makes the game special. Someone needs to make a dvd of someone playing the SILENT HILL game start to finish so that guys like me who don’t enjoy video games can just watch the story.
Griff: Not sure if you’ve seen this one, but a Korean film called RESURRECTION OF THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL employs video game techniques with a fair degree of success. In my completely uninformed opinion.
Vern: I like how Gil-Scott Heron acted like a protective figure over the hip hop he helped shape. He was always sending out little messages telling the young MCs to not waste the opportunities their medium afforded them. I figure the Too Live Crew didn’t get his memos.
Also, thanks to this thread I now know that Chucky the killer doll has his own charity.
Michaelangelo
May 28th, 2011 at 9:58 am
Hey, Vern, I’m noticing a couple of films conspicuously missing from your review vault. Specifically, I’m referring to the great Shaw Brothers flick Five Deadly Venoms and its sequel-in-lazy-American-naming-conventions Return of the Five Deadly Venoms, AKA Crippled Avengers, AKA Mortal Combat, AKA The Greatest Kung Fu Movie Ever Made As Proven By A Bucnh Of Egghead Scientists In A Lab. Five Deadly Venoms is historically significant, as this is the film that first united these guys on the screen. Think of it as the Venoms’ Oceans 11. But Crippled Avengers is the true, undisputed masterpiece. See, Five Deadly Venoms is incredibly awesome in its own right, but that was the first time these guys all worked together so they used that film to learn how to mesh properly, and Crippled Avengers is the film where they come together like Voltron or some shit, in a harmonious display of righteous ass kicking with a social message. See, Crippled Avengers is like the manifesto for the empowerment of cripples worldwide. Think of it as the cripple’s version of “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” or “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud”, only in Mandarin with some ass kicking for those sonsabitches who can’t get with the program. I hope you will soon come to rectify this oversight, and believe me, your life will be greatly improved by having these two masterpieces in it.
Glad I saw Gil Scott-Heron in Dublin last year, shame he’s gone. That last album was terrific, would have been interesting to see where he would have gone next. Oh well.
jsixfingers
May 28th, 2011 at 6:59 pm
I didn’t feel like reading through this entire thread so stop me if this has been discussed, but is anybody else stoked that Tony Jaa left the monastary and is now doing pre-production on The Protector 2? Cause thats fuckin awesome, hopefully we get a return of modern Tony doing crazy ass shit that we didn’t think was possible. The Ong-Bak movies just went a little sideways towards the end of 2 and most all of 3. Anyways, just watched the original Thai version of Protector on blu and damn I almost forgot how good that movie is. Somebody needs to count how many guys he lays out in that movie. Or how many bone breaking sound effects they use. Could make a good drinking game.
May 28th, 2011 at 9:37 pm
I’m bored, let’s all name a movie or movies that we think are really underrated and should all check out
Miracle Mile is what I would pick, man is that an awesome movie, I mentioned it last year when I watched it, but I though I’d give it another shout out
I love everything about that movie, from the excellent pacing, to Anthony Edwards, to the interesting look at 1980’s LA, to the Tangerine Dream score
it’s a shame that the movie is not better known, it certainly deserves to be
I’d love for Vern to review it one day
Jareth Cutestory
May 28th, 2011 at 11:33 pm
Griff: That’s not an easy task you’ve set up for us. Our collective love for genre film and general fuckedupedness tend to put over-looked gems into the thick of conversation quite often. I mean, this is a site that gets more excited about DON’T LOOK NOW than TITANIC. We probably all find stuff like RUBBER’S LOVER more romantic than 500 DAYS OF SUMMER.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s KAIRO is totally obscure to the casual horror fan, known more for the awful American remake, but it’s something of a favorite among us. Kurosawa’s CURE is less talked about but is arguably just as good as KAIRO.
DRACULA’S DAUGHTER isn’t necessarily the most top-notch obscure film I can think of off the top of my head, but it’s interesting to watch if only to see how some of the tropes we complain about in recent vampire films were present in a film in 1936. Anne RIce’s self-loathing vampires are in there, as is the idea of vampires being addicts. Also the lesbianism from THE HUNGER. It also reminds us how clunky sequels aren’t a recent thing.
dna
– griff
I love Miracle Mile. Fantastic script.
Okay, I`ll play along. I think that John Singletons actionmovies; Shaft, 2 Fast 2 Furious and Four Brothers are underrated. They are not misunderstood masterpieces by any means, but wellcrafted oldfashioned actionmovies, you know, the type of movies we have been missing from the last decade. I especially like Singletons action-scenes; basic, short and hard as hell. And you actually care about the characters. They got a solid build-up, are important to the story, no shakycam and no avidfarts, just badasses shooting each other down in a realistic and brutal manner. And Shaft got 3 great performances by Christian Bale, Toni Colliette and Jeffrey Wright.
Not underrated, but almost forgotten classics; The Train with Burt Lancaster (pretty sure it`s the first actionmovie with a buff and halfnaked actionstar yielding a machine-gun towards the audience) and The Desperate Hours with Bogart. What a movie!
May 29th, 2011 at 5:59 am
Jersey Girl.
There, I said it. Smith’s finest piece of filmmaking, maybe Ben Affleck’s best acting performance, George Carlin should have gotten an Oscar (and he had deserved it!) and it’s the only movie I know that shows 100% authentic kids behaviour. Yes, the I wish the last act would be less predictable, but if one movie in the last decade did not deserved to be panned by critics and audiences, it was JERSEY GIRL. (We all know they projected their hate for Jennifer Lopez onto this movie. And she is only in it for the first 10 minutes [spoiler]!)
yeah, it’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but I remember being confused to learn that Jersey Girl has a reputation as being an awful movie when I thought it was pretty good, not “awful” at least
Kevin Smith is just an easy target for pessimistic nerds I think
Darryll
I recently watched TRIP WITH THE TEACHER, a crazed biker/rape-sploitation B-movie from ’75. It’s grungy, low budget, nasty, and surprisingly good.
Darryll
Zalman King is a total slimeball.
Charles
May 29th, 2011 at 9:08 am
I just recommended CHAWZ the other day in this thread. It is a Korean JAWS remake featuring a giant boar instead of a shark. I don’t know if it would qualify as underrated but it is a film that may not be on peoples radar that is worth checking out.
Also, if you are in the mood for pure insanity you have to check out the Japanese film HOUSE. The less you know about it going in the better, but if I had to describe it I would say that it is a psychedelic mash-up of cinematic influences that plays like a live action version of a Japanese children’s program if it were directed by Sam Raimi. If you are a fan of cult cinema or just love bizarre shit you have to check it out.
Darryll
May 29th, 2011 at 9:28 am
Charles, HOUSE was amazing. I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing most of the time. By the end I felt like I was on drugs.
Your Sam Raimi comparison is good but it’s all so very japanese it’s hard to compare it to any western director or style. It’s total dismissal of logical storytelling was actually refreshing. Pure imagination with no imposed limits on what could be included. By the time the disembodied legs came out of the flying lamp to do battle with the demonic, blood spewing, cat picture while the house flew apart and the piano munched on girls extremities I was pretty much entranced.
Ironically, HOUSE was a reaction by the japanese film industry to the rash of imported blockbusters of the time, like JAWS. After an innovative marketing campaign that was ahead of it’s time, HOUSE did really good business in japanese cinemas. I can’t even imagine a film like it even being released in North America.
Charles
Darryll, HOUSE does make you feel like you are on drugs. It a completely crazy and unique cinematic experience. Words to no do it justice. It has to be seen to truly appreciate the madness of it.
Casey
May 29th, 2011 at 9:48 am
I think Master and Commander is really underappreciated. I was lucky enough to see it in the theatre and it was awesome on the big screen but it still holds up on home video. It’s just one of those films that scratches a lot of my itches and it has a great action scene at the end that is one of the best in recent years. It even features a 10 year old that loses an arm and is a total badass at the end.
I’m not sure how underappreciated it is but I think it should have had a long series of films. There’s like 20 books in the series and I would have really liked a new one of these coming out every year. I grew up reading these and Horatio Hornblower, though, so I’m probably biased. I do think Vern should review it as I think it’s up his alley. It’s a really quiet film but it has a few excellent action scenes.
Darryll
May 29th, 2011 at 10:03 am
Casey, I agree. M&C is under-appreciated. Aside from the action I liked the camaraderie of the crew, the details of a life at sea, and the friendship between the captain and the doctor. What a great script with some great performances.
Unfortunately, I believe PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN came out around the same time and audiences voted for the more fantastic of the two pirate movies. (I know, I know, M&C is not a pirate movie but ask the general public to make that distinction and you’ll get blank stares.)
Darryll
May 29th, 2011 at 10:10 am
Yeah, pardon my double post here but I was just thinking about M&C a little more. What I liked was that the camaraderie of the crew I mentioned seemed to be a direct result of the Captain’s friendship with the doctor. That relationship kept the Captain’s spirits high, his judgement fair, and his mind sharp. All of which translated directly to the crew’s healthy morale. A lot of modern workplaces could take a lesson from this film.
Broddie
May 29th, 2011 at 10:13 am
I really wanted a sequel to M&C to; too bad it made like no money. Now poor Paul Bettany has to resort to making crap like PRIEST & LEGION. But hey at least he gets to sleep with Jennifer Connelly. She’s no longer in her prime but dammit it’s still Jennifer Connelly.
Casey
May 29th, 2011 at 12:23 pm
I liked that the relationship between Aubrey and Maturin was such a big part of the movie. The M&C series is referred to as the Aubrey and Maturin series, afterall.
I think it’s one of those movies that had a hard time finding an audience. I had to see it at the Cinema Arts in Fairfax, VA which is an independent theatre that plays mostly smaller or foreign movies. It’s a great place but I’m not sure if M&C played at any of the bigger chain theatres around here. I think it’s the kind of movie that was a throw back to an older time. It was a movie of manly men doing manly things and there were no romantic subplots that got in the way.
I don’t see that type of movie doing well anymore, which is really unfortunate as I don’t think The Great Escape, Lawrence of Arabia, Bridge Over the River Kwai, or tons of other movies that I have a lot love for would work for much of today’s audience. Well, that’s not fair, I think those movies would be received well by those that saw them I’m just unsure if people would go out of their way to see them in the first place.
Paul
May 29th, 2011 at 1:50 pm
Lemme see… movies that used to be well known, are generally acknowledged as classics, but barely get a mention these days? Juggernaut, Juggernaut, Juggernaut. (Yeah, I’m hoping that if I mention it often enough, Vern will review it.)
Jennifer in “The Rocketeer” (good movie by the way, great performances by Jen and Timothy Dalton) was my first big movie “crush”.
“The Train”? I thought I was the only one who’d even heard of that movie, let alone watched it. Good pick.
Broddie
May 29th, 2011 at 2:32 pm
I remember the first time I saw what she looked like after LABYRINTH it was some stupid ass movie called CAREER OPPORTUNITIES. Which I only rented cause she looked nice on the cover and it had John Hughes’ name attached.
It’s actually one of the worst things either of them was involved with but boy did she look hot as fuck. Between that movie and when I sneaked into THE ROCKETEER right after watching T2 I was convinced that she was the greatest looking woman of all time for a while there.
They remade that stupid CAREER OPPORTUNITIES nonsense shortly after with a black cast and called it STRICTLY BUSINESS. I don’t remember it having any EPMD music but I remember it’s only success was the same one as the one for the other movie which is that the girl was hot as fuck (in the case of the latter movie it was Halle Berry).
May 29th, 2011 at 3:09 pm
Broddie – if you had seen The Hot Spot around that time, do you think your head would have exploded?
Charles – House is fucking awesome! I actually own the Criterion blu ray, like you said it really does feel like a children’s movie, except there’s blood and nudity, how bizarre is that?
Master & Commander I’m happy to say I got to see in theaters and it was amazing
I saw CAREER OPPORTUNITIES in the theater on account of that tanktop she had on and no other reason.
That’s good marketing.
May 29th, 2011 at 6:06 pm
Sorry, Career Opportunities is one of my favorite movies of all time. I can watch that movie over and over again. I like the premise of a 21 year old guy who refuses to accept reality and grow up, but is forced to during one crazy night locked inside a target store. From Frank Whaley’s performance as the town liar to Dermot Mulroney’s hilarious performance as the dumb/perverted robber, this move rocks. Throw in a heavy dose of Jennifer Connelly’s glorious circa 1990 titties and you have a winner in my book. Props to John Candy and William Forsythe’s hilarious cameos as well. I’m being serious by the way.
Caoimhín
No, I think that’s the title in Serbia.
Oh, did I say that?
neal2zod
May 30th, 2011 at 5:41 am
The first 7/8 of Career Opportunities is one of my favorite movies too! Endlessly, addictively watchable, relatable characters, fast-paced, a really cute soundtrack, and the “serious” scenes really pack a punch. Then the final 10 minutes totally falls apart in all the worst ways, but i still love the movie, damnit. I’m boggled that there’s never been an alternate ending/deleted scenes DVD/bluray, since the entire ending reeks of re-shoots/focus groups and borders on incoherence. Even the back cover of the movie shows scenes we never saw, and is it just me, or did early commercials show Connelly/Whaley bonding with the two robbers instead of fighting them?
Also, Broddie – don’t ask me why I know this, but Strictly Business and Career Opportunities came out the same year, and their plots are totally different. I think you’re thinking of another movie, though I would actually LOVE a remake of Career Opportunities done right.
BTW, what was up with John Hughes, putting two stupid criminals into all of his scripts after HOME ALONE? (At least I gotta give FLUBBER credit for having the burglars played by Ted Levine and Clancy Brown. )
Broddie
May 30th, 2011 at 9:24 am
Neal – Yeah I remember they dropped the same year that’s why I said shortly after. But true I should’ve said “very loose remake”. Only thing they have in common is that the protagonist is a young guy working a dead end job and that it features a hot hollywood chick in her prime. That’s enough to constitute remake to me LMAO.
Broddie
May 30th, 2011 at 9:26 am
CJ – I guess it was his way of trying to recapture lightning in a bottle. Shit didn’t BABY’S DAY OUT have 3 stupid criminals instead of 2? that was him figuring if he upped the ante the money will roll in even bigger. Unfortunately once he started doing this it also cemented his sad down fall. But hey we’ll always have his 80’s classics to look back on.
I was making a reference to Red Letter Media’s review of Baby’s Day Out, I’m a little surprised no one got it
it seemed pretty hilariously appropriate since Career Opportunities was also written by John Hughes
also, pizza roll, anybody wanna pizza roll?
neal2zod
May 31st, 2011 at 8:15 am
CJ – I had no idea Flubber had two stupid criminals in it, but I’m not surprised. I think I heard somewhere Hugh Laurie was one of the two stupid criminals in Hughes’ 101 Dalmations remake, and he might have been electrocuted in the crotch but maybe I’m mixing that up with something else. Man, just thinking of Hughes’ kiddie mid 90s-output makes me sad, and I still remember the way the studios marketed Curly Sue and Dutch based on the few moments of slapstick violence instead of what they really were.
Griff – The fact that that guy got famous for reviewing the Star Wars/Star Treks and then suddenly rolled into Baby’s Day Out was hilarious. The first time I saw that review I couldn’t stop laughing at the sheer randomness of the choice.
Brendan
May 31st, 2011 at 12:40 pm
Anyone ever see the movie ‘Emperor of the North?’ Holy shit, it’s like pure badassery distilled into movie form. Lee Marvin vs. Ernest Borgnine on a train? And Borgnine has a fucking hammer he uses to crack hobo skulls? And its from the director of The Dirty Dozen? Just an amazing movie from start to finish.
May 31st, 2011 at 2:24 pm
I’ve never even heard of that movie, but the thought of being stuck on a train with a hammer-wielding Borgnine is pretty much the scariest thing I can think of. I would probably have to magically transform into Lee Marven just to deal with it.
jsixfingers
May 31st, 2011 at 4:38 pm
neal – Spot on with the Hugh Laurie reference. He did indeed play ‘Jasper’ of Jasper and Horace fame in the live action ‘Dalmations’ flick. Speaking of Laurie, I read an interview recently where he talked about producing a film adaptation of his novel ‘The Gun Seller’. Great read, the narration and writing style reads very much like you’d expect Laurie to write, kind of a British hard-ass version of House complete with the quick wit and sarcasm abounding. I was bummed he won’t be playing the lead tho, only producing, as he was all I could picture while reading the book.
Darryll
I’ve heard of it. Trailers From Hell covered it not long ago. You can find the trailer here: http://www.trailersfromhell.com/trailers/690
It does indeed look epic. They broke the mold after Ernest Borgnine.
Darryll
EMPEROR OF THE NORTH, I mean. Excuse me.
Brendan
Emperor of the North is a must-see Marvin movie, but to really get what the man was capable of you have to seek out Prime Cut (’72) – one of the meanest movies ever made.
Stu
June 1st, 2011 at 4:16 pm
Saw X-MEN: FIRST CLASS today and thought it was really good. A great fresh start, with lots of excitement, a bit of humour (including a GREAT cameo) and characterisation. McAvoy and Fassbender are a great double act and the rest of the cast do well(Bacon’s a little weird though. Not quite hammy, but there’s definitely something a bit…arch about his performance, though maybe that’s because his character is the one most 60sed up in appearance and setting. If there’s one problem really, I’d say they maybe tried to cram too much story into it, and some aspects/characters are given short shrift because of it(for instance, did that tornado guy have any lines, or even get referred to by name at all?), but overall a nice surprise.
Broddie
June 1st, 2011 at 7:24 pm
I’ve hated the X-MEN movies so I’ll pass. To me “a great fresh start” would be Disney getting the movie rights back from FOX. Nice to see Fassbender will finally be a star though since everyone says he steals the movie.
June 1st, 2011 at 7:29 pm
I’m probably gonna see the new X-Men (even though I haven’t seen any of the others) because they filmed some of it right next to where I live, on Jekyll Island (which was also where the Federal Reserve was started, go figure)
I didn’t get to visit the set though sadly
Griff
June 2nd, 2011 at 4:32 am
well guys, I don’t want to start a huge argument or anything knowing how hot button of an issue this is, nor do I want to derail this too much from discussing movies, but this is something that’s been bothering me for a while and you guys are my most trusted buddies on the internet and I’d just like to see what you guys think (warning things are about to get a little personal)
well to put things bluntly I’ve been going through a bit of a crisis of faith, this is something that’s been under the surface for years, but I’ve always chosen to just kind of ignore it
I was raised a Christian by my Christian parents and although for years I’ve liked to think of myself as a Christian, I’m afraid I’m not so sure
the problem is that it absolutely terrifies me (like seriously makes me afraid) to admit that, not only because of the very potent fear of Hell (and I realize that that’s part of the problem with Religion, that it controls people through pure fear), but also because I find the idea of life being essentially pointless really depressing
of course it’s not like the Religion has any huge bearing on my life, my family only rarely goes to Church (and a Catholic one at that) and I’ve for a long time held a lot of beliefs that don’t really jibe with Christianity, like a relaxed attitude towards sex for example (outside of marriage, homosexuality etc) and I have never been a big fan of the whole “end times and the rapture” thing, it’s always left a bad taste in my mouth, so while technically it might not be a huge leap it is for me
there’s also the problem that my parents, as much as I love them and as good as they are, would still never accept me as anything other than Christian, there’s no “coming out” for me, so I have to pretend I am regardless of what I really think
I guess it’s just a part of growing up and faces pretty much everyone at some point in their lives, this has been building for years though ever since I got the internet and actually heard opposing points of view
June 2nd, 2011 at 4:57 am
As an atheist/agnostic I should probably not give you any direct advice on the matter, but maybe you should consider “making up” your own version of christianity? In my opinion belief is a personal thing, and since organized religion tend to be quite rigid, you could choose the things you’re comfortable with and drop the rest. Some of my friends (a christian, a buddhist and a babtist – no, it’s not the start of a joke) have done so, and they seem happier now. A lot of the “rules” are man made anyway, so why shouldn’t you have a say?
June 2nd, 2011 at 5:51 am
I was raised Catholic but ditched any vestiges of religion or spirituality when I was 14. I used to be an uppity prick about it, but I’ve mellowed since then. My advice: Don’t talk about religion with your family. That’s what I do. I know it would break my grandmother’s heart if I told her I didn’t believe we were all going to heaven together, so I let her think whatever she wants. There’s no reason to make an issue out of it. My belief system doesn’t require that I proselytize.
I also agree with pegsman. The Bible is just a book of philosophy, so take the good bits of advice that mean something to you and forget the rest. Hell, all Christians do that. Otherwise, blind people wouldn’t be able to go to church and people who wore two different kinds of fabric together would be stoned in the streets. But also, check out other works of philosophy. Getting a handle on other religions puts Christianity in perspective and makes it seem less scary to leave it behind.
Good luck. Enjoy your crisis of faith while it lasts. As you get older, dealing with this world becomes enough to occupy most of your brain power. You don’t have much left over to think about the next one.
Rook
June 2nd, 2011 at 7:45 am
Well, Griff, since you brought it up, it turns out I am a Christian. I absolutely 100% believe in the divinity of Christ. I’ve been babtized and everything. From my perspective, there’s a difference between “religion” as a monolithic human institution and “faith” as a personal decision. You state that religion controls people through fear. Based on some of my experiences with ranting hayseed preachers here in Dixie, I would be inclined to agree. Those guys do more to drive people from God than Dawkins and Hitchens put together, but they’re not the whole story. To me, the fundamental tenet of Christianity is free will. You choose to embrace it, or you don’t. God gave the decision to you. For my own part, I am neither a philosopher nor an evangelist (the prominent and sustained use of profanity in my daily discourse is ample proof of that), so I can’t pretend to have any big epiphanies to bestow. What I can say is that, however cliche or banal it may sound, if you sincerely seek God you will find Him. Don’t be discouraged by judgemental hypocrites who try to make you feel that you’re not worthy. For every one of those sanctimonious jerks there’s someone else who will listen to what you have to say and be willing to engage you on a level of thoughfulness and understanding.
Anyway, peace to all and thanks for listening.
dna
June 2nd, 2011 at 8:52 am
– griff
I was raised by a religious family too, my grandfather was even a priest, but I never really believed in God, Heaven and Hell. I actually do think that the bible offers some pretty good answers to the mysteries of life, but as the others said; it`s all about how you interpret it anyway.
I think of it as a pretty good piece of fiction with some amazing subtext. All that stuff about Adam and Eve getting kicked out of paradise is a brilliant psychological methaphor for becoming an adult, and being seperated from your parents because you are becoming a sexual being etc. It`s way ahead of Freud, in my opinion.
I kind of believe in heaven and hell, but not as real places, more like metaphors of the consequences of how you live your life. As in, if you kill somebody, your life will become hell. Or if you become terrible rich, you won`t find true happiness and so on.
I think the book offers a lot of good advise on how to make your life heaven, even though shit sometimes does happen (or “the lord works in mysterious ways”, as the christians prefer to put it..)
One sentence that really stuck out in your post, were “life being pointless”. Well, I don`t believe I can offer any quailified answers to what happens after death, other than that I have absolutely no idea and not enough information to even make a valid suggestion. The only thing I can be sure of, is that I`m proberbly wrong about almost everything regarding the great beyond.
It makes sense to me that there is nothing and that near-death experiences are your mind tripping, but I`ve also experienced things that I can`t explain…
But even if there is nothing after death, how does that make life pointless? If we get our heaven or hell in this life, what`s the difference to reap what we sow in a near future, instead of after death? I would actually suggest that believing in turning your life into heaven by being a decent human being, is a better motivation for living your life in the best possible way, than getting your reward for being a good human being (or christian/hindu/muslim etc) after death.
Also, CLONE WARS season 2 is AWESOME!!
anthony4545
Haha, I’m trying to imagine this conversation on AICN. :P
Darryll
“Or if you become terrible rich, you won`t find true happiness and so on.”
I’d be willing to test that theory.
In my life, I am surrounded by Catholics. My wife and her family are all catholic. Mymom is christian. I call my own particular brand of faith ‘The Church of the Open Question.’ This stance grew out of frustration with so many people and groups claiming to have all the answers. Definitive answers that supersede the answer’s of of others. Also, people that claim they know all the rules to follow in this life and illustrate these rules by pointing out what everyone else is doing wrong.
In The Church of the Open Question, if someone asks me, well, what do you think happens after you die? My answer is, I don’t know. But I take great comfort in knowing that no one else does either, no matter how loud they claim it. Don’t you know that homosexuality is a sin? I don’t know that it is but the gay people I’ve known are perfectly happy people who don’t seem riddled by guilt over it. That seems like a good attitude to have. I am perfectly willing to listen and explore the various theories but in the end they are just theories and the ones that are designed to limit another’s self expression are usually the ones I ignore.
I have found this Open Question stance quite liberating, personally. We are all in the mystery together and we all will find the answers together. Anyone that claims to have fast forwarded to the end of the movie for the answers is fooling themselves.
June 2nd, 2011 at 2:21 pm
Griff- – I too was raised Christian (went to Catholic school, even — no better way to cultivate a young atheist). I can pretty confidently tell you that there is no God, no gods, no souls, no monsters, no good an evil. There’s plenty of good reasons to think this, but you know them already. The point is that it can be hard for someone who knows this to know what to do with themselves after living so long with people offering easy answers to the hard questions about what you should do with your life.
Atheism puts the responsibility on you to decide what’s important and meaningful, because there’s no objective answer. Nothing has any independent meaning, it all comes down to what it means to you. That’s a very hard, painful, personal thing to figure out, but as you do (and you’ll be doing it for the rest of your life) at least you can take some comfort in knowing that it’s you thats responsible, that you’re not deflecting the hard questions to some imaginary father figure to validate.
It’s worth it, I think, although its much more difficult.
For me, at least at this point in my life, whats important is loving as many people as I can as much as I can and exploring the world to the greatest extent I’m able to. That won’t mean anything at all once I’m gone, but for me, right now, its staggeringly important and valuable. Who knows what’s valuable to you? You may not even know what it is yet, or you may think you know and find that it changes once you start to let go of all your mythological notions of what’s worthwhile. Who knows. But the journey will be an interesting one.
The other issue for newfound atheists is dealing with people who are too deeply invested in religion to be able to constructively talk about a reality without it. Think about it this way: people have devoted their whole lives to a series of rules which they were told was objectively the most important thing in life, regardless of their personal feelings. You can only base your life around that principle for so long before abandoning it essentially makes your whole life utterly meaningless wasted time. So yeah, they’re gonna be defensive about it and its probably not even worth discussing, quite frankly. Even if you find a theist who can have a civil discussion, there’s not much point since there’s nothing really to debate. I reccomend finding generally open-minded thoughtful people to bounce ideas off of and have the kind of life experiences you need to figure out where you’d like to direct your time, passion, energy, and self-worth.
Good luck bud. It’s gonna be an interesting ride for awhile, but at least you’ve still got the films of cinema.
June 2nd, 2011 at 3:29 pm
I am an Atheist. I’m also the kind of asshole who sincerely thinks that Phelps and Camping are pretty good examples of the whole of religion when taken on a long enough scale. I find the whole system to be a large, delusional, death cult. Religions, when taken as more than fables and folktales, are little more than societal parasites that prey upon the emotions of the weak willed and manipulate culture, almost exclusively to negative results. There are no unique benefits to religious faith* and many, many unique pitfalls. I do not think it is hyperbole to say that religion is the single worst thing that has ever happened to humanity. It is a malignant tumor on our species that will forever hold humanity back from reaching its full potential. And it will very likely be the cause of our undoing.
That said, I quote the bible daily and find many of its stories deeply moving. I have literally wept from the beauty and depth of some of the poetry found within that book. I also try to pray before going to sleep and before eating meat. So basically, I’m a total hypocrite.
The ironic thing is, as an Atheist, I spend all day every day searching for meaning, searching for proof and searching for direction, whereas those who are sure of G-d’s existence and goodness probably think less about matters of faith. I desperately want there to be a G-d and a truth and a meaning. But every piece of life I have ever experienced says the exact opposite. I hope to one day be proven wrong, but I am quite sure I will not be.
*Pascal’s wager is a sucker’s bet because he does not account for the definite and irrefutable damage done by religion. His 1% chance of heaven is not a fair exchange for creating hell on earth.
Casey
I’m a secular guy but for a period of my life I was very convinced that my path in life was to become a Rabbi.
I appreciate faith and religion more than I believe.
I think the whole question of faith comes down to: do you have any faith? I think it’s a much more emotional and personal question than a logical one. I also don’t think personal faith requires a belief in universal truth.
I also don’t understand the need to make declarations about what you believe to be universal truth. It’s totally okay to change your mind every day and just live life with a flexible faith.
I also agree with those that you should feel free to study your faith and determine what it means. I’ve read the New Testament a few times and it seems to me that it mostly discusses loving everyone, being a pacifist, and just doing good works and charity. Issues of sexuality seem totally insignificant to the message of love.
I don’t know, it seems to me that faith is totally separate from reason or logic. It seems to me that attempts to prove or disprove faith totally miss the point. You either have faith or you don’t. I think just spending your life living what you feel to be a righteous life and spending some time reflecting upon your feelings and life will lead you towards your truth.
Good luck!
June 2nd, 2011 at 8:25 pm
Casey: Keirkegaard wrote that reason and logic are essential to achieve faith; it is reason and logic that will take you to that place where you learn the limits of intelligence and from which you make the leap into faith.
Another great philosopher (Shane MacGowan) once said in an interview that morality existed long before Christians came along and put their kink in it, so don’t get too hung up on the source of wisdom and focus instead on applying the wisdom to your life. I’m paraphrasing MacGowan’s point because, like in all his interviews, he was completely drunk and incoherent.
June 2nd, 2011 at 10:07 pm
Casey:
Maybe it’s because I was raised in reform Judaism, but I don’t think that Judaism calls for any type of “faith.” At least not in the Christian sense. In Christianity, if you believe that Jesus was a cool dude, but not the son of G-d, you’re out of the club. If you believe that Jesus had divine inspiration, but did not rise from the dead, you’re out of the club. You have to buy into the whole thing. Meanwhile, Judaism is much more piecemeal. You don’t have to believe every word of the Books of Moses. You don’t even have to believe in Yahweh in any certain form. In fact, the highest calling in Judaism is to question G-d and question authority.
It was the most rebellious, questioning children would be sent to Rabbinical schools. The Talmud’s commentaries are meant to be just as holy as the original texts. Hell, if you read the Torah, Moses, Abraham, Jonah and most of the major figures get in *arguments* with Adoni and they win!
G-d says to Moses, “Yo holmes, I’m gonna go destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.” And Moses is all like, “Hey, wait. What if there are 50 good people in that city? Shouldn’t you let them live? Baby with the bathwater and all that.” And G-d’s like, “Hmm, okay. Go find me 50 worthwhile dudes and I’ll save the city.” And then Moses is like, “What if there are 49?” And so Moses argues G-d all the way down to saving the city if there is just one good man in it.
Eventually, G-d sends two angels down into the city, disguised as humans. They search through the people until they come upon Lot. Lot is a Mensch. He lets the Angels into his house, feeds them, clothes them, and offers them housing in accordance with Jewish tradition. Then a large crowd forms outside of his house and demands that Lot hand over the angels whom they desire for their, “strange flesh*.” Lot, being the good Jew that he is, is all like, “No, you can’t have these strangers that I just met, but I’ll make you a deal; here are my two virgin daughters. I guess you can fuck them to death, or whatever.”
G-d is pleased by this…for whatever reason, and so the angels tell Lot and his family to get the heck out of Dodge before the fire and brimstone start raining down. They also say that no one is allowed to look back. The family leaves, but Lot’s wife looks back, so G-d turns her into a pillar of salt.
I’m paraphrasing a bit here, (except for the “strange flesh” line), and I’ve gone way off point. But I’ve been endlessly fascinated by that story, so I decided to share the whole thing.
*Angels were sexually irresistible to humans and they used to copulate a lot before G-d made them eunuchs. If a human and an angel had a baby their offspring were giants with superhuman strength. The most famous of these was King Og, who was said to be 18 feet tall. Another interpretation is that the people of the city wanted to eat the angels, Day of the Dead style. But I donno that I buy that one.
June 2nd, 2011 at 10:07 pm
Also, rejecting Christianity doesn’t make you an atheist. There’s a whole lto in between.
And afterlife or no, 100 years is a pretty good time, definitely worth doing right. And the love you make now does last in generations beyond.
This won’t be popular around here but I actually got a lot out of The Secret. I never saw the video, only read the book, but I believe we’re all connected to everything throughout the universe. It’s very apparent. You see the results of the good you do. So I have faith in that connectedness, and I do believe in a God. Lots of other good readings on the subject: Eckhardt Tolle, The Celestine Prophecy…
June 2nd, 2011 at 10:42 pm
The reason I shared that story was because it never made sense to me until about a year and a half ago. I always saw it as yet another example of misogyny in the Torah: two random men are of the utmost importance while Lot’s daughters can be used as pawns, the woman is too weak willed and curious and is punished for it. And so on.
But then, during senior year of college I had an ex-girlfriend come to visit me. I had dated her for about a year during high school and she was really fun and exciting. I once wrote her a poem called, “Horse Brutality” about telling her I loved her for the first time while we were at a midnight screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which is also where I met her. Also, her older brother was a skinhead who stood 6″8 and was born with a full set of teeth. It was one of THOSE relationships, you know?
So anyway, I hadn’t seen her in ages and we were both newly single, so she comes up to visit and commiserate. At first things go well: she’s fun and spunky and totally punk rock and she’s amazed by my college town and gets along with my friends. I’m totally crushing on her all over again. But then things start to go sour. She texts me telling me she wants to fuck one of my friends, starts being really antagonistic, brings up old grudges and literally yells at me because she was offended by the content in a book of David LaChappelle photography that I showed her.
At around 2 am on Saturday night, she tells me that she wants to go home on the first train in the morning. I say, “Okay, there’s one at 9 am.” She says, “No. I want to go home on the 6 am train.” My first instinct was to tell her, “Fine. Here’s money for the train and a google map, I’m going to bed. Lock the door on your way out.” But I decided that this would be cruel. We ended up getting nachos, talking all night and working most of it out. But she still wanted to leave at 6 am.
So, we begin to walk over to the train and about halfway there she starts getting really pissed at me for no discernible reason. It gets to the point where I stop and ask her, “Do you just want me to leave?” She says, “Yes.”
I give her the money and some brief directions then turn around and leave her by the side of the road. (Keep in mind, this girl was tough as nails and wearing knee-high steel-toed boots. Boots she most assuredly knew how to use. She wasn’t in any danger walking half a mile just after dawn.)
I’m walking away, frustrated beyond belief at her behavior and deeply confused and at first I want to look back. I want to see if she’s following me home. I want to see if she’s standing there watching me. I want to see if she’s checking over her shoulder to look back at me.
But then it hits me; the story of Lot.
I realized that it wasn’t a story about G-d’s arbitrary wrath and the hatred of women, it was a story about having a belief and sticking to it. I hadn’t been romantically involved with this girl since right around my 18th birthday but we still had the exact same dynamic. I still acted like I was 16 when she was around. I also realized that not only did we have the exact same relationship now, I had basically had the exact same relationship with the five women who came after her. Different girls. Different styles. Different levels of intelligence. Different places. Different ages. But when it got down to it, I had been having the same shitty relationship over and over for more than half a decade.
I realized that Lot’s wife turned into a pillar of salt because, if you have a belief but you look back, you’re not really moving forward, you’re still clinging to the thing you’re trying to escape. If you look back, you’ll be looking back forever and you will be frozen, like a pillar of salt.
So I didn’t look back. I walked home and determined to change and evolve. And really, the main change was that I stopped having the same shitty relationship and started having a *lot* of intense, often self-destructive flings with beautiful women, but it was a first step. In the year and a half since that morning I’ve actually grown up a lot and begun to make more permanent, meaningful changes and that biblical story was essential to that growth.
dna
June 3rd, 2011 at 1:15 am
Tawdry
Great story. You say “There are no unique benefits to religious faith”. I kind of disagree. A lot of people find comfort in knowing that there is a life after death. I wish I could believe that there is “something”, other than nothing. I`m pretty sure I`ll turn into a fanatic religious person when my time is up. I guess that most atheists feel the same way, at least when they hit middle age..
I`ve been to India a couple of times and I love their sense of religion; the drama, intensity and excitement. Religion adds to a otherwise pretty harsh and mundane reality. It just makes the world seem a bigger place. I guess that hinduism is their starwars, just more real. Being in a temple lit by candles, with hundreds of people in extasy, weird statues all over the place and mystical music and chanting, is as fun as going to the cinema. They are, in a way, trekkers or fantasy-nerds, getting together and connecting via some big fantasyworld with gods, monsters, warriors etc. Religion can be exciting and fun, and I`m all for having as much fun as humanly possible. I think my biggest problem with christianity is that it`s pretty boring.
I think, as an atheist, that having the best possible life is the point of everything, and if religion makes your life more exciting and fun, then I`m all for it.
Hannuman is AWESOME btw!
June 3rd, 2011 at 1:55 am
thanks a lot for all your comments guys
anyway to bring things back to a movies a bit (though feel free to keep discussing Religion), I watched 12 Monkeys tonight, been wanting to see it for a long time
it was pretty good, as far as R rated time travel movies go it’s as good as Timecrimes, I would have liked to have seen more of the really bizarre future in the movie, but I guess they couldn’t show a lot due to the budget
it was really cool though, it’s hard to describe, but I would say it’s very industrial with a little bit of Steampunk and it was all real sets, no CGI, I love Terry Gilliam’s surreal style
Casey
June 3rd, 2011 at 5:16 am
I totally agree with you about Judaism, Tawdry. I’ve just grown to be a lot more agnostic and I ended up falling out from the Jewish community here for various reasons. It seems to me that Judaism is a lot less about the religion, at least where I am, than the culture and community. For various reasons, including marrying a nice gal who happened to not be Jewish, I ended up disassociating myself with that community.
June 3rd, 2011 at 5:33 am
I searched and it looks like Vern has never reviewed 12 Monkeys, I’m surprised considering how much Vern loves Bruce Willis
Vern if you’re reading this you really need to give 12 Monkeys a rent soon, I’d love to see your thoughts on it
Jareth Cutestory
I so totally want to change my user name to King Og. Or maybe Horse Brutality.
FTopel: the interconnectedness that you enjoyed in The Secret is a big part of Buddhism.
ThomasCrown442
Jareth, yes, I know! Russell Simmons talks a lot about it too. I guess I should read the bhaga gavita too.
Tawdry, wow. Just wow.
Also, this idea of comort and people finding comfort in religion, afterlife, etc. I don’t think we should strive to just be comfortable. That may be one of the turnoffs for organized religion. We strive for excellence, so develop a belief that’s productive, not just comfortable.
ThomasCrown442
June 3rd, 2011 at 10:16 am
So Tawdry, the first step to enlightenment is to have a bunch of self destructive flings with beautiful women? Sweet! I think you should start your own religion. (Unless the whole “self destructive flings with beautiful women” thing was just a personal anecdote and not a general rule to followed).
Jareth Cutestory
June 3rd, 2011 at 10:33 am
FTopel: The Bhagavad Gita is sort of a “meaning of life” text from the Hindu perspective. It’s part of a much larger work called the Mahabharata (which, if filmed in the style of RED CLIFF, would be a killer action movie epic). I find the Gita a bit opaque, but if you’re into stuff like the Song of Solomon it’s a neat trip.
Another Hindu text with some neat stuff is the Upanishads. That’s the one David Lynch likes to quote from. “We are like the spider. We weave our life and then move along in it. We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream. This is true for the entire universe.” Trippy.
There are plenty of good introductory books to Buddhism. Anything by Sogyal Rinpoche is going to be lucid and concise. Lama Surya Das (a Jewish American who became a Tibetan Buddhist monk) is really popular among American readers who prefer to have the modern relevance of ancient traditions spelled out for them.
June 3rd, 2011 at 1:30 pm
Mr. S, great review. I wish I liked HOBO as much as you did. Our reactions to the film were very different, but I do agree with you about the quality of the performances and the filmatism. I think Jason Eisener did a whole lot with very little and I look forward to his next film. You also make a good point about HOBO being a real exploitation film not just a tribute to exploitation films like GRINDHOUSE. I stand by my initial response to the film, but I will visit it again when it comes out on DVD and see if my stance has softened. I really want to like it more.
Wonderful review, Mr. S. Although I think you should give Molly Dunsworth a shout out in your cast list. :)
You’re right, I was really sad he didn’t get his lawnmower.
Jareth, thanks for the recommendations. It’s time to take my reading to the next level.
June 3rd, 2011 at 2:39 pm
Oh, I certainly recommend having as many self-destructive flings with beautiful women as possible. That IS one of the main pillars of Tawdrism.
However, this spirit journey must be embarked upon en tandem with a second, equally important tenet: ALWAYS WEAR A CONDOM. To summarize the Book of Crazyhot, the 12th scroll in the Books of Tawdry, It doesn’t matter if she says she’s on the pill. Crazy girls are, by definition, crazy. They are wont to do irrational things. Sometimes they decide they want a baby, right now. Even if she’s only 19 and even if you’re almost literally the only guy she’s ever dated who *isn’t* a millionaire. So sometimes they lie about being on the pill and tell you and her parents that she’s preggo. And then you have to tell her parents that she clearly isn’t preggo because she bled all over your bed. And while that type of conversation builds a certain kind of character, it is also not exactly “fun.” And Tawdrism is all about fun.
Darryll
June 3rd, 2011 at 3:18 pm
Thanks for the kind words, guys!
Charles – I should say, I completely understand where you’re coming from with that post I cite in the review. It is an incredibly depraved, sadistic film where they torch a schoolbus full of kids as a joke. But to me, that kind of way-too-far provocation is part and parcel of being an exploitation film, and part of the transgressive fun of the genre (if it can be called that). What makes it OK for me is that I feel like the filmmakers’ hearts were in the right place, and they love their cinematic violence but also have some appreciation for basic human decency too. WANTED turned me off with its cynical sociopathic nihilism wrapped up in a pretty package. HOBO is a big teddy bear wrapped up in perverse transgressive ulta-violence. It makes you feel dirty –as you should with this sort of thing– but it’s ultimately about the need for more hope, more kindness, and less hobos with shotguns. That goes a long way for me, but your mileage may vary. I certainly would never judge anyone who found it to be too grotesque to enjoy.
Charles
June 3rd, 2011 at 4:14 pm
Mr. S, I agree with you that WANTED is more nihilistic. I did not like WANTED at all, but I liked HOBO, just not as much as I had expected/hoped to. However, WANTED did not wear me out with extreme violence and sadism the way HOBO did. HOBO is a good film but it is exhaustingly cruel. I do agree that HOBO at least features caring and endearing characters like the noble and armed bum of its name sake, but he is one of two characters that are even decent human beings in the film and they are drowned in cruelty and indifference. Hobo is like a giant cruelty flavored Tootsie Pop I want to enjoy what is at its core but I don’t know if it is worth all the cruelty to get to it.
June 3rd, 2011 at 4:25 pm
My main problem with WANTED is simple: Its message was “Killing humans is cool and something you have to do in your life or otherwise it’s wasted” and didn’t even try to hide it. It’s FIGHT CLUB, made by morons who didn’t got the satirical aspect of it and only watched it for the fights and the pretty visuals.
Vern! check this out, they’re making a BLADE anime http://www.japanator.com/blade-gets-anime-adaptation-19620.phtml
looks like you might finally have to review an anime soon huh?
June 3rd, 2011 at 10:08 pm
Charles — I applaud your use of the cruelty-flavored tootsie pop metaphor and can easily understand why you would feel that way. It seems like we saw pretty much the same thing in the film, I just had a higher tolerance for it (which I suspect comes from my many years watching z-grade exploitation fare where the violent debasement is sort of the point). The absurdly exaggerated nature of the whole conflict also kind of makes it more tolerable to my mind.
CJ — I felt the same way. The film’s insistence on violence as the sole route to self-actualization (especially its emphasis on recapturing “stolen” masculinity with violence) and its poisonous, naked hatred everyone else just kind of kills the buzz that the otherwise awesome action sequences should have provided.
Casey
Man, this discussion on Wanted makes me want to see a new Billy Jack movie but with Wanted’s action scenes. That would have to be great.
Jareth Cutestory
June 4th, 2011 at 9:03 am
Mr. Subtlety: Did you see HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN in a theater? If so, how did the audience react? The half-empty theater I saw it with started out really boisterous, but, over the course of the film, became very subdued. When the film was over, there was a strange contemplative hush, which seems to support your point about the nature of the violence they just witnessed.
Also, I would have posted this remark on your blog, but the layout of that thing is so white. Coming to your site from Vern’s is like leaving a dim jazz bar for a florescent-lit coffee chain.
June 4th, 2011 at 9:06 am
If James McAvoy can jump through a falling exploding train firing two guns at once in slow motion, you better fuckin believe Tom Laughlin can do it. And he’ll teach you something about tolerance and respect for the Earth at the same time.
Stu
June 4th, 2011 at 10:42 am
So, I saw this 4 hour long japanese movie last night called LOVE EXPOSURE, which was listed as a “Quirky drama about 3 troubled inviduals who get involved in a complicated love triangle”…and while that’s true, sorta…it doesn’t cover the myriad other topics such as sexual repression, reli gion, cross-dressing romantic deception, brainwashing cults, panty-snapping perversion, mental breakdown and castration. I guess my questions is…are there ANY japanese live-action dramas that get exposure in the west without being batshit insane or outright dark and depressing? Without being action, samurai, horror or yakuza films?
Jareth Cutestory
June 4th, 2011 at 3:54 pm
Stu: LOVE EXPOSURE is by Sion Sono, who is famous for SUICIDE CIRCLE. In my opinion, he dealt with very similar themes as LOVE EXPOSURE much better in SUICIDE CIRCLE’s sorta-sequel NORIKO’S DINNER TABLE. But the school for upskirt photography in LOVE EXPOSURE was classic.
To answer your question, here in Toronto stuff like ADRIFT IN TOKYO and AFTER LIFE (in my opinion a near-perfect movie) get limited release in theaters and are well regarded by critics. I think ADRIFT IN TOKYO made more money during its run than MICMACS did, which is quite an accomplishment. Not sure how many people actually see these films, but they’re easier to find here than the fucked up stuff like TETSOU and GO GO SECOND TIME VIRGIN. You either see that stuff at obscure festivals, at the Japanese Cultural Centre (where I saw LOVE EXPOSURE) or wait for video. At my video store, stuff like ROBOGEISHA and TOKYO GORE POLICE are popular.
Stu
June 4th, 2011 at 4:14 pm
I found LOVE EXPOSURE to be simultaneously torturous and enthralling. I came across it on tv around midnight and while it kept going on and on and on past the point I thought it would, and I wanted to go to bed, I also had to know how the fuck it was going to end. I’m not coming down on the bizarre movies in general mind, just that, I imagine there’s probably some good stuff with more mass appeal made in Japan, yet all that ever seems to get attention here and get an airing on british film and tv channels like Film4 are the weird shit. Also, as I think about it, an overwhelming amount of these films seem to have the theme of “being a teenager sucks” between LOVE EXPOSURE, the BATTLE ROYALS, ALL ABOUT LILY CHOU CHOU etc. I saw some of KAMIKAZE GIRLS a while ago, but not all of it, so maybe that one didn’t end with the protagonists dead or horribly scarred for life. It seemed quirky but upbeat.
Inspector Li
June 4th, 2011 at 11:56 pm
Hey Griff – Here to belatedly throw in support for you during the … don’t want to say “crisis” … “realignment”? “Time of questioning”? Urg. Anyway. A lot of my responses got covered by Jareth, FTopel, and some others – especially that leaving religion doesn’t necessarily mean life becomes pointless, that leaving one faith doesn’t necessarily mean leaving religion (or spirituality) altogether, and that it’s sensible in finding your beliefs to engage your brain (God-given or not – it works either way). Don’t want to endorse any final destination, but you might want to check out a Quaker service or a Unitarian one; they kind of approach the philosophical observances of church with less dogma (though that sometimes means inconsistency from congregation to the next.) I think it’s also fair to say that, for better and for worse, you never shed your earlier metaphysical mindset 100%. Hang in there. Wherever you land you’re going to be richer for it.
Inspector Li
And back to movies: Sion Sono’s going to do appearances before several of his films at LA’s Cinefamily next weekend. Hoping to finally check out Love Exposure then …
Charles
June 5th, 2011 at 10:02 am
So speaking of McAvoy, I saw X-MEN FIRST CLASS, and I was pleasantly surprised by how good it was. FIRST CLASS is the origin story of the X-Men, but at its core it is the story of how two friends that have a great deal of care and respect for each other ultimately end up on opposing sides due to their ideals. McAvoy is very good as a young and somewhat naive Professor X, and Fassbender’s performance as Magneto is excellent. The dynamic between the two is spot on and creates the foundation the film is built on. That is what makes FIRST CLASS so good and one of the better comic book films is that it delivers exciting action sequences, but they are all in support of a narrative that is character driven and skillfully executed. It does have its flaws (some clunky expositional dialog), but they are relatively minor and easily overlooked. I would highly recommended it.
Charles
June 5th, 2011 at 10:39 am
After posting my FIRST CLASS review I feel like I didn’t give Fassbender enough credit for how good he is in the film. I can’t stress enough how good his performance is. I like Fassbender, he was good in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS and CENTURION, and as good as he was in those films he is even better in FIRST CLASS. He portrays MAGNETO as a very damaged and sympathetic character. We do not always agree with MAGNETO’s choices but we can feel his pain and understand why he makes them. This is the role of Fassbender’s career and he delivers, and I would bet he will be considered a genuine movie star and marquee name after this film.
June 6th, 2011 at 1:46 am
so guys Super 8 is coming soon
God I’m getting so excited, I actually had a dream about it the other night, it’s not often I dream about movies
Seconded, Griff. That’s a great interview. Good section on the Indianapolis speech too.
Griff
that part about Reagan and aliens creeps me out
Darryll
Yeah, possibly the best thing at AICN in literally years.
Question: Why hasn’t Spielberg worked with George Clooney yet? Seems like a natural fit to me.
June 8th, 2011 at 10:21 pm
This is going to sound weird, but after perusing their Wiki page and reading a few interviews…I think I kind of admire the Insane Clown Posse. They’re a legitimate example of the American dream. They went out there, did their thing and never took no for an answer. And somehow they’ve built a friggin’ empire without ever compromising or watering it down. In their own way, I really think these guys “Strive for Excellence”(tm).
I know it sounds ridiculous to say, but I can almost see them as role models for individualism.
http://tinyurl.com/6d43suq
…Chris Tucker is one of the people Tarantino is looking at to play the title character in DJANGO UNCHAINED. It’s a boast because ever since I saw FRIDAY on the list of movies Tarantino programmed to play at his theater a couple months ago I’ve been theorizing that he’s considering somebody from the cast for DJANGO. I’m sure Tiny Zeus Lister would fit in somewhere, and I’ve been joking about Ice Cube in the lead, but I was really hoping that if I was reading the tea leaves correctly then it was Tucker he was looking at. After all he did get a great performance out of him as Beaumont (an employee Ordell had to let go) in JACKIE BROWN.
I doubt it’ll happen, and Idris Elba would be more badass, but hey. I bet nobody else predicted it. I’m pretty cool.
Better get working on that epic defense of MONEY TALKS.
Actually, the timing is right. It’ll be five years since Rush Hour 3 by the time Tucker would appear on screen again, the same gap between RH2 and 3. Way to go, Vern.
Darryll
June 9th, 2011 at 7:21 am
Yeah, I could see both Elba and Tucker for DJANGO. Tucker doesn’t look nearly as skinny or as wiry as he used to. He’s bulked up some. Now can he do something about that voice?
I’d also like to nominate Don Cheadle for the role. He’s been a favorite of mine since TRAFFIC.
Way to call that one, Vern. You’re pretty cool.
I really don’t understand how you could say the stuff with the kids rang false, especially the relationship between Elle Fanning and the main kid Joe
neal2zod
June 10th, 2011 at 9:15 pm
I’ll save most of my Super 8 thoughts for that eventual board, but I’m sad to say i didn’t like it either, Griff. Devin Faraci can be excessively mean in his reviews, but he’s spot on in this one, especially that joke of a climax – http://www.badassdigest.com/2011/06/01/movie-review-super-8-makes-us-nostalgic-for-spielberg-movies-because-they-work
I also think it’s really weird that alot of people are championing it for being an “original’ property that’s not a sequel/remake/reboot or whatever when it’s probably one of the most predictable and UNoriginal movies I’ve seen in forever. At the end of the day it’s just Cloverfield, ET, Goonies, and Son of Rambow crammed together but not as good as any of them.
But I’ll agree the end credits with the home movie was charming, I’d argue it was more entertaining than the rest of the movie!
June 10th, 2011 at 10:36 pm
come on guys, don’t be so hard on Super 8, this isn’t the AICN talkbacks, this isn’t 4chan’s /tv/ board, there’s no arms race to look cool here
in an era in which 99% of family films (save for the Pixar joints) are “guy hangs out with talking animals” bullshit and are completely inoffensive and bland, Super 8 reminds us what these movies used to be like, it had some actual edge to it, like truly frightening moments and a little cussing (even one F bomb), I’m not saying the cussing makes it a good movie but it shows it’s heart is in the right place
and despite how famous he is so few filmmakers try to borrow a page from Spielberg’s style these days, instead they’re trying to emulate music videos or Twilight or God knows what, so JJ Abrams deserves to be commended for trying to bring back some classic to style to modern Hollywood
I don’t mean to go into ad hominem territory, but I think Super 8 is a good litmus test in how pessimistic you are about movies
but whatever, I guess I get it, you guys like action movies, that’s your bag and I like action movies too, but Steven Spielberg is my favorite filmmaker and his movies along with the movie’s he produced are my bag, they’re my “Steven Seagal” if you know what I mean (that is to say my cinematic obsession), so I was on cloud 9 with this movie
Ebert gives it 3 and a half stars http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110608/REVIEWS/110609989
so there’s at least one professional who agrees with me
June 10th, 2011 at 11:18 pm
Super 8 was exactly my kind of movie, about things I like movies to be about in a style I long for… and it didn’t work. Everything with the kids felt hollowly constructed to be whimsical and heartwarming.. Spielberg touch definitely missing. I didn’t even get the sense that J.J. really was ever a film loving kid. The actual film by the kids was the only thing with any personality.
Remember, I’m a guy who LOVES references and homages. That said, if they had to foresake me to make the rest of America happy, they had to go with the greater good.
June 10th, 2011 at 11:23 pm
And Griff, no need to worry about people agreeing with you, professional or otherwise. You could be the only one who likes the movie and that’s still cool, but you won’t be the only one on this.
I happen to love your name, a reference to an underrated sequel I LOVE, which goes so far as to include clips of its own predecessor. How’s that for a reference?
June 11th, 2011 at 2:10 am
and Fred, I don’t personally care what other people’s opinions are, I can agree to disagree (I admit I didn’t always be that way, but I learned to get over it), I was just kinda wishing Super 8 would get a mostly positive reception so I could discuss the movie with you guys instead of defending it, but of course so far only two people (not counting me) have voiced opinions on so perhaps I’m jumping the gun
bottom line I’ll put it this way, I just love what Super 8 set out to do, the fact that a filmmaker said “hey, let’s make an old school style Spielberg movie” instead of “hey let’s do a movie where a girl falls in love with a hot vampire, but instead lets make him a creature from the black lagoon, or a sexy Frankenstein” like the usual Hollywood fare guaranteed the movie was gonna get a pass from me
you can debate whether the film pulled it off or not (personally I thought it did), but it’s heart is in the right place
the only thing I thought was missing was a painted Drew Struzan poster for the movie, but not even God could force studios to use a painted poster in this day and age (JJ could have commissioned one at least, even though it’d never get used)
on a side note, if anyone thinks JJ was just cashing in on nostalgia I don’t think this movie was a safe bet at all, a safe bet in this day and age is a remake, comic book movie, vampire romance, kids movie with talking CGI animals etc etc and I hope Super 8 is a huge success to show that Hollywood that classic styles of film making are not totally dead
June 11th, 2011 at 5:52 am
Griff – it’s heart is definitely in the right place, and yes, I’d rather EVERYONE emulate Spielberg rather than Twilight/whatever’s trendy now. But as I’ve often said – Jet made a song that sounded “Beatle-esque” once. I’m not going to ignore the fact that it wasn’t a good song just because it sorta sounded like The Beatles. (Or by that rationale give Nickelback bonus points for not sounding like Britney Spears). Good intentions just don’t count for much when the content itself doesn’t deliver.
And re: that F bomb, I actually thought it’s inclusion totally went against what JJ was trying to do. It’s not I’m a prude or anything (I LOVED the Fbomb in First Class – totally hilarious), but that wouldn’t have happened in a classic Spielberg movie- it was like how the Gus Vant Sant Psycho made a huge deal about copying the original shot for shot but then had those weird shots of cattle, so it was like “what’s the point?”
That being said I’m glad you liked it and if it makes you feel better, most of my friends enjoyed it too. I felt like the grumpy old guy that night.
Didn’t one kid in E.T. call his brother “Penis Fart” or something like that?
neal2zod
I think it was Penis Breath. Though I’m totally going to have to steal Penis Fart from you now.
Casey
So, guys, if I was going to bug my wife to go out to a movie tonight which should I take her to: First Class or Super 8?
Casey
June 11th, 2011 at 8:37 am
Quick thing, I’m not sure if this was the post where people were talking about Spielberg but I don’t think anyone has mentioned it.
I keep reading about people hating it on the internets but people of my generation (I’m 27) seem to really love it. I do, too. I think it’s a fun film and if I say “Ru-Fi-Oh!” almost anyone of my age knows the reference and thinks of it fondly.
I was always confused by the hatred of that film. I remember watching that and the Sandlot on VHS a lot as a kid. Also The Road Warrior, Total Recall, Robocop, and Highlander.
neal2zod
June 11th, 2011 at 11:35 am
Griff, did your parents at least name you after Biff’s grandson in Back to the Future II?
Casey, I always liked Hook too. Been interested to watch it more recently and haven’t gotten around to it.
Tawdry Hepburn
June 11th, 2011 at 12:16 pm
Yeah, I always figured your name was a Public Enemy reference too, Griff. And as for the Doc’s antisemitism, I think that the political context of the band somewhat excuses his comments. PE was deeply influenced by the Black Panthers and Malcolm X and their ilk and if we’re going to be honest about it, none of those groups really liked Jews.
Public Enemy, N.W.A. and the first wave of politically-minded Gangsta’ Rap was very much about expressing and exploring suppressed feelings of anger and disenfranchisement, you know, “Stereotypes of a black male misunderstood” and the like. And you know what? The ghetto had and has a lot of antisemitism and homophobia. It’s an accurate reflections of parts of the culture. And while I’m not going to cosign to Dr. Griff’s thoughts, they are not out of place and not without value. What’s more, if we can accept and even cheer along to Fuck the Police, Cop Killer, A Bitch is a Bitch, et al seeing through their surface-level endorsement of murdering law enforcement officers, beating and raping women and selling soul destroying narcotics down to their political and socially important core, then I don’t see why we shouldn’t be able to contextualize Dr. Griff and consider the place from which his rage comes. Certainly shooting a cop in the face is worse than calling me a “Christ Killer” or whatever. And if the fact that Dr. Griff has a beef with Jews is all we remember from the material, then I think that says something unpleasant about our culture.
On the other hand, the discussions of cop killing were clearly not literal in most cases. Yes, a lot of hoods have shot cops, but I don’t think Eazy-E or Ice Cube ever did. Hell, half my friends growing up went to Taft High School, his Alma Mater. And while there was one drive-by shooting there that paralyzed a kid I half-knew, (I ran into him at parties during high school and college a few times. We’d talk and he would always bring up, “You wanna know why I’m in the wheelchair?” And I would tell him that I already knew. In retrospect, I’m not sure if he was sick of the awkward pause where people would ask, or if it was a story he liked to tell…), the school isn’t in a bad area and it wasn’t an unsafe area back when Cube was bussed in. Meanwhile, it’s fairly easy to take causal Antisemitism at face value. I suppose it could be harder to rationalize it as wish fulfillment. But then, Snoop Dogg sang “Bitches Ain’t Shit” and now he’s been the voice of a talking animal in like 3 or 4 different family movies, so…
I kinda got off point somewhere in here, but I think what I’m trying to say is that while I’m probably more sensitive toward Antisemitism than the vast majority of people, I think that the context of the statement matters and that in the case of early 90s Gangsta’ Rap, Griff’s comments were socially relevant and worthy of discussion rather than dismissal. What’s more, it’s somewhat disturbing that out of all of Public Enemy’s lyrics, and perhaps even out of all of early 90’s Gangsta’ Rap, the accusation of Antisemitism is somehow remembered while much harsher and more grotesque lyrics are forgotten and forgiven.
Casey
June 11th, 2011 at 12:54 pm
My parents are from Scotland and I’m a big redheaded guy so I don’t look Jewish. I worked at a Best Buy a decade ago and I worked with a lot of African Frenchmen (I don’t know the term, but they were black guys from France). They were all really and terribly Antisemitic.
Even then, I never felt that it was directed towards me. It was more directed towards these vague notions of bankers, who I also really hate, and towards what they saw as Israeli atrocities against Palestinians and other Arabs. It wasn’t like they were overly Muslim or anything, they seemed more interested in spending money on expensive clothes from the Armani Exchange than religion as far as I could tell. Still, I usually contextualize most Antisemitic attitudes as being against wealthy elites and about being against what many see as Israel’s excessive force.
Hell, I experienced some of that in Norfolk as well. Many African Americans there were very homophobic and seemed really puzzled by the whole Judaism thing.
I remember Al Franken writing in one of books about how his father always told him that as Jews that they should always be there to support the poor and disenfranchised. Al Franken’s father was a supporter of the Civil Rights Movement and so were a lot of Jews, I remember Harlan Ellison’s stories about his experiences in marches and the like.
I even view a lot of the anticop lyrics as being in the context of how awful the police and judicial system has been to African Americans.
Hell, if I was a black youth who was more likely to go to prison on a bullshit charge than to go to college, was more likely to be beaten by the police than to be given a scholarship, and was otherwise sentenced to a life of poverty and injustice for no other reason than the circumstances of my birth than yeah, I’d be really pissed off at any and all causes of that life even if some were imagined or misdirected.
I think Tawdry is right, as usual, that if all we remember about Griff’s comments is his Antisemitism that is says more about our culture than about Public Enemy. Whites in this country are so eager to take a position of victimhood and hypocrisy that they look for any excuse to trump up their perceived lack of power. Hell, the whole Common at the White House “controversy” was born of such bullshit. Instead of trying to understand why Common had spoken about the issues he did speak about Fox News and other bullshit sources would rather misrepresent he said and make it out to be that we live in a perfectly equal society and how could someone be so overt in trying to analyze the world in racial tones. The obliviousness to privilege that many in this country have is disgusting and all it does is allow them to try to further oppress those who are already disadvantaged.
Hell, even the whole Jeremiah Wright “controversy” stems from this. Instead of trying to understand Liberation Theology many would rather just try to paint Jeremiah Wright as a monstrous racist. Shirley Sherrod went through something similar.
Man, just thinking about all of this in context with all these other instances is really starting to upset me. Why is it okay for really mainstream media outlets like CNN or the Washington Post to paint these figures as being disgusting, racist, or otherwise unacceptable but they are so fucking afraid to talk about actual racial injustice in this country?
Fuck, man, I’m going to go play some basketball.
Tawdry Hepburn
June 11th, 2011 at 3:22 pm
Wrights ultimate point was the exact opposite of that one comment, by the by. But at the same time I would certainly care if a presidential candidate was a prominent member of a church that was, to pick a subject we’ve already broached, vocally antigay. So ultimately I don’t know that that controversy was inherently bullshit so much as it was a willfull misrepresentation.
And as for the black Frenchmen, that is a country with a long and rich history of violent antisemitism. And I don’t mean that to say antijew. I mean against all Semites. So that undoubtedly plays a role.
The thing is, griff’s comments come from a different place than evil Jew bankers and conflation of Jews and israelis. The latter is much more troubling and is, in my opinion, more based in an intellectualized form of holocaust denial that finds it’s roots in the Protocals of Zion. But I can’t explain that on an itouch after 48 hours of heavy drinking to celebrate my friends graduation. More politics and discussions of wonton debauchery later.
Casey
CONAN Red Band trailer is out you guys! I was totally wrong and we’ll get plenty of bad looking digital blood after all. Probably not more than a glimpse of boobs though.
neal2zod
I suspect there’s some Doug Hutchison fans here – http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/b248227_green_mile_actor_51_marries_16-year-old.html
Is it wrong that my reaction is “Good for him”?
anthony4545
June 20th, 2011 at 3:34 pm
Don’t know if it’s been mentioned (Ain’t it Cool sure hasn’t mentioned it), but Ryan Dunn from Jackass died in a car wreck today. He always seemed like a good guy. He was only 34. Pretty big bummer.
Mouth
June 20th, 2011 at 7:41 pm
The Conan trailer has bad music and makes me wonder why they couldn’t have made the same movie but with the name “Mouth” or “Lance Uppercut” or something cool like that instead of “Conan.” Why not an original adventure movie? Why a remake/reboot? Oh yeah, it’ll mean guaranteed money, I guess, regardless of affiliation with the disgraced Governator. Other than that, shit looks hot.
Neal, I’m not a fan of the idea of trusting a 16 year old’s emotional judgments on a decision that is supposed to determine the rest of her life, but I won’t judge. True love and all that.
Now I submit to the Verniverse a recko for your benefit and a pressing quandary for your consideration:
1- BLACK DEATH is fucking rad.
Employing my favorite approach to my favorite pastime, I watched this movie with zero foreknowledge of what I was getting into except for having seen part of a trailer on, I think, the I SAW THE DEVIL dvd, which I watched recently b/c Vern & others here basically told me to, so thanks everyone for somehow facilitating my awareness of BLACK DEATH — 6 degrees of everything’s connected, circle of life, et cetera. BLACK DEATH might sneak onto the highly culturally & historically significant Mouth’s top 10 movies of 2010/2011 (depends on which release date you use) list.
. . . -But if you’re scared of diving into it without some context, it’s set in 1348 as the Plague is wiping out something like 1/3 or 1/2 of the population of parts of Europe. It’s a horror movie for people who don’t normally dig horror movies, er, for me anyway, and I loved it because it reminded me of the best aspects of VALHALLA RISING and the underrated AGORA, as well as Ken Follett’s excellent novel WORLD WITHOUT END (I gotta check out PILLARS OF THE EARTH someday when I have time to burn through another 1000 page piece of fiction.). Some of it is post-action, but BLACK DEATH is not really an action movie so that’s okay in this case. And, regardless, the violence is gruesome & satisfying & scary.
2- Apparently there’s a movie about giant robot things from outer space attacking Indiana Jones, Jr., due to be released in the US next week. I’m conflicted because I like to support filmmakers who feature giant spacebots & blow stuff up on a grand scale, but the last such movie was an assault on all my physical & immaterial senses that it made me want to violently retaliate against everyone involved in the production, even the hot chicks. This one’s in 3D, though, so that’ll make it better somehow. Or will it? I think I’ll bring my spare red-n-blue Buddy Hollys, go buy a ticket for another movie, and then sneak in to watch the robot movie.
I’m curious if anyone else would like to protest the existence of this movie and, rather than merely let it angry up the blood, embark on a Project Mayhemesque campaign of not paying to see it and then seeing it anyway. We could totally, like, bring down the whole system, and then Hollywood’ll pay attention and they’ll be forced to make better, er, at least less offensively horrible, giant space robot movies. Right? Is there any chance it’ll be good?
Seriously, though, I’m conflicted. I know I shouldn’t be, but I am. I feel like somehow I shall have to watch this stupid fucking thing because of the circumstances & cinematic geography of the world we inhabit, but every sense of morality & correctness in me tells me to pretend it doesn’t exist, to condemn it now and forever, to remember the previous Transformers abomination and reread the review here and proclaim to you all “Never forget” while saluting the Vern logo. But then there’s the essence of the big summer movie that is so important to OutlawVernism, so that’s a consideration that might compel me in the other direction. Or something. Surely someone else here feels the same, no?
From the Old Testament’s Abraham to Thucydides to Pontius Pilate to Augustine to Voltaire to Kant to JFK, no thinker has ever faced such a conundrum as the one that now troubles Mouth.
Jake
June 20th, 2011 at 9:18 pm
You bring up an interesting question, Mouth. I was wondering myself how many people that profess to hate Michael Bay and everything he stands for are going to see TRANSFORMERS 3: MOON ROBOTS. Luckily for me I don’t face your particular dilemma. I’m gonna be there opening weekend paying whatever ridiculous amount the 3D ticket costs and I’m gonna attach a note to my money that says, “Mr. Bay, please put this in the savings jar that has BAD BOYS 3D written on it.”
If you want to justify seeing it I do think that 3D may force directors to be a little more clear with their action directing. For example, I thought RESIDENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE had some of the best action scenes of the series and I can’t help but think the 3D was at least partially responsible for that. I guess TRANSFORMERS will be a good test for this theory.
Casey
June 20th, 2011 at 9:47 pm
Black Death sounds great, Mouth. I really liked Agora (I agree it was underrated) and I think Valhalla Rising is one of my favorite movies of the last few years so anything that compares to those two is something I need to see.
Thanks for bringing it up, I might not have heard about it otherwise!
Casey
June 20th, 2011 at 9:49 pm
Jake, I really hated the first two Transformers movies. The third one looks interesting. I don’t care about it being in 3D but it being in 3D means they have to shoot it differently and it looks like the film is going to have lots of steady shots of action so that it’s going to make sense instead of thousands of cuts and shining polygons offending my eyes. It seems that it being shot for 3D forces certain limitations that will actually make it a better film.
Darryll
June 20th, 2011 at 10:09 pm
BLACK DEATH is indeed rad. The SEVENTH SEAL with a Men On A Mission twist. This is dark, intense storytelling with some theological subtext, some kick-ass sword and shield violence and ultimately, perhaps, an atheist agenda? I’m conflicted on that last point but you could certainly make the argument. As per usual, Sean Bean is awesome in medieval garb.
3. Stanley Kubrick
honorable mention David Cronenberg
why I like Spielberg and Kubrick goes without saying, basically I like directors who have a certain “collectibility” to their work and who’s movies cover a good array of subjects, but still have a strong specific style where you can always tell it’s them
Spielberg was my favorite director as a kid and Quentin Tarantino was my favorite director as a teenager (even though I just saw Reservoir Dogs for the first time last year)
first Tarantino movie I saw was Kill Bill, I had heard of him before and knew that Kill Bill was his first movie in a couple of years, I didn’t get to see it see it in theaters, but I rented it on dvd and I’ll never forget the dvd menu coming up with “Battle Without Honor or Humanity” playing and clips from the ANIME (!) sequence playing, I was absolutly blown away and the movie hadn’t even started yet, watching that movie may in fact have been the highlight of that year
so I was hooked after Kill Bill, I re-watched it a few months ago on blu ray and it’s still great, that action sequence at the House of Blue Leaves is fucking incredible
my love of David Cronenberg started when I saw The Fly remake as a kid even though I wouldn’t learn that he directed it till many years later, I first became aware of Cronenberg after reading in a video game magazine that said that he was cited as an influence on the Silent Hill video game series
first movie I saw of his where I was aware that he directed it was Spider (which had just come out on dvd at the time), probably not the best introduction to him, but I was intrigued enough to watch any movie of his that came on IFC or Sundance (including Naked Lunch, still one of the weirdest movies I’ve ever seen)
one unique experience I had with Cronenberg was when I first got a laptop and the internet in early 2006 I looked him up on imdb to see what all he had directed and that’s where I learned about Videodrome and just a few months later it played on Sundance, imagine already being a fan of a director and discovering that you haven’t even seen his best movie yet!
about two years ago I had a mini Cronenberg marathon and rented a couple of his movies from Netflix (Scanners, The Brood and eXistenZ), so I’ve now seen almost all of his movies (including Shivers, which I’m sorry to say was terrible)
whoo that was quite a post huh?
Mouth
June 20th, 2011 at 10:21 pm
BLACK DEATH came out of nowhere. Musta been outa the country when it was released or something, but that’s the beauty of NetFlix Instant. And its RottenTomatoes score is 73%, so hopefully you’ll agree with the majority on it, Casey.
The thing with the new Bay movie is that I saw one really badass trailer for it a few weeks ago, and my good sense antibodies that normally shield me from pop culture garbage easily erode in the face of some rousing electrobass scoring to some large-scale robo-carnage that goddammit looks like some good action filmatism.
Goddamnation. Scenes from THE ROCK are playing out in my head, but I’m taking all that movie’s conflict —
the SEALs infiltrating and then facing an opponent in a superior position and refusing to surrender and being slaughtered and Ed Harris is all “God damn you for making me do this!”; Cage trying to disarm Connery and then he’s like “Now he has all the guns” and then trying to rationalize shit and telling us about all the poison that will kill everything if we don’t stop it; Ed Harris telling me “You’re being asked by an old friend.” [doesn’t compute] “You’re being ordered by a superior officer.” [hesitation] [Ed Harris draws his sidearm, points it at my temple] “Now you’re being given your last chance by a man with a gun. Put the wallet down. Don’t touch those 3D glasses. Step away from the ticket counter. C’mon, we’re going to see MIDNIGHT IN PARIS again, and nobody gets hurt.” —
and applying it to this one decision I gotta make in the next month about this new stupid movie that I know I’ll hate and regret not hating even more.
June 21st, 2011 at 12:23 am
Mouth, I have the same war raging inside my soul. I know there’s no chance in hell that I will actually think that movie is good, and I know I will feel like an asshole for contributing to a record-breaking opening of a terrible piece of garbage, but it’s pulling me in. I’m fascinated by those movies. Did Bay seriously have to shoot readable action scenes because of the heavy cameras, as he has complained, or will stereoscopic Michael Bay scenes literally injure our eyes? Did he really leave out the “dorky humor” that he angrily disowns, as if he thinks we’ll believe that Transformers 1, Transformers 2, Bad Boys 2 etc. were forced on him by The Man and were not accurate depictions of the stupid bullshit he purposely wanted to put on film? Did he find some new form of racism to replace the gold tooth twins? Will we find out more about the transformer babies, or RoboHeaven, or Mountain Dewbot? Is it true that there’s a NASCAR car that transforms into a redneck robot with a mullet? What robotic fluid or private part will assault John Turturro this time? Will a robot try to hump Academy Award winner Frances McDormand? Will whatsisdick’s replacement love interest make us yearn for the nuanced characterization and relatable girl-next-door looks of Megan Fox?
Of course I have to see this fuckin thing, and in 3D, and I’m going with a bunch of people in the same boat. Because it’s kind of a lackluster summer I’m actually excited for it. When it was GI JOE I didn’t feel as bad because it wasn’t a big hit and was generally looked down upon by society, so I didn’t feel like my dollars were gonna keep it alive or anything. With this, though, I guess this is what they mean when they say guilty pleasure.
Ooh, good one, Griff. I’m going to have to go with my old standbys, though I’m sure I can think long and hard and come up with a revision.
1. Sam Raimi
3. Steven Spielberg
Honorable mention: Michael Davis
Raimi because he was the first director to make me really appreciate filmatism, as Vern would say, in Evil Dead 2. His subsequent films remained interesting, from Darkman to Spider-Man (and Quick and the Dead!)
Spielberg because he’s just the quintessential filmmaker. You just look at each of his movies and they’ve probably affected your life somehow. Even mid-level ones like The Terminal are pretty good, and then a Munich comes out of nowhere.
James Cameron is the ultimate storyteller to me, being a writer/director to boot. Avatar is my least favorite Cameron movie and it’s still got the basics of the action I love from him, and I don’t mind the story. But the Terminator films are profound and Aliens is pretty good too. True Lies is actually my favorite because I love the narrative risks it took, as well as risks with Arnold’s persona. It does exactly what I want movies to do, be outrageous and ridiculous because it’s not real life.
Michael Davis would be number one if I could confirm he’s going to work agian. But Shoot ‘Em Up was the movie I’d been waiting for my whole life. He gets that creative action, and even made some romantic comedies I loved. His next film will be the bomb. I hope he gets to make it.
Luckily I do’nt have to stick to only these four. I can still watch them all!
Vern, if it’s any consolation, I think it’s totally fine to celebrate the worst of Hollywood’s misguided spectacles. They spend $300 million, you get a piece for only $12.
I however will be seeing it for free at a press screening, so I counterbalance Mouth.
June 21st, 2011 at 1:43 am
whoaaaaaa Fred, can’t believe someone else has heard of Michael Davis
yeah Shoot Em Up was awesome, I was also pleasantly surprised by his 100 Women and 100 Girls
plus when I was a little kid he directed a Full Moon kid’s flick I saw called Beanstalk that was far better than it had any right to be (and featured a crazy ass Margot Kidder)
dna
June 21st, 2011 at 1:55 am
– mouth
Yeah, I`ll watch it. And then I`ll eat some crap from Macdonalds, drink some Coca Cola and go home and be ashamed of myself. It`s like new years eve; you know it`s gonna suck, but you can`t miss out.
Also, I was gonna write something clever about the hidden qualities of the cinema of Bay, but Vern beat me to it. But, there must be something about those movies since we keep watching and discussing them, despite hating everything they stand for. My official excuse for going is a very good friend who loves bayhem. She would be so upset, if I said no to go with her. I just can`t make her upset now cause she`s pregnant. And I can always redeem myself by coming here and participate in the baybashing. Gawd, I`m so confused…
– Griff
I would love to play along, but it seems almost impossible to confine my list of favorite directors to a top 3, so without further do:
1. George Lucas.
9. Hideko Anno.
10. Andrzej Zulawski.
Very arty-farty, I know, but those guys all made movies that totally blew my fragile little mind.
Also Sam Peckinpah, Sam Raimi, Spike Jonze, Paul Thomas Anderson, Martin Scorsesse, Francis Ford Coppola, Alfred Hitchcock, Russ Meyer, John Cassavettes, David Fincher, Satoshi Kon, Stanley Kubrick, Caspar Noe, George A. Romero, Coen Brothers, Darren Aranofsky, David Lynch, Sergio Leone, Brad Bird, Terry Gilliam and Lars Von Trier.
June 21st, 2011 at 2:08 am
Griff, Michael Davis is my soul mate. He captured scenes I imagined when I was a kid and put them in Shoot ‘Em Up (Clive launching himself through the windshield). You mentioned the three of his ouvre I love. You saw Beanstalk? Where can I find that? That’s the only one I haven’t seen.
June 21st, 2011 at 2:22 am
The only other Michael Davis film I ever saw apart from SHOOT EM UP was one about a teenager who was so in love with the girl next door, that he decided to sit on her lawn until she either falls in love with him or summer ends. The movie was apparently made before the public knew that stalking is a pretty serious issue, so everybody just laughs it off and it is overall portrayed as a cute quirk.
The movie was also way too 90’s to hold up. Because the concept of a guy sitting on a lawn all summer long leaves not much room for exciting plot developments, Davis did it like every other indie director of that time and filled the script pages with lots of senseless dialogue, that is very painful to listen to. About stuff like sex with watermelons or why songwriters are inferior to writers of novels of screenplays. (Because you can end a song with just fading out.)
I didn’t like it.
June 21st, 2011 at 4:51 am
I love SHOOT ‘EM UP. I love that it obsessively, compulsively sticks with its main fetish (Guns are AWESOME!!!!!) at every possible opportunity. The hero loves guns, the villains make guns, the MacGuffin is gun-related. Guns aren’t just for killing people, they’re also long-range Swiss army knives with a plethora of uses around the home and office. Guns are how you fall in love, bond with a child, even give birth. When you’re in trouble, what you do is you find the biggest gun around and you hide inside it. Guns will watch your back when you have no other allies, and when you don’t have a gun, you have no choice but to turn your own body into a gun. I’m sure if the budget had been bigger there would have been suspension bridges with buttresses shaped like Berettas and giant BATMAN FOREVER-style statues of historical type dudes in powdered wigs jumping sideways holding two Glocs. The world of SHOOT ‘EM UP is to guns as BURGERTIME is to hamburgers.
That said, the corny one-liners make me cringe, even though I know they’re supposed to. A movie comprised solely of Michael Davis dialogue is not something I think I want to see.
You know what I do want to see, though? TRANSFORMERS FUCKING 3: METAL UP THE ASS. It’s the only movie of the summer that I’m actively excited about. I know Bay went door-to-door and made out with everyone’s mom and made their dad’s start drinking all the time so they lost their jobs at the plant and now everyone has to live in a trailer with their weird cousins who smell like corn chips, but he makes images that stimulate my spectacle gland like Renny Harlin movies did when I was 14. Maybe this time he’ll even let us seem them!
Also, does anyone else think it’s funny that the trailer showed, like, one shot of Shia Labeouf? Like they were contractually obligated to indicate that he was in the movie but they didn’t expect anyone to care. Methinks maybe America’s love affair with him has ended.
“talk about blowing your load”
Casey
June 21st, 2011 at 5:49 am
My list of favorite directors is verymuch a list of my favorites and not who I think is “best”. I say that because I think my #1 choice is really amazing but a big reason why they are my favorite is because they’re still working and I’m always really excited by whatever they decide to do.
1) The Coen Brothers
3) Akira Kurosawa
Honorable Mentions: Clint Eastwood & Fernando Merielles
I really admire the work of the Coen Brothers. They have such a great body of work today and I think they could do anything they want. Hell, I could see them making an awesome Transformers 4.
Sergio Leone is so distinct and made some of my favorite movies. I love the way he uses music and shot his films.
Akira Kurosawa is just Akira Kurosawa.
Clint Eastwood is like the Coen Brothers in that I’ll see whatever he makes without reservation. He’s not the most stylish director but I’ve been fortunate enough to begin my love affair with film while he was very active and getting a chance to live through many of his great films it makes me excited for what he has in mind for the future.
Meirelles, I think, has a distinct voice and visual style and I am very eager to see what he does in the future.
—-
I am very glad I’m not alone in mixed feelings about Transformers 3. I feel like a total chump but I’ll definitely go see it. I know it’s stupid to expect something different but the trailers make the film to be apocalyptic in scale with well staged action shots. If it follow through on that I think I can enjoy it without reservation.
Mouth
June 21st, 2011 at 7:36 am
Preeshiate the feedback, Vern and everyone. Now I guess I won’t feel too bad about seeing the Beast of the summer like every other sucker. I got money, I can withstand this, I shouldn’t be so anti-capitalism. My soul rages, but the stupid chief in BAD BOYS 2 had a calming technique I might use now. Also, my only viewing of Trannies2 was with a bootleg dvd in Kuwait, so I’ve done my part to subvert Bay’s profits.
My favorite directors also happen to be the best:
1. Kubrick
(this space intentionally left blank to show how much better Kubrick is than every other artist in the field of filmatism)
2. Mann
3. Verhoeven
Any other list is wrong.
Honorable Mentions: Powell & Pressburger, Herzog, Aronofsky, Chaplin, Wilder, I should probably throw a female on this list to be politically correct oh well
Special Prize for potential: Тимур Бекмамбетов / Timur Bekmambetov, Wachowski siblings
Casey
June 21st, 2011 at 8:35 am
Kubrick and Verhoeven are great choices. I think in the grand scheme of things they are both better than my choices.
I’m with you, Mouth. I don’t want to give money to Bay. I’m against what he stands for and against capitalism at large. But, I’m a sucker and refuse to buy into this argument that since I’m against this all pervasive system that it somehow makes me a hypocrite that I exist in it.
I remember seeing Bound when I was 14 or 15 and between that and Speed Racer I can see why the Wachowskis are on your list. One of the things I really liked about Speed Racer, to go on about capitalism and whatever, is that it has a really strong anticapitalist message.
I reread Vern’s review of The Fountainhead and he’s completely right about it. What I never understood about Rand, and I’ve read almost all of her novels, is that she is so oblivious to the fact that her politics are completely opposed to her ideals. Hell, I kind of agree with her ideal that every person should work for themselves. I remember reading A Soul of a Man Under Socialism by Oscar Wilde and it seriously reads like a Randian tract but from a perspective that advocates for socialism.
That’s part of why I liked Speed Racer. Speed Racer is all about the worker owning the means of production and not being subverted by a large business that is only focused on profits. At the end Speed is able to win the race because he realizes that he drives because that’s what he wants to do. He doesn’t do it because he wants to win or be the best or anything else. He does it because that’s who he is and that’s what he would do and even if he was the worst driver that ever lived he’d still be doing it.
Long story short: I like Speed Racer and I like socialism and I think people forget that many advocates for socialists in the past were advocates for reasons Rand would agree with if she was not insane. Socialism is about the liberation of the worker from the tyranny of capital. Libertarians, Objectivists, Randroids, Neoliberals, and their ilk are all in favor of enslaving the masses under the yoke of tyrannical capital all under the guise of it being somehow natural and free.
dieselboy
GAME OF THRONES TALK
SPOILERS
Well I’m sure some of you guys got into this over the last few months, if you have HBO it’s impossible not to catch any of the advertising. I myself started reading the books a few months before it started and ended up tearing through all four of the published novels in about 6 weeks. Close to 4000 pages when it was all said and done, way more time than I’ve ever put into any other book series. I am now eagerly awaiting book five, which releases in three weeks. I feel very lucky that I came into the series after the eight year gab between books four and five.
I personally don’t think you could ask for a much better or faithful,yet still entertaining,adaptation of the books. All my favorite characters were perfectly cast, Peter Dinklage will be taking home an Emmy this year for his role of Tyrion. Emilia Clarke as Dany showed such a growth from the timid little sister in episode one to the the unburnt Dragon Queen in the finale. And Sean Bean gives the best performance of his career as the head of the Stark family. The list goes on and on really.
I hope they are given a larger budget next year though. Budget constraints are really apparent for certain events(the Tournament, The Battle of the Green Fork and Jamies capture by Robb) but don’t really hurt my opinion of the show.They nailed the feel of Westeros in terms of costumes,settings and props. And at the end of the day this is really story about characters and the politics of the realm. That being said, the last shot in the last episode with the dragons crawling over Dany was really well done. If they save their budget for money shots like that I’ll be happy.
My biggest gripe would be that they need to find some way to get the direwolves into the story more, newcomers to the series probably aren’t feeling just how connected they are to the Stark children and how big a role they are in their lives.
But anyway what did you guys think about the first season that just ended last week? Did they do the source material justice? If you haven’t read it before, were you blown away by the twists and turns the story takes?
Talking about TV shows: Did anybody watch FALLING SKIES? It’s starting here on Friday and I would like to know what you thought of it.
dieselboy
CJ-A pretty decent two-hour pilot. The effects weren’t too shoddy. Some good recognizable character actors. I was definitely impressed enough to want to see where it goes from here.
Mouth
June 22nd, 2011 at 12:27 pm
I could see myself giving 1 or 2 of those FIRE & ICE books a chance to fill my leisure time if the 2011 NFL season doesn’t happen. I was going to give John Crowley a chance to burst my fantasy lit cherry, but I assume you think George Martin is a good investment of my time, dieselboy? Or I could just do that thing that I hate and always quietly complain about other people doing: skip the books and wait & NetFlix the HBO series.
Two hours? Aw fuck, looks like the international audience gets a 45 minutes version again. Just like they did with THE WALKING DEAD. (To be fair: The short version of the TWD pilot didn’t feel like anything was missing.)
dieselboy
June 22nd, 2011 at 12:43 pm
Yeah Mouth I’d say it’s a good investment of your time to be sure. It’s a book so full of the most BADASS characters, heroes and villains, I feel pretty confident saying you wouldn’t be disappointed. If anything pick it up and give it a couple hours of your time, you should know pretty quickly whether or not you like the authors style and the world he is throwing you into.
Casey
June 22nd, 2011 at 12:47 pm
I so very badly wanted to love Game of Thrones. I’ve given the first book out as gifts and hell I even used to play the card game with friends and traveled to tournaments around the country for it.
I think the series was really lackluster and had a lot of problems. A lot of those problems, however, stem from the book so I can’t be too upset.
First, I want to say what I liked. Tyrion is great. I think Dany comes into her own in the last episode and the ending with the dragons was well done. I think some of the bit parts are well done. I think they sometimes have some solid cinematography, although other times it’s really awful.
I think the major problem with the show, despite its budget, is that they give a lot of the “bad” characters so much depth and character that they become sympathetic and understandable. They never bother to do that with the Starks so ultimately I don’t care. Ned is boring, clueless, and really honorable but he has no real character. I understand why Cersei wants to keep fucking her brother and stop anyone that wishes to get in her way. I don’t understand the motivations of any of the Starks except that they believe honor is important so it’s okay to get thousands of peasants and soldiers killed because of honor or something. I see the end game for the Lannisters and while they’re kind of bad I at least understand their motivations. The Starks don’t have any and they’re just the default heroes of the show and triumphant / sad music plays for them as needed but I never feel like they ever earn the viewer’s loyalty or compassion. Just because we spend time with someone doesn’t mean they’re a character.
The Starks were pretty one dimensional in the books, too, but I guess it didn’t bother me too much. The show just really makes it painful for me.
I like Tyrion a lot, though, so that’s good.
Honestly, I think the show can be saved. I think they need to stop being so slavishly devoted to the books. We didn’t need to see how awful Catelyn’s sister was or how awful Walder Frey is, either. We don’t need to see and hear a ton from Theon but we do need to care about Robb and so far he has no personality (he never had one in the books, either) and that needs to be fixed. Littlefinger is boring and so is Varys. Every scene involving either character brings up how Littlefinger has no friends and Varys is a eunuch and they bring it up a lot. All the time. It’s the only thing they talk about. Also, scenes where it’s just Varys and Littlefinger talking are the worst scenes that just stop the show cold.
I also think the show needs to focus on the intrigue and main storyline. All the diversions to Jon and Dany slow the show down, too. They should just have them make 2 hour movies for them every season until those plotlines merge with the rest of the story. Hell, they could even do Dany’s in the summer and Jon’s in the Winter. I think making those stories conform to a tighter narrative would make them more interesting as well.
I really like Tyrion, though, and like the books he’s the main reason I’ll keep watching. I hope Davos is as rad as he was in the books, too.
I’m really looking forward to Falling Skies. It starts on Friday? If so I’ll need to make sure to DVR it.
Casey
June 22nd, 2011 at 12:53 pm
Mouth, I would wait until the series is completed before reading it. The first three books are excellent and have a lot of good characters and great story. The fourth book was kind of awful, though, and I have increasingly little hope for the rest of the series.
Basically, the first three books feature a lot of the intrigue and battles and has very little “fantasy” in it. I think the series is going to expand on the fantasy element a great deal and really become awful and trite. That’s also assuming GRRM finishes the series and I would not place money on that happening.
If the third book didn’t end on some really gripping cliffhangers I would almost recommend just reading the first three as its own story.
dieselboy
June 22nd, 2011 at 1:16 pm
Casey-I think one of of the things that I like best from the books is that the so-called “bad” characters are rarely that one dimensional. Sure there are evil fuckers like Joffrey and The Mountain but characters like Jamie or The Hound can start off being some of the most despised in the series and over the course of a few books grow to become favorites.
As far as feeling detached from the Starks, I dunno, I think maybe having read the books and spending all that time in their head maybe was better for developing a real bond with the Starks and letting you know what drives them. I never really read Ned as clueless, in the show or the books, just determined to serve his term as Hand as honorably as he could and dispense justice to anyone involved with the murder of Jon Arryn.
I also don’t understand how you don’t see the benefit of giving Theon so much screentime this first season. His role in the second book is so big it would seem odd if he was just in the background throughout most of this season. The emotional impact will be much bigger next season when he finally chooses what side he wants to fight for. And Walder Frey is a great character, even if his part to play won’t become apparent until season three I really liked that they worked him into the show already. I pictured him about 30 years older in the books but the Hogswarts groundskeeper did a great job in the role.
Mouth
June 22nd, 2011 at 1:26 pm
Thanks, Casey & dieselboy. I’m always looking to expand my horizons, and I go through periods in which I read a freakish number of words everyday, especially now that ground-based missions have slowed way down in favor of unmanned skybot operations in the ‘stans, but I like to focus myself and stick to a plan before I dive into new literature, so your advice is helpful. I won’t be playing any hobbity card games or tournaments, though.
I keep hearing good things about Game of Thrones. That probably makes the George Martin series the fantasy frontrunner in the campaign for my eyeballs’ attention, since I love to compare literature and the cinema based on it, but the books’ll be under a pile of historical & political texts most days, and will probably only get my attention if there’s no pro football this season. Also, once Volume II of the Mark Twain autobiographical texts comes out, I’ll go into hiding to read nothing but that for a couple weeks. Priorities, you know?
Casey
June 22nd, 2011 at 3:07 pm
I totally see where you’re coming from, dieselboy. I don’t want to say I was a fan who is now jaded but I think I’m becoming one.
I’m not against the “bad guys” being complex and fleshed out. I think it’s great, actually. I just think the TV show, and this is directed more at the TV show than the books, invented a few scenes making Cersei and Jaime more reasonable and sympathetic while giving us no reason to care about the Starks at all.
I think a big problem in the books, and this is a problem that definitely spread to the TV series, is that Martin has some really great characters but he also has some characters that are totally one note and uninteresting. I think Tyrion, Brienne, Davos, Jaime, and some other characters like Sam are well written and have depth.
Other characters just don’t. I think Jon is boring. Ned is honorable but I have a hard time finding another adjective for him. Catelyn is a mother, I guess. Robb is good at fighting and battles. The show suffers from this, too.
One area where I think the show has improved on the books is with Cersei. GRRM is terrible at writing from a woman’s perspective. She’s basically a psychopath who wishes she had a penis. In the show, so far, she has a lot more personality and depth.
I’m in favor of giving her more depth but I think they totally forgot to do that with the Starks. I think they’re boring and so far up their own ass about their notions of honor that I wish the Lannisters win.
I’m a huge fan of the first three books. I think they’re legitimately good. I just think that the series has been written into a corner and the ending is going to be spectacularly awful and betray the tone of the first three books. But man, those first three books are really good even if the show totally misunderstands why.
Casey
June 22nd, 2011 at 3:09 pm
Also, Mouth, how was the first volume of Twain’s autobiography? My wife is almost done reading it and she’s loving it. I hope to get to it after her. I’ve been on a big leftist kick and have been reading Chomsky and Zizek lately. I just finished rereading Marx’s Capital for the 4th or 5th time but this time I read it along David Harvey’s lectures. It was pretty great.
Before that I was on a big Faulkner kick and prior to that I did my semiregular reread of Moby Dick.
June 22nd, 2011 at 3:32 pm
speaking of fantasy series with huge followings, I would suggest you guys check out Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series
the last 3 books in the series get a lot of hate, but they’re not as bad as they’re made out to be in my opinion
although the series does peak with the third book, which is so awesome it’s worth the price of admission alone
dieselboy
June 22nd, 2011 at 5:04 pm
I plan on picking up the Dark Tower as soon as I finish the next song of ice and fire book. with only a month in between my finishing the fourth book and the fifth being released I didn’t really want to jump into a new long series and start trying to learn alot of new characters. My understanding is it’s like a mix of western fantasy and horror. Is that right?
Casey
I’d say it’s a mixture of magical realism, western, and horror. At least for the first three books. It’s solid stuff!
Mouth
June 22nd, 2011 at 9:09 pm
The Twain autobiography so far is more disorganized than it should be for a series of texts so heavily edited & scrutinized by so many experts, so it can be a chore to read and tough on the eyes, but every few pages there’s at least one badass passage that reveals how unrelentingly cynical yet Southern-gentlemanly tactful he is toward every facet of society and its citizens or something that sheds a mighty light on Twain’s ideas on posterity & the literary ramifications of the new technology used in recording the material, like this description of the act of writing with a simile about [of course] a flowing body of water:
**Narrative should flow as flows the brook down through the hills and the leafy woodlands . . . a brook that never goes straight for a minute, but goes, and goes briskly, sometimes ungrammatically, and sometimes fetching a horseshoe three-quarters of a mile around and at the end of the circuit flowing within a yard the path that it traversed an hour before; but always going, and always following at least one law, always loyal to that law, the law of narrative, which has no law. Nothing to do but make the trip; the how of it is not important so that the trip is made.**
that makes it worth the slog.
If you pay attention to my writing style*, with my abundance of appositives & parentheticals and the occasional run-on sentence or fragment, you can probably see why I appreciate that particular passage.
*which is not to say that I am comparing myself to Mark Twain, God of Words & Wit before whom I bow, in any way
Casey
June 23rd, 2011 at 9:32 am
My wife was telling me that a big reason why she liked it was because it was written in a very scrambled way. Well, scrambled probably isn’t right but it wasn’t done chronologically and she was telling me it more felt like a stream of consciousness autobiography where he goes into tangents on politics and whatnot as the issue would naturally arise.
I’m pretty excited to read it. One of my favorite classes I took when I was doing my Religious Studies degree was in the Gospel of Mark as spoken word and I get the impression that Twain’s autobiography might make for some really great spoken word performance.
Mouth
June 24th, 2011 at 11:16 am
THE TREE OF LIFE is finally within driving distance for me. Later this afternoon, I shall enjoy the new Terrence Malick joint. This pleases me.
I’ll go out on a limb and say that I’ll probably like this movie, since Malick is batting 1.000 in his career so far in my opinion, and I encourage anyone who cares about cinema to see THE TREE OF LIFE on the big screen. Don’t wait for home release. Malick doesn’t deserve to be reduced to that, even if you have a 100″ LED TV or whatever.
Charles
I don’t know if you guys saw the news, but Peter Falk has passed away. He will probably be best remembered for Columbo, but he was great in films like MACHINE GUN MCCAIN, THE PRINCESS BRIDE, UNDISPUTED, & MADE.
Mouth
I shall upgrade his lifetime pass, earned for being part of WINGS OF DESIRE, to an eternity pass.
Paul
June 24th, 2011 at 3:57 pm
Ok then. “Julia’s Eyes”.
For the first three quarters of this film, it’s a brilliantly atmospheric character study of a woman who’s slowly losing both her sight and, according to the people around her, her sanity. Of course we know that she’s right; but others don’t, and she begins to lose confidence in herself as her vision gets worse and worse. As her perception of the world gets worse, so does her link with the people she knows.
This continues up until the last quarter of the film, where it’s played as a “straight” stalker joint. I have to say, the two parts of the film don’t mesh very well. There’s a couple too many cliches of this kind of film in the last part (why is it that the blind girl in peril always turns off the lights, and the menacing villain always finds a creative way to get around this?) I gotta say though, the villain is so convincingly bonkers, and the “conventional” scary parts so well executed, that I can kind of forgive the film if it’s a little obvious at points.
One complaint I have: the film starts out looking too washed-out. The technique used is to have the audience’s perception mirror the main character’s – as she loses her sight, the screen gets darker, etc. I think that the parts of the film where her eyes are working the best (it’s made clear that they’re never perfect) should’ve been in glorious colour. So this didn’t quite work for me.
But overall this is a gripping, scary-as-hell almost-blind-girl-in-peril film with some unexpectedly poignant moments (in particular between the woman and her disbelieving husband) and one HELL of a villain. Definitely recommended if you’re into this kind of thing.
Paul
June 24th, 2011 at 5:36 pm
so I heard that they’re finally filming World War Z
I am so super happy to hear that, even though I only read it last year, World War Z is one of my favorite books I’ve ever read
ZOMBIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIES!!!!!!!!!
June 25th, 2011 at 5:49 am
I think World War Z could be really, really good. I hope they focus on two or three stories and flesh them out instead of trying to include everything. I could see this being a good zombie anthology film series if it’s done right and I would be eager to see a sequel every year as there’s a lot of good stories to be told from the book.
June 25th, 2011 at 1:18 pm
I need to find a quote from Vern, where he was talking about Star Wars fans and their constant complaining about George Lucas and the franchise. It all came down to something like: “They apparently like only the first two movies out of a series with six movies.”
Can anybody here remember where he wrote this (I know, not very likely, considering the amount of written words here)? Because I would like to use this quote on Thursday.
neal2zod
June 25th, 2011 at 2:39 pm
That’s a pretty good quote CJ, i wish I knew where he said that. And not to sound like some cooler-than-thou asshole, but I’m glad people are finally coming around to hating Episode III. I specifically remember people LOVING that movie when it first came out. Didn’t Spielberg cry during it or Kevin Smith said it redeemed the whole trilogy or some shit? I actually think it’s the WORST of the prequels- at least Ep I has the “so bad it’s good” thing going for it and Ep II has an awesome final 40 minutes of pure, well-directed action. Ep III is just a checklist of shit that needs to happen, done in the most rote and uninteresting ways. It’s like the last 10 minutes of Xmen: First Class but for a whole movie.
June 25th, 2011 at 2:52 pm
I found it! It goes: “Half of these guys don’t even like the Return of the Jedi one, so they like 2 out of a 6 movie series and still won’t shut up about it.”
I found it here in the comments, because I somehow remembered that it was underneath a Hitfix article from one or two years ago.: http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/motion-captured/posts/sxsw-the-people-vs-george-lucas
June 25th, 2011 at 2:52 pm
To me, Épisode 3 was the only one of the prequels that had the pacing right. The first two, especially the first one just grinded to a complete halt when Qui-gon and Obi wan arrived to Tatooine. It picked up later sure, but I remember Episode 3 being the most entertaining “thrillride” of them all.
Oh shit, I just realized that my search for that one specific quote might have caused ANOTHER prequel discussion on here. I deeply apologize for that.
Mouth
^^^^* But let’s stay clear of complaining about George Lucas shit, please. Just so there’s one spot on the internet, you know?^^^^^
Check Vern’s guidelines at the top of this page. You’re on notice!
June 25th, 2011 at 5:03 pm
I’ll just chime in and say I never understood why Return of The Jedi gets hate
all the hate stems simply from the Ewoks and people ignore everything else about the movie, Jabba’s Palace, the Rancor, the Sarlacc pit, getting to see Vader’s face, ‘it’s a trap!’ etc
and at least the Ewoks are actual people in suits, plus they don’t talk (or at least say anything you can understand), they just look cute, big freakin deal
it’s ridiculous to say the Ewoks are as annoying as Jar Jar
holy shit guys, pug puppies for sale!
Mouth
It’s always bad for property value when a new pug dealer moves into town.
Jareth Cutestory
Vern recently made a compelling argument that the ewoks are more badass than the chewbaccas, particularly in terms of the damage they inflict.
Ace Mac Ashbrook
I liked the Ewoks. I also don’t mind Short Round beating up grown men. I wasn’t upset at Indy getting shot across the desert in a refrigerator. I don’t see what people get so pissed at.
Mouth
June 26th, 2011 at 6:05 am
That damn fridge sequence was fantastic. Who doesn’t wanna imagine & execute a breathless escape from a nuclear blast? That’s the ultimate rush, and it made for great cinema in my minority opinion (<<not a racial comment, PC police). Spielberg filmed it very nicely; in other news, water is wet.
For me, that was the point where I said, "Ok, this movie is gonna be some good shit," as I chuckled and settled in. The rest of the movie was pretty good, too, but that fridge sequence is special.
June 26th, 2011 at 9:19 am
I save you time and give a you a short summary of the Plinkett review:
“Wah wah wah wah, I’m a psychopath haha, wah wah wah worst film ever, wah wah wah, wife in basement ha ha, wah wah wah wah whatever stupid argument I found on the imdb message boards wah wah more mentions of my wife who is locked in my basement because I’m a psychopath ha ha ha, wah wah damn you George Lucas, worst film ever.”
I haven’t seen it, but that’s pretty much what his Star Wars reviews were, so something tells me it will be like that.
neal2zod
June 26th, 2011 at 10:02 am
I actually liked Plinkett’s first few reviews – yeah, the basement shit got real old real fast, but he brought up a lot of points about Episode I that were actually well-thought out and not overplayed. Like I don’t think he even really touched on Jar Jar Binks, b/c there isn’t really much you can say that hasn’t already been said. I wouldnt be surprised at all if Plinkett’s review barely mentioned the nuking of the fridge, the prairie dogs, or the tarzan scene.
And I actually didn’t hate any of the above scenes w/ KOTCS – I had more of a problem with the tired plot, the really boring middle section, the weak villain, two of the lamest supporting characters ever (Ox and Mac), no chemistry between Indy with either Marion or his son. Oh and yet another ending where Indy kinda doesn’t do anything and the villains defeat themselves.
I find all the Red Letter Media reviews funny and entertaining, whether I agree with them or not
CrustaceanHate
June 26th, 2011 at 5:40 pm
Part of his schtick is that he’s hyperbolic and nitpicky, but he also makes a lot of cogent, well-reasoned arguments and doesn’t harp on the typical fanboy complaints. Two of my favourite parts are when he asks his friends to describe characters from EPISODE I, and when he examines the way Lucas shoots dialog in the EPISODE III review. Both are really great criticisms. His STAR TREK reviews are entertaining as well, and the way he describes how the TNG movies continually botched Picard’s character is spot on. I thought his BABY’S DAY OUT review was great as well, taking that same nitpicky, nerdy mindset and applying to it to a completely different genre of movie.
dieselboy
June 26th, 2011 at 6:20 pm
regarding Plinkett- I think the guy is hilarious and offers some great insights into George Lucas’s progression from a promising young filmmaker,with a real passion for the world and characters he was trying to bring to people, to the dull, lazy, uninspired mess we got with the second trilogy. I found them infinitely better and easily more re-watchable than the movies they were analyzing.
Casey
June 26th, 2011 at 6:20 pm
Count me as a fan of RedLetterMedia’s reviews as well. Some of the humor is bad but a lot of it works and a lot of the points they bring up are valid and interesting. I also get the impression that he, or they, really love film and really wanted to love these movies. I don’t know, I think they do a lot of what Vern does in that they take a critical eye to movie reviewing and bring up a lot of points I would not think of myself while being funny.
No, I call all those websites, that used such a throwaway quote as a fact, idiotic.
dieselboy
June 27th, 2011 at 11:20 am
Didn’t Toy Story 3 end on a perfect note to finish the series on? The Toy Story franchise is ,one of the, if not THE very best film trilogy completed in terms of staying true to the tone and characters established in the original.Why even take the chance of souring the public’s view on something so beloved.
The recent Cars 2 hanging around 30% on RT shows that, even Pixar, is possible of a mis-step here or there. I say let it end, it’s already had the best possible ending for these toys.
June 27th, 2011 at 12:06 pm
I hear people constantly mentioning a “McDreamy” being in TRANSFORMERS 3. I’m no Transformers expert, but is he an Autobot or Decepticon? And most of all, how became a robot with such a shitty name so popular among nerds, who even hated that Optimus suddenly had a mouth!
Casey
June 27th, 2011 at 12:41 pm
Okay, so I know what a McDreamy is but first I must explain the whys and hows.
5 or 6 years ago I was in line at the cafeteria getting food. In front of me were some young women chattering on and on about a show called Gre(a?)y(‘?)s Anatomy. The way they were talking about it made me want to swallow my own tongue it sounded so bad. Apparently one of the guys in it was named McDreamy. I remember it because it sounded so stupid.
(for all I know it could be a legitimately good show, but the way these women talked about it I would have a hard time believing it)
June 27th, 2011 at 2:09 pm
CJ – it’s reference to a shitty prime time soap opera called Grey’s Anatomy
not to sound sexist (though this comment probably is), but most American women have really shitty taste in entertainment (Twilight for example)
June 27th, 2011 at 2:30 pm
Toy Story 3 does indeed END on the perfect note, but I find the body of the movie unsatisfying. In light of the magnitude of Toy Story 2, TS3 just retread those conflicts with a different bad guy. So I will always be happy to develop that world further, and if TS4 sucks, go for TS5.
I had an idea of a missed opportunity in TS3. Lotso saw he was replaced like Jessie in TS2, but Lotso went evil. But they missed an important difference. Lotso’s child still loved him. He was replaced by an exact copy of himself, because to the parents, just buying another Lotso makes their kid happy. THAT’s a story, how does a toy cope with other copies of himself doing the same job? They had some fun with the second Buzz in TS2 but I see the next level of existential crisis in this one.
There is a Toy Story short before Cars 2. It’s silly and not great, but it’s fun and nice to know there’s a world continuing in Bonnie’s room. Obviously, Andy should have kids one day and get Buzz and Woody back from Bonnie.
June 27th, 2011 at 2:48 pm
I don’t know guys, I love Toy Story so much that I’m game for another one
the third did indeed have a perfect ending, but it also had a perfect new beginning, I think there’s plenty more stories to tell
June 27th, 2011 at 2:49 pm
I don’t know guys, I love Toy Story so much that I’m game for another one
the third did indeed have a perfect ending, but it also had a perfect new beginning, I think there’s plenty more stories to tell
on a side note, who else would love to see Pixar remake The Brave Little Toaster
If Fast and Furious, Fast Five and Furious Six can be a new trilogy, so can The Toy and the Story, The Story of Toys and Toy Tales.
Jareth Cutestory
June 28th, 2011 at 7:51 am
I’m not going to be the guy who makes the joke about Andy being old enough in TOY STORY 4 to add sex toys to his collection. Or to nominate Andy Dick as the voice of the dildo.
Also, I think it would have been really cool if the Garbage Robot in PIXAR’S GARBAGE ROBOT made big cubes out of discarded crappy Pixar merchandise, including the TOY STORY toys, while he was tooling away on the ruins of earth for the first half hour of that movie.
June 28th, 2011 at 11:17 am
so guys new topic time, who are some directors who aren’t “kosher” to like that you like anyway? that is to say directors that the general nerd population hate, but you can’t understand why? it’s time to let it all hang out, no matter who it is
for me it’s Eli Roth, I’ve seen all three of his movies and loved all of them
I can’t understand why he gets so much hate, he makes horror films that 1. aren’t freakin’ remakes and 2. aren’t watered down PG-13
that kind of stuff should be encouraged and yet he gets so much hate, I honestly think it’s jealously, he’s living the dream, getting to hang out with Tarantino, make horror movies and get beautiful women to take their tops off in them, so it’s no surprise that AICN talkbackers (among others) can’t stand him
Cabin Fever is not very scary admittedly, but it is very funny (I especially love Officer Winston) and it features Cerina Vincent’s boobs, what’s not to like? for a low budget horror movie it could have turned out a heck of a lot worse
the Hostel movies I saw about 2 years ago, long after all the hype had died down and I thought they awesome
with Hostel the moniker “torture porn” turned out to be wrong, I was lead to believe that the movie would have really long, dragged out torture scenes, instead there were only a few and while they were pretty intense they were over with pretty quickly (though I should note that I have only seen the theatrical version)
Hostel 2 did what a good sequel should do and expanded on the premise in interesting ways
so overall I really like the guy, if there’s one legitimate complaint it’s that he needs to get off his ass and direct another movie already
June 28th, 2011 at 11:24 am
Eli Roth is hated by nerds? I always thought he would be popular among them, but doesn’t get along with “normal” critics.
(To be honest: He seems to be an arrogant dick in real life. The list of people who have been blocked by him on any social network, just for giving a negative or not 100% positive review of his work is long! So maybe that is the problem.)
pegsman: Sorry, but you didn’t get HOSTEL at all. Making a movie ridiculing The Ugly American doesn’t make you The Ugly American.
ThomasCrown442
June 28th, 2011 at 2:19 pm
I was surprised by Hostel too. I thought it was going to be an hour and a half of people being tied to chairs and being prodded and poked with numerous sharp objects. It actually turned out to be more of a thriller with some horror elements to it. I don’t know who played the brunette who seduces the nerdy guy but goddamn was she beautiful. The only real negative i have to say about the movie is the beginning is long and drawn out. Ok, these guys are a trio of unlikeable douchebags trying anything and everything to get laid. I get it. I didn’t need what felt like an hour to set that up. Other than that I enjoyed it.
June 28th, 2011 at 2:33 pm
It’s been a while since I saw Hostel, but I remember thinking similar about it like ThomasCrown: That it worked surprisingly well as a thriller, that even justified it’s gory moments within the context of the story. On the other hand it never seemed to fully reach the goals it sets to itself and fell flat, so all in all it was better made than most critics had the balls to admit, but still pretty forgettable.
June 28th, 2011 at 3:37 pm
Cabin Fever has one tremendously effective moment (the shaving scene), but is rife with the type of white entitlement that Roth is trying to spoof in Hostel. And no, the punchline to the niggaz joke doesn’t make it legitimate. Of course, when I was in New Mexico I had a nearly identical experience, without the punchline, so maybe he was just being accurate.
Hostel is also very well made, even if many of the non-kill scenes were horribly amateurish in execution. I mean, the steadycam through the club was just first year student film work. And not even first year student work from a good film school. Meanwhile, Part II completely missed the point. By putting women back front and center the film completely undermines the subversive elements of the original. It also gave my girlfriend at the time a rape flashback. So there’s that.
Also, when I met him in person he struck me as rapist creepy.
June 28th, 2011 at 4:10 pm
Griff, I’ll admit I enjoy most Brett Ratner movies. The man knows how to put a scene together so we can see what’s happening and be engaged in a story. I loved McG for Charlie’s Angels but not really much since.
And Michael Davis, my soul mate.
holy shit Tawdry, you actually met Roth in person? care to expound on how you met him and why he struck you as “rapist creepy”?
ThomasCrown442
June 28th, 2011 at 5:39 pm
I 2nd the Brett Ratner nomination. Most of his movies are solid. I enjoyed X 3 and Rush Hour 1 and 2 (3 was horrible though). Not classics but I enjoyed them enough. I’ve mentioned before that I really enjoyed After the Sunset. Its one of my favorite “I’m surfing the net and want some background noise” movies. Its easy to watch and easy on the eyes. I’ve heard good things about the Prison Break pilot and Money Talks is a fun movie. I’m in no way saying that he’s some underrated visionary or anything but he seems pretty harmless. I dont get why people hate him so much. Is he a dick in real life or something?
the Brett Ratner hate stems entirely from X Men 3, people were simply pissed that he replaced Bryan Singer and they never got over it
Mouth
June 28th, 2011 at 6:34 pm
Fred, I watched the end of xXx again recently, and maybe you’re the only other one who gets it. Did you ever notice that all the dramatic cuts to random statues and innocent Czech civilians during the climactic GTO-AHAB-harpoon chase are hilarious? I’m a Rob Cohen fan as well.
**directors who aren’t “kosher” to like that you like anyway? that is to say directors that the general nerd population hate, but you can’t understand why? **
Griff – As a director, he was a one-off, but oh that one he did was a dandy. He came; he conquered. He said his piece, dropped the mic, and retired to the easy life of DTV & law enforcement. His name is Steven fucking Seagal.
Jake
June 28th, 2011 at 8:21 pm
I like Michael Bay and M. Night Shyamalan. Are Tony Scott and Zack Snyder generally hated? Or just hated intensely by a few? Either way, I like both of them, too. If there is one person I don’t want to be like it’s The Internet. So I make it a point to try and enjoy anything by these directors. I don’t always succeed but I give it my best.
I actually can’t really understand hating any directors. The worst offense they have committed against you is trying to entertain you and failing. Surely all that merits is a tip of your cap and a, “Good day, sir, we shall part ways here. I won’t be seeing you again.” Maybe I am just gifted but I find it extremely easy to not watch movies from directors who I don’t really care for. In fact, I’m doing it right now. It’s pretty simple. I can do it in my sleep at this point.
Griff
btw part of what prompted the Eli Roth mention is that in a few days I’m going to be visiting family and staying in a cabin in the North Carolina woods, no shit
guess I should avoid drinking the water huh?
Mouth
This time of year, when it’s unlikely the NC woods have undergone any controlled burns lately, I’d be more concerned with poison ivy/oak/sumac, ticks, brown recluses, and miscellaneous critters that come to inhabit your footwear & latrines overnight.
Enjoy!
June 28th, 2011 at 9:58 pm
great
well there’s no basement, so at least I don’t have to worry about finding the necronomicon (or do I)
June 29th, 2011 at 12:09 am
Jake, you said it best. The whole “that’s two hours I’ll never get back” attitude is far worse than a bad movie to me. So you didn’t like it. You’re a movie fan, you watch movies anyway. Also, a bad movie still employed hundreds of artists for a year and maybe allowed them to do something else they were really passionate about. Perspective, people.
Mouth, I think according to Seagalogy, he directed lots of his movies by sheer force of personality.
June 29th, 2011 at 12:42 am
Mr Majestyk, I didn’t really get to the part where Roth ridicules The Ugly American. All I saw was the part where he portrayed Holland (Griff, thanks for supporting me by not knowing that Holland is the Dutch name for The Netherlands) as some backwards banana republic. No big deal, but life’s way too short for stupid movies.
Griff
June 29th, 2011 at 6:59 am
I just sold my soul, because I agreed to play a Hippie in a seriously shitty scripted reality show next week. But hey, one week Ibiza in a 3 stars hotel for free! They even pay me 400 bucks! Selling your soul rules!
June 29th, 2011 at 1:35 pm
By the way, have you guys seen this amazing clip from INDIAN ROBOT ENDHIRAN? Craziest action sequences I’ve seen all year. Might not be quite photorealistic in places, but you gotta give em credit for commitment to pure fucking insanity. Step up your game, America.
Ugh, my wife is always having me do that. Just like an Indian Robot to be so whipped so fast.
Stu
June 30th, 2011 at 3:52 pm
“So there is this new trailer for MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 4, which looks all kinds of cool, despite using an Eminem song (featuring Pink? Sounds like her.) and of course cutting to black every 0,5 seconds. Damn you Brad Bird, for making me watch another M:I movie!”
Yeah, it looks like it could be fun, but it’s also full of elements I’ve seen multiple times before in Mission Impossible:
-Ethan Hunt and his team go rogue
-Ethan gets thrown through the air by an explosion that comes from a direction that isn’t in front of him
-IMF’s director is once again not the same guy from the previous film.
-Ethan climbing a big structure without the aid of a safety line
-Ethan swinging around a big structure using a line
I’m intrigued by Jeremy Renner’s character(I’m going to go out on a limb now and guess he’s Jim Phelps’ son, and I actually hope he is, because the lack of interconnectivity/continuity between the movies in the series besides a few recurring characters has always bugged me for some reason), and the shot that seems to make Simon Pegg looks somewhat badass non-ironically.
Jon Favreau interviewed Harrison Ford recently about COWBOYS VS. ALIENS and Ford actually seems like a happy dude about it:
June 30th, 2011 at 4:00 pm
RE: M:I 4
Looks like more of the same though it’s cool to see Cruise doing a stunt in what I think is the world’s tallest building nothing there gets me excited at all. I only like DePalma’s movie; it’s not perfect especially since they killed off the team early into it but it was a solid thriller that still holds up.
Haven’t seen the second one since the theaters and didn’t like it so I don’t plan on ever revisiting it. The third one I tried to sit through I really really tried but I turned it off 20 min into it. Like the majority of things involving JJ Abrams it was just so fucking unpleasantly boring that I couldn’t sit through it. I will see this one cause well it’s directed by Brad Bird. If the man is so masterful with animation I can only imagine what he could pull off in live action. Plus you know; I must financially support anything that could get him closer to making a Superman movie. But I’m not really hyped for the shit either.
One thing I will say about part 2. Despite the movie being ass the trailer was way cooler than this one. I think cause at least it had some variation on the theme. That sold it even if it was Limp Bizkit. This Eminem shit is really glaringly out of place. The original TV theme song would’ve been much more effective actually. Probably would’ve even sold me on the lame trailer.
Broddie
Oh and where the fuck is Ving? is he even in this movie? and yes that was Pink on the Eminem song.
ThomasCrown442
I’m just happy to see Josh Holloway (Sawyer from Lost) in something other than Lost.
Stu
July 1st, 2011 at 1:06 pm
Stu, CM Punk is one of my favorite wrestlers, and that promo was money and one of the best promos in years (I am trying to think of a better one, but can’t)! I think it was a complete work, but it felt like a shoot, and added a great deal of intrigue to his match up with Cena at the PPV.
Stu
July 1st, 2011 at 1:51 pm
Word is that he was told to go out and say off the cuff how he felt, and they’d cut him off when they felt he was going too far.
Either way it’s awesome, and tops the Joey Styles similar thing from the ECW angle years ago:
July 1st, 2011 at 2:00 pm
Stu, I agree that it is even better then the Styles promo because Punk is just that much more charismatic and comfortable in his character. However, I don’t believe for a second that Punk did not have approval for everything he said. McMahon, is too much of a control freak to allow someone an open mic on his flag ship show and give him the green light and opportunity to go into business for himself. Either they have already resigned Punk and they are keeping it on the DL, or my guess is Punk wins at Money In The Bank, but before he can walk away with the title one of the money in the bank winners cashes in their title shot and wins the belt from him preventing him from walking off into the sunset with it.
hamslime
July 1st, 2011 at 10:01 pm
Anybody read the obit and the talkback for Ryan Dunn on AICN? Maybe I’m the asshole here, and I agree that what Dunn did was stupid but most of those comments are absolutely disgusting to me.
We all do stupid shit (Heck Vern landed himself in prison…allegedly (or was it jail? Maybe neither. Moving on)) but us fortunate ones live through it and get to make up for our fuck ups, or more often, don’t fuck up big enough that others see it and skate away clean like nothing happened.
I’m not much of a Christian but I remember some, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” business. Seems like a good code to live by as we all do stupid shit once in a while, (Not necaessarily drunk driving, though I’m sure there’s a person or two here and I suspect more on the talkback that have done that) the only difference is that we’ve been lucky thus far to not kill ourselves or someone else doing it.
Plus the guy is dead. The Bin Laden thing made sense though that kind of made me feel weird hearing all the bloodlusting, but Ryan Dunn, from what I could tell from watching the CKY and Jackass videos seemed like a decent guy that made a bonehead decision that killed him and a friend. He wasn’t evil, but you wouldn’t know it from reading that talkback. I guess I should kick myself for expecting any sort of human decency on AICN.
Vern
July 2nd, 2011 at 10:37 am
Hamslime – Yeah, I was disgusted when I saw that too. The part that blew me away was how the early part of the talkback was them all being pissed that tAICN posted about him at all. They acted like it was an undeserved, loving tribute. Bobo-Vision, the guy that wrote it, had to come on to defend himself and explain that don’t worry, he was actually shitting on a dead guy, everybody be cool.
I’m only a casual Jackass fan, I had to be told which one was Ryan Dunn when I heard the news, but it doesn’t matter who it is. If you’re gonna write an attack on a guy’s life, his fans and his death then you don’t fucking pretend it’s an obituary and put it on The Ain’t It Cool News.
I’m about 99% positive that the guy sent it in to Harry or somebody, they glanced at it and assumed it was a sincere tribute, and then posted it. I don’t think if they had read it closely they would’ve put it up. Lax editing is very much like them, brazen cruelty is not. But Harry hasn’t responded to my email about it so I don’t know.
July 2nd, 2011 at 6:49 pm
update: never mind, they didn’t post it on accident. Harry apparently hates the Jackass guys because he blames them for people injuring themselves doing stunts. Sounded like he didn’t post the thing but he said if he had “it’d been 10 times more brutal.”
I don’t think of him as being that mean, it’s too bad. But I guess that’s his business.
anthony4545
July 3rd, 2011 at 9:17 am
Wow, that’s fucked up.
I guess it’s okay for Harry to post smutty euro porn plugs every week, but he finds Jackass morally objectionable. Yeah, I know it ain’t the same thing, but I still think it’s sleazy, and for a entertainment website, I figured moral high ground would be a bit lax. Not that I expect much from the AICN.
anthony4545
July 3rd, 2011 at 9:36 am
Actually, after re-reading that talkback, I realize I’m done. The AICN bookmark is gone. I used to casually check he headlines, but as someone who has a lot of negativity in them (i’m working hard on it), I realize life’s too short, even if it’s only a few minutes a day. Besides, Bleeding Cool usually beats them on headlines.
Once again, thanks Vern, for this internet island.
July 3rd, 2011 at 9:59 am
Yeah, I also think of abandoning the AICN mainsite forever. (I will still fequently visit THE ZONE, though) I didn’t really participate in the Talkbacks for years anyway. Maybe one or two comments every few months, but that’s it. I usually don’t even read what comes afterwards.
I’m not completely holding it against Harry though. He had a pretty bad back injury as you all know, and therefore all rights to pissed off for all the wrong reasons. I just don’t think he should release his anger in public.
anthony4545
July 3rd, 2011 at 11:01 am
CJ:
Yeah, for the past couple of years I’ve avoided the talkbacks, but this just tells me that the AICN staff is willing to let this kind of thing go, even encouraging it. I guess part of me always hoped they would eventually clean up the place, set rules, ect., but I can see now that’s never going to happen. So I’m done.
hamslime
July 4th, 2011 at 2:41 pm
We’ll that’s sad that Harry thinks that way. Perhaps it is time I join you guys and cut the cord as well. I just got back from a weekend in the mountains and feel pretty good right now. No sense in ruining those good vibes by reading trash and hatred.
Perhaps Harry and bobo should skip a movie or two and spend some time to get out in nature for a bit. That could very well be all they need to get some perspective on things.
I’m greatful for this sight though. I haven’t really been posting at all for some time, but I do read it a few times a week and it can’t be said enough. “You guys are great.”
ThomasCrown442
Thanks for link Stu. Good stuff.
anthony4545
July 4th, 2011 at 10:28 pm
Btw, does anyone have any suggestions for a ‘weekly dvd release column’ I can check out? That’s the only real reason I ever went to the Site That Will Now Remain Unnamed (STWNRU), so any suggestions will be much appreciated.
Chud does a decent one. Or your Best Buy ad.
dieselboy
/film always does a good one, dvd release column that is
CJ Holden
Greetings from Ibiza. Everything you’ve heard about it is true. It’s hot, overpriced and DJs are national heroes.
Mouth
July 5th, 2011 at 11:15 am
The new Lloyd album is mostly garbage, but the 3 songs that happen to share titles used previously by superior artists for superior songs (“Lay It Down”–The Reverend Al Green; “Angel”–Jimi Hendrix; “World Cry”–Jay-Z) are pretty good. The R. Kelly section of “World Cry”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Notz8C_NxYw
is beautiful; it’s the only thing I plan to play over & over again incessantly & loudly until my supervisor across the hall finally throws a stapler at me. (Yeah, I play loud music while I work all day in front of a bunch of computers. And I browse non-work websites, too, what.) Once that happens, I’ll try to do more research on this K’Naan musician I never heard of before for some reason. He guest verses on “World Cry,” and I’ve become a fan of this:
which apparently I missed when it came out 2+ years ago. I work almost 7 days a week, but today has been pretty good for a workday.
Mouth
CJ, that sounds awesome. My dream is to retire to Cadiz, which I suspect is comparable to Ibiza in some ways. Photos, por favor.
Broddie
July 5th, 2011 at 1:32 pm
K’Naan is the shit. Guy seems larger than life just going off from the legend of his back ground (he didn’t know a lick of english; learned it from listening to rap music; then started to rap better in english than most American rappers). Something which I still somewhat hesitate to fully believe but do find awesome regardless.
To his actual output (DUSTY FOOT PHILOSOPHER and TROUBADOUR are very ill albums) the man has “something” and has proven his talent. Listen to the song TRIBES OF WAR from the album DISTANT RELATIVES and watch him outshine Nas and Damian Marley as if they were a couple of amateurs. He’s definitely one of those artists to always keep an eye out for.
Mouth
July 5th, 2011 at 4:33 pm
I love that DISTANT RELATIVES album. Not sure why I never picked up on this K’Naan guy’s name or history before. Rhapsody’s got all his stuff, it appears, and I’m not consistently blown away by it when I hear it all in a row, but I’ll definitely be mixing in his flavor to my playlists in the coming months. Some of his raps are awkward, some are badass, but I’m really digging his current direction if he keeps the reggae-funk-soul bent going.
I’ve never been to Somalia, but I’ve heard stories from some other employees of the federal government, and it strikes me as hell on earth. Glad K’Naan made it out of there.
July 6th, 2011 at 2:39 am
Mr Majestyk, a little warning about the fact that Endhiran/The Robot is three hours long and contains a dozen (looong) song and dance numbers would have been fine. I haven’t been so exhausted by a movie in a long time. But the action scenes are cool.
Wait, Vern are you saying that you’re doing a set visit? How would you be able to do this and maintain your anonymity? Won’t you be exposing your secret identity to too many outsiders?
Jareth Cutestory
July 6th, 2011 at 9:17 am
I like the implied threat in that phrase “keep a look out for me.” It’s like Vern will be stalking the cast and crew of the LEATHERFACE film waiting for the first mistake so he can go to work kicking some asses.
Or maybe he means “go to the set and observe things because I am unavailable to do so.” Which is also really cool, because it makes me feel like a member of a small army prepared to drop my civilian duties and spring into badass film fan action whenever called upon.
We don’t need to see Vern. He is always with us, in the smile on every baby, the bruise on every knuckle.
Casey
July 6th, 2011 at 9:31 am
Vern brought up the 4th TCM and I feel the need to defend it. Or to explain why it’s not as bad as the two Platinum Dune ones.
I kind of liked the part 4 with Zelweger and McConaughey. Not that it’s a good movie or should have been associated with TCM in any way but it’s really insane. I just remember Zelweger screaming a lot, McConaughey yelling at Leatherface and having a weird robotic leg that is controlled by a remote control, and a weird appearance by the Illuminati at the end. That movie swung for the fences and is just totally insane.
I mean, if you’re going to totally disrespect the tone and the point of the original you might as well do so in the most crazy way possible.
I think in some ways it can be seen more of a sequel to the second TCM than the first. Meaning, it’s more of a comedy than anything else.
The two Platinum Dune ones just totally miss the entire point of TCM and are just loud, boring, and pedestrian.
Jareth Cutestory
He is the “more cowbell” that everyone is always asking for.
Jareth Cutestory
Way to step on the continuity of my stupid joke with your thoughtful film analysis, Casey.
Casey
I apologize, Jareth, but your jokes were more thoughtful and interesting than anything I had to say. I’m just being totally pedantic about a really bad movie that I think has some redeeming qualities.
Jareth Cutestory
That we can all be “totally pedantic about a really bad movie” is what I like best about this site. That and the horsefuckers.
Grim Grinning Chris
Yeah, it is me, Vern.
Looks like if I go it will be the last weekend of the month.
My roommate and I have a friend that is a make-up artist (she does beauty mainly but also some light effects makeup… mostly on pictures being shot in and around New Orleans- of which there are fucking tons now- I’ve never looked it up, but the number of movies shot there post-Katrina is just nuts, maybe some tax breaks to try and get some money flowing into the city/state?).
Though the set visit to Abraham Lincoln: VH was due to another friend of ours who is a steadi-cam operator out of L.A. and is in the New Orleans area a lot as well.
This is like the 5th invite this year between the two of them, and I kinda feel like “now or never” with my work schedule- and since I’ve never been on a real movie set, especially not a real horror movie set, I think it’d be a hoot… but then part of me wants to hold out for something better, just in case I am only able to make it over there once this year.
July 6th, 2011 at 2:16 pm
I appreciate how mean TCM:Redux was. It was a really, really gnarly film and quite well directed. It wasn’t good at all, but it was much more hardcore than almost any American horror film I’ve seen from a studio in recent memory, if not ever. How that film has an R-rating is baffling to me.
TCM:Predux is significantly less good, but it’s sound on a structural level. The bits with R. Lee Ermey are interesting and the draft dodging angle is kinda cool.
I’m not a big TCM fan, honestly. I love the shit out of TCSM:P2 and think it’s one of the best horror comedies ever, but none of the others grabbed me in any way. Frankly, I kinda wanted Leatherface to just kill the final girl in the original because she annoyed me so much.
Broddie
July 6th, 2011 at 3:44 pm
TCM remake was ho hum. I remember seeing it and just going “wow they totally didn’t get the movie they remade at all”. It was kinda boring in it’s tedious lets make a bad version of a FRIDAY movie type way. Nice cakes on Jessica Biel though about the only thing I could remember after all these years.
Broddie
They were warned. They are doomed. And on Friday the 13th, they ain’t got shit to do.
Vern
July 6th, 2011 at 6:47 pm
Yeah, I actually just meant keep an eye on the movie, maybe give them some insinuating looks so they know not to fuck it up.
I’m actually keeping an open mind for now. If it was in the tradition of part 2 at all then 3D could be a good idea, and hiring Moseley is a sign that they have at least a small understanding of what makes the movies good. The plot summary I read (which may or may not have changed) could go either way. Actually it kind of sounded like they were influenced by THE DEVIL’S REJECTS.
Wait a minute, are you telling me they’re filming it in New Orleans? That seems a little nuts. I could’ve sworn those movies took place somewhere else. Yes, there are tax incentives to shoot in New Orleans, that’s why so many movies of the last few years take place there. In fact, it’s why we have the beloved phrase “Port of Call New Orleans.”
For a while Michigan had that too, that’s why GRAN TORINO takes place there, but I read that they don’t have those anymore.
I wish Seattle would do that. We are also a port of call. Val Kilmer’s character could move here and have a BAD PRIVATE DETECTIVE spinoff.
Broddie
When I see the words Val Kilmer and private detective anywhere near each other it reminds me how badly the world needs a Gay Perry movie. Shit they could even movie him to New Orleans.
Grim Grinning Chris
July 7th, 2011 at 11:04 am
Vern,
They are shooting in Shreveport. I do not know what percentage of the shooting is being done there, but I know that they are supposed to be there for 4-6 weeks.
CJ Holden
@Mouth: Photos and videos will come next week. I’m unfortunately (?) here for work and Im not fully equipped for uploading of those right now.
anthony4545
July 7th, 2011 at 6:46 pm
Sorry to butt in on the conversation, but holy shit, have you guys been watching the second season of Idris Elba’s Luther?? The last two episodes were so good it made me ill. I was always a fan of the guy on the Wire, but good God he’s so good here. The first season was good, especially the last four eps, but this one is just so far above it. I’m really bummed out that Taratino chose Foxx over him for Django. The dude deserves to be a movie star.
Okay, I’m done. Sorry for gushing. Please watch Luther, thanks.
Mouth
July 7th, 2011 at 8:09 pm
How dare you comment on a random topic in this thread, anthony, you little punk.
Also, I watched MIDNIGHT IN PARIS again today. Loved it again. As a film, it’s no more intellectually valid or much more intellectually provocative than, say, FAST 5, but, as with probably the 2nd best 2011 movie so far, if you accept it on its own terms, you will be highly rewarded. Instead of badass automobile violence, the payoff is literary dialogue & art criticism zingers, and the payoffs in both movies are equally perfectly delivered within narratives that are barely more than a veneer of contrived fantasy. They both have made me laugh & gasp equally.
The best part of MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (not the porn movie with the Hilton chick, by the way, just to clarify in case you’re a not-up-to-date perv reading this) is indescribably badass, though he’s only in the movie for a few minutes altogether. I’ll never write or produce anything as awesome as Woody Allen’s version of Ernest Hemingway, the best movie character of the year, and one of my favorites ever, and I’m not just saying that because my advisor in my alma mater’s English Department is a Hemingway nut. (I hope Dr. C approves.)
It’s a well written, hilarious character, and Corey Stoll, who doesn’t appear to have any major memorable roles in his resume to this point, would be my choice for every acting award I could give.
Vern
July 7th, 2011 at 10:02 pm
Maybe Guillermo Del Toro’s giant monster movie PACIFIC RIM will turn Idris Elba into a movie star. Supposedly the role was once meant for Tom Cruise.
By the way, does anybody know how to pronounce Idris Elba’s name? Is it just idd-riss ell-buh?
That is indeed correct, Vern.
anthony4545
July 8th, 2011 at 12:08 am
Stringer Bell vs. Monsters? Count me in.
Mouth: I bet the original Midnight in Paris woulda been way better if Woody Allen had directed it. I bet he wouldn’t have used that stupid night vision cam either.
July 8th, 2011 at 12:44 am
well guys, I have returned from my trip to visit family in North Carolina and I have survived, no Deadites, no flesh eating viruses and no killer rednecks
unfortunately it was kind of a bust, Murphy’s law had it out for me and everything I wanted to do did not turn out like I had hoped (for example, not being able to get fireworks for the 4th) and I got in a small fight with my uncle over stupid bullshit (which would not have happened if I hadn’t drank a few hard lemonades beforehand),
boredom was another factor, there was no internet at the cabin and a shitty selection of channels on the tv (and the dvd player didn’t even work), all I could really do to pass the extra time was read a book on the Amazon Kindle, which wasn’t so bad but I finished it quickly
maybe my expectations were just too high, but it’s the first vacation I think I’ve ever took where instead of being sad that it was over I’m happy to be home and maybe making me appreciate home with all my video games and stuff is a good thing, maybe I needed a wakeup call
well a change of scenery for a while is always nice, but I had a hell of a lot more fun visiting Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure last year
on a side note, has anyone here heard of the band Say Anything? my cousin is dating one of the members of that band (I saw them again during the vacation), his name is Jeff Turner and he is such a cool and nice guy, plus me and him are like two peas in a pod, he’s the closest thing to a celebrity I’ve ever met
July 8th, 2011 at 11:27 am
So, someone tell me something even mildly hopeful about John Carpenter’s new one, THE WARD? Anyone?
I didn’t want to spoil the 666 posts here, but if I gotta do 667 I think this is a suitable topic.
Gwai Lo
July 8th, 2011 at 11:43 am
Even if it’s dogshit, it’s still Carpenter and I will support him. It’s a shame that I have heard literally nothing good about THE WARD, so I’m not feeling too much excitement, but the man has earned my time and money, and more importantly my undying loyalty. Even if he gets back into film making full-time and spends the next 20 years making shitty movies, I will keep paying to see them.
July 8th, 2011 at 11:58 am
sorry but I think Carpenter has joined the ranks of John Landis and Joe Dante as once great directors who have lost their mojo
not coincidentally they all directed episodes of the underrated Masters of Horror tv show, Landis’ and Carpenter’s episodes were actually really good though, while Joe Dante’s episodes were hilariously awful
anthony4545
July 8th, 2011 at 12:01 pm
The trailer for the Ward looked really promising. I hadn’t heard anything though.
Didn’t In the Mouth of Madness get really bad review? Yet I love that movie. It gets better every time I watch it.
I’d like a vern review of Prince of Darkness, btw. Hell, I’d settle for a good dissection of that movie by someone else too. I always thought it had alot to say, whether it’s entirely successful or not…
July 8th, 2011 at 12:11 pm
In The Mouth of Madness is pretty good, but with such an excellent premise (a Stephen King esque horror writer getting his ideas from Lovecraftian old ones and they come true? brilliant!) it should be a classic, that’s actually a movie I would be okay with it getting remade one day
but despite that, In The Mouth of Madness is Carpenter’s last good movie, Coming To America is John Landis’ last good movie and Matinee is Joe Dante’s last good movie
Broddie
July 8th, 2011 at 12:17 pm
I considered watching THE WARD before it’s release. I always hold onto some hope when it comes to JC even if VAMPIRE$ was the last one I dug and everybody else pretty much hated it.
It’s a shame to see how bad Carpenter fell off considering how monumental & influential a lot of his classics were to many of us growing up but I always think in the back of my mind that one day he’ll get his groove back.
However I heard the consensus in here so far (it sucked) parroted by many others who’s opinion on film I really tend to trust. This even includes some post-GHOST OF MARS Carpenter apologists. So in the end I just can’t help but remain wary of THE WARD.
As much as I love Amber Heard (lots!) and as much as I did admire Carpenter once upon a time I’m afraid of even catching the matinee based on the negative feedback. I’ll wait for it to hit video to avoid being burned at the box office this weekend. I guess I’ll just watch TREE OF LIFE again or catch that new Jason Bateman and Charlie Day movie.
July 8th, 2011 at 12:19 pm
The difference now, I think, between the reception for THE WARD and the reception for some of the older Carpenter movies that got bad reviews despite being awesome movies is that Carpenter has now achieved the status of beloved elder statesman. His filmography has been reconsidered by a younger, more admiring generation, he’s been retroactively granted his rightful status as a master… but even people who love Carpenter are saying the new one sucks. Oh well.
Gwai Lo
July 8th, 2011 at 12:21 pm
Sorry again guys, keep lowering those expectations. I’m a huge Carpenter fan, have been since childhood, HALLOWEEN and THE THING are among my all time favorites, bla bla bla. I will even defend most of his 90s output (not GHOSTS OF MARS though), and I was hopeful after MASTERS OF HORROR (especially CIGARETTE BURNS) that he was getting his mojo back, and all he needed was a bigger budget and more than a week to shoot. But THE WARD still fails even if I’m giving the guy a break. It’s even sloppy in the purely technical areas where Carpenter used to excel. It looks as cheap, maybe cheaper, than those MOH episodes. I could overlook that if the story was any good, but it’s a tired old rehash with a totally predictable but still groan-inducing final twist.
Broddie
July 8th, 2011 at 12:28 pm
I don’t know if I could agree about those being their last good ones Griff. As I said I really dug VAMPIRE$. Different from it’s source sure but it’s still a nice pulpy western with a kick ass James Woods performance. I also have a fondness for AMAZON WOMEN ON THE MOON; it has a lot of that trademark Landis quirk that is found in his better films and that makes it a charming watch. Been years since I revisited that one though.
Funny you mention Dante cause I just watched LOONEY TUNES: BACK IN ACTION recently and it was actually pretty alright. It actually FELT like a LOONEY TUNES story; unlike lame ass SPACE JAM a lot of the classic tropes from the cartoons were faithfully re used by Mr. Dante with lots of conviction.
I actually feel that movie is pretty underrated when it comes to mentioning quality features within the “live action/toon” subgenre. Sure it’s no ROGER RABBIT but it’s miles ahead of the likes of COOL WORLD and the aforementioned SPACE JAM when it comes to genuine entertainment. It’s guaranteed to cheer up that kid inside you that spent saturday mornings watching THE BUGS BUNNY SHOW at least once.
Broddie
July 8th, 2011 at 12:32 pm
Gwai the moment someone told me “SUCKER PUNCH pulled off the premise far more convincingly than THE WARD did” I considered it a monumental red flag. I trust your word on it; cause well SUCKER PUNCH despite having great eye candy was far too vague and disconnected to pull of it’s premise properly (at least the theatrical cut). If Snyder’s “blonde girl trapped in an institution” movie is considered more layered and interesting than the latest by a legend like Carpenter then something is off there IMO.
Gwai Lo
July 8th, 2011 at 12:40 pm
I hated SUCKER PUNCH, but at least I could tell it was made by someone who is young, enthusiastic and full of ideas. THE WARD just feels like it was made my someone who is old, tired and out of inspiration.
The subject matter is very similar, but stylistically the films couldn’t be more different. SUCKER PUNCH looks like a juiced up video game and THE WARD looks like it was shot for the Home and Garden network.
Broddie
July 8th, 2011 at 12:40 pm
Actually Griff checking the dates even though I saw AMAZON after COMING TO AMERICA (which I DID see on VHS back in ’88) AMAZON actually came out before it. So I take that back and say you may be right there even though I think OSCAR was an ok movie and the only decent comedy starring Sly.
July 8th, 2011 at 12:44 pm
I think Looney Tunes: Back in Action is wonderful, exactly like a Looney Tunes movie should be. Perfect fourth wall breaking meta moments and wink wink cameos. Brendan totally makes you believe he’s interacting with cartoons. That’s why I have hope for Furry Vengenace.
July 8th, 2011 at 1:56 pm
Broddie, I absolutely love AMAZON WOMEN ON THE MOON (as well as Kentucky Fried Movie), but that did indeed come before Coming To America
also from what I remember of Looney Tunes: Back in Action, it was a lame Who Framed Roger Rabbit rehash, just because it was not as bad as Space Jam does not make it a good movie
anyway Broddie, you have inspired me to go off topic and talk about how much I love the comedies of the 70 and 80’s, it’s my favorite style of comedy
over the top, anarchistic and (with rare exception) filled with copious female nudity, by comparison these modern day “Judd Apatow style” comedies that think simply being foul mouthed is inherently hilarious and if they ever show nudity it’s usually a naked man for “hilarious” effect are not my style (although Pineapple Express was ok)
my favorite comedies of the last couple of years would have to be Hot Tub Time Machine (for having a little female nudity and the pretty brilliant premise of modern day Judd Apatow esque characters visiting the teen movie past of the 80’s) and Tropic Thunder for it’s 90’s style over the top satire of Hollywood
July 8th, 2011 at 1:58 pm
also Ghostbusters is one of the few comedies from that era that manages to be kid friendly as well as hilarious
part of me though can’t help but imagine what an R rated Ghostbusters would have been like, there is a storyboard of a never filmed seen of an unseen ghost ripping women’s clothes off, that would have been nice to see
one last off topic post, I forgot to mention that mother fucking JURASSIC PARK is FINALLY coming to blu ray! this is literally a dream come true
I’m so happy I’m now going to quote Jeff Goldblum
“I’ll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you’re using here: it didn’t require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn’t earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don’t take any responsibility… for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you even knew what you had you patented it and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now *BOOM* you’re selling *BOOM* you’re selling it”
felix
July 8th, 2011 at 2:34 pm
I saw THE WARD.
It’s not a horrible film per see. But its so boring and by the numbers that it plays better as a TV episode of that “Fear Itself” Series that got cancelled last year.
Seriously, anyone who’s savvy to movies in the horror genre will pick up the “twist” in THE WARD immediately. Amber Heard is still incredibly feisty and hot though.
All said and done, I am still a great fan of John Carpenter. He’s given us way too many quality films for us not to feel affection.
Broddie
July 8th, 2011 at 4:11 pm
I couldn’t stand TROPIC THUNDER. Which is very bizarre since I actually love Ben Stiller’s shit when it’s extremely irreverent. ZOOLANDER and DODGEBALL to me are idiot comedy classics that I will cherish till the day I die. DODGEBALL cause he basically reminded me of HEAVYWEIGHTS.
That was a movie I watched a lot as a youngin just cause he played his famous arrogant exercise trainer villain. Despite the rest of the movie sucking ass those whiny fat asses deserved that miserable trainer IMO so I always did go back to that one. ZOOLANDER because it’s filled with too much great random quotes.
So I was initially hyped for TROPIC THUNDER but in the end it felt extremely forced. Tom Cruise and Jack Black’s overacting were two of the worst things I’ve ever seen in terms of attempt at humor. Just horrendous shit to sit through all around. Even RDJ and Stiller were wack to me but not as bad as the other guys cause at least they tried their best to naturally sell irreverence and not seem forced like Cruise and Black. The only thing I remembered liking was that little boy being thrown over a bridge at some point but by then it was just too little too late. That and Nick Nolte.
I do think the 70’s and 80’s were the prime of American comedy hell comedy in cinema in general but for the sake of convo let’s leave it at American for now. We not only have the likes of ANNIE HALL, MASH, BLAZING SADDLES & ANIMAL HOUSE but they occupy the same space as BLUES BROTHERS, THIS IS SPINAL TAP, BEVERLY HILLS COP, PORKY’S, NATIONAL LAMPOON’S VACATION, FLETCH, BILL & TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE, TRADING PLACES and yes I dare say it and will stand behind it if questioned; the original POLICE ACADEMY. It was a magical time for comedy cause it created lots of timeless jokes that still hit hard no matter how often you’ve seen them.
I think a key reason was cause not all the times but many of the times back then the comedy talent was ACTUAL comedy talent. People who will genuinely sell the most ridiculous and stupid premises ever with sincere & charming comedy.
Whether in front of the screen or behind the scenes. It was writers, directors and actors that all had comedy driven backgrounds. From Second City vets to being former National Lampoon writers or coming from other comedy circuits these people are all over a lot of these features.
Even all the way into the 90’s with the Farrelly’s three point masterpiece theater showcase of DUMB & DUMBER, KINGPIN and THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY. Murray’s QUICK CHANGE. Those were the days back when Adam Sandler didn’t give a fuck about selling out and made man child classics like BILLY MADISON and HAPPY GILMORE and Farley was still alive.
Those movies succeed because the comedians are genuine comedians first and actors second. When that is not the case then it’s the writers and director that completely understand why comedy is amazing and how to make it function tremendously. Which is when they actually make you laugh at things done by Elliot FUCKING Gould cause they do it so damn well.
They have the respect for comedy necessary to pull it off with genuine heart. That attitude in them inspires people like Carl Weathers and Jeff Daniels to be hilarious as fuck in turn. Genuine comedians also well they understand importance of delivery. I mean I fucking die like mad everytime I hear Joe Flaherty yell out “Jackass!” cause of the delivery. Nothing seems artificial when this element is around even in the most juvenile of comedies.
I’m not big on Apatow. Never have been. To me he’s flat out overrated. Only things he’s associated with that I’ve enjoyed were SUPERBAD, CABLE GUY, FREAKS & GEEKS and ANCHORMAN & if he was involved with STEP BROTHERS then that too. That’s. About. It.
No offense to the Apatow fans but I considered FREAKS & GEEKS more of a dramedy akin to THE WONDER YEARS. I liked it but it didn’t really seem full blown comedy. Nothing told me the talent involved there could really make something that makes me laugh as hard as I think the writers and the onscreen talent both were likeable and all but I was never going “ha ha ha” watching that show.
So to see these people making R-rated comedies now has been somewhat disheartening. I find their movies filled with too many false moments that make them seem pretentious at times.
The shift in tone for the comedy genre happened with Apatow. You had these more sensitive and empathic types dealing with comedies as well. So now to balance dick and fart jokes you need genuine heartfelt moments too.
Not that there is anything wrong with comedy that has heart cause we all know GROUNDHOG DAY is a masterpiece. But it’s also a masterpiece because it has no pretenses in it’s execution. Ramis and Murray are both unapologetic throughout it and even though it’s a new view into their collaboration it still very much has that STRIPES, GHOSTBUSTERS and CADDYSHACK “feel”. You know it comes from people who have that level of understanding of comedy.
It never tries to apologize and try to convince you that it’s more than it’s supposed to be like the Apatow resume does. They force contrived drama all throughout that greatly drags the films and makes you facepalm since it’s such a drastic contrast from the humor at points.
This is why I actually enjoyed BORAT, the original THE HANGOVER and despite all it’s shitty time travel & pop culture logic the movie HOT TUB TIME MACHINE as well. Movies that remembered to you know just be fucking funny for a couple of hours without having to have what I call “cancer patient introduction moments”. The points where the films are begging for sympathy and for people to think you’re deep and dramatic too. A lot of Apatow’s shit does that. But the existence of movies like HOT TUB TIME MACHINE & massive success of HANGOVER REHASHED this summer makes me think there is still hope out there for comedy to regain it’s real footing.
This is also one of the reasons I want to see HORRIBLE BOSSES cause it looks like something trying for that and not the “oh but I’m a sympathetic character with feelings too” crap that stops the Apatow joints from reaching their true potential in my eyes.
GHOSTBUSTERS was the apex for me though. It’s what got me into comedy in the first place. Being an early80’s babies I grew up watching REAL GHOSTBUSTERS. Because of that show I rented the movie one day back in the late 80’s. It blew me away as a child in many ways but two reasons above all were
1) It confirmed for me that it’s ok to casually sip liquor from a flask in a public place if you’re a witty adult.
2) The effects at that time were still top notch and knocked my socks off at points even genuinely scared me (the dogs chasing Lewis) so it really worked as horror too.
3) Winston’s “if there’s a steady paycheck in it, I’ll believe anything you say.” is STILL the most genuinely believable quote I’ve ever heard in any movie and I’m sure I’ve seen at least over a thousand movies by now so that speaks volumes. There’s more realism in that quote than in a Nolan Batman movie.
I’m a bit of a sarcastic jackass in my life mainly because of fucking Venkman well him and Axel Foley. As I grew older & rewatched GHOSTBUSTERS the movie grew up with me with every view. Year after year with every watch I found a new joke as I kept maturing. This went on till I was like 14. The more I saw it the more I became a fan of Murray and Ramis for life. The more I gave a lot of things with Aykroyd at least one shot despite his inconsistency. The more movies featuring Ernie Hudson I began to watch.
BACK TO THE FUTURE is definitely my favorite comedy of all time hell it’s probably my favorite overall movie when I think of it. But I’d be a liar if I said that GHOSTBUSTERS wasn’t a close second. I am so sorry for the long ass post guys. Shit seems like THE BIBLE ABRIDGED in retrospect but I just get too geeky whenever 70’s and 80’s comedy are mentioned. Especially considering the state of modern comedy today.
Hey, is anyone going to the Comic Strip Con? I’d love to meet up.
ThomasCrown442
Ben Stiller in Heavyweights = Best role of Ben Stiller’s career. Seriously.
Mouth
July 8th, 2011 at 5:57 pm
“Beds give me nightmares.”
Broddie’s sorta right about Tom Cruise & Jack Black, but TROPIC THUNDER is hilarious & uniquely fulfilling as a comedy. I don’t know how you can not laugh at Nick Nolte & that line. Your opinions are wrong and scary to me.
I didn’t care for most of SUPERBAD, and I can’t stand grossout “comedy” ( good piece:–> http://www.theawl.com/2011/07/in-defense-of-prudes ) or material that relies on guys being outrageously stupidly buffoonish/manly, but I sorta like what Apatow & his crew are trying to do with the whole surprisingly sensitive, sympathetic character angle (like the scene in FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL where the guy is singing about needing therapy at the piano).
Apatow didn’t force everyone to make him the #1 comedy “brand” guy. He’s just a writer doing his thing, and it happened that a bunch of people bought it. Some people hold his success against him, but I don’t because I don’t think he defines modern comedy, as his detractors seem to fear. He better not be definitive for our current times; I’m avoiding BRIDESMAIDS because it sounds terrible because it apparently features a lot of bodily fluid material. Unacceptable. Makes me miss good ’80s humor.
July 8th, 2011 at 6:19 pm
to be fair the only Apatow directed movie I’ve seen is Funny People and I hated it, I’ve probably talked about this before but what ruins the movie is you’re supposed to feel sympathetic for Sandler’s character despite the movie intentionally flaunting his wealth as a big fuck you
outside of that I think the only Apatow related movie I’ve seen is Pineapple Express, which was certainly funny, but I was disappointed how the trailer made it seem like a different movie (the trailer led you to believe that the entire police force was after them instead of just one corrupt cop), I enjoyed it in the theater but it’s probably not a movie I’ll re-watch anytime soon
still 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, none of those movies seem appealing to me
but yeah Broddie, I like my comedies to be larger than life
also I’m sure I’ve talked about this before too, but what’s the deal with female nudity almost completely disappearing from comedies? I don’t really buy the excuse that it’s because of internet pornography, I mean it’s not like porn didn’t exist before the internet
it just seems weird that movies like The Hangover (which was directed by Todd Phillips, who gave us the intentionally gratuitous shower room scene in Road Trip) seem to intentionally avoid having any decent nudity despite perfect opportunities for it, the last comedy that had a creative nude scene in it that I saw was the Harold and Kumar sequel with the bottomless pool party
ThomasCrown442
July 8th, 2011 at 7:38 pm
Don’t forget the lovely Malin Akerman in the first Harold and Kumar as Freakshow’s wife. A scene thats funny and has a hot naked chick in it. Its very tough to balance comedy and nudity and have it not come off as a cheap excuse to get tits in the movie. This scene manages though. Actually, the whole movie combines swearing, nudity, and gross out humor pretty darn effectively if you ask me.
July 8th, 2011 at 8:17 pm
ThomasCrown442 – the best nude scenes in comedies are the ones that manage to be funny as well as titillating
the shower scene in Porky’s has peewee not being able to see the girls because the of the fat girl’s ass
Bluto spying on the sorority sisters in Animal House has him not only falling backwards, but somehow moving the ladder and banging it against the side of the house without any of the girls noticing (or maybe they didn’t care?)
Amazon Women On The Moon has Monique Gabrielle walking around in public nude (including in Church) and no one paying attention and Kentucky Fried Movie has Catholic High School Girls In Trouble, which is probably one of the best examples of something being both sexy and hilarious at the same time
anthony4545
Dang, Griff, that’s like the third post today about female nudity. I’ve got some Playboys around here somewhere you can borrow ;)
Only kidding of course.
July 8th, 2011 at 8:20 pm
I’m with you on Tropic Thunder, Broddie. I think it’s better than you paint it but it is really broad. I love the premise and think it has some great moments (“I’m a lead farmer, motherfucker!”) but I think it mostly falls flat. Zoolander is amazing and I think Dodge Ball has a lot going for it.
I like Apatow. I think Freaks and Geeks is solid and Undeclared was fun. I met Seth Rogen and others for Undeclared because they were doing a university tour. We looked freakishly alike then and I get random people yelling “Hey Superbad!” at me on occasion. Even still, I liked 40 Year Old Virgin, Superbad, and Knocked Up. I also really loved Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
I’m more of a Will Ferrell guy, though. Anchorman is the comedy of the last ten years and I think Talledaga Nights, Step Brothers, and even The Other Guys are very funny. Man, the part of The Other Guys where Will Ferrell is talking about how he will lead a school of giant tuna who get a taste for lion flesh makes me laugh just thinking about it.
I also like The Hangover and its sequel as well as Borat. Even smaller films like Role Models make me laugh. I have also come to appreciate smaller dramady type movies like The Promotion (seriously underrated and should have been bigger) and World’s Greatest Dad.
I’m a pretty easy guy to please. I think Tim and Eric are the funniest guys and won’t miss a chance to see them live.
July 8th, 2011 at 9:35 pm
anthony4545 – hey what can I say, I’m obsessed with female nudity and not ashamed to admit it
while we’re on the subject, what’s your favorite nude scenes? the one is Porky’s is a classic, but my favorite of all time is without a doubt Belushi spying on the sorority sisters in Animal House
my grandpa once got busted for doing something similar in college in the 1960’s, I shit you not, so I guess it runs in the family
July 8th, 2011 at 10:59 pm
Heavyweights is an excellent film. Shocking and definitely great character work.
Griff, I think you’re actually NOT supposed to sympathize with Sandler in Funny People. The point is he’s still an asshole. The Hollywood version would be to have him learn his lesson, but the Apatow version is no, he’s still just an asshole.
Favorite nude scene – Re-Animator.
holy shit, I could have swore Comic Con already happened this year, maybe I just confused it with E3 or maybe I can’t believe it’s already that time again
Casey
July 9th, 2011 at 6:04 am
The wife and I have talked about going to Comic Con but everything I hear is that it is huge and totally packed. It sounds like fun but I think I would end up having an awful time fighting through crowds and otherwise being surrounded all the time.
But, man, Ray Stevenson AND the RZA? Count me in. Doubly so if they have that awesomely sexy brunette in glasses again.
Mouth
I. Channing Tatum should return in G.I. JOE 2 and he should dance.
II. Comic Con is nerd shit.
III. Roman > Arabic.
July 9th, 2011 at 11:10 am
3. Tatum is returning.
2. It’s from the director of STEP UP 3D and the Bieber movie so I’m sure he’d probably be singing or breakdancing at some point. Maybe even in 3D?!?
1. If counting down is good enough for NASA; then it’s good enough for me.
CJ Holden
July 9th, 2011 at 1:26 pm
Shit man, It’s Saturday night, I’m on Ibiza and got no idea what to do.
1) My feet hurt like shit from the stupid sandals that I have to wear for the TV show that I’m shooting
2) I don’t have enough money to go to a club (Because they are REALLY overpriced!)
3) I’m aparrently the only one in my crew who appreciates electronic dance music anyway, so I would have to go alone
4) Tonight no DJ who I care for seems to play anyway (If I have to pay 70 bucks to get into a club, I don’t wanna listen to any DJ. It must be a great one. Last night three of my favourites played in the same club, but I couldn’t attend because of my working schedule. That sucks, man.)
5) At least I gotta admit that sitting on a balcony at night, right next to the beach, is pretty awesome.
neal2zod
July 10th, 2011 at 4:12 pm
Great, now I’m going to have to see Heavyweights because of you guys. Considering how much I love Good Burger, it’s kind of weird I haven’t seen it already.
And in other news I just saw “Balance of Power” on Netflix Instant. Otherwise known as the movie featuring the youtube clip of Billy Blanks trapped in the sauna, going “No! No! No!” over and over again. It was ok – some decent fights, some clumsy ones, a few good training montages. It seems made for kids but then there’s some really over-the-top gore. As much as I like Blanks, he’s not a very natural actor and I’m glad he found his true calling as an instructor. He’s an excellent and charismatic teacher in his videos. I feel like Seagal should actually take a page from his book since his heart hasn’t really been in a performance since Into the Sun if you ask me.
July 10th, 2011 at 4:36 pm
Wait, Good Burger is good too? Man, that was playing when I worked at a movie theater in college and I took a bunch of posters to put up in my college apartment as a joke. Never actually saw it though.
July 10th, 2011 at 5:12 pm
being a big Nickelodeon kid I saw Good Burger in theaters
I remember almost nothing at all about it, it’s maybe not a terrible movie (although the Nostalgia Critic disagrees), but it’s certainly very forgettable, still it warms my heart to think that Keenan and Kel once stared in a movie
Heavyweights is worth watching but keep in mind that Ben Stiller is by far the best thing about it, the rest is a pretty average mid 90’s kids movie
it’s nice though to see a movie where fat kids are the heroes instead of the butt of jokes, it’s also nice to see a movie that makes fun of exercise nuts as the annoying egomaniacs they are
neal2zod
July 10th, 2011 at 8:51 pm
Fred – Good Burger is seriously in my top 5 favorite movies. I know people joke alot about a “Criterion Collection Edition of Good Burger” but I would buy that shit up in a second. (And yes, I actually bought a double-sided poster of it, probably just like the ones you have!) It has a real sweetness and innocence to it, but it’s also freaking hilarious. It definitely owes more than a bit to “The Jerk” but I actually think it’s funnier and more quotable. Plus this might have been the first interracial romance in a kids’ movie. That’s pretty darn progressive if you ask me. (I always tell my hipster friends that this movie was the best thing Linda Cardellini was ever involved in, and watch them get enraged). And you know this movie is good because it played at the $1.50 theatre here for like SIX MONTHS, which is always a sign of a crowdpleaser around these parts.
On another note, it’s kind of weird that Kenan went on to be in a lot of stuff like Heavyweights and eventually on SNL, because he’s the straight man and doesn’t really get any of the funny lines in the movie. The fact that Kel gives a balls-out, all-in, 100% committed tour de force, that seriously ranks with the best comedic performances of all time, but didn’t get many roles after, boggles my mind. And yes, I know how stupid I sound right now and every ounce of credibility I just had was lost, but hey, the fact I can say stuff like this here is why I love this site.
Griff
hey it’s ok neal2zod, I can totally get behind love for Keenan and Kel
it’s too bad Kel never had a post Nick career
July 10th, 2011 at 9:14 pm
Neal2Zod, I am sold. Always glad to hear a kids movie strove for excellence. I was so quick to dismiss it too. See how the universe leads me to this forum 15 years later to find out I need to give Good Burger a chance?
I’ve seen Heavyweights. Taped it as a kid and was so surprised how good it was it went into my rotation of movies I watched over and over.
ThomasCrown442
July 10th, 2011 at 9:30 pm
You gotta love a kids movie that has the balls to put Robert Wuhl, Abe Vigoda, Shaq, and Carmen Electra in it for no good reason. Good Burger is one of those movies I can’t say is a legitimately good movie but I’ve seen it a bunch of times. I’ve got the Immature song from the soundtrack on my computer somewhere.
hamslime
Heavyweights is pretty damned funny. My brothers and I quote it quite often.
“Who’s going to own up to this treasure trove? Oh look! A deli meat.”
I also say, “Do it to it Lars,” at least once a day in normal conversation.
Then of course there’s this scene… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPTRHgLKaBk
Griff
Kudos to WWE for doing this whole story and letting Punk bring up all the things they’d otherwise not really like to acknowledge.
Mouth
Sublime has a new album? Didn’t dude die like 17 years ago? Well, wherever this music came from, it’s not bad at all.
I’m still not sick of the R. Kelly section of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Notz8C_NxYw
Air Force guys here seem to be with me on this, but my Army colleagues are resistant to its charms. So, that proves yet again that Air Force is the class of the armed services, while the Army is mostly a bunch of tasteless troglodytes.
July 12th, 2011 at 7:13 pm
holy shit, a The Shadow pinball machine? awesome
whatever happened to pinball machines based on movies anyway? last one I remember seeing was the American Godzilla
July 13th, 2011 at 4:02 pm
Yeah, my last real haircut was in 1998. Right now it would go down to my feet, but I decided one or two years ago to keep it at ass-length, because when it was already reaching my knees I had trouble with turning around in bed at night.
I got good and very thick hair, so I can wear it that long. It’s also a great conversation starter, because I get compliments from strangers almost once a week. Of course there are still lots of people who hate this hairstyle and I got no idea why nobody would care if I would shave my head or dye my hair pink, but long hair is such an issue, but whatever. The Dude abides.
One day, when I’m sick of wearing it that way, I will sell it to a wigmaker and try to go bald for a while. Although since I know that I always looked better with long(er) hair, I might let it grow back to shoulder length.
Grim Grinning Chris
July 13th, 2011 at 4:32 pm
The Phantom Menace pinball was standing right next to the Shadow one (you can see a part of it on the photo), but I found the Shadow one cooler. Just because it blew my mind that I saw a pinball machine of a nearly forgotten Box Office bomb from 17 years ago in Ibiza.
July 13th, 2011 at 4:35 pm
I personally can’t stand long hair, I just find it too uncomfortable, so I cut it pretty short, it’s not a really a style thing
plus my gets greasy so quickly that I would be a walking BP oil spill after just two days
Casey
July 13th, 2011 at 7:24 pm
I really liked the Star Trek TNG pinball game. Captain Picard’s soothing voice made losing balls a lot more bearable.
As for hair, I get the ridiculous redheaded Jewfro action going. A few years ago I had 14″ curls exploding out of my head like I was some long forgotten member of the Globetrotters. As a joke I would sometimes carry my cell phone in my hair and pull it out when I got a call.
Dude, visit my Facebook page. I’m playing a Last Action Hero pinball. The Addams Family and Hook pinballs were actually good games too.
Griff
so guys I just watched the Tintin trailer in 1080p
and wow, I was blown away, I thought it looked great
Vern
July 15th, 2011 at 12:26 pm
I watched MACHETE again yesterday, and I learned something I didn’t know through the power of the pause button. Did you guys notice that when they show his file it lists Navajas and Cuchillo as known aliases? This means that the knife thrower in DESPERADO and his character in PREDATORS are both actually Machete. So we know how Machete dies. Two different times.
Also his birth name is “Machete Cortez.”
So…he IS the Machete from Spy Kids?
Mouth
July 15th, 2011 at 1:09 pm
Rodriguez will surely address this alternate universe quandary in MACHETE KILLS and MACHETE KILLS AGAIN, which I guess will be the 4th & 5th in a series. He’s not one to ignore scientific realism & believability just for the sake of adding extra jokes.
Now, if we get a movie that somehow features Lindsay Lohan, Machete, Seagal, *and* Predators, then I’ll take back every less-than-effusive thing I ever said about Rodriguez.
Stu
July 15th, 2011 at 2:05 pm
I think the fact Cheech has played like half the characters in Rodriguez’s movies(and a lot of them have died) is a bigger quandry. And what about Earl McGraw? He somehow survived the end of the world due to a mutative virus outbreak, only for things to go back to normal, to allow him to transfer from being a sheriff to a Texas Ranger and get killed by Richie Gecko.
That’s another thing, Earl McGraw’s son (son #1 from Kill Bill) is in a deleted scene, having sex with Jessica Alba’s character’s slutty cough syrup addicted twin sister (long story).
Jareth Cutestory
July 15th, 2011 at 11:30 pm
I searched the phrase “cough syrup addiction” and learned that one of the side-effects (presumably unwanted) is lesions on the brain, which “normally ends in epilepsy or permanent psychosis.” Apparently, out of the ten most common drugs being abused by those in 12th grade in the US, at least seven are cough medicines obtained either over the counter or by prescription. In order to obtain a euphoric hallucination, the kids typically take 50 times the recommended dose. They call it robo-tripping. And all this time I thought it was just something SOUTH PARK made up.
Also, the coolest pinball machine I ever saw was a SOUTH PARK machine. When the machine wasn’t being used, Cartman’s voice would periodically urge customers to play by saying, “Awe c’mon, even Kenny can afford 25 cents.” I never got tired of that.
Stu
July 16th, 2011 at 1:18 pm
New Topic: name movies which are primarily NOT action/thrillers, especially comedies, but for some reason have a subplot or couple of scenes that clash tonally by being more of the action/thriller genre. An example would be TWINS, which is a comedy about disparate long lost brothers meeting up, bonding, going on a road trip…but has a subplot about a stolen prototype engine, the original thief of which has been killing people who’ve seen his face and is out to track the new thief one of the twins. Or the STAKEOUT movies, which is weird because they’re actually copy buddy action comedies but are 90% Dreyfuss and Estevez spying on people, making jokes and messing with each other, but have a psycho villain show up at the end and appearing in a couple of scenes throughout doing psycho stuff. I’ve got a feeling there’s more, but I’m struggling to remember specifics.
Mouth
July 16th, 2011 at 2:03 pm
It’s not a perfect answer to your question, Stu, but I’ll give it a bash:
El secreto de sus ojos is primarily a crime-mystery movie, but it’s shot like a low-key drama/period piece with a serious focus on a love story, and out of nowhere in the middle of the movie we get this glorious scene,
July 16th, 2011 at 2:21 pm
Stu: I would also say BIG MOMMA’S HOUSE (yes, I once watched that one.), which is of course a comedy about Martin Lawrence in a fat suit, but has a seriously evil villain, who even drowns a friend of his ex-wife (or something like that) in one scene in an aquarium.
Stu
July 16th, 2011 at 2:43 pm
Mouth: Wow, that’s really impressive.
KINDERGARTEN COP too, it’s mostly fish out of water “IT’S NOT A TUMOR!” hijinks, but I remember the guy Arnold’s after being a real nasty piece of work who sets the school on fire to kidnap his kid and it leads to a hostage situation and Arnold shooting the guy dead in front of his son.
Casey
July 16th, 2011 at 2:47 pm
I remember being a kid and thinking the villain in Kindergarten Cop being a lot more evil and badass than the villain in Commando.
Mr Stu, I’m not sure if this is what you were thinking of but I watched Invictus again the other day. First, I’d like to say that movie was better on the second view and I think is a really strong movie that probably isn’t as well appreciated as it should be. Or maybe I’m really vulnerable to schmaltz.
Either way, the scene with the pilot and the 747 was played very dramatically and really ominously. I know a big part of the movie was Mandela’s personal guards and their story and looking out for threats but I don’t remember any other scene that really played up the treat as dramatically as that.
Casey
July 16th, 2011 at 2:58 pm
Also, since this is the miscellaneous type thread I thought I would talk about Agora.
I played basketball for a few hours today, I really need to work on my layups but I’m a monster on the three point line, and I’m at home eating some grapes and saw that Agora was on so I’m now watching it.
It’s pretty good! Seeing all the fights between pagans and Christians and Jews and Christians is really interesting. The story of Alexandria becoming Christian as the backdrop for Rachel Weisz doing science is really interesting. The preview for it looked boring, we almost saw it at the theatre but backed out because it didn’t look that good, but the actual movie is more bloody and compelling than I had thought it would be.
But, yeah, it’s a pretty good movie! A lot better than I expected and one that probably didn’t get on many radars.
Side question: Rachel Weisz, being the most attractive woman in movies today, has had a lot of roles. Which role or character was her most attractive? I have to go with her character in The Constant Gardner. I also think that’s one of the most underrated movies of the last decade and she’s great in it.
Stu
July 16th, 2011 at 3:07 pm
SHORT CIRCUIT 2 probably encapsulates what I mean the most. I mean, it’s a family/kids comedy about an intelligent robot learning to be more human, right? Some bad men try and exploit him to steal some jewels, too, but it’s not going to get THAT heavy, is it?
Holy shit, that’s actually pretty harrowing! That’s the family robot movie equivalent of the Murphy’s death scene from ROBOCOP!
Mouth
I agree. (The first three seasons were already shown here.) That’s why I’m so jealous.
Casey
July 17th, 2011 at 10:15 am
I’m interested to see if Jesse killed Gale. I think he did, but it’s not 100% certain.
In one of the previews for the new season there’s a quick bit that looks like SPOILER Walt pulls a gun on Gus and shoots him.
this season really has the potential to make Walt into a pure villain. Like, he’s been doing bad stuff but he always had a reason for it and a conscience but I think he’s just embracing his being a bad guy.
July 17th, 2011 at 10:58 am
I think Vince Gilligan spend the whole last year with telling everybody that the S3 ending wasn’t meant to be ambigous and Jesse definitely killed him. Unfortunately the camera movement before the shot makes it look like he moved the gun.
Casey
I had read that as well so I had thought it was a definite thing.
I read this recently, however:
http://www.newsweek.com/2011/06/26/breaking-bad-the-finest-hour-on-television.html
“But viewers found it so hard to believe that Paul’s sensitive, soulful character could commit cold-blooded murder—debates raged in fan forums—that Gilligan reconsidered, opening the season-four writers’ room “with a long and spirited discussion of whether we should actually have Aaron go through with it.” Paul’s performance was that powerful.”
Don’t get me wrong, I think Jesse did it. Moreso, I think it would go against the spirit of the show if he didn’t.
Even if he didn’t kill Gale I have a lot of faith in the show that they will do it in an interesting and compelling way.
Jareth Cutestory
July 17th, 2011 at 12:50 pm
Casey: There’s a recent interview with Bryan Cranston up on the AV Club where he confirms CJ’s point that Jesse’s gunshot wasn’t meant to be ambiguous.
Cranston also talks about a cool sounding project that he did with Soderbergh that is coming out in the Autumn.
And somewhere in the comments section to the article, a bunch of rapscallions propose that BREAKING BAD is a sequel to MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE, with Gus being a greatly rehabilitated Stevie. No idea how Dewey fits in.
Casey
July 17th, 2011 at 2:02 pm
I totally understand that was the original intent, Jareth, but from the piece in Newsweek I linked to (which is pretty new) it mentions that they at least rethought the possibility of whether or not Jesse followed through.
For what it’s worth, I thought the way they shot the scene and it played out made me think Jesse shot him and I never even thought of the possibility that he didn’t until I read people mention it online.
I think he did. I’d bet money that he did. I just don’t KNOW for sure that he did.
Casey
http://www.avclub.com/articles/baltimore-the-wire-locations-part-one,57344/
Look, I love The Wire. I think it portrays so much about America that is never addressed. I think it is Important Television and is meaningful. I have been pretty outspoken about my politics and a lot of my politics are defined by things like The Wire. Granted, The Wire feels, in a lot of ways, like my experiences in rural Maine and rural Kentucky minus the elements dealing with race. I think poverty, and its symptoms, have become so entrenched in so many parts of our nation that it is really sickening.
Still, when I see something like the above it just pisses me off. People who basically go to Baltimore to see how real urban poverty is because of a fucking television show disgust me. This dude doesn’t actually care about these people or the institutional racism and poverty that is all pervasive. He’s just some hipster douchebag who thought Omar was cool and wants to be a fucking tourist so he can say he understands these people.
This just felt so ugly and exploitative to me. The comments are even worse.
Mouth
July 17th, 2011 at 2:42 pm
Casey, that AVClub pop pilgrim series started with a visit to the Nakatomi building, which seemed nice to #1 DIE HARD fan Mouth (Yes, it’s been my #1 movie since years before I knew Vern existed.), except really it was a car commercial and they didn’t even go to the damn building. They had a random DIE HARD fan, some bearded guy who actually was pretty cool & knowledgeable, come and talk about the setting of DIE HARD for a few minutes, but they never got closer than a quarter mile from bloody stain of Hans Gruber.
Wack shit.
July 17th, 2011 at 3:08 pm
Man, that’s almost more upsetting.
I’m not sure which is worse: A car commercial exploiting Die Hard by proxy and teases the viewer about a building or a car commercial that features two white guys talking about film locations about a show dealing with racism and poverty.
This is seriously why I really dislike bourgeois nerds and most liberals. The only way to get them interested in the plights of those they would rather ignore is to do so with a captivating story and when that does happen they manage to like it despite the fact that it deals with serious issues and ignore the actual subtext because Omar Little is really cool.
anthony4545
I kinda give most Wire fans the benefit of a doubt when it comes to reading subtext, due to the polarizing structure of the show. I wasn’t aware that Omar had become the new Wolverine (funnybook version).
ThomasCrown442
I thought Rachel Weisz was sexy as hell in Confidence.
Jareth Cutestory
July 17th, 2011 at 5:10 pm
Casey: The AV Club’s visit to Treme was problematic for many of the reasons you cite.
Regarding BREAKING BAD: it seems pretty clear that they’re setting up a fascinating battle of wits between Gus and Walter White on the show. I’m not sure keeping Gale around is an option.
Casey
I actually think Walt will dispatch Gus sooner than later and the focus of the show will become between Jesse and Walt falling out and becoming enemies.
That’s just my theory, though.
Most fans of the Wire I’ve met have been pretty decent people. I knew a staunch libertarian who was a fan of The Wire and I would regularly bring up how ridiculous that was. I mean, that amount of cognitive dissonance has to really hurt.
But, yeah, I visit Baltimore once or twice a month. I have friends there. I live in DC and I see a lot of similar neighborhoods here, but no one visits them because it was never the focus of a television show.
Caoimhín
July 17th, 2011 at 6:11 pm
Good looking out, Caoimhín.
Casey, I posted something in response to your WIRE musings on the BADASS RUNDOWN thread, but the comment is “awaiting moderation,” probably cuz there’s 3 links that taste like spambot to the security of this site, or because I switched my modem/router settings too many times lately at the office, or because our host finally has had enough of me.
Also, I wanted to ask Mr. Majestyk or any New York Cityers about this: http://www.biggayicecreamtruck.com/
Is this, like, performance art? A real thing? A commercial rainbow facade on a vehicle meant to inculcate NYC’s children with the Gay, as the Bachmann family & the Mormon Elders warned us would happen when liberals have too much power?
I’ll be in Manhattan next month for Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark, a Yankees game, and assorted debaucheries, and I’m curious if this “big gay ice cream truck” holds any celebrity status up there. I think it’d be a fun diversion for the woman & me to seek it out for a cone & a photo.
Casey
I look forward to it, Mr Mouth!
anthony4545
July 17th, 2011 at 9:30 pm
Rob Zombie directed a detergent commercial. I find it quite entertaining.
If the link doesn’t work, just google RZ Woolite commercial. I’m about to pass out and shouldn’t be trying to link anything.
July 18th, 2011 at 7:34 am
Also, Mouth, I had never thought that one cop looked like Boyka but he totally does! I don’t know how I could be such a big fan of Scott Adkins and one who really appreciates the Wire and totally miss it.
Still, Vern should watch it. I think Breaking Bad might be more his speed, and I don’t mean that in a bad way at all. Many “fans” of The Wire, such as myself, can be totally obnoxious about it and I could see why someone would reject that. I don’t think the fans of Breaking Bad have gotten to that point, though, so Vern should give it a try before Breaking Bad fans become insufferable.
Also, I was thinking of Breaking Bad and comparing it to The Shield and I think there’s a lot to talk about in how they each handle ethics differently. I think the shows contrast a deontological ethical framework with a teleological framework and I think that’s quite exciting.
In Breaking Bad the actions of the protagonist are wrong no matter the reasons and the expected consequences from it. Time and again Breaking Bad shows us instances where Walt is able to rationalize his actions to himself but then it shows how those bad actions have really awful consequences on everyone else.
The Shield seems to excuse a lot of the vile and wicked deeds of its characters and I really get the impression that if the characters acted more logically or didn’t go too far that they could have gotten away with their evil actions without too many negative consequences for the rest of the world.
July 18th, 2011 at 9:10 am
I’ve heard of this Big Gay Ice Cream Truck but have yet to see it in my travels. But let me know when you’re going to be in The City (Capital T, capital C–no exceptions) and we’ll get a drink or six. With your training I’m sure we’ll be able to find a way to exchange contact info in a secure fashion.
My codename will be Watermelon Man. Yours will be La Bouche.
Mouth
July 18th, 2011 at 11:15 am
Outstanding, Mr. Majestyk. The dates are not yet set, as I may soon have to do another quickie 2-3 week overseas foray to take care of some business, in which case I’ll be checking in at DC for an indefinite interval before hitting The City. For some reason, senior officers tend to want *me* to accommodate *their* schedules.
For Watermelon Man’s Eyes Only: When you see a chopper deposit a man down a rope ladder onto the top of the Empire State Building, plan to meet La Bouche’s contact exactly 2 hours later at The Plaza’s Oak Bar. At a table overlooking Central Park, a woman will be reading Robert Kaplan’s MONSOON on a Kindle. Order a dirty martini from the bartender with 6 fingers on his left hand and pass a napkin note to the woman with the message “That gum you like is going to come back in style.” Then turn off your cell phone and follow instructions. Come alone. Or bring a friend, whatever. We’ll be in touch.
July 18th, 2011 at 11:19 am
I just found out that THE SEARCH FOR ONE-EYE JIMMY, one of my favourite movies from my favourite period in my life, is been out on DVD in the UK for a while. Why did nobody ever tell me about this?
I should also try to look for my old VHS TV recording and try to burn this on DVD, just to have the German language track of it too.
Jareth Cutestory
It’ll take you two WHOLE hours, Mouth? You ARE turning into later-day Val Kilmer.
*Jareth leaves desk to investigate strange whooshing noise, succumbs to Mouth’s garrote*
Mouth
July 18th, 2011 at 2:23 pm
Jareth, first thing I always try to do when I drop into The City is I visit my brethren at a NYPD mounted police precinct/stable. That takes at least an hour. You know they have some mighty fine equines working the beat at Central Park. Mighty fine.
There’s just something about a filly in uniform, isn’t there?
Mouth
July 18th, 2011 at 3:26 pm
I watched THE LINCOLN LAWYER, and I thought of Paul’s review from 4 months ago, which led to a mini-thread in which I told that crazy focker that I hate him and later that I love him. http://outlawvern.com/2010/12/10/potpourri-2-miscellaneous/#comment-479430
Man, is he ever wrong about the soundtrack. It’s awesome. The only problem is, there should have been more of it, more Marvin & Erick Sermon & Rakim & Bland & Gangstarr etc., in the mostly musicless middle portion of the movie.
But I agree with Paul that the movie is very effective though not perfect. I enjoyed it immensely, but it’s hard to write any kind of review without spoiling the story. Too bad Ryan Phillippe never went mega like he could have in his role here.
Casey
How does it compare to Juggernaut?
Jareth Cutestory
July 18th, 2011 at 8:18 pm
Casey: It’s the JUGGERNAUT, bitch, how do you think it compares?
Mouth: I have fond memories of the horses in Central Park. One of them bummed a smoke from me and showed me her tattoo. I think you keep good company. Much better than that Enumclaw crowd.
Broddie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apMXFloDH6M
Reminds me how refreshing it is that we’re finally going to get an actual physical threat for Batman in modern film. It only took 7 movies to get there. Can’t wait to see new Mad Max intimidate the shit out of Bale throughout the damn movie. Sucks that they didn’t give him his trademarked Bane luchador mask though; looks a lot better than that Frank Booth on steroids look they went for.
Griff
July 19th, 2011 at 3:30 am
oh God, that gave me wood
and Mouth, I can only imagine what you would think of me if you met me in person, maybe you could help me get laid
July 19th, 2011 at 3:45 am
Apparently there is also a new Beastie Boys video out, which was directed by Spike Jonze and is about the Boys slaughtering Yeti’s for 12 minutes.
I can’t watch it, because of the stupid Country restriction on YouTube, so I have to wait till it shows up somewhere else.
Casey
It’s probably my least favorite song on their new album but the remix is pretty good and the video made me laugh.
I kept expecting the bad guy to be revealed to be Mix Master Mike.
July 19th, 2011 at 6:32 am
Yeah, unfortunately I still can’t watch it (YouTube and GEMA are in a silly war and block all music videos in Germany.) But by now I know that it is not about slaughtering Yetis, so I apologize for what I said before.
July 19th, 2011 at 7:40 am
So I finally saw Deathly Hallows Pt 2 last night. Absolutely loved it. I would have changed about 15 seconds of it (which I’ll discuss if anyone else has seen it and cares), but aside from that, it had about everything I would want in a finale to this series. Easily the best of Yates’ run as director. Probably in a tie for second place (after Azkaban) with Goblet Of Fire for second best of the series.
Casey
July 19th, 2011 at 7:43 am
I’m hoping to see it tomorrow during lunch, Chris.
I never understood the love for Azkaban. It’s OK but it doesn’t stick out for me. Goblet of Fire is great, though, and it has so many little touches that just work for me.
I’m looking forward to Pt 2, though, even if Pt 1 felt like it was spinning its wheels and spent a ton of time on the whole, “I must do this alone!”, “but we’re your friends!”, “But I must do this alone!”, “Seriously, bro, we’re your friends. Shut up!”, “OK G-D WHATEVER!”
July 19th, 2011 at 8:08 am
Pt 1 was rather tedious a lot of the time. It still had several scenes and character moments that I thought were spot on, but yeah…
Azkaban has an overly rushed Shrieking Shack scene/confrontation- but that is my I only gripe with it. I think the mood (and even richer production design), the huge leap in the acting of the leads and the clever ways that the time travel is handled are what really elevate it for me. Also it was the first to feel like the whole affair was part of a larger story, where SS and COS (and this is the fault of the books as well) just feel like “bad guy of the week” Scooby Doo adventures (even if it happens to be the same bad guy, albeit in 2 different incarnation).
I still think COS is the best in terms of fully adapting its source material AND probably has the consistently best effects of the whole series (the giant spiders and the Basilisk were both fantastic), it is probably the weakest of all the stories.
RRA
July 19th, 2011 at 11:04 am
Hey Mr. S and whoever else is interested, as requested I finally got back on the horse…I mean, in the saddle…I mean, up in an equine vagina, which is a metaphor for writing a new movie review, in my opinion. Click my name for the finest or at the very least the longest BRAIN SMASHER: A LOVE STORY review you’ll ever read for free.
July 19th, 2011 at 11:12 am
And while we are at plugging our own stuff, I finally wrote down what I did on Ibiza, including some photos (with one of the most pornographic looking tree ever) and a 10 minute long video, that has 2 up to 5 minutes long driving montages.
So if you wanna know what can happen if your left ball fights a thong, click on my name.
July 19th, 2011 at 1:07 pm
I wasn’t actually crazy about DEATHLY HALLOWS 2 — something about it just didn’t connect on an emotional level for me. Some of my favorite parts of the book are present but somehow don’t seem to have quite the weight they should. Weirdly, the part I liked best is my least favorite part of the book — the pointless epilogue 19 years later. In the book it comes across as an excuse to tell us that everyone married their high school sweetheart and pumped out a few kids, pretty lame and unnecessary. In the movie, the visual parallels with the first film are much more pronounced and the epilogue becomes more about a continuation of the tradition than a glimpse into Harry’s middle age. But weirdly I liked part 1 quite a bit, I’m kinda a sucker for that existential angst when they’re camping, completely unsure what the fuck they should do. The film nails that part.
I still think his romance with Ginny has to be one of the most forced and unnecessary (and also kinda creepy) fictional romances of all time.
July 19th, 2011 at 1:19 pm
I think the romance with Ginny works perfectly in the books and was something I rooted for (I will admit to actually throwing my book up in the air and making some sort of Harry Knowles-ish sound of glee at their first kiss), but in the movies admittedly they have no real chemistry, which is a shame- both are, I think, perfect for their respective parts as individuals- just not perfect together/ as a couple.
What were the parts that left you wanting, Mr. Subtlety?
I also 100% agree on the epilogue.
Vern
July 19th, 2011 at 1:27 pm
I’ve only watched the Harry Potters once each when they come out, but I think the reason why part 3 is so highly regarded is because it was such a change from the previous 2 which seemed like they must’ve been pretty literal scene by scene re-enactments of the book, but the third one gave a more interesting impression of a world, lots of things going on in the background, more of a texture to it. Plus Sr. Cuaron put more of the real world into it, combining the magical wizardy world with, like, modern clothing and stuff. And the special effects were a huge leap from the Mummy Returns esque centaurs to much more believable and interesting monsters. The rest of the movies have followed in Cuaron’s style and mostly done a good job, but he gets crediting for starting it in that direction.
SPOILER FOR THE NEW ONE – I did think the epilogue was pretty ridiculous and sad. Couldn’t one of these kids leave home and meet new people at some point? I guess that’s just how wizardland is. Everybody that works at the school grew up together also. Fuckin wizards need to get out more. If I was Harry I would’ve went back and tried to find that beautiful black girl that hit on him in the diner in whichever previous movie that was.
July 19th, 2011 at 1:38 pm
Vern,
I agree that the effects in POA were a huge leap from those in Sorcerer’s Stone, but not from Chamber Of Secrets.
The real leap in effects was between Sorcerer’s Stone and Chamber. Again, the Basilisk and the giant spiders were all (to me) Jurassic Park-level killer integrations of animatronics and flawless CGI.
Quidditch looked 100x better and the flying Ford Anglia was pulled off really really well.
The Hippogriff in POA was totally photoreal. Just perfect. As were the Dementors. But the werewolf was a total step back to Sorcerer’s Stone-level cartooniness (though I did like the basic design).
I agree with everything else you said about Azkaban though.
July 19th, 2011 at 2:01 pm
Vern — totally agree on both counts. I actually think Cuaron’s narrative and pacing droops a little at the end and Oldman has one of the most cliche-ridden speeches of the whole series at the end. But the world is just so damn rich and mysterious and downright magical that you go for it anyway. The subsequent movies kept his tone, to great effect, but only Cuaron really had the imagination to grow the world and fill it with truly unexpected things. And his spider-legged werewolf is awesome. I could hardly be more excited about GRAVITY. Somehow Robert Downey Jr. quit that project to go work with the guy who directed NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM. What the fuck was he thinking.
Although the end still has a note of “yaaay everyone got married!!!” to it I do think it works better than in the book (Vern, I hope I’m not making unwarrented assumptions about you when I guess you probably did not read the novels). I do like the idea of showing us that another generation is off to Hogwarts, even if its a little pat to show everyone still happily married to the people they met at age 10. For the record, I always wanted Harry to end up with Luna. Her spacy wisdom goes nicely with his down-to-earth pragmatism, and you just know she’s a freak in the bedroom.
And that’s how I lost all remaining vestiges of street cred. True story.
July 19th, 2011 at 2:27 pm
Mr. Subtlety… still curious which parts of DH2 fell flat for you.
To go back to my wanting to change 15 seconds of the movie, I will start with 10 of those seconds
***spoilers***
I think there needed to be about 10 seconds (that honestly would have been enough) of showing Ginny holding off Bellatrix to ratchet up the tension before Molly steps in and says and does her thing.
As it stands it just jumps right to it, without a build. Granted, I am glad it is there (there may have been riots in theaters if it wasn’t) and it still got a cheer… I just think it needed to be led up to more, even by just a moment.
RRA
July 19th, 2011 at 5:49 pm
CJ Holden – Why do people not dig “Don’t Play No Game”? A wonderful, nice little reggae outing. But whatever.
I want those Beastie Boys action figures, but unlike most nerds I don’t want them standing in the corner collecting dust. I want to play with them in my all-new adventure: “Mystery of the Missing Wine Cooler.” Co-starring Captain Sunshine and Wonder Boy #4.
Vern – so the moviemakers should’ve made the epilogue like the WONDER YEARS or something?
(Mr. S, make room for me on the Lost Street Cred park bench.)
July 19th, 2011 at 5:52 pm
***SPOILER***
I wish they would have shown Luna and Neville in the epilogue. I know they are only mentioned in dialogue in the book, but if they could not comfortably fit them into the dialogue, it would have been nice to see them in the background. Theirs was the only “relationship” that wasn’t resolved onscreen.
Jareth Cutestory
CJ Holden: Are you telling us that you’re making your own BROWN BUNNY five minutes at a time?
Casey
July 19th, 2011 at 7:10 pm
Wait, Ginny and Harry get married? Man, thanks for spoiling the movie for me.
I read the books up until the one after Goblet of Fire where there were like hundreds of pages of Harry being sad and shit because that one kid died. I just couldn’t get through it. I think it worked out for the best, though, as a lot of my friends didn’t like the last few movies because they kept nitpicking them against the books and I was better able to appreciate the movies as movies and not as adaptations.
RRA
July 19th, 2011 at 9:22 pm
As someone who never read those books…why do moviemakers assume that I did? Fuck that shit.
Vern – I think that shit was done because after 7 books, people woulda been pissed if indeed a WONDER YEARS ending was pulled on them, denying them that closure they wanted, specifically closure in the goddamn “shipping.”
Vern
July 20th, 2011 at 12:28 am
Jareth: Call me old fashioned, but when I hear or say “minute long driving montage”, I think of HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD.
And yeah, everybody I talked to liked “that one with Santigold” the least on HOT SAUCE COMMITEE. I think it’s because while it is not really a bad song, it is pretty unspectacular and just goes by without any climax or really memorable parts.
dna
July 20th, 2011 at 2:27 am
Yay, pottermania on outlawvern.com!
I caught it yesterday and I thought it was okay. I`m not sure why everybody thinks that Yates is a great director; I don`t think that anybody gave a great performance except Helena Bonham Carter and the spectacle doesn`t feel very spectacular in his hands. But my biggest problem with the movie was that it was all pay-off, with very little set-up or room for actual suspense. With way to much gloom on top.
But, a lot of scenes did give me the chills. I haven`t read any of the books, but I thought that the twists and revelations were brilliant. And I really like a lot of the characters and were excited about their faith, which is properbly why I was dissapointed that every character besides Harry and Voldemort were reduced to cameos (especially Luna Lovegood, Hagrid, Draco, Ginny, Ron and Hermonie). But maybe DH2 will be a lot better when watched together with part 1.
SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER
Okay, I`m not sure about how good a director Yates is. He did get some great performances out of the actors in the last 3 movies, and I`m not sure if he is as interested in suspense as he is in mood (GLOOOM!), but I like how he doesn`t make every plotpoint obvious. ..If that`s his intention…
An example; when Voldemort kills Harry in the forest, he sends Dracos mum over to check if he`s dead. And she mumbles; Draco? Is he alive? In the cinema, I was like huh? That`s not Draco, that`s Harry and he`s clearly alive. That doesn`t make sense. And then I researched on the internet and realized that she asks Harry if her son is alive, that Harry nods yes, and then she decides to betray Voldemort. That`s a great little twist (imo), but I`m not sure if it`s badly told in the movie, or Yates have so much faith in his audience, that he underplays it on purpose.
Also, what`s up with the deadly hallows? Does Harry come back from life because of the stone, or does he merely call forth his parents (which has been popping up all over the place in the last 7 movies anyway). And if he only calls forth his parents, what was the point in hiding the stone in the quiddish-ball, since he had already decided to meet his faith? Did Dumbledore expect the parents to convince him to commit suicide? And why does he drop the stone before meeting Voldemort? He has the three hallows that makes you master of death, and he throws the stone away and breaks the elderwan. Why? Voldemort wasn`t even interested in them. Please illuminate me.
But, when all is said and done, I think that the Harry Potter series is an amazing achivement; a great story with great characters. And I love that it leaves a lot of the puzzle to the audiences to figure out. Best gloomy childrens series since Neon Genesis Evangelion.
Griff
July 20th, 2011 at 4:05 am
hey CJ, knowing how big of a Venture Brothers fan you are I thought I’d let you know that the guy that voices Rusty Venture is in the Fallout New Vegas DLC Old World Blues
I have not checked imdb or anything to confirm this, but it sounds just like him, so I’m willing to bet
Griff
dna – Neon Genesis Evangelion is a children’s series?
dna
July 20th, 2011 at 4:27 am
– griff
Well, I think it it starts out as a childrens series, before it goes bonkers. The maincharacters are 12-13 years old, aren`t they? I know there is a lot of sexual humour in the beginning as well, but I think that is normal in Japan. It slowly turns into something else around episode 15, but I wouldn`t show the last couple of Harry Potter movies to children either.
I didn`t mean any offence to Neon Genesis Evangelion by calling it a children series, I think it`s one of the most brilliant psychodramas / sci-fi stories ever told, and have watched it several times.
Griff
I didn’t take offense, I just could imagine a kid wrapping their head around the mindfuck the show later becomes, but yeah I can kinda see what you mean about the early episodes
“congratulations Shinji!”
this is now making me wonder how crazy it would have been if they had really made a live action movie of NGE as was planned (one that might have had Robin Williams in it of all people)
Griff
July 20th, 2011 at 12:38 pm
dna:
I thought it was pretty clear what Narcissa Malfoy did in the movie. So did the folks I was with that hadn’t read the books as we had a lengthy discussion afterwards of anything they did or didn’t understand or follow.
And by that point all of the Malfoys had given up on Voldemort and the Death Eaters and were only interested in the survival of their family/each other which is why they beat feet before the final battle. If Draco had been dead at that point, her and Lucius may have just totally given up/given in and followed Voldemort to their deaths but I think that (cowardice aside) their love for their son outweighed their allegiance to the Death Eaters and they were happy to defect quietly. It was obvious over the last several movies (and of course the books) that they were becoming increasingly beaten down by Voldemort and finally starting to question whether they were on the right side or not.
As for the Resurrection Stone… it wasn’t that Dumbledore wanted the spirit of his dead family to convince him to do what he needed to do (aka march to his own death), because he knew Harry’s mind and heart and knew Harry would do it anyway… he just knew that having the spirits of so many that he loved around him would give him more strength to do so and make the journey less painful.
In regards to Harry coming back to life after the being “killed” that had little to do with the Deathly Hallows. The kids search for those had more to do with keeping them away from Voldemort than having them for themselves. His body and soul were further protected from Voldemort because it was Harry’s own blood that was used bring Voldemort back to full physical being (back in Goblet of Fire) forming a second bond beyond the horcrux bond… so in essence the killing curse that Voldemort used on Harry instead of killing him, seperated him from the horcrux portion of Voldemort’s soul that was inside him (which was given a physical manifestation as the bloody, fetal Voldemort in Harry’s afterlife sequence) and in the end that horcrux manifestation of Voldy is what took the fatal brunt of the killing curse.
I’ll agree that this is a little muddy in the film, as far as the details of it, but everyone I was with still seemed to pretty much just go with it.
July 20th, 2011 at 1:30 pm
POTTER SPOILERS AHOY
Grim Grinning Chris — After so much setup, I found the payoff of a few major events in the film to be a bit wanting. As you yourself point out above, the death of Bellatrix could hardly be handled more offhandedly, even though she’s set up by that point as almost more hateful than Voldemort himself. The movie doesn’t even make it personal between her and Ms. Weasly, she just sort of gets killed in a little 15-second aside and no one really notices. I like the fight Harry and Volemort have but considering there were 7 movies leading up to it it’s not particularly spectacular and Volemort never really seems to have to deal with the collapse of his ambitions. He’s pretty much in control right up until the point he dies, so you can’t really savor his defeat (although Fienne’s expression at the end speaks volumes and almost saves it).
Likewise, Snape’s backstory (finally explained) feels ssoooooo rushed and mostly exposition. It’s such a tragic, powerful tale that compressing it into 30 seconds of quick cut exposition dialogue doesn’t really feel like giving it the attention it deserves. And then no one mentions it afterwords! True, Radcliffe’s face says a lot, but narratively the film feels like it brushes it off. I think its the same in the book too but in the film it really feels tossed off, which is a bit lame when telling us something shocking about this guy who’s been an adversary the whole series. He gets to see his mom right afterwords, it feels like he should mention something about it to her, you know? This guy spent his whole life as a miserable misunderstood outcast because of his love for her, that doesn’t at least merit telling her, or, fuck it, someone? Had Harry died in the woods, no one would have ever known that Snape was anything other than a murderous traitor. That shit’s cold, Potter.
Anyway, nothing that ruined the experience for me, just felt like a few payoff beats like those don’t quite deliver the weight they need to after all this time building up to them. And it’s a bit lame that poor Ron and Hermione have nothing at all to do for the last half of the film. Neville gets his moment to shine and that’s all well and good, but it feels a bit like it’s at their expense (narratively, it would have worked better to have Ron or Hermione kill the snake. After all the time we’ve spent with them up til now, it seems weird that they just kind of sit there and get saved by some minor character at the big finale).
I meant my prayers are with the victims families…..
Vern
July 23rd, 2011 at 12:11 pm
This seems inconsequential after the shit in Norway, but I wanted to say it’s too bad about Amy Winehouse dying. I guess I never thought she would clean herself up, but I wish she would’ve. She reminded me of people I try to stay away from, but I dug her singing and her taste in music. She was a unique talent with genuine soul and not this modern daughters of Mariah Carey American Idol bullshit that everybody else is singing these days.
It´s always bad when people die of other than natural circumstances. Her family will be just as griefstruck as the relatives ro the victims in Norway. So it`s not inconsenquential. It´s just tragic.
neal2zod
July 23rd, 2011 at 2:53 pm
Couldn’t figure where else to put this, but I just saw Skyline on Netflix Instant and actually didn’t hate it. In fact, I’ll go on record saying I enjoyed it more than Battle LA (probably due to WAY lowered expectations). Sure Battle LA had better actors and a better concept, but it just seemed perfunctory and lifeless. Considering the destruction and bodycount in that movie, i was bored most of the time, like watching someone else play a not-very-good videogame, complete with boss battles and cut scenes.
As for Skyline, sure, most of the characters are annoying and I’m not quite sure why they’re bickering the whole time. But the movie looks fantastic (except for a few FX shots), and there actually seems to be some real imagination and thought in the alien design, unlike Battle LA’s tin men. Oh and I HATED Battle LA’s ending – a cheap ripoff of both SWAT and The Hurt Locker’s ending. It kinda sickened me that there’s some kid out there who’ll see this movie first and then think other movies ripped it off. I guarantee you, you won’t see Skyline’s ending coming, and it’s kinda awesome.
Anyone have any non-spoiler thoughts on Captain America?
I am going to see it tomorrow, due to a packed work weekend…
hamslime
July 24th, 2011 at 4:20 pm
I saw Captain America Friday. Well, I saw most of it as I kept falling asleep. Needless to say I didn’t really care for it but many people I know that saw it thought it was great so I would guess that most people would dig it. I think I might have to give it another shot once it’s on DVD because I’m obviously missing something. Tommy Lee Johnes was definitely a highlight.
I don’t know what it is about that director’s movies, they always seem to put me to sleep. The Wolfman, Captain America, The Rocketeer, October Sky. I just realized that he did Honey, I Shrunk The Kids. I liked that one as well as Jurassic Park III, so he has a few that didn’t induce narcolepsy, but yeah…I didn’t like Captain America although you might so I say give it a shot.
FYI – If you got shit to do and don’t want to stay after the credits (That seem to go on for fourteen days) I’ll give you a little spoiler to save you some time.
*SPOILER ALERT*
Captain America punches a punching bag.
Nick Fury walks in the room and does his, “We’re assembling a team” buisness.
That’s pretty much that until they play the teaser for the Avengers which was cut quickly in that fade in and out of black style that’s been popular lately.
Eseentially the only thing I remember from the trailer was Tony Stark patting Thor on the back and saying something silly and many people who were still left in the theater chuckled.
Broddie
July 24th, 2011 at 7:08 pm
The audience I saw cap with ate that shit up like candy. I couldn’t even hear anything in the AVENGERS trailer cause these morons were hooting and hollering like Whedon and the cast were actually in the building.
As someone who actually grew up reading comics surprise surpise I was left unsatisfied. I just found the green screen work kinda bad at times same for the effects. The editing was too off kilter to the point that it had too fast a pace (Ie: Rogers provokes an ass kicking at a movie theatre then we’re awkwardly thrown into said ass kicking, howling commando rescue to them being cap’s buddies all within 5 minutes; really).
Red Skull was severely underused and his “plot” was fucking retarded and lame. Characterization was good he’s still a mad coward of a man to contrasts Cap’s logical brave soldier but he was just really underused. Loki is still by far the best villain in these movies. It’s also pretty anticlimatic towards the end and more than once at that with both the Red Skull resolution and the actual ending.
It was a good movie. I’d say technically superior to THOR in certain areas but I found Hemsworth’s Thor much more entertaining as a character to follow. Part of it is probably the fact that I like that character more than Cap in the comics so I guess by proxy even in the movies I find him more entertaining. Still Cap is the most faithful translation of any of them. No noticeable changes from the comics were made to him like with Thor and Iron Man.
He’s milquetoast, altruistic, bold, heroic, jingoistic and corny. EXACTLY like his comic book counterpart. The Chris Evans haters could suck it cause he PLAYED Steve Rogers and there was nothing there to remind you of any of his previous performances. Unlike say Ryan Reynolds as Green Lantern and even RDJ as Tony Stark. He did great and made the movie very watchable.
Dominic Cooper was good as Howard Stark too. THE DEVIL’S DOUBLE is actually the last movie I’ve seen so it was interesting to see the night and day shifts in roles and his range. It’s much better than the boring ass INCREDIBLE HULK and lame IRON MAN 2. I just don’t think it’s as entertaining as THOR and it’s nowhere near as great as the original IRON MAN. That’s still their lightning in a bottle there.
Casey
July 24th, 2011 at 7:21 pm
I actually really liked Captain America.
I know enough about the comics to appreciate the thematic elements of his story (heroic do-gooder who represents the best of America waking up in a time that falls very short of those ideals seems like a really interesting premise) and I thought that the movie delivered on what I thought Captain America was all about.
I thought the action scenes were good, the acting solid, Tommy Lee Jones was hilarious, and it managed to fit in a very believable story that had a lot of character moments. I felt all of the emotional and character resolutions had payoffs.
I don’t know, I really liked it. I would put it up there with Spider Man 2 and Unbreakable in terms of being one of my favorite super hero movies.
I’m not a comic book guy. I read Ghost Rider as a kid (the dude had a flaming skull and rode a motorcycle!) and I read The Walking Dead and Invincible now but that’s about it. If I was a comic book fan, though, I would be flipping out since we got a Thor movie with Asgard, a WW2 Captain America movie, an Avengers movie, a Green Lantern movie with the space stuff, “serious” Batguy movies, and even “graphic novels” like Watchmen, Sin City, 300, and others are getting pretty well adapted. I’m just saying that if I was a comic book guy that I would be ecstatic.
Griff
July 24th, 2011 at 8:19 pm
I liked Captain America because despite all the modern CGI it struck as a (somewhat) old school movie, like the kind of movie they would make in the early 90’s
and I like Joe Johnson, I forgive him for Jurassic Park 3, it’s just cool to watch a blockbuster from the director of Honey I Shrunk The Kids and The Rocketeer
Griff
I would say Captain America is as good as The Shadow, The Rocketeer and The Phantom, which for some people may seem like an insult, but it’s not
Griff
and yes I know they did do a DTV Albert Pyun Captain America movie in 1990, lol irony
Jareth Cutestory
…it´s probably plural TRANCERS.
neal2zod
July 25th, 2011 at 11:25 am
Shoot – I recently had the joy of watching Trancers 1 and 2 on netflix instant. They’re hilarious and inventive – certainly cheesy and over-the-top, but definitely the right combination of “so bad it’s good” and “so good it’s good”, which is hard to do.
Trancers 3 has been unavailable on Netflix for a while, so i have to keep knocking back 4 and 5 on my queue. Is 3 required viewing or do you think I should just skip it and move on to 4?
Broddie
July 25th, 2011 at 11:54 am
Holy shit!!! TRANCERS?!? now there’s a name I haven’t seen since the days of betamax. I never saw past the third one so good suggestion on revisiting that series ShootMcKay. Also if you want more non-NEAR DARK Tim Thomerson goodness; DOLLMAN is most definitely required viewing.
July 25th, 2011 at 3:40 pm
Part 4 and 5 are…ehh watchable but nothing more.
However DOLLMAN is a great movie. But if you want fucked up shit, you got to watch DOLLMAN VS
THE DEMONIC TOYS. Fuck TOY STORY
July 25th, 2011 at 3:42 pm
Part 4 and 5 are…ehh watchable but nothing more.
However DOLLMAN is a great movie. But if you want fucked up shit, you got to watch DOLLMAN VS
THE DEMONIC TOYS. Fuck TOY STORY! This movie is unbelivable shit. Too badit´s only 60 minutes, but, my god those 60 minutes would make Mike Wallace´s head spin faster than Linda Blair´s in THE EXORCIST.
Part 3 is the last one featuring helen Hunt. it has one of the more hilarious bad guys in Andrew “Scorpio” Robinson. It is the last good TRANCERS movie and should be required viewing.
rainman
July 25th, 2011 at 6:09 pm
I saw THE TILLMAN STORY last night about Pat Tillman. It was okay. I think the main thing I got out of it was that Pat seems like he must have been one hell of a guy. Maybe he was an obnoxious prick, and there’s no way anybody would say so in the aftermath of what happened to him, but you can’t deny the fact that he walked away from millions, enlisted, and absolutely refused to capitalize on it, gain any sort of fame, or pander to the media. He just believed in what he was doing and he did it. Hearing about his upbringing, his family, hearing from his brothers and comrades, etc., you realize that the guy’s heart was pure. It is hard to not have respect for him.
There was a small part in the movie where, when the family was trying hard to get the guy’s death investigated for realz rather than the continuous Army coverups, and one of the lead investigators went on one of these conservative radio talk shows and started bashing the family because they were athiest. His “point” was that they had a hard time accepting Pat’s death because they thought he was just dead rather than0 “gone on to a better place” or whatever. This was coming from the mouth of one of the guys heavily involved in the cover up. What a prick.
Then towards the end of the movie you finally get a play by play detailed account of what happened the day he died. The sad fact of the matter is that it was nothing but a horribly unfortunate accident, the same kind of fog of war shit that happened when the USAF bombed a bunch of Canadians into oblivion, or NATO bombs a wedding party, or whatever. War sucks, and sometimes when you have been shot at (or think you have been shot at) and you come around a corner and there’s a bunch of guys standing there on a ridge and one of them is definitely Afghani and the others, well who the hell knows you just start shooting. And the Afghani ends up full of 50 cal rounds, and poor Pat Tillman ends up headless.
Unfortunately, the family’s crusade to get the true story out starts sounding kind of like beating a dead horse after a while. The Army covered up the friendly fire killing of a hero, and yeah that sucks but it’s not like it is Watergate or even Iran-Contra. After two Army investigations and a Congressional investigation where everybody higher up says “I don’t know”, what were they expecting to accomplish? And yes it was stupid of the Army to cover it up because that usually doesn’t work, but it is also a little bit stupid to try and demonize the government for it. They wanted Pat to die a hero saving his squad from a dozen Taliban, not killed by his own squadmates in a pointless mixup. I guess the family was upset about people treating Pat like a political football, but the reality is that was inevitable.
It makes me sick to think this guy got killed by accident, but then again so did the Afghani who was fighting alongside him, and those Canadians, and all those Afghani and Iraqi civilians, and the list goes on. War sucks, accidents happen. The only way to win is not to play.
Kind of a downer of a movie.
Grim Grinning Chris
July 27th, 2011 at 7:31 pm
Calling Fred Topel…
Did you ever wind up watching PETER PAN and did you already comment on it and I missed it? And am I retarded and confusing you with someone else that was just about to give it a first spin recently?
July 28th, 2011 at 11:07 pm
because I’m really bored and I’d like bring the potpourri back into the spotlight, here’s something funny
it’s a screengrab from a early 2007 anime called Lucky Star, which is about cute as button anime school girls and their daily misadventures and one episode features a cameo of none other than SAW 3
July 30th, 2011 at 12:25 pm
guys, I just discovered my favorite anime of all time is on Hulu http://www.hulu.com/rod-the-tv?c=Animation-and-Cartoons/Anime
I know most of you guys don’t normally watch anime, but the fact that now anyone can watch this at any time blows my mind a bit, I highly recommend you guys check this out
there is a prequel, an OVA (original video animation) that is not on there sadly, if you haven’t seen that you will be a bit lost, but you could check wikipedia
July 30th, 2011 at 12:29 pm
seriously though, just give it a chance
I have been obsessed with it for years now and I would love to spread the love, the idea of maybe being able to discuss with you guys makes me giddy
“webseite” and “kosmetik” are German. They must have followed me somehow. Damn.
neal2zod
August 6th, 2011 at 3:02 pm
Shoot – On your recommendation, I just watched a Netflix Instant marathon of Dollman, Demonic Toys, and Dollman vs. Demonic Toys. Of note:
1) Dollman was directed by Albert Pyun, and I’ll say this with a straight face – despite his rep, in about 70 minutes (minus credits), he gives us 3 characters we really care about – the hero, the girl, and the villain- which makes it 3 more characters than I’ve ever cared about in all of Michael Bay’s movies. Jackie Earle Haley is awesome as one of the villains (there are two, Batman-style) and I’ll go on record as saying the female lead has one of the best intro scenes I’ve seen (it’s not what you think). Highly Recommended
2) Demonic Toys was written by David S. Goyer, which might qualify this for Nerd Shit. You think it’s going to be a total ripoff of Child’s Play, but it actually has more in common with Assault on Precinct 13 or other “siege” movies. Great, likable good guys, including the main girl Tracy Scoggins, who brings the perfect blend of “playing it straight” while also giving a fun performance. The main villain is kind of awesome too.
3) Dollman vs. Demonic Toys is easily the worst of the three. Full of flashbacks and filler, (The Hills Have Eyes 2-style), it actually also incorporates Bad Channels too (I’ve never heard of it, but the nurse character is ridiculously hot). Despite the drop in quality, Scoggins and Thomerson are awesome and give it their all, and with a bit of selective fast-forwarding it’s a passable way to spend an hour.
August 7th, 2011 at 12:51 am
I watched Dollman vs Demonic Toys first and did not know of other movies or that this was some sort of crossover shit so i had a lot of enjoyment out of this silly shit and didn´t care about the flashbacks.
Tim Thomerson rocks as always, TRANCERS are still my favourite of his movies that he has had the lead. But just the concept of devilworshipping toys sacrificing humans is just to good to miss out on and especially the baby doll leader…I know i have that movie lying around my place on dvd and should re-watch it again. I thought it was awesome when I first saw it.
August 12th, 2011 at 9:17 am
Okay, let’s talk cartoons for a moment. Not the cool ones like the BLACK DYNAMITE pilot, but the one for kids. (Hear me out first.)
There is this one Disney show named PHINEAS & FERB, which for any reason seems to be a huge among critics and audiences of all ages. Even John August once twittered that this is a well made show. I gotta admit that I don’t get the hype. From time to time I catch an episode on TV and it has some good jokes, but even though I don’t mind formulaic television, this show is a little bit too formulaic for me.
Anyway, I came across one episode today, that struck me for having a short, incredibly well staged and edited action scene, if you ask me. Especially for a made for TV kids cartoon. I found it on Youtube. Let’s see if you agree with me.:
August 19th, 2011 at 4:02 am
So I just watched TUCKER & DALE VS EVIL, which came out on DVD over here a few weeks ago. And I loved it! It’s hilarious, it has some nice gore, good characters and while it totally understands how teenie slashers (the good and the bad) work and how you can subvert its cliches and use them for humoristic moments, it never turns into a reference movie. The characters aren’t named after 80’s directors, there aren’t any re-enactments of famous slasher movie kills and there aren’t any cameos from Tom Savini, Robert Englund, Kane Hodder and Co. (Nothing against these guys, though.) It totally tries to stand on its own feet and succeeds while doing so.
August 19th, 2011 at 10:23 am
The GHOST RIDER 2 teaser has been released and I’m surprised by how restrained, almost seriously good that footage looks. Almost as if Neveldine/Taylor (who look like the rednekiest rednecks in the introduction) learned how to use a camera and shit.
August 22nd, 2011 at 7:11 pm
wrestling observation: I like how WWE has booked Alberto Del Rio since he won the WWE belt. Despite being the heel and doing heel tendencies, he’s won his last three TV matches clean and because he sells so well, guys like Daniel Bryan and John Morrison (good workers) don’t look bad or weak or chumps at the least for losing fair. And the crowds cared.
Hell even on last week’s Raw when Rey Mysterio tore both his ACL and MCL, they still had a good TV match that got the crowd intimately involved in the outcome that both made Del Rio more legitimate as champion, and also wrote Rey out till next spring.
August 24th, 2011 at 1:41 pm
So, have you guys seen the Australian beer commercials with Steven Seagal? Not only is a funny concept, but the makers of the commericals truly seem to understand Seagal’s milieu better than most people who make sort of generic action movie jokes.
Here’s Seagal’s initial challenge: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c60bcgBGyw
And here’s the final movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfAlB1Z8Dn8&feature=related
All are worth watching.
August 25th, 2011 at 3:50 am
Nice! :)
Now I wish I could get all the people who owe me money to pay me. Who wants to spam my dad and my last two work places?
August 25th, 2011 at 5:11 am
Holy shit. Just the other day some random asshole sent an email to the Cracked account I started just so I could start the FUCK CRACKED! PAY VERN! revolution. He was like “there were like 3 entries saying ‘pay vern’. Way to accomplish totally nothing ‘outlaw.’ And by the way i just wrote two articles for cracked and i got paid right away. Im 99% sure verns lying.” I wasn’t even gonna bring it up because the guy was a total troll (He even responded with “u mad bro” when I wrote him back apologizing that the way I chose to distract myself at work one day didn’t change the world) and I know he lurks on these boards so I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. But now that I know that I was the Caesar of the RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE MOTHERFUCKERS WHO GIVE VERN HIS MONEY, I feel better about using this forum to tell this prick to eat a bag of monkey dicks.
August 25th, 2011 at 12:04 pm
Mr. Majestyk:
Fuck Cracked! Pay Vern! is maybe my favorite internet meme ever, mainly because it’s just an in-joke between like 5 of us and not actually an internet meme at all. Too bad the epicness of that discussion is lost in the ether of Potpourri 2. In any case, your comment here made me laugh out loud several times. Good work.
RRA
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1386703/
NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO
Also, am I the only person who kind of hates Zach Snyder because they liked the Dawn of the Dead remake? I mean, it’s a good movie but I remember thinking it would suck before seeing it. But, now whenever I see a new remake announced I always fall back to the “well, I thought the Dawn remake would suck too so maybe this will be good!” but no, fuck that, you can’t remake certain movies.
August 29th, 2011 at 3:47 pm
Or, if you’re going to do another Total Recall, why make it Quaid again in a remake? Whatever value the title has in remake-land, it’s not because people remember the characters or plot specifics. So make it a new Total Recall about a new guy who gets a memory implant that goes wrong and you don’t know whether it’s real or not.
Total Recall still blows my mind to this day. I just have to think of the scene where Hauser’s on video asking Quaid for his body back and I get into an infinite mind loop of “but how can Hauser have wants and desires when Quaid’s personality replaced him, but how could Quaid hate his previous personality when his is the fake construct, but how can Hauser still exist once they’ve wiped him” and then my head explodes.
Stu
August 29th, 2011 at 4:31 pm
I’ve never bought that there’s any ambiguity to TOTAL RECALL’s “is it real or is it a dream?” thing, because Quaid dreams about his girlfriend BEFORE he gets the implant. Also, because of any scene that happens without Quaid being able to witness it(like when he starts freaking out with the implant and they knock him out, then talk about what must have happened), because if it was an implanted memory, something he wouldn’t be imagining directly wouldn’t be “happening”. Same thing happens with “is it a dream or not?” plots, INCEPTION excluded because they explicity said there’s a whole “architecture” to the dreams they created, and extensions of the subjects mind were inhabiting it.
Colin Farrell though…get Vern to review IN BRUGES already, Griff!
hamslime
August 29th, 2011 at 4:53 pm
Stu, I agree about the “scenes Quaid isn’t in” issue. It hit me when we saw Ronny Cox and Michael Ironside going over their evil plans, or the mutants suffocating on Mars. Quaid would have no memory of that. But I excused it as sloppy narrative because I REALLY want it to be his implant. I want him to wake up and go home to his wife who he remembers killing and that’s gotta be awkward.
The Malina thing makes total sense. His brain turned his dream girlfriend into the one he meets in the Mars memory.
Stu
August 29th, 2011 at 7:41 pm
Does it not strike you as a bit weird though that Quaid seems to have this well off middle class existence, but his day job is as a construction worker? Does that not ring any alarm bells with you that his existence is phony?
Or is there a missing subplot about him being a corrupt union delegate or something?
August 30th, 2011 at 7:25 am
The only thing I’ve read about the remake so far is that apparently, the director proudly announced that there would be a three-breasted mutant in it, like it proves that he really “gets” the original. I know that it’s the one thing that EVERYBODY remembers about the first TOTAL RECALL, but did he really think that it was the only thing that made it interesting? And why not come up with his own original creature anyway? Was it so hard to hire good special effects/makeup artists to create completely new, original mutants for him?
Jareth Cutestory
August 30th, 2011 at 8:33 am
I just read that Spike Lee has cast Josh Brolin as Detective John Oldboy in his OLDBOY remake. It’s so much harder to ignore another remake when both the director and lead actor are so compelling.
In other entertainment news, 75% of the internet has now referred to the Beyonce/Jay Z baby as “destiny’s child.”
August 30th, 2011 at 9:51 am
WWE promotes anti-bullying , but if you look at their shows; They are clearly promoting bullying. What a bunch of fuckin´bullshit. They do not know their ass from their mouth. Assholes….3 against 1 is ok? (talkin´Miz vs punk). Fuck WWE. It is not the only case of bullying. I am so fuckin´mad i could explode. Fuckin´hypocrites.
Mouth
The coolest part of my week in New York was either not getting killed by Irene or meeting Mr. Majestyk. Or the NY Public Library. Or hooking up with girls way out of my league.
It was a good vacation.
August 30th, 2011 at 10:59 am
Yes, boys, as you may have heard, a storm blew through NYC last week. A storm known as Hurricane Mouth. Dressed like Tom Wolfe, face like Jimmy Olson, skills of Jason Bourne, personality of the younger brother from JUST ONE OF THE GUYS with just a dash of Patrick Bateman for flavor. It was an experience.
August 30th, 2011 at 11:17 am
Actually, in the interest of full disclosure, I’ve met and hung out with Mr Subtlety several times since meeting him on these boards. In fact he came to my bachelor party a few weeks ago. So I withdraw my teasing implication of homosexuality from my last post.
August 30th, 2011 at 11:48 am
Oh and heck, while I’m on here…
My almost-wife and I are starting an online literary journal called Magic Lantern Review, which focuses on poetry, film criticism/commentary, and short films. We are hoping to put out the first “issue” this fall, and although we have received a ton of poetry submissions, we’ve barely gotten any film criticism or short films. So if anyone has something along those lines they’d like to submit, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll get in since we’re currently desperate for material:
August 30th, 2011 at 1:38 pm
Majestyk,
I very much appreciate it and we may well take you up on it. In fact I’d like to state here for the record that anyone who reads these boards and hasn’t spent at least a couple hours going through Mr Majestyk’s blog is doing themselves a disservice.
Jareth,
Well, mums the word on that, but I will say that the first time I met him he has a spiked up mohawk and a Vern Tells it Like It Is t-shirt.
August 30th, 2011 at 2:07 pm
ok Vern, I’ve thought long and hard about what movies I would like to see you review and I’ve come up with two, I’d love for you to review both, but it’s up to you whether to review both or which one to review
first up is MIRACLE MILE http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097889/
I mentioned this movie last year when I saw it and it’s a fantastically underrated 80’s thriller
second is MEMORIES http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113799/
I know this one is animated (you could probably guess one of those was coming), but trust me, this is an excellent movie, it’s a compilation film of three vignettes and all 3 are great
so there you go Vern, I’m not suggesting anything too crazy, I feel I really do deserve a reward for helping to get you finally paid for the Cracked joint
anthony4545
Vern – you’ve actually seen Memories? whoa, my mind is blown
and cool, thank you very much for the forthcoming Miracle Mile review
Mouth
As previously reported by our Thing hero friend here: http://outlawvern.com/2011/08/29/priest-2011/#comment-1117627 & here: http://outlawvern.com/2011/05/03/book-review-not-bad-for-a-human/#comment-646050
This is happening:
http://atlantahorrorfilmfest.com/Blog/Entries/2011/9/15_Entry_1.html
And would you fucking believe it, there is a better than 50% chance I’ll be in Atlanta that long weekend. Some random Air Force/NATO software conference thing in the 404 neighborhood I have to attend instead of going overseas since the doctor just told me my head/ear injuries make me nondeployable for now. Odd how that works out. So yes, once again, Mouth will probably be on the scene, repping the web sight and making the online badassery we enjoy here tangible in the real world, meeting real people, overdressed for a festival, probably rocking my Vern pin again.
RJ, which cast/crew member are you? I’m telling my facebook friends that you’re the director until I hear otherwise. Sorry, I don’t remember if we’ve been over this already. Congrats on the festival entry, opening night @ 8 o’clock, not bad.
hamslime
September 2nd, 2011 at 6:14 pm
Has anybody watched Red State yet? I thought it was fantastic. There’s some shaky cam bullshit in there, but I thought it really worked in this one. Easily my favorite Kevin Smith movie to date. It’s just too bad he’s gonna quit making movies after Hit Somebody as I think he’s really been hitting his stride since Jersey Girl (yes I liked Jersey Girl AND CopOut).
September 7th, 2011 at 7:06 pm
so I was thinking and have you guys ever noticed that very young directors (like in their 20’s) are rare? most of the youngest are in their 30’s and Michael freakin’ Bay is my dad’s age (the fact of which makes me laugh)
Caoimhín
That’d be because most guys in their 20s who might be likely to go on and direct haven’t done anything yet to make someone with money part with said money.
C.R.E.A.M., etc..
September 9th, 2011 at 11:48 pm
hey guys – in case you haven’t seen it yet, the trailer for Gareth Evans’ The Raid, his follow-up to Merantau is now on Youtube. Here’s a link. Going from the reviews, you can expect this level of hardcore mayhem throughout the film. There was a conversation here the other day about great action scenes were like crack – prepare to OD on this…
I think the soundtrack is Sony’s idea, so perhaps the indonesian version – and the version being shown at TIFF – will have a different score. Nid De Guepes – Nest of Wasps (aka The Nest), which was pretty good.
Ace Mac Ashbrook
Hey Vern, give Rango a watch, its worth your time!
dieselboy
September 10th, 2011 at 3:08 pm
I second that Rango nomination. It had, in my estimation, some of the best action sequences in a movie this year. The character design was fucking amazing. I’m pretty sure it was ILM’s first animated full length feature, and it seems like they are really trying to make an impression.
Ace Mac Ashbrook
September 11th, 2011 at 6:37 am
Holy shit, that was kind of amazing. I’m a sucker for close quarters hand-to-hand combat mixed with pistols, so that move where the dude rolled the other dude over and shot him three times in the temple pretty much made my day. I hope the titular raid has no context, like it’s just a bunch of dudes trying to take over a building and slaughter all of its residents for no particular reason except for, like, existentialism and stuff.
September 11th, 2011 at 6:39 am
I’m am referring to the trailer for THE RAID, not RANGO, which I didn’t see on account of cartoons. But if you can assure me that it has lizards blasting each other thricetimes skullwise I will try to check it out.
wow, that’s quite the shame, that guy’s career was just getting started too
Mouth
September 12th, 2011 at 12:48 pm
THE LEGEND OF BRUCE LEE (1980, starring “Bruce Le”) seems like it might be one of the less offensive of the many Bruce Leesploitation films of fake badass cinema, but I’m not sure I can watch it since I don’t trust it since I couldn’t find Vern’s review. That’s not a bullet I want to bite first.
I might get burned by awful it is, but I’m tempted, since it’s again the top recommendation on my NetFlix today, along with BREAKIN’ 2: INFAMOUS SEQUEL TITLE and movie suggestions categorized as “Witty Showbiz Musicals,” “Mind-bending Romantic Supernatural Movies,” and “More Like BILLY JACK.” That last category looks like it’s full of badass gems. I know I’m not supposed to like NetFlix so much, but I do. Don’t judge me, I support local & independent arts & businesses all the time, get off me.
Obviously, I’m not going to get any work done today because I have to see how Billy Jack became Senator Billy Jack. It’s going to be a good day.
Stu
Just heard about Andy Whitfield. A terrible loss. RIP.
Stu
RIP Andy. That sucks. I feel kinda bad that I never got around to checking out his show.
Anyone seen MACHETE MAIDENS yet? All I can say is that MJW needs to remake SAVAGE! asap.
ThomasCrown442
September 12th, 2011 at 9:50 pm
Can’t believe he’s dead. With all of the sex and violence in the Spartacus show he brought an understated badass quality to the show. He was soft spoken and intelligent while at the same he could believably fuck some guys up in the arena. I’m sad that he’s gone.
September 13th, 2011 at 3:27 pm
That TIME CRISIS video is wonderful – thanks for sharing, Stu.
Also, anyone here caught BUNRAKU yet? Saw this last night and was expecting – thanks to some reviews I’d read – a pretentious mess with some horrible stunt casting.
Gotta say, was very pleasantly surprised. Think SIN CITY meets WARRIORS WAY meets DICK TRACY.
Yes, it’s overlong and bits of it look cheap at times, for sure (it was made for $25 mill, apparently), but generally it’s one nice looking flick and the cast (which includes Josh Harnett, Woody Harrelson, Ron Muthafuckin Perlman & some dude called Gackt) is pretty cool.
It should not work at all but it does and that kinda makes me love it a bit.
A lot of fun – check it out if you can, guys.
September 15th, 2011 at 12:57 pm
That’s the internet for you. Griff fucking PROVES THE EXISTENCE OF GOD and it’s not good enough for CJ.
I’m glad you said it without using “meh” though. I feel there is enough “meh” on the internet already.
Charles
September 15th, 2011 at 1:15 pm
Karlos, I caught BUNRAKU at Fantastic Fest here in Austin last year and I really liked. I have written about it a number of times on this site since then. Do you know if it has received a theatrical or DVD release date yet?
September 15th, 2011 at 1:17 pm
I stopped saying “meh” back in 2005. And I never use “LOL”. I do like to use these smiley faces all the time, with my favourite being the “:P”
But seriously, I’m not saying Scarlett is ugly or something, I just think she is pretty average and I don’t get the appeal of her, neither as actress nor from her looks. Nice butt, though. But I’ve seen better.
Charles
From reading the link you can get an idea as to what it is about, but here is a taste for those interested.
Harlin discussing CUTTHROUGHT ISLAND:
“I’ll tell you another detail that people don’t know about. Originally, Michael Douglas was supposed to star in Cutthroat Island. And he walked away. At that point I was left there with my then-wife, Geena Davis and myself, and a company that was already belly-up. We begged to be let go. We begged that we didn’t have to make this movie. And I don’t think I’ve ever said this in any other interview. We begged that we not be put in this position.”
Harlin has had a hard fall from grace, but he is a talanted film maker and I wish he would get the chance to make larger budget films again. I thought they should have got him to direct EXPENDABLES 2.
Zombie Paul
September 15th, 2011 at 3:34 pm
I am not particularly surprised about Mr Eastwood’s remarks. I would expect more sense out of him than I would out of, for example, Mr Heston or Mr Wayne. (Although Penn and Teller made a pretty good case for gun ownership rights, so maybe I should reconsider Mr Heston a little.)
Zombie Paul
Also I am not above the occasional “Meh”, but would not inflict a “LOL” upon you guys.
Mode7
I don’t know how anyone could watch Lost in Translation and not fall instantly in love with Scarlett Johansson. That karaoke scene kills me every time.
Charles
Paul, if you are out there you will be happy to know that I just noticed that JUGGERNAUT was recently added to Netflix streaming.
Mouth
September 15th, 2011 at 6:30 pm
That’s pretty fucked up if Scarlett’s phone was hacked or if some dick stole those photos. I’ve been crushing on her since she was a nobody in GHOST WORLD. Mmmmm, those gray pants. But as a gentleman, I refuse to ogle at contraband, thereby celebrating a crime against a lady. Shame on buzzfeed and shame on you all.
But if I did look at those pictures I would say that God exists and loves us and that I wish the lighting & pixel quality were better.
******************************************
The time has come for Potpourri to go where we always knew it was headed.
That’s right, it’s time for our beloved offtopic gibberish thread to be presented in Smell-o-Vision. Coming soon: Potpourri 4D! (_____fillintheblank_______ in some browsers)
Caoimhín
September 15th, 2011 at 7:21 pm
I wonder if when she found out her phone had been hacked she quoted Revenge of The Nerds and shouted “nerds saw me naked!”
and Mouth, the fact that we’re not supposed to be seeing those photos only makes it hotter, I mean she was never gonna do a nude scene in a movie (the fact that she’s pissed off over this proves it)
Stu
September 15th, 2011 at 7:44 pm
“and Mouth, the fact that we’re not supposed to be seeing those photos only makes it hotter, I mean she was never gonna do a nude scene in a movie (the fact that she’s pissed off over this proves it”
That movie where she’s going to be playing an alien predator in human form who seduces her prey seemed possibly where she’d do nudity. The fact she’s pissed off could just be because it’s a real invasion of privacy an exposure of herself that’s not her choice, and maybe there was other stuff on her phone of a private nature she wouldn’t want anyone else to know about.
or maybe she’s just mad that everyone’s seen her naked
Jareth Cutestory
September 15th, 2011 at 10:10 pm
Mode7: I haven’t seen a movie in which I thought Johansson was anything less than annoying (including LOST IN TRANSLATION, which I think, apart from Murry’s performance, is mediocre), but I’m willing to concede that her vacant acting style speaks to the experiences of younger people in the way that Winona Ryder’s various quirks seemed to speak to Gen Xers or the way Nastassja Kinski’s near-inaudible style spoke to me when I was young.
Mouth: We all know that Thora Birch wearing a Catwoman mask walked away with GHOST WORLD.
September 19th, 2011 at 8:30 am
Also am I the only one who is slightly pissed that Peter Dinklage’s Emmy win isn’t the big media event that it should be? He might be the first little actor who gets rewarded for a serious acting role. They usually only get used as sight gag.
Zombie Paul
September 21st, 2011 at 1:37 pm
CJ – yeah, it’s bad for Dinklage, but it’s good for the world in general. “Vapid self-congratulatory awards show fails to get serious media coverage” cannot be anything but good news, surely?
It took me five refreshes to get to the bottom of this thread. We need a “Potpourri 4D”.
Happy belated birthday Griff!
In other news, I just saw “Jennifer 8”, on what turned out to be a pretty misguided recommendation. I like Lance Henriksen as much as the next guy here; but boy, he needs to fire his agent (and hire Ellen Page’s). About ten minutes into the film I guessed, almost to the nearest minute, the exact time when the obviously-only-around-to-die partner does die and the main character gets wrongly blamed for it. That is all I have to say about this deeply uninteresting, utterly predictable film. If you happen to hear about it, like I did, skip it and watch “Wait Until Dark” instead for your blind-girl-in-peril thrills.
Darryll
October 24th, 2011 at 10:35 am
When you look at Vern’s graphic up there for YIPPEE KI-YAY MOVIEGOER! does anyone else see a samurai with a top knot in the blood spatter on the right? It oddly mirrors the Seagal graphic below it. Just thought I’d point that out. I glance at it every time I come here. Weird.
RRA
December 5th, 2011 at 12:39 am
Ron Paul was banned from this week’s GOP forum hosted by the Jewish Republicans because he’s too extreme and somehow the equivalent of the Nazis.
The guy can come off as kooky*, and his foreign policy views range from principled anti-imperialism to naive reactionarism to publicly asking necessary questions (whether your answer) about our military alliances in the Middle East that aren’t kosher to GOP political orthodoxy….
But this is retarded. All those assclowns “offend” me, but I wouldn’t ban them. Did the 1980s Democrats in primary debates ban Jesse “Hymietown” Jackson? Yet again, the GOP defending the Constitution by wiping its ass with it.
Conspiracy Talk: Is this elaborate behind the scenes play to stunt Paul’s (supposed) potent if minority presence in the Iowa primary which could threaten to split Mittens or Newt’s support? Or just unironic orthodox enforcement?
*=returning us to the Gold Standard? Haha NO.
Casey
Maybe it’s an admission that Ron Paul supporters are just Paultards who won’t vote for the Republican nominee anyhow since that person won’t be Ron Paul and Ron Paul is the best person ever?
felix
Moltisanti from the famed B-Action Thread of CHUD presents his list of 2012 Action film releases.
Check the link below and tell us what you think.
| i don't know |
In which year did the Queen give birth to Prince Edward? | Betty Parsons taught Queen Elizabeth and Princess Diana to enjoy giving birth | Daily Mail Online
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Dressed in a simple leotard and leggings, childbirth guru Betty Parsons espoused advice as pared down as she was: ‘Now girls, drop shoulders, breathe out gently, pause, and let your breath come in.’
But the clients who hung on her every word were anything but plain and homespun. For more than half a century the former nurse saw some of the country’s grandest and wealthiest women at their most vulnerable.
Those she referred to as ‘my girls’ included The Queen, Princess Diana, the Duchess of York and a host of celebrities including actress Rula Lenska and television presenter Esther Rantzen.
A royal birth: The Queen with Prince Edward. Betty Parsons was said to have advised on the labour
Her common-sense approach to pregnancy and labour took the fear out of childbirth for more than 20,000 women lucky enough to attend her ground-breaking antenatal classes.
When she died earlier this month, aged 96, they came out in force to pay tribute.
The mixture of relaxation techniques, practical advice and humour proved soothing in almost any situation. Her motto was: ‘relax for pregnancy and for life’.
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This desire to help other women through one of the most fundamental — but often frightening and painful — times in their lives stemmed from her own traumatic experience of pregnancy and childbirth.
Born Aileen Murray Slater (the name Betty was originally a nickname from the Hindi ‘Beti’ meaning ‘little girl’) in Pakistan in 1915, she grew up in Canada, where she trained as a nurse.
She married Terence Parsons, a commander in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in 1940, and moved with him to Bermuda, where she became pregnant.
When her husband was posted to the Far East, Betty returned to Canada to have her son Michael. She described his birth as ‘long and painful’. She spent much of the time unconscious under general anaesthetic and he was eventually delivered by forceps. She later said that had it been available at the time she would certainly have chosen an epidural.
Betty with Prince Charles: The popular childbirth guru passed away this month aged 96
A second son tragically died aged four months of pneumonia and a ‘rather horrible’ miscarriage left her unable to have any more children. Desperately seeking support, she approached an Indian homeopathic doctor who taught her to overcome her grief and depression with breathing techniques. This became the foundation of her practice in the UK.
Once established in Mayfair — where her studio was an oasis of calm, furnished with plump cushions, vases of flowers and pretty paintings — Betty’s classes became incredibly popular.
Her patient list read like Tatler’s society pages. During her heyday it was said, ‘every Duchess in Debrett’s was a Betty P girl.’ Countess Alexander of Tunis — referred to Betty P by Sir George Pinker obstetrician to the Queen — remembers her, ‘as a sort of no-nonsense nanny, very soothing and reassuring.’
Part of her appeal to the well-heeled and upper classes was undoubtedly her discretion.
'She believed the most important thing was that the mother was relaxed and confident - not trying to outdo one's friends by having a water-birth or yogic labour positions'
She never gave interviews or spoke about clients — however, she did once let slip more than she meant to about one of her most famous cases.
A rumour had circulated that The Queen, who had sought Betty’s help when pregnant with Prince Edward, had asked Betty to help her relax. It had happened not long after intruder Michael Fagan had broken into the palace (making it as far as the Queen’s bedchamber) and Prince Andrew’s girlfriend Koo Stark was exposed as a one-time porn actress.
When asked if it was true Parsons rather gave the game away by replying: ‘How extraordinary. I don’t know how you could have heard. I’m sorry but I can’t talk about anyone I give classes to.’
Aside from relaxation techniques, Betty’s greatest contribution to the field of childbirth was her then revolutionary notion that expectant fathers be part of the process. When Betty started out, a father’s role was restricted to pacing up and down the hospital corridor waiting for the baby to be born.
He would see his wife and child only when both were cleaned up, and the most important part of his role was to ‘wet the baby’s head’ — and perhaps indulge in a cigar to celebrate the new arrival.
The most high-profile father Betty persuaded to be involved in his child’s birth was undoubtedly Prince Philip. When the Queen went into labour with Prince Edward on Tuesday March 10, 1964, she had her husband beside her, holding her hand, in the bathroom of Buckingham Palace’s Belgian Suite, which was converted into a makeshift delivery room.
Advocate: Tessa Dahl sought Betty's help for the births of her four children
Philip didn’t attend the births of his first three children, but by the time Edward arrived, even royalty acknowledged that father’s role in childbirth had changed dramatically — although Philip drew the line at attending Betty’s classes.
She was sympathetic to men in the delivery room and always told ‘her girls’ to ‘remember to bring wine — he may need it.
Royal biographer Ingrid Seward recalls how Betty P had to comfort her husband — distinguished war correspondent Ross Benson — when the birth of their daughter Bella in 1989 didn’t go to plan.
‘Betty had retired by then but Tessa Dahl took me to meet her and when I went into St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, Betty accompanied us.
‘We sent Ross home because he was very nervous and things were moving quite slowly. Suddenly, Betty noticed on the monitor that the baby’s heart had stopped.
‘She summoned the doctor who picked me up off the bed and carried me down to theatre.
‘All the time Betty was holding my hand saying: “Don’t worry darling, it’s going to be alright.”
‘When the baby was delivered it was Betty who told me, “it’s a girl, and she’s perfect” Without her my daughter would have died.’
When Ross returned he collapsed in tears. ‘He never told me this, my brave war reporter husband, but Betty had to comfort him as he sobbed. That was typical of her —there for the whole family.’
'Another of her great mantras was: "It takes a year to have a baby, not nine months"'
In sharp contrast to the modern approach, where childbirth often seems like a competition — with the highest points awarded for ‘natural’ births delivered without recourse to pain relief, where breast-feeding and maternity leave are political issues, where opting for an elective Caesarean is deemed ‘too posh to push’ — Betty thought such worries only added needless stress to the expectant mother.
All of her clients describe her as ‘non-judgemental’ and she believed the most important thing was that the mother was relaxed and confident — not trying to outdo one’s friends by having a water-birth or engaging in yogic labour positions.
Tessa Dahl, the writer daughter of author Roald Dahl, visited Betty before all four of her children’s births and even covered for Betty’s secretary when she was away.
She recalls: ‘For Betty, any birth which involved a live child being born was natural, she never made you feel guilty about choosing an epidural or a C-section.’
Betty spared women no detail, believing it ‘wicked’ to peddle an ideal of a pain-free labour.
The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh this week: He was persuaded by Betty to be present at Prince Edward's birth, having not been there for the arrival of his first three children
Instead she advocated ‘fearless, not painless childbirth’. When told a fellow birth guru likened childbirth to an orgasm she famously told her class: ‘Well honeys, if that’s an orgasm, keep me out of the bed.’ One expectant mother said Betty’s advice was so comprehensive it even extended to ‘telling you about different hospitals and whether or not you need to take Vim to clean the bath.’
Esther Rantzen attended Betty’s classes in the 70s and 80s before all three of her children were born and remembers her as ‘incredibly maternal and charismatic. She taught me things I still remember today.’
And for Betty, her job didn’t end at the birth. Another of her great mantras was: ‘It takes a year to have a baby, not nine months.’
She would almost certainly not have been in favour of the current vogue for returning to work weeks or even days after giving birth.
Betty advocated a two-hour nap for the mother every afternoon in the first three months after birth.
‘She believed that when women get tired they get angry with their husbands, and time out to recharge your batteries is not wasting time,’ says writer Mary Killen.
Sadly future generations will miss out on those soothing, common-sense tones. And those who were fortunate enough to know them are all lamenting a great loss.
Were she here today, no doubt Betty would urge them to cope in the best way possible: ‘Drop shoulders, breathe out gently, pause, and let your breath come in.’
| 1964 |
What is the alternative name of the Linden tree? | Queen Elizabeth II - Biography - IMDb
Queen Elizabeth II
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Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor (Her Royal Highness Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary of York)
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5' 4" (1.63 m)
Mini Bio (1)
Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary was born on April 21, 1926, in London England to the second son of George V -- Albert, Duke of York and the Duchess of York, the former Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. Her sister Princess Margaret was born 4 years later. In 1936, when she was 10, her uncle, King Edward VIII (aka Duke of Windsor ), caused a stir by abdicating the throne to marry a twice-divorced American named Wallis Warfield Simpson. His brother Albert was next in line to the throne, and he became George VI in honor of his father. She therefore became the Heiress Presumptive, meaning she would become Queen only if her parents did not have a son -- who would be king before her. At the age of 13, she met 18-year-old Prince Philip , her distant cousin. As her grandmother Queen Mary put it with more detail, they were third cousins through their descent from Queen Victoria (they are both great-great grandchildren of hers) second cousins once removed through their descent from King Christian IX of Denmark (her great-grandmother was Christian's daughter, his father was a descendant of his) and fourth cousins through their descent from George III (both of them being descendants of Queen Victoria -- she was his granddaughter). They fell in love and wanted to get married, but her father wanted to make sure it was real and not just because this was the first person she loved. Before they got married, he renounced his royal title as a Prince of Greece and Denmark, became a British subject, and adopted the surname of his uncle Louis Mountbatten . He was named Duke of Edinburgh shortly before they got married but was not made a Prince of the United Kingdom until 1957. They got married on November 20, 1947. One year later, they had a son, Charles Philip Arthur George. In 1950, they had Anne Elizabeth Alice; in 1960, Prince Andrew; and in 1964, Prince Edward.
When they were in Kenya in 1952, they found out that her father had died of lung cancer so they returned as Queen and Consort. It was a busy time and got even busier. They worked at public engagements and, starting in the late 1970s, became grandparents. Anne had a son name Peter in 1977 and then a daughter named Zara in 1981 with her husband Captain Mark Phillips. Charles had William in 1982 and Henry in 1984 with his wife Diana. Andrew had Beatrice in 1988 and Eugenie in 1990 with his wife Sarah Ferguson. On November 20, 1997, they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary with their family and also celebrated the fact that Windsor Castle was reconstructed after a fire in 1992.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Anonymous
Spouse (1)
( 20 November 1947 - present) (4 children)
Trade Mark (2)
Dress suit, big hat, boxy handbag
Corgi dogs
Trivia (50)
Ascended British and Commonwealth thrones on February 6th, 1952.
Was crowned in Westminster Abbey in London on June 2, 1953. This coronation became the first major international television broadcast.
Son, Prince Charles Philip Arthur George, born Nov. 14, 1948.
Son, Prince Andrew Albert Christian Edward, born Feb. 19, 1960.
Son, Prince Edward Antony Richard Louis, (aka Edward Wessex ) born March 10, 1964.
Daughter, Princess Anne Elizabeth Alice Louise, born Aug. 15, 1950.
Daughter of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and King George VI .
Owns one of the world's largest private collections of postage stamps.
She formally approves all government legislation, though she does this on the advice of the Prime Minister. It would create a massive crisis if she did not approve a piece of legislation.
She enjoys watching horse-racing, "Doctor Who" and the British comedy Last of the Summer Wine (1973) .
She has owned over 30 corgis over the years, and her four current dogs are named Pharos, Swift, Emma, and Linnet (as of February 2002).
First cousin of the Duke of Gloucester .
Earned her nickname "Lillibet" as a child, when she could not pronounce her name.
Great-granddaughter of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra .
Not including the United Kingdom, she is Queen of over a dozen countries, including Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Since she does not live in those countries, though she visits often, much of her duties are performed by a Governor General who she appoints on the advice of the Prime Minister of the country in question. It is important to note that neither the sovereign nor the Governors General, have had any hand in governing these countries since the 1930s, and their roles are purely ceremonial.
She owns the world's finest Pink Diamond, It forms the Centre of a flower brooch and weights 54.50 carats.
Although most of the "Crown Jewels" are owned by the state, the British Royal Family do own one of the most valuable collection of jewels in the world, containing some of the worlds largest diamonds, Emeralds, Sapphires, and Rubies.
Time Magazine's "Man (or Person) of the Year" (1953)
Learnt to drive in 1945 when she joined the Army.
Is fluent in French.
Has sat for 139 official portraits to date.
Has visited the sets of Britain's most popular soap operas Coronation Street (1960), EastEnders (1985) and Emmerdale (1972).
Has received over 3 million items of correspondence during her reign.
Has never held a drivers license, despite driving an ambulance in WWII. She does, however, drive on her lands.
The 2009 Sunday Times List estimated her net worth at $442 million.
Her Majesty became Queen in a tree house. At the time of her father's death she was staying at the Treetops Hotel. It is literally built into the tops of the trees of the Aberdares National Park as a tree house, offering the guests a close view of the local wildlife in complete safety. It was there that, uniquely, she "went up a Princess and came down a Queen". She was the first British monarch since the Act of Union in 1801 to be outside the country at the moment of succession, and also the first in modern times not to know the exact time of her accession (because her father, George VI, had died in his sleep at an unknown time); it fell to Prince Philip to tell her. The night of the King's death, Sir Horace Hearne, then Chief Justice of Kenya, escorted The Princess Elizabeth, as she then was, to a state dinner at the Treetops Hotel. Upon finding out that she was now Queen, she returned immediately to Britain.
Has 8 grandchildren:Prince William Arthur Philip Louis (b. 21 June 1982), and Prince Henry Charles Albert David (b. 15 September 1984, Prince Charles' sons), Peter Mark Andrew Phillips (b. 15 November 1977) and Zara Anne Elizabeth Phillips (b. 15 May 1981, Princess Anne's children), Princess Beatrice Elizabeth Mary (b. 8 August 1988) and Princess Eugenie Victoria Helena (b. 23 March 1990, Prince Andrew's daughters), Lady Louise Alice Elizabeth Mary (b. 8 November 2003) and James Alexander Philip Theo, Viscount Severn (b. 17 December 2007, Prince Edward's children).
Cousin of Lady Elizabeth Anson .
Her favourite Royal residence is Windsor Castle.
Likes tea, with milk and no sugar every morning.
Harry's graduation was the first time in 15 years she presented the ceremony.
Ascended the throne when she was 25.
May 4-8. Her Majesty stayed in Jamestown, Virginia to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the colonizing of Jamestown. [May 2007]
On the 9th of September 2007 there was much news coverage of Queen Elizabeth II attending the Opening of the Welsh Assembly. Unfortunately, unintentional humor resulted when some broadcasters used the common abbreviation of the word Assembly.
Her Coronation in 1953 was watched by a 13-year old David Jason ; she later knighted him during her birthday honors on December 1st, 2005. According to Jason, she never tells anyone to 'arise' once they've been knighted - it's an urban myth and not part of the ceremony. Later, she told Jason he had been in the business a long time, and he asked if he had ever done anything to offend her. She laughed and said no.
She is one of the six surviving people mentioned by name in the 1989 Billy Joel song "We Didn't Start the Fire". The other five are Doris Day , Brigitte Bardot , Chubby Checker , Bob Dylan and Bernard Goetz .
On September 9, 2015, she surpassed her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria as the longest-reigning monarch in British history.
During her long illustrious reign, the Queen has met all but one of the last twelve US Presidents, Lyndon Johnson being the exception. In chronological order she has met, Harry S. Truman (Canadian Embassy Washington 1951), Dwight D. Eisenhower (St. Lawrence Seaway opening 1959), John F. Kennedy (London 1961), Richard Nixon (UK 1970), Gerald Ford (White House 1976), Jimmy Carter (Buckingham Palace 1977), Ronald Reagan (UK 1982), George Bush (Washington 1991), Bill Clinton (Buckingham Palace 2000), George W. Bush (White House 2007), Barack Obama (London 2016). She also met former US President Herbert Hoover more than 20 years after he left office (New York City 1957).
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What type of bomber dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945? | Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - World War II - HISTORY.com
Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
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Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
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Introduction
On August 6, 1945, during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Japan’s Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s unconditional surrender in World War II in a radio address on August 15, citing the devastating power of “a new and most cruel bomb.”
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The Manhattan Project
Even before the outbreak of war in 1939, a group of American scientists–many of them refugees from fascist regimes in Europe–became concerned with nuclear weapons research being conducted in Nazi Germany. In 1940, the U.S. government began funding its own atomic weapons development program, which came under the joint responsibility of the Office of Scientific Research and Development and the War Department after the U.S. entry into World War II . The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was tasked with spearheading the construction of the vast facilities necessary for the top-secret program, codenamed “The Manhattan Project ” (for the engineering corps’ Manhattan district).
Did You Know?
After World War II, most of Hiroshima would be rebuilt, though one destroyed section was set aside as a reminder of the effects of the atomic bomb. Each August 6, thousands of people gather at Peace Memorial Park to join in interfaith religious services commemorating the anniversary of the bombing.
Over the next several years, the program’s scientists worked on producing the key materials for nuclear fission–uranium-235 and plutonium (Pu-239). They sent them to Los Alamos, New Mexico , where a team led by J. Robert Oppenheimer worked to turn these materials into a workable atomic bomb. Early on the morning of July 16, 1945, the Manhattan Project held its first successful test of an atomic device–a plutonium bomb–at the Trinity test site at Alamogordo, New Mexico.
No Surrender for the Japanese
By the time of the Trinity test, the Allied powers had already defeated Germany in Europe. Japan, however, vowed to fight to the bitter end in the Pacific, despite clear indications (as early as 1944) that they had little chance of winning. In fact, between mid-April 1945 (when President Harry Truman took office) and mid-July, Japanese forces inflicted Allied casualties totaling nearly half those suffered in three full years of war in the Pacific, proving that Japan had become even more deadly when faced with defeat. In late July, Japan’s militarist government rejected the Allied demand for surrender put forth in the Potsdam Declaration, which threatened the Japanese with “prompt and utter destruction” if they refused.
General Douglas MacArthur and other top military commanders favored continuing the conventional bombing of Japan already in effect and following up with a massive invasion, codenamed “Operation Downfall.” They advised Truman that such an invasion would result in U.S. casualties of up to 1 million. In order to avoid such a high casualty rate, Truman decided–over the moral reservations of Secretary of War Henry Stimson, General Dwight Eisenhower and a number of the Manhattan Project scientists–to use the atomic bomb in the hopes of bringing the war to a quick end. Proponents of the A-bomb–such as James Byrnes, Truman’s secretary of state–believed that its devastating power would not only end the war, but also put the U.S. in a dominant position to determine the course of the postwar world.
“Little Boy” and “Fat Man”
Hiroshima, a manufacturing center of some 350,000 people located about 500 miles from Tokyo, was selected as the first target. After arriving at the U.S. base on the Pacific island of Tinian, the more than 9,000-pound uranium-235 bomb was loaded aboard a modified B-29 bomber christened Enola Gay (after the mother of its pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets). The plane dropped the bomb–known as “Little Boy”–by parachute at 8:15 in the morning, and it exploded 2,000 feet above Hiroshima in a blast equal to 12-15,000 tons of TNT, destroying five square miles of the city.
Hiroshima’s devastation failed to elicit immediate Japanese surrender, however, and on August 9 Major Charles Sweeney flew another B-29 bomber, Bockscar, from Tinian. Thick clouds over the primary target, the city of Kokura, drove Sweeney to a secondary target, Nagasaki, where the plutonium bomb “Fat Man” was dropped at 11:02 that morning. More powerful than the one used at Hiroshima, the bomb weighed nearly 10,000 pounds and was built to produce a 22-kiloton blast. The topography of Nagasaki, which was nestled in narrow valleys between mountains, reduced the bomb’s effect, limiting the destruction to 2.6 square miles.
At noon on August 15, 1945 (Japanese time), Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s surrender in a radio broadcast. The news spread quickly, and “Victory in Japan” or “V-J Day” celebrations broke out across the United States and other Allied nations. The formal surrender agreement was signed on September 2, aboard the U.S. battleship Missouri , anchored in Tokyo Bay.
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Which French realist painter, who lived from 1814 - 1875, specialised in peasant life? | The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
1940 - 1949
The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
At the time this photo was made, smoke billowed 20,000 feet above Hiroshima while smoke from the burst of the first atomic bomb had spread over 10,000 feet on the target at the base of the rising column. (August 6, 1945). SuperStock/Getty Images
By Jennifer Rosenberg
Updated February 29, 2016.
Attempting to bring an earlier end to World War II , U.S. President Harry Truman made the fateful decision to drop a massive atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. On August 6, 1945, this atomic bomb, known as "Little Boy," flattened the city, killing at least 70,000 people that day and tens of thousands more from radiation poisoning.
While Japan was still trying to comprehend this devastation, the United States dropped another atomic bomb.This bomb, nicknamed "Fat Man," was dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people immediately and another 20,000 to 40,000 in the months following the explosion.
On August 15, 1945, Japanese Emperor Hirohito announced an unconditional surrender, ending World War II.
The Enola Gay Heads to Hiroshima
At 2:45 a.m. on Monday, August 6, 1945, a B-29 bomber took off from Tinian, a North Pacific island in the Marianas, 1,500 miles south of Japan. The 12-man crew ( picture ) were on board to make sure this secret mission went smoothly.
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Colonel Paul Tibbets , the pilot, nicknamed the B-29 the "Enola Gay" after his mother. Just before take-off, the plane's nickname was painted on its side .
The Enola Gay was a B-29 Superfortress (aircraft 44-86292), part of the 509th Composite Group. In order to carry such a heavy load as an atomic bomb, the Enola Gay was modified: new propellers, stronger engines, and faster opening bomb bay doors. (Only 15 B-29s underwent this modification.)
Even though it had been modified, the plane still had to use the full runway to gain the necessary speed, thus it did not lift off until very near the water's edge.1
The Enola Gay was escorted by two other bombers that carried cameras and a variety of measuring devices. Three other planes had left earlier in order to ascertain the weather conditions over the possible targets.
The Atomic Bomb Known as Little Boy Is on Board
On a hook in the ceiling of the plane, hung the ten-foot atomic bomb, "Little Boy." Navy Captain William S. Parsons ("Deak"), chief of the Ordnance Division in the " Manhattan Project ," was the Enola Gay's weaponeer. Since Parsons had been instrumental in the development of the bomb, he was now responsible for arming the bomb while in-flight.
Approximately 15 minutes into the flight (3:00 a.m.), Parsons began to arm the atomic bomb; it took him 15 minutes. Parsons thought while arming "Little Boy": "I knew the Japs were in for it, but I felt no particular emotion about it."2
"Little Boy" was created using uranium-235, a radioactive isotope of uranium. This uranium-235 atomic bomb, a product of $2 billion of research, had never been tested. Nor had any atomic bomb yet been dropped from a plane.
Some scientists and politicians pushed for not warning Japan of the bombing in order to save face in case the bomb malfunctioned.
Clear Weather Over Hiroshima
There had been four cities chosen as possible targets: Hiroshima, Kokura, Nagasaki, and Niigata (Kyoto was the first choice until it was removed from the list by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson ). The cities were chosen because they had been relatively untouched during the war.
The Target Committee wanted the first bomb to be "sufficiently spectacular for the importance of the weapon to be internationally recognized when publicity on it was released."3
On August 6, 1945, the first choice target, Hiroshima, was having clear weather. At 8:15 a.m. (local time), the Enola Gay's door sprang open and dropped "Little Boy." The bomb exploded 1,900 feet above the city and only missed the target, the Aioi Bridge, by approximately 800 feet.
The Explosion at Hiroshima
Staff Sergeant George Caron, the tail gunner, described what he saw: "The mushroom cloud itself was a spectacular sight, a bubbling mass of purple-gray smoke and you could see it had a red core in it and everything was burning inside. . . . It looked like lava or molasses covering a whole city. . . ."4 The cloud is estimated to have reached a height of 40,000 feet.
Captain Robert Lewis, the co-pilot, stated, "Where we had seen a clear city two minutes before, we could no longer see the city. We could see smoke and fires creeping up the sides of the mountains."5
Two-thirds of Hiroshima was destroyed. Within three miles of the explosion, 60,000 of the 90,000 buildings were demolished. Clay roof tiles had melted together. Shadows had imprinted on buildings and other hard surfaces. Metal and stone had melted.
Unlike other bombing raids, the goal for this raid had not been a military installation but rather an entire city. The atomic bomb that exploded over Hiroshima killed civilian women and children in addition to soldiers.
Hiroshima's population has been estimated at 350,000; approximately 70,000 died immediately from the explosion and another 70,000 died from radiation within five years.
A survivor described the damage to people:
The appearance of people was . . . well, they all had skin blackened by burns. . . . They had no hair because their hair was burned, and at a glance you couldn't tell whether you were looking at them from in front or in back. . . . They held their arms bent [forward] like this . . . and their skin - not only on their hands, but on their faces and bodies too - hung down. . . . If there had been only one or two such people . . . perhaps I would not have had such a strong impression. But wherever I walked I met these people. . . . Many of them died along the road - I can still picture them in my mind -- like walking ghosts.6
The Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki
While the people of Japan tried to comprehend the devastation in Hiroshima, the United States was preparing a second bombing mission. The second run was not delayed in order to give Japan time to surrender, but was waiting only for a sufficient amount of plutonium-239 for the atomic bomb.
On August 9, 1945 only three days after the bombing of Hiroshima, another B-29, Bock's Car ( picture of crew ), left Tinian at 3:49 a.m.
The first choice target for this bombing run had been Kokura. Since the haze over Kokura prevented the sighting of the bombing target, Bock's Car continued on to its second target. At 11:02 a.m., the atomic bomb, "Fat Man," was dropped over Nagasaki. The atomic bomb exploded 1,650 feet above the city.
Fujie Urata Matsumoto, a survivor, shares one scene:
The pumpkin field in front of the house was blown clean. Nothing was left of the whole thick crop, except that in place of the pumpkins there was a woman's head. I looked at the face to see if I knew her. It was a woman of about forty. She must have been from another part of town -- I had never seen her around here. A gold tooth gleamed in the wide-open mouth. A handful of singed hair hung down from the left temple over her cheek, dangling in her mouth. Her eyelids were drawn up, showing black holes where the eyes had been burned out. . . . She had probably looked square into the flash and gotten her eyeballs burned.
Approximately 40 percent of Nagasaki was destroyed. Luckily for many civilians living in Nagasaki, though this atomic bomb was considered much stronger than the one exploded over Hiroshima, the terrain of Nagasaki prevented the bomb from doing as much damage.
The decimation, however, was still great. With a population of 270,000, approximately 40,000 people died immediately and another 30,000 by the end of the year.
I saw the atom bomb. I was four then. I remember the cicadas chirping. The atom bomb was the last thing that happened in the war and no more bad things have happened since then, but I don't have my Mummy any more. So even if it isn't bad any more, I'm not happy.
--- Kayano Nagai, survivor8
Notes
1. Dan Kurzman, Day of the Bomb: Countdown to Hiroshima (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1986) 410.
2. William S. Parsons as quoted in Ronald Takaki, Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1995) 43.
3. Kurzman, Day of the Bomb 394.
4. George Caron as quoted in Takaki, Hiroshima 44.
5. Robert Lewis as quoted in Takaki, Hiroshima 43.
6. A survivor quoted in Robert Jay Lifton, Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima (New York: Random House, 1967) 27.
7. Fujie Urata Matsumoto as quoted in Takashi Nagai, We of Nagasaki: The Story of Survivors in an Atomic Wasteland (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1964) 42.
8. Kayano Nagai as quoted in Nagai, We of Nagasaki 6.
Bibliography
Hersey, John. Hiroshima. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985.
Kurzman, Dan. Day of the Bomb: Countdown to Hiroshima. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1986.
Liebow, Averill A. Encounter With Disaster: A Medical Diary of Hiroshima, 1945. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1970.
Lifton, Robert Jay. Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima. New York: Random House, 1967.
Nagai, Takashi. We of Nagasaki: The Story of Survivors in an Atomic Wasteland. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1964.
Takaki, Ronald. Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1995.
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Which Welsh fashion designer launched the 'Warehouse' chain? | Jeff Banks - Fashion Designer | Designers | The FMD
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Jeff Banks is a renowned Welsh designer of both men's and women's clothing, jewellery, and home furnishings.
Jeff Banks was born in 1943 in Ebbw Vale, Wales, U.K. His sheet metal worker father left his mother when Banks was aged eight, and she resultantly decided to move to London, England.
Offered a scholarship to independent grammar school St Dunstan's College in Catford, South London, his mother couldn't afford the uniform so he got a round delivering paraffin on a wheelbarrow - by aged 13 he had employed a man to drive a lorry based tanker, and sold the business aged 15.
Encouraged by a teacher to study art and become a painter, he realised his art skills were limited during his first year at London's Camberwell School of Art, and so transferred to studying interior design and latterly textiles at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design from 1959 to 1962. He then went to the United States, where he studied at the Parsons School of Design, in New York.
Banks holds honorary degrees from the University of Lancaster, East London, Newcastle & Northumbria, University College for the Creative Arts, and the University of Westminster, and is a Doctor of Arts.
In 1964, with money saved from the paraffin business and his father mortgaging his own home, Banks opened the boutique Clobber in London, where he sold garments of his own designs as well as those designed by others.
It proved to be such a success that in 1969, he launched his own fashion label.
In 1975 he opened the first standalone Jeff Banks shop in London, as well as retail outlets in twenty-two department stores, including Harrods and Harvey Nichols.
In 1974, he became involved with the establishment of the Warehouse Utility chain of shops which provides inexpensive fashions in bold colours, for a predominantly young market.
He has also worked freelance for a number of companies, including Liberty of London. Throughout the 1970's and 80's, Banks was completely in tune with contemporary fashion. With an imaginative use of inexpensive fabrics, he was able to provide young women with access to fashion without compromising taste.
After the Warehouse was taken over by retail chain Sears, he was sacked for being disruptive in board meetings - a decision he never regrets. In 1979 and 1981 Jeff became British Designer of the Year, and in 1980 he was made British Coat Designer of the Year.
Banks' standing as a commercial force in retail fashion led to his presenting over 320 episodes of The Clothes Show, the BBC's long-running fashion show, alongside Selina Scott and Caryn Franklin. The show's success of often gaining over 10million viewers, led in 1989 to the first "Clothes Show Live" event at the NEC Birmingham, as well as the launch of the Clothes Show magazine.
In 2000 the food chain Sainsbury's hired Jeff Banks in a bid to stay ahead of the supermarket trend for selling non-food items. Jeff and Co. clothes went on sale in 76 stores and had just begun breaking through the one million pound a week mark. But in 2003 Sainsbury's terminated Banks contract in October. Jeff feels that Saisbury's wants to reap the profits without paying him anything, and he plans to take legal action against them unless he gets "well in excess of ten million pounds" that he feels he is due.
However finally he agreed to take a compensation package of 1 million pounds and a box of chocolates every week.
He has continued to work as a designer with designs for the Guide Association, the England football team, and recently for London's 2012 Olympics bid, which were modelled at the launch by Sir Bobby Charlton, Sir Steve Redgrave and Denise Lewis.
Banks has been married twice. First to the 1960's pop star Sandie Shaw, and subsequently, to Sue Mann, a model and makeup artist. He has converted to Buddhism.
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Welsh fashion designer Jeff Banks is well known not only for his stylish and highly regarded men and women’s clothing, jewellery and home furnishings but also for his presence on popular TV shows like the long running The Clothes Show on the BBC. Moving to London at the age of 8, his entrepreneurial skills and business sense manifested at a very early age. After an abandoned attempt at studying art, Banks studied interior design and later textiles.
Jeff Banks opened his first boutique in London, a shop called Clobber. At first this sold not only his own designs but also those of other designers. This was a big success and soon the eponymous fashion label was launched by the designer. The brand’s products are now sold via stand alone stores as well as through some top stores such as Harrods, Harvey Nichols, Debenhams and many more. The fashion chain Warehouse was founded by Jeff Banks in the late 1970’s. On this page you will find out how to go about shopping at the Jeff Banks online store as well as how to use a free discount coupon to get yourself some great bargains on your purchases.
DISCOUNTS FOR ALL YOUR CLOTHES SHOPPING NEEDS
We know how you love shopping. We also know that you love getting those discounts on your orders - it just makes the purchase that little bit sweeter. So what we do is, we scour the net for some of the best bargains and promotional vouchers out there and arrange them in a systematic manner for you to find here on our website. All offers are 100% free, zero obligation offers. We don’t ask for your credit card number, nor do we ask you to fill out tedious forms.
Take a look at the vast number of vouchers we have for you just in our Men’s Fashion Section. You will find exciting deals from online stores such as 24 Studio as well as Zalando here. That’s just two of the many stores whose promotions you will find there. If you like what you see, and would like to see more, just subscribe to our weekly newsletter and we’ll be sure to inform you of future bargains and promos.
JEFF BANKS DISCOUNT CODES
On this page, you will find deals such as these from the Jeff Banks online store:
3 (shirts) for £99 deals or 2 (chinos and denim jeans) for £50 offer
10% off or 20% voucher code
Selected polos starting at £12.50
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"Which politician said of Margaret Thatcher, ""She's the best man in England""?" | Margaret Thatcher, Britain's 'Iron Lady' Prime Minister, Dead at 87
Margaret Thatcher, Britain's 'Iron Lady' Prime Minister, Dead at 87
DAVID WRIGHT
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Margaret Thatcher , the first woman ever to serve as prime minister of Great Britain and the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century has died at age 87.
"It is with great sadness that Mark and Carol Thatcher announced that their mother Baroness Thatcher died peacefully following a stroke this morning," Lord Timothy Bell said today. "A further statement will be made later."
Thatcher had significant health problems in her later years, suffering several small strokes and, according to her daughter, struggling with dementia .
In Dec. 2012, she was underwent an operation to remove a bladder growth, longtime adviser Tim Bell told The Associated Press.
But during her long career on the political stage, Thatcher was known as the Iron Lady. She led Great Britain as Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990, a champion of free-market policies and adversary of the Soviet Union.
PHOTOS: Margaret Thatcher Through The Years
Many considered her Britain's Ronald Reagan . In fact, Reagan and Thatcher were political soul mates. Reagan called her the "best man in England" and she called him "the second most important man in my life." The two shared a hatred of communism and a passion for small government. What America knew as "Reaganomics" is still called "Thatcherism" in Britain.
Like Reagan, Thatcher was an outsider in the old boys' club. Just as it was unlikely for an actor to lead the Republicans, the party of Lincoln, it was unthinkable that a grocer's daughter could lead the Conservatives, the party of Churchill and William Pitt -- that is, until Thatcher. She led the Conservatives from 1975 to 1990, the only woman ever to do so.
READ MORE: Margaret Thatcher's 7 Most Inspiring Quotes
Personal Life
Thatcher was born Margaret Hilda Roberts on Oct. 13, 1925 in Grantham, England. She attended Somerville College, Oxford, where she studied chemistry, and later, in 1953, qualified as a barrister, specializing in tax issues.
She married Denis Thatcher on Dec. 13, 1951, and their marriage lasted for nearly 52 years until his death in June 2003. The couple had twins, Mark and Carol, in 1953.
When Thatcher was elected to Britain's House of Commons in 1959, she was its youngest female member. In 1970, when the Conservatives took power, she was made Britain's secretary of state for education and science. In 1975, she was chosen to lead the Conservatives, and she became the prime minister in 1979.
Her policies were controversial. She took on the nation's labor unions, forcing coal miners to return to work after a year on strike.
"We should back the workers and not the shirkers," she said in May 1978.
She pushed for privatization, lower taxes, and deregulation. And she sought to keep Britain from surrendering any of its sovereignty to the European Union.
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Thatcher's admirers say she rejuvenated Britain's faltering economy. Her critics say the rich got richer and the poor were left behind.
In the inner cities, Thatcherism brought a violent backlash. There were calls from her own party to change course. But Thatcher resisted.
"You turn if you want to," she said in October 1980. "The lady's not for turning."
She had courage in abundance. In 1982, when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, she took Britain to war -- and won.
In 1984, she narrowly escaped being killed when the IRA bombed her hotel during a party conference. The morning after, she convened the conference on schedule -- undaunted.
She recognized Mikhail Gorbachev as a man who could help to end the Cold War, commenting famously, "I like Mr. Gorbachev. We can do business together."
Ronald Reagan thought so, too. Together, Thatcher and Reagan savored victory in the Cold War as their proudest achievement. But while Alzheimer's forced Reagan to retire from public life, Thatcher kept on long after leaving Downing Street.
She became Baroness Thatcher, a symbolic leader for a party that struggled to find a worthy successor.
By the time of President Reagan's funeral in 2004, Lady Thatcher had already suffered several strokes. She was a silent witness at her friend's farewell, but she had the foresight to record a eulogy for Reagan several months earlier.
"As the last journey of this faithful pilgrim took him beyond the sunset, and as heaven's morning broke, I like to think -- in the words of Bunyan -- that 'all the trumpets sounded on the other side," she said.
| Ronald Reagan |
"And which politician described Margaret Thatcher as ""Attila the Hen""?" | Margaret Thatcher: 20 ways that she changed Britain | Politics | The Guardian
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher: 20 ways that she changed Britain
From the economy to women's fashion, no PM in living memory has had such far-reaching influence on the social landscape
Margaret Thatcher with Kevin Keegan, left, and Emlyn Hughes, right, before the 1980 European Championship. Photograph: David Levenson/Getty Images/Hulton Archive
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher: 20 ways that she changed Britain
From the economy to women's fashion, no PM in living memory has had such far-reaching influence on the social landscape
Sunday 14 April 2013 05.00 EDT
First published on Sunday 14 April 2013 05.00 EDT
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1 Transforming the City of London
Until the late 1970s, the Square Mile was a genteel all-male club dominated by pinstripe suits, public school accents and a culture of long lunches. Money was made at the Stock Exchange with effortless panache, as a coterie of licensed dealers acted on behalf of stockbroker firms with redolent names such as Quilter and Co.
The Big Bang blew the ancien regime apart. Within six months of Margaret Thatcher's election, exchange controls were lifted and foreign capital flooded into Britain. The deregulation of the Stock Exchange in 1986 was an invitation to the world's biggest beasts to enter the trading floor.
Traders began to send huge amounts of money fizzing around the world's financial networks. The towers of Canary Wharf rose silver and immaculate from the industrial desert of the former London Docklands. The capital began its journey to world financial domination.
The crash of five years ago cast a shadow on the free-for-all spirit that the Big Bang let rip. But Thatcher's deregulatory push created the new internationally focused City. For better and for worse, it hasn't looked back. At the start of this decade the financial sector was estimated to be worth £125.4bn, or 9.4%, in gross value to the UK economy.
2 Privatisation
As part of a famous television ad campaign from September 1986, an ordinary looking bloke is shown in a fictional village pub. Lost in thought, he almost knocks a passing postman from his bike. It turns out he is preoccupied with the news that he can buy shares in British Gas. After passing on the good news to the postie, he adds: "If you see Sid, tell him."
The age of Sid was not simply a PR myth. Initially there really was a popular scramble by ordinary folk to sign up to the "people's capitalism" and reap the rewards. Four million people applied for British Gas shares at 135p a pop with a minimum purchase of 100. Many then sold them almost immediately for a quick profit. In Thatcher's second term, Jaguar, British Telecom, BritOil and British Aerospace were also sold off. Later, British Steel, British Airways, BP, water and electricity would follow. Thatcher said that privatisation was a chance to give "power back to the people". In fact, as Robert Philpot, director of the Progress pressure group, wrote last week: "Now, in 2012, it's clear that the result of electricity privatisation was to take power away from the people. Small British shareholders have no influence over the overwhelmingly non-British owners of the firms that generate and distribute power in Britain."
3 The Saatchi and Saatchi effect
Saatchi and Saatchi's "Labour isn't working" political poster, apparently featuring a long dole queue (made up of actors), became perhaps the most famous in the nation's history. British electioneering was changed for ever.
4 The decline of the north
When Britain's first female prime minister was in her pomp, northern football fans travelling to away games in London would be taunted by home supporters waving wads of £10 and £20 notes. The brutal repartee of the terraces expressed a fundamental truth of the Thatcher period: the north suffered the worst of the deep recession and high unemployment of the early years; and it benefited least from the eventual boom of the late 1980s.
It would be wrong to say that Thatcher planned the decline of the north's most vital industries and sources of employment. In fact, northern England suffered precisely from the absence of a plan in Westminster.
In 1985, explaining why she believed regional planning in Britain was a non-starter, Thatcher said: "If we try to discourage development and economic growth in large parts of the south of England, in the hope that it will happen in the large cities in the north, we risk losing them altogether."
Left to its own devices, the British economy rebalanced irrevocably to the south. Employment in the manufacturing industry, vital to the north's wellbeing, slumped, falling from 7.1 million in 1979 to 4.4m in 1993. Services and the booming City eventually took up much of the economic slack, but the good times were happening in the south.
5 A diminished role for trades unions
Thatcher came to power ready to take on the the National Union of Mineworkers, which had humiliated her Tory predecessor, Edward Heath, during the 1970s.
The miners' strike of 1984-85 allowed her to destroy the power of the NUM and institute a series of legal obstacles to industrial action – which she believed had bedevilled Britain in the 70s. Meanwhile, the decline in Britain's manufacturing industry, which Thatcher's government did little to reverse, destroyed the power bases of British trades unionism.
High unemployment and recession critically weakened the unions' bargaining power in the early- to mid-1980s. Since 1980, union membership in Britain has halved.
6 Open all hours
A backlash by the Christian right meant that Thatcher's shops bill, designed to allow Sunday trading, was voted down in 1986. It was her only defeat on an entire bill in the Commons. But the road to deregulation for shops and pubs had begun.
7 Shattering the postwar political consensus
After the second world war, British politics seemed to have come to a lasting settlement on the fundamentals of running the country. Both the Conservatives and Labour cherished the "mixed economy", balanced between public and private ownership. Pragmatism was the order of the day, as union leaders such as Jack Jones and Joe Gormley enjoyed beer and sandwiches at No 10. Economic policy was forged through achieving "tripartite consensus" between employers, unions and the government of the day.
The winter of discontent sounded the knell for that way of doing things. Thatcher arrived in power armed with the free-market philosophy of Ronald Reagan's adviser, Milton Friedman. "Managers must be allowed to manage" became the mantra, and a new style of politics was born.
8 The rise of power-dressing
The rise of the City of London, and its new money-focused ethos, spawned its own style. Designer labels came of age, suited to the new aspirational spirit. Actresses such as Joan Collins, (a Thatcher admirer) in the American glamour soaps Dallas and Dynasty, patented the look for would-be female power-dressers.
Shoulder-pads and sharply tailored suits ruled. Thatcher swore by her blue skirt suit, pearls and Asprey handbag, a look that was to influence powerful women from Hillary Clinton to Condoleezza Rice.
9 The Northern Ireland peace process
Among republicans in Northern Ireland, Thatcher is loathed for her intransigence during the Maze prison hunger strike of 1981, which led to the death of Bobby Sands. But four years later she appalled unionists by signing the Anglo-Irish agreement, which gave the Republic of Ireland a say in the affairs of the north, paving the way for the Good Friday peace agreement of 1998.
10 Education reforms
Thatcher's education secretary from 1986-89, Kenneth Baker, transformed the state school system, creating a proto-market that is being enthusiastically embraced and developed by one of his successors, Michael Gove. Baker insisted that attainment levels be made public, allowing a "league table" of schools to emerge. At the same time, he instructed schools to accept all applicants, local or otherwise, unless already full.
The choice agenda was born: parents could, in theory if not always in practice, decide which school their child would go to. Local authority control of education was also much-reduced by the Education Act of 1988, which gave autonomy over budgets and appointments to heads and school governors.
Gove has deepened that autonomy with his academy programme and added the further option of free schools.
11 Changing the way we watch football
Thatcher had no interest in football, despite occasional cringeworthy photo-ops, such as the pose outside No 10 with footballers Kevin Keegan and Emlyn Hughes before the 1980 European Championships. But when one of the worst incidents of football hooliganism broke out at a Luton-Millwall match in March 1985, she acted. The Football Spectators Act was passed in 1989, controversially making ID cards compulsory for fans.
After the Hillsborough disaster that year, in which 96 Liverpool fans died, the plan was never acted upon. Lord Taylor's Hillsborough inquiry recommended all-seater stadiums in English grounds. A revolution in who watched football and how they watched it was under way.
12 Inspiring a generation of Eurosceptics
When the European Economic Community began to develop far beyond a free-trade agreement, Thatcher's strident opposition to anything beyond a single market became a hallmark of her premiership. She inspired a generation of Eurosceptics and changed the chemistry of the Tory party. In much of the nation, fed on a diet of "Up yours, Delors!" style headlines and exposés of life aboard the "Brussels gravy-train", the mood gradually shifted from one of relative indifference to antipathy towards the EU.
13 Relations with Rupert Murdoch
Murdoch's Sun switched from backing Labour to the Tories for the 1979 election that launched Thatcher. The relationship became mutually beneficial from then on as she helped him create a power base that would be threatened only 30 years later, during the hacking inquiry.
In the early 1980s Murdoch launched a bid for the Times Group newspapers, which ordinarily would have been referred to the competition authorities, given his existing media holdings. Instead the deal went through on the nod after private meetings between Thatcher and Murdoch at Chequers.
Murdoch would later revolutionise the British media, defying the print unions and moving his News International media group to Wapping in an overnight coup de theatre. Thatcher backed him. According to cabinet minister Norman Fowler, any misgivings from colleagues or supporters would be met with the response: "Why are you so opposed to Rupert? He is going to get us in."
14 The revolution in home ownership
Britain was not always a country obsessed with house prices. But the Housing Act of 1980, which allowed council house tenants to buy their own homes, changed the face of home ownership in Britain. Many former local authority tenants paid less than £10,000 for homes that would be worth 10 times that a decade later. Over the next 30 years, this radical move towards "a nation of home-owners" led to a trail of unintended consequences.
A prolonged boom in house prices took place along with a chronic shortage of affordable housing – yet to be resolved by a series of governments – and the gradual emergence of a culture of debt, incurred on the presumption that the value of property would keep rising. In the private sector, rents soared.
In the first half of 1988 alone, house prices rose by 30%. On the back of the housing boom, much of Britain mortgaged itself up to the hilt and household debt reached record levels.
15 A new prestige for the armed forces
Winning the Falklands war in 1982 transformed Thatcher's standing in the opinion polls. Fighting it put the armed forces back on the centre stage for the first time since Suez. The Falklands revived the prestige of soldiering, as huge crowds gathered to wave off and welcome home the troops in Portsmouth. Later came the Gulf, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq and the tributes to the fallen at Wootton Bassett.
16 Framing the debate
No one talks about abolishing private schools any more. Unilateral nuclear disarmament is not embraced by any of the three main political parties. In 1979, as Thatcher took power, the top rate of income tax was 83%. The ferocious battle this year over lowering the top rate of tax from 50% to 45% illustrates how far the debate on tax has shifted.
17 Transforming the Labour party
Losing three times to Thatcher led directly to the creation of New Labour and the emergence of Tony Blair as a leader who embraced her emphasis on choice, competition and an expanding role for the private sector in the economy. Following the crash of 2007, Labour under Ed Miliband has still to decide whether to make the break from that consensus.
18 The Tories and the Church of England
The observation that the Church of England amounts to "the Tory party at prayer" is thought to date to the 18th century. Thatcher's terms of office severely damaged that relationship, possibly beyond repair. The publication in 1985 of the C of E report Faith in the City, A Call to Action by Church and Nation, caused an almighty political row between the church and the Conservative party which has reverberated to the present day. Endorsed by Dr Robert Runcie, then archbishop of Canterbury, the document followed riots in Britain's inner cities. It was a cry of anguish over the dilapidated, alienated state of the inner cities, after years of recession, gloom and rising unemployment. Relations between the Tories and the established church have never truly recovered.
19 Transforming television
Thatcher saw the BBC licence fee as a tax imposed on television viewers irrespective of whether they wanted to watch BBC programmes or not. As prime minister, she believed that a leftwing bias permeated its coverage. During the Falklands war, rightwingers renamed the corporation the Stateless Persons Broadcasting Corporation – a dig at its refusal to describe British troops as "our" troops and Argentinian soldiers as "the enemy".
It was hoped that the 1990 Broadcasting Act would tame the institution, forcing it to outsource at least 25% of its production, and allowing new players into the market. But the legacy of the Thatcher era has been to drag the BBC into a perpetual culture war. And she helped create Channel 4 in 1982, probably not anticipating that it would popularise fiercely anti-establishment output.
20 Changing the world
Defeat in the Falklands war signalled the end of the road for Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri Castelli, head of Argentina's last military dictatorship. Thatcher's friendship with Mikhail Gorbachev helped hasten the cold war to its end, as the economically moribund Soviet Union collapsed. However, her refusal to back sanctions on apartheid South Africa, and description of Nelson Mandela as a "terrorist", arguably delayed the fall of that regime.
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In which sphere was John Phillip Holland a pioneer? | Communicate Science: The Irish Submarine Pioneer: John Philip Holland
The Irish Submarine Pioneer: John Philip Holland
Holland at the hatch of the USS Holland
John Philip Holland was a Christian Brother and taught at the North Monastery in Cork where he is reputed to have started developing the early prototypes of his invention.
Holland is believed to have been born in Liscannor, Co. Clare in 1841. He was educated at the Christian Brothers secondary school in Ennistymon and subsequently Sexton Street School in Limerick City. In Limerick he was greatly influenced by the scientist and mechanical engineer Br. Bernard O'Brien who was accomplished in building telescopes with intricate clockwork mechanisms.
He joined the Christian Brothers in 1858 and began teaching alongside Br. James Dominic Burke at the North Monastery. Br. James Burke was a noted science teacher and is considered the father of vocational and scientific education in Ireland.
Never an exceptional teacher of the classics, he apparently found it almost 'intolerably boring' to teach reading , writing and arithmetic, but he was known to be an excellent teacher of drawing, science and music. Without taking full vows in the order, he taught at schools in Armagh (1860-61), Port Laoise (1861), Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford (1862-65), Drogheda (1865-69)and Dundalk (1869-1872).
While in Enniscorthy, Holland developed an interest in flying and began to design flying machines.In Drogheda he constructed a mechanical duck which could walk around the garden and swim, dive and resurface when put in water.
Seemingly, through a combination of ill-health, lack of teaching ability and his brother and mother emigrating to the United States, Holland declined to take his perpetual vows in the Order and emigrated to America.
Fenian Ran at Paterson Museum, NJ
Fenian Ram c. 1920's
In New Jersey, Holland resumed teaching for a time and became involved with the Irish Fenian Brotherhood who financed the building of his first three submarines. In 1878, Holland dove to 12 feet in his first submarine - Holland I. The hull of this vessel was recovered from the bottom of the Upper Passaid River in 1927 and is currently on display in the Paterson Museum , Paterson, New Jersey.
The Holland II (The Fenian Ram) was launched in 1881 and was a three-man boat.The vessel carried Holland and others to depths in excess of 45 feet and successfully fired projectiles. Following a dispute, the Fenian Brotherhood stole the Fenian Ram in 1883, but shortly realised that nobody but Holland knew how to work it. The Fenian Ram was eventually brought to the Paterson Museum where it is still on display.
The Holland VI was eventually to become the first submarine in the US Navy. Purchased by the US Government on 11 April 1900, the USS Holland was commissioned on 12 October 1900 and served for 10 years. By 1905, Holland withdrew from the company he had helped found to design and build his vessels ( Electric Boat Company ), but not before the submarines were being used by American, British, Japanese, Dutch and Russian Naval forces.
John Philip Holland, 1912
Holland died of pneumonia on 12 August 1914 aged 74 in Newark, New Jersey and is buried at the Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Totowa, New Jersey.
Regarded as the father of the modern submarine, Holland is remembered as the North Monastery, Cork celebrates 200 years in existence. The NMCI has dedicated its library at Ringaskiddy in Holland's memory. The library has a unique collection of John P. Holland papers in its collection.
Much more information on Holland and his submarines can be found here .
USS Holland launch 1897
| Submarine |
'Herod', 'John the Baptist' and 'Nawabath' are characters in which opera by Richard Strauss? | Courage & Conflict - Forgotten Stories of the Irish at War by Ian Kenneally
Courage & Conflict
Click on the image of John Philip Holland, submarine pioneer, for a look inside this book
Available from all major eBook stores.
The Irish people have a long history of emigration and it is no surprise that those emigrants found themselves involved in wars throughout the world. For many, a career as a soldier was the last hope for a better life and the great armies have always been a home to those on the bottom rungs of society. This book tells some of those stories. Courage and Conflict is based around extraordinary people and events, revolutionaries, inventors, soldiers, sailors and mutineers. Some of these histories are more famous than others, many have been forgotten and some are being told for the first time. This thrilling book tells the story of
John Barry, the 'father of the United States Navy'
the brutal tale of the San Patricios, deserters from the US Army who fought for Mexico
the forgotten history of the Irish Battalion of the Papal Army in Italy
John Philip Holland and the development of the modern submarine
the epic history of Irish involvement in the American Civil War for both North and South.
the incredible exploits of British army officer John Henry Patterson in what is modern day Kenya
the Irish soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn
the Connaught Rangers Mutiny in India
the complete events of Dublin's Bloody Sunday including shocking new evidence on the shootings at Croke Park
These stories provide a glimpse of Irish history intersecting with that of other peoples and countries. The book is an exciting and eclectic mix that details some of the triumphs and the tragedies of the Irish at war.
Bibliographic Data
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Give any year in the life of the Spanish explorer Hernando Cortez? | Hernan Cortes The Explorer Conquistador | The Man, The Mission, His Actions Changed the World!
Hernan Cortes The Explorer Conquistador
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EXCERPT FROM THE LIFE OF HERNAN CORTES
“”When I saw the discord and animosity between these two peoples I was not a little pleased, for it seemed to further my purpose considerably; consequently I might have the opportunity of subduing them more quickly, for as the saying goes, “divided they fall”…And I remember that one of the Gospels says, “Omne regnum….” So I maneuvered one against the other and thanked each side for their warnings and told each that I held his friendship to be of more worth than the other’s”(Hernan cortes).. . ( http://hernancortesnhd.weebly.com/the-life-of-cortes.html )”
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EXCERPT:
“Castilleja de la Cuesta, Seville, Spain. 2nd December 1547. Hernan Cortes died at the Duques de Montpensier Palace. One of his horses, bringed back from México, was buried at the gardens of the Palace. Today, that Palace is Las Irlandesas School, and the stone is still there
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EXCERPT:
“MEXICO CITY.- A linen that protected for more than a century the remains of Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes was restored by specialists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) of Mexico. This piece, elaborated with white linen and black silk embroidery, belongs to the National Museum of History (MNH) of Mexico, at Castillo de Chapultepec.
The linen, used during the funeral rites of the osseous remains of Cortes, was intervened as part of the systematic conservation project made by the museum to celebrate their 70th anniversary. The attention to the textile was made in collaboration with the students from the School of Conservation and Restoration of the West (ECRO). ( http://artdaily.com/news/74640/Linen-that-protected-Spanish-conquistador-Hernan-Cortes–remains-restored-by-specialists#.VmUbvb91-fg )”
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EXCERPT:
“MEXICO WEB FACTS: Place of encounter of Montezuma Xocoyotzin and the Spanish Conquistador Hernan Cortes on the 8 day of November 1519. When Cortés returned to the palace, however, he found that Alvarado and his men had massacred the Aztec nobility and the survivors had elected a new emperor, Cuitláhuac. Cuitláhuac ordered his soldiers to besiege the palace housing the Spaniards and Monteczuma. Cortés ordered Monteczuma to speak to his people from a palace balcony and persuade them to let the Spanish return to the coast in peace. Monteczuma was jeered and stones were thrown at him injuring him badly, and Monteczuma died a few days later. ( http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/Mexicoweb/factfile/Unique-facts-Mexico7.htm )”
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EXCERPT:
“CORTES, HERNAN – Hernán Cortés (also spelled Cortez), Marqués Del Valle De Oaxaca (1485-1547) was a Spanish adventurer and conquistador (he was also a failed law student) who overthrew the Aztec empire and claimed Mexico for Spain (1519-21).
Cortes sailed with 11 ships from Cuba to the Yucatan Peninsula to look for gold, silver, and other treasures. Hearing rumors of great riches, Cortés traveled inland and “discovered” Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec empire. He then brutally killed the Aztec emperor Montezuma and conquered his Aztec Empire of Mexico, claiming all of Mexico for Spain in 1521. Treasures from the Aztecs were brought to Spain, and Cortés was a hero in his homeland. Cortés was appointed governor of the colony of New Spain, but eventually fell out of favor with the royals. He then returned to Spain where he died a few years later. ( http://www.enchantedlearning.com/explorers/1500a.shtml )”
INTERACTIVE SCRIBBLE MAP: ( http://www.scribblemaps.com/maps/view/Hernan_Cortes_/0PpODKLYJn )
EXCERPT:
“José Guadalupe Posada: The Jean Charlot Collection, University of Hawaii Library
EXCERPT AND LINK at http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/34302 : ” BIBLIOTECA DEL NIÑO MEXICANO, por Heriberto Frias, Mexico, Maucci. In 1900 Maucci Brothers, a Spanish publisher, commissioned Posada to illustrate a series of pamphlets for children on the history of Mexico. Each pamphlet measuring 4 3/4 x 3 1/4 in. is approximately 16 pages. The cover illustrations are probably the only mechanically produced chromolithographs that Posada ever did.
In 1921 the artist Jean Charlot, working as a muralist in Mexico City, encountered the broadsides of José Guadalupe Posada. Charlot’s enthusiasm for Posada resulted in the assembly of an extensive personal collection of his art. In 1900 the Maucci Brothers, a Spanish publisher, commissioned Posada to illustrate a series of pamphlets for children on the history of Mexico. The cover illustrations are probably the only mechanically produced chromolithographs that Posada ever did.
To view larger images of the covers and to download a high resolution image file of the cover go to http://digicoll.manoa.hawaii.edu/jeancharlot/ ”
EXCEPT:
“HERNÁN CORTÉS (1485-1547)
Hernán Cortés was a Spanish explorer who is famous mainly for his march across Mexico and his conquering of the Aztec Empire in Mexico.
Cortés was born in the Spanish city of Medellín in 1485. When he was a young man, he studied law, but he soon gave that up to seek his fortune in the New World that was just being discovered by Columbus and others.
First he went to the island of Santo Domingo (now known as the Dominican Republic) in 1504. He was only 19 years old at the time. He stayed there for seven years, then took part in the Spanish conquest of Cuba in 1511. He became mayor of Santiago de Cuba and stayed there until 1518.
Cortés was eager for more power and conquests, so he talked the Spanish governor of Cuba into letting him lead an expedition to Mexico in 1519. Mexico had just been discovered by the Spanish explorer de Córdoba a year before.”
(http://wayback.archive-it.org/3635/20130907001822/http://library.thinkquest.org/4034/cortes.html)
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Scene from the frieze decorating the United States Capitol. Painted sometime between 1878 and 1880 by Constantino Brumidi.
EXCERPT AND LINK FROM VIRTUALOLOGY.COM: “CORTES, Hernan, or Hernando, soldier, born in Medellin, Province of Estremadura, Spain, in 1485 died near Seville, 2 Dec., 1547. His parents, Martin Cortes and Catalina Pizarro Altamirano, were both of good family, but in reduced circumstances. He was a sickly child, and at the age of fourteen was sent to the University of Salamanca, but returned home two years later without leave. He then determined upon a life of adventure, and arranged to accompany Nicolas de Ovando, likewise a native of Estremadura, who was about to sail for Santo Domingo to supersede Bobadilla in his command. An accident that happened to him in a love adventure detained him at home, and the expedition sailed without him.” –
Welcome to the website of the most famous Explorer Conquistador in the world, Hernan Cortes. Here you will learn from a vast array of sources that we have provided in one website.
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“Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro, 1st Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca (
Spanish pronunciation:
[erˈnaŋ korˈtes ðe monˈroj i piˈθaro]; 1485 – December 2, 1547) was a Spanish Conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of mainland Mexico under the rule of the King of Castile in the early 16th century. Cortés was part of the generation of Spanish colonizers who began the first phase of the Spanish colonization of the Americas.
Born in Medellín, Spain, to a family of lesser nobility, Cortés chose to pursue a livelihood in the New World. He went to Hispaniola and later to Cuba, where he received an encomienda and, for a short time, became alcalde (magistrate) of the second Spanish town founded on the island. In 1519, he was elected captain of the third expedition to the mainland, an expedition which he partly funded. His enmity with the Governor of Cuba, Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, resulted in the recall of the expedition at the last moment, an order which Cortés ignored.“- ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hernan_Cortes )
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| 1485 1547 |
Murphy's stout originated in which city? | Hernando Cortez Stock Photos and Pictures | Getty Images
By: Hulton Archive
People: Hernan Cortes, Emperor Montezuma II of Mexico
Hernando Cortez Hernando Cortez *1485-1547+ Conquistador, discoverer of Mexico, Spain Encounter between the King of the Aztecs, Montezuma, and Cortez in Tenochtitlan| behind Cortez is his Indian interpreter Dona Marina - Mexican depiction on a carpet
People: Hernán Cortés, Last Ruler of the Aztec Empire Moctezuma II.
Hernan Cortes (1488-1547). Engraving. Colored.
| i don't know |
Which Italian fashion house, founded in 1992, has a silver triangle as its emblem - it is synonymous with opulence and quality? | Designers Antique, Estate and Vintage Costume Jewellery
New designer information added to this page on 17 September 2016
Designer Adele Simpson - 1944-1950's
Adele Smithline was born in 1903 and married Wesley William Simpson in 1930. Through 1930, she had worked as a designer for Gershels, William Bass firm, and Mary Lee Fashions. This last company allowed her to put her label on her accessory designs of jewelry, perfume and lingerie. The Adele Simpson Company, a clothing and accessories company, was found in 1944. It produced unusual designs, chains, medallions, necklaces, broaches and earrings in sterling silver and gold plated metal using clear and color pave rhinestones, faceted crystals and faux pearls. Mark: "Adele Simpson" in script. The jewelry line was limited in production and ceased operations in the 1950's. Jewelry pieces are rarely found today.
Designer Alfred Philippe for Trifari (Crème de la Crème)
Alfred Philippe is one of the top designers for Trifari please also see details on Trifari Jewellery
There is so much history to Trifari Jewellery. Trifari Jewellery was first known as Trifari and Trifari founded by Gustavo Trifari and his uncle in 1910. The company name changed to just Trifari after Gustavos uncle left. In 1917 Leo Krussman joined and then Carl Fishel in 1925. They renamed the Company Trifari, Krussman and Fishel which is where the hallmark KTF derived.
Early 1930 Alfred Philippe joined as head designer, he's considered a top craftsman who worked in fine jewellery for Cartier and Van Cleef and Arples. His designs became very popular especially the well known designs known as fruit salad (also known as Tutti Frutti) jewellery. The company was run 1910 to 1975 by the originating founders and sons of those founders. In 1975 Trifari was purchased by several other companies, there's so much rich history to Trifari, we will add more and more over time on their fascinating history. Early Trifari Jewellery is very collectible and some pieces are now very rare to find.
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Designer Alexander Korda
Korda designs were based on the movie 113 Thief of Bagdad. The movie was released in 1940 and it has been remembered as the greatest fantasy film ever made. The movie received Academy Awards for Art Direction, Color Cinematography and Special Effects. The producer Alexander Korda biggest achievement in my opinion. The movie is about Arabian Nights adventures and appeals to this date to all ages. Six famous directors worked on the film which encountered many obstacles. The final result of this movie more that exceeded all expectation and it has become an instant classic to this day. Korda the director of the film distributed limited pieces to promote the film. All the pieces were limited reproduction of actual pieces used in the film.
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Designer Avon of Belleville 1945-1971
Rare to find Avon of Belleville, not to be confused with Avon Cosmetics Corp., was formed by Abe Mazer (Mazer/Jomaz) in 1945, producing fine quality jewelry out of their plant in Belleville Ontario. Much of Avon of Belleville jewelry is designed by Marcel Boucher, and although bearing the Avon of Belleville mark, also is imprinted with Boucher's signature 4-digit design numbers. Avon of Belleville ceased to exist in 1971 which coincides with the time that Avon cosmetics began producing costume jewelry. RECOGNIZING AVON OF BELLEVILLE JEWELRY The first sign is the superior quality of the jewels. Avon of Belleville jewelry has heft and uses the finest quality rhinestones. There are also the magnificent designs of Marcel Boucher that instantly sets this jewelry apart from the other quality Avon Cosmetics jewels. The jewelry was marked "Avon" in script and also in upper case block letters, along with Marcel Boucher's 4 digit design inventory numbers.
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Designer Beau or Beaucraft 1947 - September 2004
Beaucraft Inc. began operations and produced "Beau" and "Beaucraft" jewellery in Providence, RI from 1947. The company was one of the leading producers of beautiful and unique fine sterling silver jewellery ever made for over half a century. The jewellery designs had originality, versatility, and impeccable craftsmanship. Vintage Beaucraft jewellery pieces are now considered highly collectible and in the same class of jewellery as Coro. Their latest designs took on a new approach by contrasting brushed and high polished sterling silver finishes, creating a completely original look that combines classic style with modern fashion. The jewellery designs include fish and seahorses in sterling silver metal. Mark: "Beaucraft" (In Sterling), "Beau B Sterling", "B" with "Ster" or "Sterling", and "Beau Sterling". Beaucraft also made 14k jewellery.
In September 2004, after 57 years in the business, Beaucraft Inc. retired from the jewellery business and the entire inventory was put on the auction block with Amsco Ltd. purchasing the bulk of its inventory that is being offered to the public at "well-below-discount prices", "OVER THREE QUARTERS OF A MILLION DOLLARS WORTH OF FINE BEAUCRAFT STERLING SILVER JEWELRY". Check the internet: AmscoOnline.com, the Amsco online retail store for NEW discount jewellery of Beaucraft. Amsco Ltd., for more than twenty years, has been supplying quality jewellery to the wholesale jewellery and catalogue industry and are now able to offer this merchandise, as well as other discount merchandise, direct to the public at a fraction of the cost found elsewhere. Other jewellery for sale includes: Charter Club, One of a Kind and Salesmans Samples used to display merchandise to the buyers at Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdales, and Saks Fifth Ave., Religious, Nature, Awareness, Semi-Precious, Hearts, Angels, Holiday, and Patriotic.
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Designer Bergere 1947 - 1979
Jewellery by Bergere was produced by L. Erbert & Pohls Inc. New York in 1947. We Have come across some really high quality pieces of jewellery from Bergere. They mainly concentrated on producing necklaces, bracelets, brooches and earrings. The materials they used within their jewellery was faux pearls, coloured stones, beads, crystals and rhinestones on gold plated, rhodium and brass metails. They produced various collections dating from 1947 until the company ceased trading in 1979. The Bergere signature mark is bergere with a dash above the 2nd e of the name and Bergere in script.
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Designer Marcel Boucher
From Marcia Brown's book, "Signed Beauties of Costume Jewellery": Frenchman, Marcel Boucher, came to the United States as a young man in 1925. He became a jewellery designer for Cartier, one of the finest jewellery companies in New York City. He designed jewellery for Mazer Brothers in the early 1930's and established his own company, "Marcel Boucher and Cie Company," in 1937. Boucher jewellery is usually signed and carries an inventory number. Early marks are "Marboux" or "MB" in a cartouche. Later marks are "Marcel Boucher" and "Boucher." Marcel Boucher died in 1965 and his wife, Sandra Boucher, ran the company until 1972. Boucher created a line featuring six bird pins. But, oh what birds! They were birds of imagination with ornate coloured stones, bright enamels, very three-dimensional "ready to soar" Boucher jewellery is "high-end" and can be tough to tell from the "real thing." It is very collectible and highly desirable.
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Designer Blackamoor Jewellery
According to An Illustrated Dictionary of Jewellery by Newman, a Blackamoor is a figure of a young male or female black African depicted in jewelry in a head or bust. Morcic Croatian jewelry and figures have been a speciality of the artisans of Venice and Croatia for hundreds of years. Inspired by styles of the East, this type of jewellery was believed to have protective powers and was sometimes worn as an amulet to guard against evil. Sailors often wore a Morcic earring in their left ear. In the 19th century it became the expensive and soughtafter jewellery to the rich. Still produced today in Venice by the iconic Nardi firm and conjuring up images of Carnivale and the exotic mysterious East.
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Designer Cartier (Crème de la Crème)
CARTIER, the very name denotes qualtiy and opulence. Founded in 1847 in Paris, the firm became one of the world's greatest designers and manufacturers of jewelry and objets d'art, and a supplier to royalty, nobility, and the wealthy. Once memorably hailed as the "Jeweler of Kings, & the King of Jewelers" by King Edward VII Cartier remains today, one of the worlds' best known luxury brands and a byword for quality & style.
Until the end of the 19th century, Cartier was primarily a retailer of jewelry and objects produced by outside manufacturers. When Cartier's son Alfred took over in 1874, the firm gradually began repairing and improving jewelry, and then designing and manufacturing their own original pieces in the late 1800s. In 1899, the move to 13 Rue de la Paix situated the business in the heart of the important jewelry and couturier quarter of Paris.
Encouraged by King Edward VII, Cartier opened a branch in London in 1902 managed by Alfred's son Jacques. A royal commission was granted in 1904, followed quickly by commissions from Spain, Portugal, Russia, Siam, and Greece. These royal commissions helped to solidify Cartier's reputation among the wealthy and famous the world over.
To better deal with American millionaires, who from the beginning formed a large part of Cartier's clientele, a New York branch was opened in 1909 by Alfred's other son, Pierre. Until World War I, Cartier maintained close relations with clients in Russia, and the princes and maharajas of India sought Cartier to design and mount their jewels. Jewelry and accessories were also made as stock items for the stores or were commissioned by individuals.
Until the 1960's, the Paris, London, and New York branches were part of a single firm but operated independently, collaborating whenever necessary. In 1962, the New York branch was sold, followed by the Paris branch in 1965, thus ending the unity. The firm was reunited and reorganized in 1979 as Cartier Monde, and today shops and boutiques can be found in cities around the world.
With each of the branches headed by a Cartier brother, the first four decades of the 20th century were a time of originality in design and technique in which a distinctive Cartier aesthetic emerged. Most of the pieces in this exhibition date to this period and reflect in part the range of materials and decorative techniques employed by Cartier.
Recent sale on a well known auction site Cartier Tutti Frutti Platinum Double Clip Brooch > > >
Designer Cadoro (Crème de la Crème) or Hollywood Stars - 1945 - 1980's
CADORO - JEWELLERY TO THE RICH AND FAMOUS, Cadoro is very high quality jewellery and was founded by Actor Steve Brody and Dan Staneskieu in 1945. At the time their jewellery was very fashionable and custom designed. Each piece was hand crafted using the materials brush gold tone and silver tone metals with some pieces consisting of rhinestones, glass crystals, seed pearls, coloured stones, apparently they chose only the highest quality resources. Their signature mark is CADORO and CADORO with a copyright symbol. The company suffered the loss of Dan Staneskieu who died in the 1960's and the company ceased trading in 1970. Their jewellery is now very collectable and rare to find.
Designer Chanel - Gabrielle "COCO" Chanel ( (Crème de la Crème)
See also Reinad Jewellery and Robert Goossen)
One of the most visible personalities of her era, Gabrielle Chanel invented a style that was synonymous with modernity and chic. What is perhaps less well known is that the grande dame of twentieth-century fashion used platinum and diamonds to create an exceptional collection of the finest jewelry. This daring experiment is currently a new source of inspiration for Chanel, which through its fine jewellery department in the Place Vendome in Paris, is once again demonstrating the art of creating and wearing exceptional jewellery. The adventure is both classic and contemporary and perpetuates one of the greatest names of the century.
If you're interested in finding out what is currently available on the market from reputable dealers for Authentic, Original Vintage Gabrielle Coco Chanel Jewellery
To view an article on Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel > > >
Designer Claudette 1945 - Mid-1950's
Claudette jewellery was made by Premier Jewellery Co., Inc. NY in 1945 and believed to have gone out of business in the mid 1950s. Mark: "Claudette" and "Claudette with a copyright symbol". Some of the jewellery produced contained coloured Lucite stones. Claudette (and C. Claudette) are marks on costume jewelry made by the Premier Jewelry Company, Inc. of New York, New York, USA. The relatively rare Claudette marks were first used in December, 1945.
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Designer Coro, Corocraft, Francoise, Vendome Jewellery 1900's - Present
Designers Emanuel Cohn and Gerard Rosenberg started their own shop in New York founded earyly 1900's selling costume jewellery and accessories, they later became known as Coro as you can see the name Coro incorporates the first two letters of their surname Cohan and Rosenberg. They became very successful and very well known for their high quality, designs and volume of jewellery at affordable prices. Coro made jewellery from 1920 until the 1970's, they apparently produced jewellery under different company names for example "Vendome", "Corocraft" and "Duette". The signature marks are some signed "Corocraft", some signed "Francois" this mark was used for the higher end of the market and attracted the wealthier clients. The signature mark "Vendome" the jewellery line which started in 1944 was also attracting the higher end of the market, best know for dynamic glass beads and they used cabochon and rhinestones. Corocraft often used sterling vermeil, rhinestones and enamel and produced some stunning designs. The mark "Coro Craft" since 1937 was used for higher end pieces, Corocraft was used after WWII, and the "Pegasus" mark was used after WWII these are few from a long Coro markings. Coro ceased trading circ 1979. Coro Inc. in Canada is still in operation today.
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Designer Christian Dior 1905 - 1957 (Crème de la Crème)
Many notable jewellery designers and manufacturers were commissioned to produce jewellery for the House of Dior including "Mitchell Maer", "Kramer", "Henkel & Grosse", "Josette Gripoix", and "Robert Goossens". Chanel has hand poured 'pate de verre' jewels created for her by the craftspeople of "Gripoix", "Rousselet and Goossens" Christian Dior jewelry usually incorporates elegant style and superb quality of manufacture. The designers used the highest quality crystal stones prong set into hand soldered settings.
Christian Dior 1905 - 1957 was an influential French fashion designer. In the 1950's, Dior jewellery was produced by Kramer in the 1950's, Henkel & Grosse from 1955 and Mitchel Maer from 1952 - 1956. The year 1955, Swarovski and Christian Dior developed the iridescent aurora borealis stone Licensed Dior jewelry continues to be produced.
The quality and craftsmanship of every aspect of their jewelry is admirable in every respect. Even the most subtle details such as clasp design, and back finishing are beautiful and the jewellery is almost as beautiful from that back, as from the front.
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Designer 'Countess Madeleine' - 'Jolie Gabor' and 'Fantasia'
'Countess Madeleine'' line of jewelry created by Madeleine Herling, owner of the 'Jolie Gabor' jewelry store and the Countess Madeleine Galleries in New York City during the 1980's until her death in 1995. The company 'Fantasia' located in NYC, continued to manufacture for Jolie Gabor the mother to the glamorous Gabor sisters after it was sold to the Herlings per Jean Forman a sales associate at the store right after Madeleine bought the Gabor store.
Click here to see Countess Madeleine, Jolie Gabor and Fantasia Jewellery to buy now > > >
Designer Esher Randel - Circ 1940's
Randel worked in Germany creating jewellery master pieces, pre-WW11 German Deco Style. It is rare to find jewellery made by Randel, his designs reflect the Art Deco period and he used the highest quality MOP and Rhinestone. You will see Randel parures priced from $175 - 300 range. Very rare to find his designs today. Signature mark shows a half circle with "ESHA" inside, name "RANDEL" in Caps next to it you can also find "WEST GERMANY" is marked on some pieces along with the signature.
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Designer Emmons - 1948-1981
Emmons was founded by Charles H Stuart in Newark NJ in 1948 the Company name Emmons was given after his wife Caroline Emmons. They started marketing jewellery that was not designed or manufactured at the company outsourced to other companies. The jewellery is very beautiful and was constructed using faux pearls, beads, rhinestones on silver metals. Emmons jewellery was sold at home jewellery parties. The signature mark is "EMMONS" or "EMMONS with a copyright symbol" and also "EMMOLITE". The company ceased trading in 1981. Their jewellery is very collectible and can be difficult to find.
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Designer Elizabeth Taylor for Avon Jewellery November 1993 to Present
Elizabeth Taylor born in 1932 in Hempstead, England is best know as a famous Hollywood movie actress. She produced the white diamonds perfumes, costmetics, gaming and publishing through the years. She owns the most exquisite jewellery collection I have ever seen. She also owned the famous Krupp Diamond and the La Peregina Pearl. In November 1993, Elizabeth decided to commission Avon Jewellery to produce fashion jewellery designed and signed by Elizabeth. The jewellery would be sold directly to the consumer by Avon representatives. The signature Mark Elizabeth Taylor with a script 'E' and Avon is embedded on a plaque on the back of the base metal piece of jewellery. There are several collections made and the earlier pieces are now very collectible and highly sought after. She now has her own Jewellery Company, House of Taylor which was launched July 2005.
Latest News for Elizabeth Taylor > > >
Designer Robert Goossen
Son of a fundidor, Robert Goossens, who was born in the neighborhood of artisans, the Marais, began in different offices: casting, jewelry, gold, engraving, estampa, as each jewel called his technique, he explained dominate all or reencontra them when they were lost. In 1960, encounter with Gabrielle Chanel revolutionized its existence. "Mademoiselle" afeicoou to that simple man whose hands of gold would give life, for twenty years, their fantasies more mad.
Collection after collection, Robert Goossens became the silversmiths of Chanel. An exchange has been established6 it showed its projects, Mademoiselle guiava their inspiration. Presilha hair trancada with threads of gold and silver, engastada with an emerald; pendants of scholarship with a cause for "lion-sun" and "earth-moon" Crosses "bizantinas" in crystal. Thousands of women used, without knowing, their creations.
To read the full Robert Goosen article and plus we might have some items to buy now > > >
Designer Hobé - 1930s - Present
The name Hobé is well respected and sought after by many collectors of Costume and Fine Fashion Jewelry. Hobé Cie is a costume jewellery company that was founded by William Hobé in New York in the late 1800s. William Hobé had immigrated to the US from France, where his family had made fine jewellery for generations. Hobé jewellery was used in showgirl costumes in the Ziegfeld Follies. Hobé jewellery was also used in many Hollywood movies. Hobé produces very high quality and very high priced jewellery for upscale stores. The materials used for the costume jewellery are often semi-precious stones and their jewellery is highly collectable.
Rich in jewellery history and it seems to be a family tradition. The jewellery items they created in the early years were of museum antiques and quality even though they were Costume jewellery. They were considered good enough for Queen's. Hobe' quit manufacturing jewellery some time in 1992.
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Designer Charles Jourdan - 1960's
The expertise and the search for quality by an forward thinking master shoe maker from Romans (South East of France) lead to the creation of the CHARLES JOURDAN trademark in 1921.
CHARLES JOURDAN has been acknowledged as a international luxury designer label since the 1960's. Towards the end of the 1970's, taking into account its wonderful reputation in the shoe and leather trade, the Charles Jourdan Group started to diversify its activities and completed its range of fashion accessories with belts, scarves, glasses and perfumes, and in 1978, BIJOUX CHARLES JOURDAN was born.
At first this new jewelery range was sold through their own boutiques and by their distributors and this new jewelry range did not take long to catch the consumer's eye. In the 80's, a company working under license, called DIAD'M, had the responsibility of developing sales of the jewelery collection.
After 15 years of working under license from the world famous designer, this company also based in the South East of France, bought all the rights of the jewelry activity from the Charles Jourdan Group. Since then, the complete jewelery collection is sold under the brand name of JOURDAN BIJOUX. This jewelry is made mostly in France and is synonymous of the know how and the innovation that characteristic of its culture.
The essence of JOURDAN BIJOUX is above all contemporary and timeless creativity. This is jewelry that you will love to wear for a long time. The range of jewelry is sober and elegant and based largely on various different materials both traditional - gold plated bronze, silver (925/1000th) steel - or original materials like rubber or braided cable.
Textures and colors are combined audaciously and with refinement to create different ranges of bracelets, pendants, rings, necklaces or earrings.
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Designer Joan Rivers 1990 to Present
Joan Rivers has been a comedienne, best seller author, actress, playwright, screenwriter, film director, talk show host, fashion critic, business women and jewellery designer as of 1990. She was born Joan Molinsky in June 1933 in New York. In 1990, Joan embarked on a new adventure, launching her new jewellery designs on QVC. Her dream was to create a line of affordable, classic pieces of costume jewellery for today's woman, to design and produce timeless jewellery that doesn't go out of style to includes necklaces, bracelets, brooches/pins, rings and earrings. The costume jewellery Joan River's designs with David Dangle, her designer partner, contains gold tone and silver tone base metals with simulated pearls, emeralds, sapphire and other stones, coloured beads, clear and pastel rhinestones, and light and dark crystals embedded in the base metals.
Joan's jewellery line is a perfect expression of her natural creativity, confidence and flare. Marked: "Joan Rivers" and "Joan Rivers Classic Collection". QVC has also, through the years, been selling her Joan Rivers Beauty collection of Forever Fragrance line, skin care line, beauty body treatment line, and make-up line of cosmetics. Joan Rivers, this year, will introduce The Scoundrel Collection of Jewellery of which Broadway Baubles featured in the Hit Show, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, a musical where cast members are outfitted with QVC costume jewellery of her designs along with Kenneth J. Lane and Nolan Miller. The jewellery will combine the glamour of old Hollywood with a retro twist on current trends. Joan continues to design costume jewellery from her personal jewellery collection along with her newly creative designs and has these jewellery pieces produced at an accessible price since 1990. It has been said the Joan Rivers, trademark, mix of wit, knowledge and compassion has made her a fashion style icon and a QVC treasure.
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Designer Kenneth J Lane 1950's - Present
Kenneth J Lane was born in Detroit, and, after an unexceptional middle-class childhood which he has rarely discussed, was educated at the University of Michigan and then at Rhode Island School of Design. Kenneth Lane's life as we know it began in 1954, when he arrived in New York as a self-invented bright young thing, oozing with apparent glamour and sophistication. This was the era of El Morocco and Harry Winston diamonds, when American fashion designers were first emerging on to the international stage.
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Designer Lanvin 1950's - Present (Crème de la Crème)
Jeanne Lanvin (b. Jeanne-Marie Lanvin, Paris, January 1, 1867-d. Paris, July 6, 1946), French fashion designer. Lanvin became known for her mother-and-daughter outfits and exquisite robes de style, as well as her modern and global approach to the fashion industry. Lanvin was the eldest of 11 children. At age 16, she was an apprentice milliner at Madame Felix in Paris; then trained at dressmaker Talbot and, 1889, set up as a milliner at 22 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore.
Jeanne Lanvin married the Henri-Emile-Georges di Pietro and gave birth to a daughter, Marguerite, who became a talented opera singer and eventually became the director of the Lanvin fashion house. 1925, Marguerite married the Comte Jean de Polignac Paris, June 11, 1888 Paris, October 22, 1943 who rebaptised her to become the Comtess Marie-Blanche de Polignac Paris, August 31, 1897 Paris, February 14, 1958. Jeanne Lanvin made such beautiful clothes for the child that they began to attract the attention of a number of wealthy people who requested copies for their own daughters. Soon, Lanvin was making dresses for their mothers, and some of the most famous names in Europe were included in the clientele of her new boutique on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore, Paris. 1909, Lavin joined the Syndicat de la Couture, which marked her formal status as a couturiere.
To read more on Lanvin and to see if we have any Lanvin Jewellery to buy now > > >
Designer Lisner 1900's - Late 1985
The D. Lisner and Company was founded in NY in the early 1900's. The produced high quality costume jewellery using materials which were superior aurora borealis stones and rhinestones at affordable prices from low to mid range prices. The Richelieu jewellery had the more expensive aurora borealis and contained Lucite cabochons and Austrian crystals. Their signature mark is "LISNER" in block script" and was first used in 1935, the mark "Lisner in small script" was in 1938 and the "Lisner in small script with the Capital 'L' in a circle" was used after 1959. The materials used in each design containted coloured rhinestones including aurora borealis, molded plastic and Lucite stones. The company changed its name in 1978 to Lisner-Richelieu Corporation and ceased trading in late 1985. Their jewellery is very collectible and highly sought after.
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Designer Monet 1928 - Present Now Owned by Liz Claiborne Since 2000
The Monocraft Products Company was founded in Providence, RI in 1928 by two brothers, Michael and Jay Chernow. The company first produced gold plated monograms on handbags. The business expanded and around 1937 began manufacturing jewellery under the name of Monet. Monet jewellery is of the Art Modern design. In the 1940's, the company started using sterling silver and silver plating along with the gold plated previously used as base metal. The jewellery produced is very durable with lasting quality. Monet was also responsible for several technological advancements in jewellery, the friction ear clip and the barrel clutch for pierced earrings. The Monocraft Products Company, that produced Monet jewellery, was acquired by General Mills in 1968, purchased by Crystal Brands Jewellery Group in 1989 to 1994, acquired in 1994 to 2000 by Chase Capital Partners, Lattice Holding, and in 2000 was purchased by Liz Claiborne Inc. with production of the jewellery moved out of the U.S. Mark: "MONET", "MONET with copyright symbol" after 1955. Monet jewellery has been in production for more than 75 years and has successfully adapted to the constant changing images and designs of our changing times. The Monet jewellery made today still maintains its high quality and quantity of production. It is still able to change styles and designs capable of meeting the competitive market of today in costume jewellery.
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Designer Miriam Haskell 1926 to Present (Crème de la Crème)
Miriam Haskell, a jewelry designer, opened her own store in New York City in 1926. She produced costume jewelry of elegant artistic ability, ornate and beautiful designs using faux pearls, rhinestones, turquoise, shells, Bakelite and coral that were hand wired in brass and copper to create unique designs of flowers, animals and other organic materials. Miriam Haskell jewelry has been know through the years for its high quality workmanship, designs, and materials. The jewelry pieces were handmade and handset using goldtone metal, an antique Russian gold metal finish developed by Haskell and Frank Hess. Miriam purchased her beads from France and Italy with her crystals imported from Bohemia. During WWII, Haskell used alternative materials including plastics for patriotic designs. After the war, the designs became more vibrant, colorful and feminine looking, more elaborate, larger pieces and multi bead strands with pearls imported from Japan.
Frank Hess worked for Robert early 1940s, Haskell designing jewelry although, Haskell in her lifetime, supervised the production of all the jewelry pieces. The 1950s brought Haskell jewelry with incredibility elaborate designs using stones, pearls and beads and filigree in new and exciting ways. The business was purchased in 1954 by Morris Kinsler. In 1984, Sanford Moss became owner but the business was sold again in 1990 to Frank Fialkoff, who is still producing today, the Miriam Haskell jewelry of traditionally the same quality and originality that bears the Miriam Haskell name. No jewelry was marked between 1926 and 1947. The company used many marks to identify their jewelry. Mark: "Miriam Haskell" in metal on the clasp, the hook, in a crescent shaped cartouche or oval stamp.
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Hollywood Actress Lana Turner - One of the Great Hollywood Actresses
I feel very privileged to have contact with Cheryl Crane daughter to the famous hollywood actress Lana Turner. Cheryl is currently selling Lana Turner's jewellery and other memorabilia from her estate.
Please visit Lana Turner Tribute page > > >
Designer Napier
Napier Jewellery was first founded in 1875 as Whitney and Rice and then with in 10 years became the E.A. Bliss Co.. Then after World War 1 it became Napier Bliss Co. and in 1922 it became The Napier Co. The mark Napier in block has been used since 1922 till its sale in late 1980's and merchandise was marked Napier in script, the company was purchased by "Victoria & Co". The Napier company was closed by Victoria & Co on 10-15-99. Nothing but excessive stock was last being sold by those dealers that were lucky enough to have it.
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Designer Pennino 1926 - 1961
The designer Frank Pennino founded his company Pennino Jewellery Company NYC in 1926. A master craftsman who used excellent quality Austrian rhinestones, crystals and had the look of genuine gemstones, they were mounted in 14kt gold plate or sterling silver. Some Pennino Jewellery it is believed did not have the signature mark Pennino in script. The signature mark is Pennino in script and also some pieces had Pennino with Pat Pen. The workmanship in each piece of jewellery is exquisite he designed some pieces which were intricately done having bows, tassles and swirls. Pennino ranks as one of the very best costume jewellery company. The company ceased trading in 1961. Their jewellery is extremely collectable and rare to find.
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Designer Pell 1941 - Present
The Pell Jewellery Company was found 1941 by 4 brothers, Joseph, Anthony, Alfred, and William Gaita in 1941. The company is located in Long Island, NY and produces a wide variety of jewellery using silver metal plating. The designs encompass paved rhinestones, simulated crystals and pearls on earrings, bracelets, necklaces, broaches, head pieces (tiaras), and Christmas trees. Pell has designed jewellery for Disney Productions and Miss America Beauty contests, and Coro. Mark: "Pell". The Pell jewellery has been sold on the QVC network. Alfred Gaita Jr. continues the business and produces only the best quality jewellery that has been designed and manufactured through the years the company has been in business.
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Designer Polcini 1911-1980 also known as Ledo Jewellery
The designer Ralph Polcini was a goldsmith who emigrated to the US from Italy and founded the Polcini Company in 1911. The name was changed to Leading Jewellery Manufacturing Company in 1949, short for Ledo. The company produced the highest quality and workmanship usually Art Deco designs using the highest quality rhinestones and gold plate which has the look of genuine jewellery. The materials they used were high quality prong set, rhodium plated using clear rhinestone, simulated coloured stones of pearl, opal, sapphire and rubies with some set in gold-tone metal and gold plated metal. After Ralph Polcini died the company was left to his son Damon who changed the company name to Polcini in the 1960's. Their signature mark is By 'Ledo' in script, 'Ledo RIST--LETTE' with 'Ledo' in script, and 'Polcini' with a copyright symbol. The company ceased operations in 1980. Their jewellery is highly collectible and rare to find.
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Designer Pierre Cardin - 1950
Pierre Cardin was born in 1922 in Italy to French parents. He moved to Paris in 1945 and worked for Schiapparelli before becoming head of Christian Dior's tailleure atelier in 1947. He founded his own fashion house in 1950 and began with haute couture in 1953. He is well known for his high quality metal body jewellery.
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Designer Prada 1913 to Present (Crème de la Crème)
Fashion Designer Prada was founded in 1913 in Milan, Italy as a manufacturer of leather bags. What is known today as Prada is mostly the work of the founder's grand-daughter Miuccia Prada. Miuccia Prada was born in 1949. After university, she entered the family business 1978 and soon revolutionized the appearence of its products. Her interest in unusual fabrics led to the distinctive trademark of Prada products: the surprising combination of materials. There are usually two discoveries to be made when dealing with Prada products: First, the surprise to see the use of a specific material in an unusual context and in consequence, the astonishment how good it fits the purpose. In 1989, she introduced women's wear with instant success, men's wear followed equally sucessful in 1995.
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Designer Reinad Jewellery - see also Chanel
For those not familiar with Reinad Jewellery, a short history may be in order. Research reveals that Reinad Novelty Co., Inc. of New York City was in business from 1922 til the mid 1950s. They produced few of their designs under their own name, but were for the most part a wholesale facility or 'jobber', producing jewellery for the many of the high end names you will recognize Boucher, Carnegie and Eisenberg ref: A Tribute to America Costume Jewellery 1935-1950 by the Carla & Roberto Brunialti page 28. In 1941, they brought out their own retail line of jewellery signed Chanel in script Chanel Novelty Co. some of the rarest, most beautiful, quality pieces of jewellery ever produced and of course, some of the most sought after by collectors. They were forced a year later to change the name to avoid confusion with jewellery by Coco Chanel, but still continued to design and produce some of eras finest quality pieces. Fred Rezazadeh in his book 'Costume Jewelry' states 'If you see a piece of Reinad jewellery you like, try to buy it, for you will not get a second chance'.
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Designer Robert De Mario 1945-1965
Robert De Mario founded the company in New York City in 1945 after working for Miriam Haskell. De Mario jewelry is characterized by beautiful designs, excellent craftsmanship which often incorporates hand-sewn brass strung threads using faceted Austrian beads and rhinestones and flux pearls arranged in an array of harmonious colors, fashions and styles The jewelry is relatively rare and high prices are received in the collectible market. Mark: "De Mario with and without a copyright symbol", "Hagler for De Mario" and "Hagler/De Mario". De Mario retired and closed his shop in 1965.
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Designer Richelieu Jewellery Since 1911
Richelieu is name for Joseph H. Meyer Bros Co. A company known for working in costume jewellery since early 1900's. They often made jewellery incorporating pearls in to the many items of jewellery they produced. They did create all types of costume jewellery using rhinestone and almost all other material.
Joseph H. Meyer & Bros, Brooklyn NY was founded in 1911 producing Richelieu costume jewelry for men and women specializing in designing jewelry using simulated creamy to colored pearls, small faux pearls, and rhinestones with spacers between the stones and with goldtone metal bases. Some of the pearl necklaces produced contained beautiful ornamental pearls and rhinestones on the clasp or as an added design feature on the necklace. Mark: Traynor for "Richelieu", "Treza", "Richelieu Satinore", "Richelieu Indelle", "Richelieu Pearls", "Ingeborg-Sant Angelo for Richelieu" 1967, "RCHL with a 2 letter number". The newer costume jewelry made is said to be better designed than some of the older pieces. Lisner-Richelieu Corp. is still producing jewelry and it is now marked: "Richelieu". The Richelieu costume jewelry symbolizes the beautiful simulated look of real pearls of the highest quality with stylish designs using gold plating, silver plating and platinum as the base metal. The Richelieu costume jewelry is not highly collectible today but is gaining popularity because of its outstanding distinctive designs.
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Designer Sarah Coventry
It starts in 1852, when Charles W. Stuart arrived in Newark, New York, a small village on the Erie Canal between Rochester and Syracuse, N.Y. He purchased a small farm on the edge of the village and started selling the young fruit trees door to door. This resulted in the establishment of the C.W. Stuart Nursery.
Stuart established several other nursery firms to compete with each other, but used the same facilities. The names were Emmons Nursery, William C. Moore, Quaker Hill, and others. Newark was tagged as a nursery city as it was also the home of the Jackson & Perkins Co. soon to be known as the "World's Largest Rose growers." "C.W." Stuart died in 1923, but his son Charles H. "C.H." who had graduated from Cornell University had taken over years before, and had other interests, along with nursery products. A trained chemist, C.H. began experimenting with extracts and eventually marketed his extracts and tube flavorings, using a new term "direct selling".
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Designer Elsa Schiaparelli Late 1920's - 1974 (Crème de la Crème)
Elsa Schiaparelli was born in Rome, Italy in 1890. She moved to Paris in the 1920s where she opened her first couture fashion house. She left Paris in 1940 and opened her own fashion operation in New York City in 1949 and also opened a boutique offering ready-to-wear clothing, selling jewelry, perfume, cosmetics, lingerie, and swimsuits to complement her fashionable line of clothing. She licensed her name for mass production of costume jewelry and accessories made by David Lisner Co. which was also the authorized American agent and distributor for her earlier French-made pieces. In 1947, she created clothing in hot pink color, for before that time, black, brown and blue were the only popular and basic colors in womens clothing. Top designers for her establishment were Jean Schlumberg (designed the Circus collection), Serge Matta, Pierre Hubert Givenchy, Cecil Beaton, and Jean Clement. In 1949, the Ralph De Rosa Company produced Schiaparelli jewelry.
Other Interesting Accessories and Designs from Elsa Schiaparelli > > >
Designer Henry Schreiner 1939-1977
Henry Schreiner founded the Shreiner Jewelry Company in 1939. He had been a blacksmith in Bavaria, Germany and emigrated to the U.S. in 1923. He started to work for the Better Buckle Company working with metals designing and fashioning belt buckles, buttons and dress fasteners. His daughter and her husband joined the firm in 1953 and soon the three of them were creating jewelry for Adele Simpson, Norman Norell, and Christian Dior with the use of the clients names on the jewelry produced. Jewelry designed include flower pins of daises, geraniums, sunflowers, cornflowers, and white marguerites, dragonflies, carrots, pineapples, peas in a pot, turtles, acorns, in different colors. The stunning, unusual and distinctive Shreiner jewelry used gun-metal plating, bronze plating and gold plating for backing along with very expensive custom made special shaped stones made in Germany by skilled Czechoslovakian craftsmen. Some of the designs had inverted-set or upside-down rhinestones and unusual color combinations of the stones.
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Designer Sphinx
British company Sphinx made high quality jewelry. They made jewellery for many famous design houses, like Kenneth J. Lane, Saks Fifth Avenue, Butler & Wilson Neimans, and Bloomingdales and others. I understand and also heard Designer Henry Schreiner of Schreiner Jewellery Co which began in 1939 also designed for Sphinx. Their jewellery is becoming more and more collectible today.
Founded in 1948, the Sphinx Company was a renowned British jewelry manufacturing company that produced well made, quality constructed, and beautifully designed costume jewelry that had the look of real jewelry. In addition to their own line, they produced jewelry designs for many creatively talented artists like Kenneth Jay Lane, Butler & Wilson, Joe Mazer (Jomaz), Alfred Philippi, Nina Ricci, Caura, Fried Paris, as well as Saks 5th Ave., Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdales, Mark & Spencer and other high end department stores, in Europe as well as the United States.
Mark: "SPHINX" in an oval cartouche with some having a LETTER AND NUMBER included or without the Sphinx name, having only a LETTER AND NUMBER in a cartouche. Unsigned pieces were either for customers who wanted to sell pieces as their own, because work was produced in a rush to meet demand or because there wasn't space on the design. Pieces may have either numbers only or a letter and numbers. These were design numbers. The jewelry is now becoming highly collectible since Sphinx ceased operations in the late 1990's.
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Designer Donald Stannard - 1972-2006
Donald Stannard was first mentioned in Vogue in 1972 when he started is own line after being an assistant to Kenneth J Lane. He went on to become a famous designer of jewelry for Broadway shows like "Evita" and "Hello Dolly" as well as TV shows such as "Dynasty". The Erte Collection mentioned in Vogue in 1972 Designed jewelry for individuals until his passing in 2006.
He currently only designs jewelry for the rich and famous and has not been in public business since 2000, Mr. Stannard designed jewelry for Broadway, TV, and the movies as well as for many famous celebrities it would not surprise you to learn this after seeing such an imaginative, inspiring necklace like this. Donald Stannard worked as an assistant to Kenneth J. Lane before striking out on his own as a jewelry designer in 1972.
These days he only makes jewelry for select clientele, so coming across a piece like this is a spectacular find! Excellent vintage condition! Donald Stannard's jewelry graced costumes of numerous movies, television and Broadway Productions. He designed jewelry for many movie stars including: "Loretta Young", "Carol Channing", "Ginger Rogers", "Ethel Merman", "Mary Martin", "Jane Powell", "Ann Miller", "Arlene Dahl", "Ruth Warrick", "Dixie Carter Phyllis Diller", "Audrey Meadows", "Jayne Meadows", "Elaine Stritch" to name just a few.
Donald Stannard was Kenneth J. Lane's assistant from 1968-1972, then he started his own line of jewelry. Made jewelry for Broadway shows: "Panama Hattie", "Anything Goes", "Pal Joey", "Evita", "Hello Dolly", "On the Twentieth Century", "Annie", A Little Night Music Made jewelry for TV shows: "Dynasty", "All My Children", One Life to Live Made jewelry for movies: "Roseland", "The Greek Tycoon". Click here to see Donald Stannard Jewellery to buy now > > >
Designer Swarovski
Swarovski is an Austrian company that makes high-quality rhinestones, beautiful cut crystals, costume jewellery, and other glass-related items. The company was founded by Daniel Swarovski (1862-1956), the son of a glass faceter. In 1892, Daniel developed a new mechanized technique for faceting glass crystals, creating a sparkling, diamond-like chaton." He then started a factory (and company) in Wattens, Austria (in the Tyrolean Alps) in 1895. In the 1970's, the company expanded to Providence, Rhode Island ,and then later moved to Cranston, Rhode Island. In 1955, Swarovski and Christian Dior developed the iridescent Aurora Borelais stone. The company began a line of rhinestone costume jewellery in 1977. Since 1988, the Swarovski logo has been a swan. Before this date the logo was an edelweiss flower.
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Designer Sorrento - 1911
Vincent Sorrento founded Vincent Sorrento Company in 1911. The Companys name was changed to Uncas Manufacturing Company before 1922. The costume jewellery produced used sterling silver and gold plated metals. The signature Mark is "Sorrento" since 1957. Early pieces are collectable and can be rare to find.
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Designer Swoboda 1956-1985, Re-established as N.W. Jewels by Nathan Waxman June 2000 - Present
Edward Swoboda, a talented jewelry designer, founded Swoboda Inc. in Los Angeles, CA in 1956 after having had an extensive knowledge of gemstones that were used in his manufacturing enterprise. The jewelry is characterized by magnificent thick gold plated metalwork, set with semi-precious stones and cultured pearls. Mr. Swoboda traveled extensively to South America where his gemstones were imported from. It was said that his polished gemstones and cultured pearls were unequaled in costume jewelry. The jewelry produced was designed with the Oriental and Victorian influences. In 1957, Nathan (Nate) Waxman joined the company as a trainee and quickly learned the art of casting, plating, and molding allowing him to create many of the designs. In the early 1960s, the Swoboda firm maintained showrooms in Los Angeles, New York, and Dallas and the jewelry was sold in leading department stores Dillards, Goldwaters, Marshall Fields, Saks Fifth Ave., Bloomingdales, Gumps, Ciros, Harrods of London and Neiman Marcus. Swoboda jewelry lines consisted of complete sets, necklaces, broaches (most popular) and earrings. The jewelry was not marked but had a hang-tag "SWOBODA" until 1966 when "SWOBODA" OR "SWO.INC." appeared in the metal cast. Swoboda retired in 1979 and lives in Los Angeles. The jewelry is extremely rare, especially the more elaborate pieces that are highly prized by collectors who will pay nearly $800.00 per set and or above $400.00 for a necklace. Lower priced pieces consist of figural pins, some with carved jade or other semi-precious stones on gold plated metal. Nathan Waxman ran the company until 1985 when the company ceased operations. In June 2000, Nate Waxman established his own company, N.W. Jewels on an internet website that offers a wide variety and collection of Swoboda Costume Jewelry from vintage collections to limited quantity re-issues.
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Designer Trifari and Trifari, Krussman and Fishel (KTF)
There's so much history to Trifari Jewellery. Trifari Jewellery was first known as Trifari and Trifari founded by Gustavo Trifari and his uncle in 1910. The company name changed to just Trifari after Gustavos uncle left. In 1917 Leo Krussman joined and then Carl Fishel in 1925. They renamed the Company Trifari, Krussman and Fishel which is where the signature mark "KTF" derived.
Early 1930 Alfred Philippe joined as head designer, he's considered a top master craftsman in fine jewellery for Cartier and Van Cleef and Arples. His designs became very popular especially the well known designs known as fruit salad (also known as Tutti Frutti) jewellery. The company was run 1910 to 1975 by the originating founders and sons of those founders. In 1975 Trifari was purchased by several other companies, there's so much rich history to Trifari, we will add more and more over time on their fascinating history. Early Trifari Jewellery is very collectible and some pieces are now very rare to find.
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Designer Louis Comfort Tiffany 1848-1933 and Tiffany & Co (Crème de la Crème)
Quoted from Louis Tiffany "I once lived in a small town in the United States, which was surrounded by forestland and several lakes. Whenever I drove through the area, I always found the sunlight reflecting off the surface of the lakes and the cool shade underneath the trees to be particularly uplifting. But even that paled when compared to the stunning night landscapes."
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Designer Ivana Trump
Under the umbrella of Ivana Haute Couture come 'lifestyle products' such as scents (Ivana, Elegance by Ivana, Ivanka by Ivana, Ivana Pink Champagne, and Ivana for Men), Ivana make-up and, of course, the Ivana costume jewellery. 'People love the products; everyone from the 18-year old girl to the 80-year-old grandma love it, ' boasts Ivana, who, like her ex, comes across as both relentlessly self-promoting and curiously big-hearted in person.
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Designer Van Cleef & Arpels (Crème de la Crème)
Founded in 1906 by Alfred Van Cleef and his brothers-in-law Charles and Julien Arpels on the Place Vendome in Paris, Van Cleef & Arpels is one of the worlds most prestigious and innovative jewellers. They are renowned for their creative designs and techniques, using only the highest quality gemstones, such as the Mystery Setting also known as Invisible Setting, in which the prongs are hidden underneath a gemstone. The House has always given form to these recurring motifs through inventive, very complex and continuously evolving techniques. The Van Cleef & Arpels touch asymmetry for a sense of life and movement, metamorphosis as a guiding principle in transformable jewellery, and a mingling of the transparent and the opaque. Van Cleef & Arpels immediate success prompted the founders to expand to important seaside resorts in France as well as abroad. New York City became their first location in the United States in 1939. Maria Callas, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Jackie Onassis, the Maharani of Baroda, the Royal family of Egypt, the Shah of Iran, to name just a few, were all devoted clients of the firm and regularly wore their most astonishing creations. Today, the radiant glamour of Julia Roberts, Kristin Scott Thomas, Sharon Stone, Zhang Ziyi and Uma Thurman is lit up by the jeweller. With 49 boutiques all over the world, the firm is still regarded as one of the foremost contemporary jewellers, maintaining the tradition of excellent craftsmanship and original designs.
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Designer Vargas 1945-1980
The Vargas Manufacturing Company was founded in Providence, RI in 1945 and produced ornamental costume jewelry, prong set with clear and colored rhinestones, faux pearls and simulated colored glass stones (ruby, sapphire and opal) on sterling silver, 10k gold filled, gold plated and silver plated base metals. Many pieces designs (bracelets in particular) had 3-dimensional detailed surfaces layered with huge repousse scrolled leaves and textured berries set on an antique finish of silvertone and goldtone metal with smooth and shining surfaces on the interior of the jewelry pieces. The bracelets, at least 1.5 inches wide, opened wide, were hinged and came with a safety chain for added security. Many of the jewelry designs were identical to those made by Whiting & Davis also located in Providence, RI, (sharing designs - the practice between competing costume jewelry houses was not uncommon in the 1940's and 1950's), and competition was prevalent in those days. Mark "V in an elongated diamond shape" since 1945, "VARGAS" ornamental jewelry since June 1945, "Vargas 10K GF", "Cradle Craft" in script on childrens jewelry, pendants, necklaces, pins, bracelets and finger rings in Sept. 1946, "a large V partly inside and outside a triangle" particularly on ornamental jewelry for children since Jam. 15, 1947, "Lucky Elephant" in 1960 and "Brazilia" in 1971, "Grandee" in 1971, "Bennard" in 1969. It is assumed that the company ceased operations in 1980.
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Designer Vogue 1915-1975 (Crème de la Crème)
Vogue jewellery was first produced by Park Importing Co.NYC, about 1915. The firm specialized in simulated pearls and beads jewellery. The Vogue jewellery found on the market today was manufactured in the late 1930's to early 1970's by Harold Shapiro, and his two partners, Jack Gilbert and George Grant. Shapiro left the company in 1961 and his son, Bernard, founded Les Bernard, Inc. in 1963. Vogue jewellery is said to be beautiful, demonstrating originality and innovation of designs. Jewellery pieces produced in the early 1930's to 1940's are hard to find and sought after by collectors. Mark: "VOGUE". The Vogue company ceased operations in early 1975.
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Designer Weiss
Weiss jewellery was a 1940's company and discontinued business about 1971, they were a much under rated name in the costume jewellery business but some of their jewellery was purchased from Hollywood Jewellery Co and Weiss applied their signature to it. Located in New York, NY. they created a low end line and high end line of costume jewellery and also made some high quality collectible items. Their output was no where near Trifari and Coro but they did maintain a very good line of jewellery. The first mark used was "WEISS" in block print, later came the mark of "Weiss" in script and "Albert Weiss" or "A W Co." with the "W" looking some what like a crown. The later mark was introduced sometime in 1951 and used by the president of the company, Albert Weiss.
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Designer Wiesner Joseph - 1953
The Wiesner Company was founded by Joseph Wiesner NY in 1953 producing quality workmanship in elegant designs in the 50's, sparkling clear and brilliant coloured rhinestones prong set in goldtone metal. Known for their quality boxed sets and elegant designs, compacts and accessories. Mark: "Joseph Wiesner NY". There's another company called Wiesner of Miami.
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Designer Whiting Davis and Co
Whiting Davis Co. started out making mesh chains and mesh purses in the last part of the 1800's and expanded into a very high quality costume jewellery line. Transfers on porcelain and early cameo type jewellery was one of their favourite lines. They created some of the most impressive line of iridescent glass jewellery. Perhaps they were best known in the jewellery industry for their output and production of some very fine Costume Jewellery produced in the 1950's copying many fine museum pieces. They still produce mesh purses and some accessories but have discontinued the jewellery line and their earlier jewellery will become even more collectible.
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Designer Yves Saint Laurent -1960 to Present (Crème de la Crème)
Yves Saint Laurent, a designer, was born in Algeria in 1936 and worked for the House of Dior in 1954. When Christian Dior died in 1957, Saint Laurent managed one of the Dior establishments but in 1961, opened his own fashion house in Paris and, later, in 1966, opened a boutique in the U.S. Monet produced some of his jewelry. Mark: "Yves Saint Laurent".
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Medically, what is affected by Myositis? | The Luxury Channel – Travel: By The Luxury Channel
14th July 2016
Wildly beautiful and naturally private, Emma Oxley escapes to Fregate Island Private in the Seychelles….
I find it difficult to imagine Fregate Island Private existing without me; it seemed to exist only for me when I was there. On this diminutive Galapagos of the Seychelles, delightful people are falling over themselves to make you happy. Sometimes you can’t even see them trying to make you happy. You trip down 100 steps to a secluded beach and there’s an ice box with fresh drinks, rolled up towels on a day bed and a stretch of empty white sand.
Irresistibly tempting with a frisson of adventure, you can’t quite believe you’re allowed to enjoy this much natural beauty all alone, with a giant tortoise lodged in the shrubs and an eagle ray floating in the shallows. But if after cavorting in the soft cloud of pale blue waves you get a little peckish, reach for the phone secreted in a tropical bush and soon enough, your Private Assistant will arrive with a beaming smile, white linen and lunch.
Our Private Assistant was called Bonnie and he managed a perfect balance of relaxed charm suited to the island setting, and efficient professionalism in keeping with the price. As we luxuriated with a crushed ice cocktail enjoying our own palm-fringed Indian Ocean cove, Bonnie enquired where we might like dinner – a secluded spot by the sea, a lobster barbecue on our villa deck or Fregate House Restaurant with moonlight mirrored on the beach below? This might be preceded by high tea on a clifftop, on a boat, or in the leafy fronds of a 30 foot banyan tree.
Fregate Dining Private means you can dine anywhere you like on the island, with food and drinks included, making it a pleasure to use your imagination. Though you may have the sand beneath your toes, with hermit crabs enjoying a shell swapping party around you, the service will be perfect, the Chablis chilled and the cuisine ambitiously sophisticated.
Most of the produce, including all water, is collected or cultivated from the island and ocean, seeming to give ingredients a fourth dimension in flavour. One morning, I strolled through the green acres plucking and tasting the many varieties of basil and mint, when Bonnie arrived out of nowhere with a basket. Invited to fill it, I duly tossed in lemon grass, ginger, squash, kale and cos; Bonnie sped off with my harvest and at lunchtime, I found it transformed into a delicious, zesty salad.
Activities were included too. On our first day, we were ushered to the Rock Spa for a treatment to bring us down to earth. There was deep sea fishing that didn’t seem very sporting given the easy haul, and diving over coral gardens amidst yellow clouds of unicorn fish and the odd hawksbill turtles.
You have a buggy to zip about the paths that criss-cross the island. Tanya heads a team of ecologists, and happily accompanies guests to explore the many rainforest trails, revealing such mysteries as cashew nuts being poisonous until roasted twice (and you wonder what tragedies preceded that discovery). A myriad of rare and curious birds are at your fingertips yet quick to flee, including the Seychelles Magpie Robin which they’ve nurtured from just fourteen birds to healthy hundreds. Meanwhile, the 2,000 giant Aldabra tortoises place themselves solidly all over the island, in the middle of the buggy paths, on the helipad, and mating noisily without a by-your-leave.
The island is named for the Fregate bird which flew away when its habitat was destroyed by the 18th century coconut and bamboo planters. Tanya talks with an optimistic glow, explaining the island’s real objective is conservation. To date, they have replanted 100,000 indigenous trees so now she occasionally sights the sea bird circling nearby. ‘‘When the Fregate returns, the island will truly be considered a success.’’
The Villa Residences are utterly sympathetic with the surroundings, yet justify the price tag, competently delivering the luxury that funds the forest restoration project. On an island the size of Monaco, it is a surprise to find there are only 17 villas. Ceilings are made of ylang ylang palms, and soft teak beneath your feet keeps you forever in touch with nature. An outdoor shower has ferns peeping out of the rock walls and giant fruit bats soar above you. Subtle indulgences include crisp linen, muslin-enshrouded four poster beds, Wi-Fi and an infinity pool, though it sounds spoilt to include it under subtleties – it does cascade with natural ease into jungle foliage.
I feel like some part of me was left behind on that idyllic dot in the Seychelles. The wildly beautiful surroundings draw you in, dissolving the world about you. For a few days, your life is a horizon of clear blue sea, a nest of fresh lush rainforest filled with content creatures. I wake up in town quite disorientated, no morning yoga session by the yucca palms, while charming people prepare my papaya that dropped off a tree this morning. I can’t believe someone else is doing that instead of me.
Visiting Fregate Island Private
From 3,100 Euros for a Private Pool Residence with your own buggy to zip about the island and a Private Assistant at your beck and call, including all dining anywhere, drinks, spa and activities. From Mahé, it is a ten minute helicopter ride; alternatively if you have your own Twin Otter or Cessna, the island has its own licensed air strip.
By Ramy Salameh
22nd June 2016
Sahar Mohammedi and musicians entertained with sacred Persian songs, her hauntingly beautiful voice keeping alive the traditional Persian Radif music
Fez – the fabled city of the Maghreb and its ancient landmarks – was the perfect stage for The World Sacred Music Festival. Now in its 22nd year, the Festival is intricately interwoven with one of Morocco’s great imperial cities. The cultural cross-pollination of sacred music and artists from around the world continues to engender the original ideals for which the Festival began: peace, harmony and understanding through the language of music.
The Ingie Women’s Qanun Ensemble from Azerbaijan performed, plucking the strings of the Qanun
This year, the theme “Women Founders” paid tribute to Moroccan women who have left their mark on history. Delve into the light and shade of the medina’s maze of alleyways and it will lead to Morocco’s first University, the Karaouine, founded by Fatima El Fihriya as a centre for Islamic education and religious study, and has been the beacon of the spiritual capital of Morocco since the middle ages. Another prominent figure was Kenza El Awrabiya, the wife of Moulay Idriss, who helped secure unification between the Amazigh people and the Arabs.
R-L: Zainab Afilal, Sahar Mohammedi, Abeer Nehme, Dikra Al Kalaï as Dunyâzad and Nadia Kounda as Sheherazade
The series of concerts began with “A Sky Full of Stars,” bringing together a collection of stories from A Thousand And One Nights from the Golden Islamic Age, transporting me into a magical night of music and dance, led by Scheherazade who framed the tales. Each female artist represented a different story, through the music, dance and poetry of countries across the Islamic world and beyond. Our evening became a totally immersive adventure beautifully projected against the walls, ramparts and gate of Bab al Makina.
For the first time in the Festival’s history, a new concept to highlight one particular country was introduced, and homage was paid to the musical genius of India, the origin of many of the stories of A Thousand And One Nights. The flamboyance, extravagance and colour found in the courts of the Maharajahs and Nabobs was recreated once again upon Bab al Makina. Amongst the many performers, the north Indian Kathak Ensemble dancers showered the stage with rose petals as they pirouetted with perfect balance courting their audience with every spin and Chota Divana, the little princes of Rajasthan, captivated with their vocal range, their voices filling the vast parade ground in which we were seated.
As a backdrop, the city of Fez and particularly Fez el Bali, home to the world’s oldest and continually inhabited medieval medina, plays its own distinct melody with the rhythms of daily life providing the link, the staging and inspiration for much of the Festival. It is these sights and sounds that were to resonate most deeply with me.
A sense of timelessness imbues the ancient medina, as soon as you step beneath the Islamic arch of Bab Bajloud, one of fourteen gates that punctuate the ten miles of saffron-coloured walls and ramparts. Bab Bajloud was only built in 1913, but what draws attention to it, is the delicate arabesque and knot work ornamentations across the blue-tiled façade. These mesmeric tiles are known as Zillij and are an intrinsic part of Moroccan architecture, with Fez being the spiritual home of the art. Throughout the city, Zillij tiles can be found adorning public buildings, fountains and local residences, something of a social necessity regardless of wealth. It was within the tumult and colour that courses through the sun-dappled ventricles of the medina that the finest and oldest examples of the art can be admired, none more so than Madrassa Al Atterine, built in 1346 under the Merinid dynasty.
Zillij, meaning mosaic tile, is the work of great artisanal skill by craftsmen known as Zleyjis, but when they are placed upon the walls of a religious school dating back centuries, they become art of meditative beauty and awe-inspiring complexity. Inside the Madrassa, the rhythmic linear patterns of scrolling and interlacing cursive writing that dressed these ancient scholastic walls, must have entranced and inspired students as they stepped within the inner sanctum of the school.
The 17th century Nejjarine Fountain in Place Nejjarine, which still offers water to passers-by, is another landmark that owes its beauty to generations of master Zleyji craftsman. Patterns of radiating stars enclosed within an Islamic arch demanded my attention like a firework display across a night sky.
Fez el Bali has been an UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1981 and continues to undergo an ambitious programme of restoration. The Nejjarine ensemble (including the fountain, woodworker’s suq and funduq) was an early recipient to benefit from the medina’s UNESCO status. The funduq, a former market area, has been sensitively restored and now houses a 51-room museum containing the vestiges of a bygone epoch that keeps alive the memory of traditional woodworking skills that are evident in the most cherished buildings of Fez. Set around a large courtyard, rising three stories with delicate cedar wood balustrades on each level that sit on sculpted white plaster columns, was reason enough to enter.
Returning to the sinuous passageways, the unrelenting tempo of foot traffic pushed and cajoled me around several corners, making way for the clip-clop of hooves from passing pack mules or young traders with carts loaded high, loudly announcing their right to move ahead. At times, this made it hard to stop and peer through doorways, which invariably opened into a cloistered space of contemplation or tranquillity that the medina’s walls have always shielded. One such door that opened briefly was that of the Karouine Mosque. As a non-Muslim, this was the only chance to glimpse the main courtyard and the ablution fountain surrounded by a checkerboard of coloured floor tiles that eventually reached the sanctity of the ‘‘mirhab’’ beyond.
This was the legacy that Fatima El Fihriya left the city of Fez in 859 and the reason she was being honoured in this year’s World Sacred Music Festival. It was not only the mosque she founded, but also the neighbouring Karouine University and Islamic library, which in its day attracted eminent thinkers and scholars from across the region. Today, it still contains a priceless collection of books that have survived in part by being bound and covered in the finest leather from the local tanneries whose processes have changed little in centuries. The newly restored Islamic library ironically sits within the metalworker’s Suq Seffarine; a constant clatter of tapping and hammering that reminds everyone that this is a place of work and commerce, as well as a learned and artistic city. All have their place within the medina.
In its own way, the World Sacred Music Festival contributes to Fez’s journey of preservation and regeneration through enhancing the city’s cultural renaissance. After more than two decades, the Festival is an intrinsic part in Fez’s rhythm of life that is both historic, authentic and why UNESCO made the protection of Fez a duty devolving upon the whole of mankind.
For more information about Fez and Morocco, go to www.visitmorocco.com .
By The Luxury Channel
16th June 2016
When it comes to travel, we all want to find that unique outpost with character, charm and just a little je ne sais quoi, something that makes a getaway just that little bit extra special. That particular travel nail is hit firmly on the head with HIP Hotels – the “hip” part of the equation standing for Highly Individual Places. So, whether that’s a private villa on a wild Greek island, or a hotel on a par with a 007 film location in Marmaris, you can bet there’s a property in the HIP portfolio that ticks all the right boxes, and then some.
The HIP Hotels name has been around for a while, but a recent re-launch has seen the business capitalise on its potential for business worldwide. Hotels that are selected to join the group share the HIP signature and, once they are accepted into the portfolio, gain a veritable stamp of approval. The fact that they are HIP hotels means they are unique properties with a story to tell and a culture to share.
In-keeping with the brand’s historical traditions, however, HIP has released The Grand Tour, a coffee table tome to celebrate all that is great about travelling in Italy. World-famous travel photographer Herbert Ypma has lent his discerning eye to the project, along with Fiorenza Lago, a writer with an infinite passion for her home country. Part of an ongoing series, the first HIP Hotels City book was released in 1999, and with the other 13 titles that followed, travel connoisseurs and curious holiday-makers alike have been waiting for HIP’s next journey.
With The Grand Tour, they will most certainly see that wish granted. Scouring Italy to bring the ultimate travellers’ encyclopaedia into one single volume, the team at HIP has worked tirelessly to uncover Italy’s hidden gems; living, eating and breathing the Italy has inspired travellers to visit here for centuries. One of the world’s most romantically idyllic destinations, readers of The Grand Tour will be instantly transported to the most inspiring properties the country can offer, absorbing their enriching culture, unique designs and majestic beauty.
Just to add a contemporary twist to proceedings, HIP has launched an innovative new web app called Sheradill. Mini breaks at HIP Hotels can easily be gained by sharing properties with friends and followers on social media. For every action or share, a user earns Sheradill credits, which in turn bring down the price of their getaway. Find the date that suits, and book the hotel – it’s that easy! Time to start planning your next escape….
For more information about HIP Hotels, visit www.hiphotels.com and for more information about Sheradill, visit www.sheradill.com .
By Fiona Sanderson
3rd June 2016
Adrian Slater, General Manager of the Grand Hyatt in South Korea, talks to The Luxury Channel about life in the hotel and living in Seoul….
How long have you been with Hyatt Group?
Almost 30 years – it’s a great company. What it does extremely well is give everyone the opportunity to grow, and I think the hospitality industry is all about creating experiences for people as well as their guests. I have had so many opportunities – I have worked in the Middle East, Australia, New Zealand, and now South Korea. I started working for Hyatt when I was 16. I was only going to work for a year as a waiter, then go onto hotel school in New Zealand and see what happened. Here I am 30 years later!
What is it like for a young person going into the hotel industry?
It’s not a 9 to 5 job. You have to be very flexible. But it’s an industry where you can see the world and there are opportunities, although maybe not early on in your career but later certainly. I think working in the hotel industry exposes you to a very multi-cultural society, understanding customers who are very different from you. That’s something you don’t realise until you have been through it. I had two roles in the Dubai Hyatt, and I really saw what a multi-cultural society is. I had 54 different nationalities coming through our hotel doors – you don’t get that in any other country in the world!
What changes have you seen in the hotel industry over the years, and where is the focus today?
I think the hotel industry has become so design-focussed – the importance of the interior designer, the space they create and the experience around it. It’s all about delivering the experience to the customer that matches the environment. I think technology within hotels has changed dramatically. From finance systems to check-in, to the telephone and internet. Consumers today are using technology more and more to find out things and the hospitality industry was very slow at first but is much savvier on that front now. You now look at the habits of the millennials and how they respond and behave, which can be quite a challenge, then you have the baby boomers who are a little bit more analogue in the way they operate. The millennials will just flick through and say, look we can get this deal. You have to be really up to speed with it to make sure you know what they are talking about and you can relate to their issues and their experience and market.
What’s the difference between a Grand Hyatt and a Park Hyatt?
Customer expectation is very high and can differ between hotels. When you come to a Grand Hyatt, you expect a grand experience. When you walk into the lobby, you are awed by the music, the ambience, and the sheer look and feel of the place. Our Park Hyatt brand is very personalised, but not so grand so when you arrive into a Park Hyatt, the lobby has a bit of a residential feel. They are all very different, though. Normally, a smaller hotel has a more personalised service than perhaps a Grand Hyatt like this, which has probably over a thousand people walking through the lobby every day. We have about a thousand staff. Koreans are fantastic in the service industry and they really pride themselves on this. I took a lot of Korean nationals with me to Dubai because they understand service and what is required to make it perfect, and they are very, very proud of that. This hotel is 38 years old and some of the employees have been here since the opening. They recognise the guests and that’s what the guests like. Recently, a guest returning after six years recognised the bell boy and gave him a big hug and said “its so nice; it’s like coming home!”
Why is Asian service known for its perfection?
If you teach a Korean how to do things well, they will do the same for the next 40 years and I think that’s a commitment. I think it’s in the culture, it’s in the history, how they strive to do better and how they are committed to making sure the guest experience is awesome. Korea is challenging but rewarding. I think there is a lot of history here, a lot of culture. They are very proud, particularly when you look at what it was like after the Korean war and what they have achieved since. I was away for five years and came back, and when I got off the plane, I said “I am home!” because relationships stick for a long time here. You can build solid relationships here but it does mean a lot of nights out getting to know people and building the trust.
What is the attraction of South Korea and who comes here as a tourist?
Our biggest market is the US. Lots of luxury brands are here. Korea is a market that is known for testing cosmetics; if it works in this market, it will work anywhere else in the world. Koreans know what they want. It’s a very dynamic city but you have to know where to go. As a foreigner coming here, it may not be as easy to get around like New York but it’s getting better. They are really committed to making it “user friendly.” I think you will find if you were lost in tourist areas and went looking for help, they would be more than happy to help and guide you where to go. The other thing is that if you have got kids, they really take care of them. If you are in a queue, they will bring you straight to the fore. Seoul is really amazing as you really have the four seasons to the fullest. The cherry blossoms are extraordinary – such vibrant colours and you see the reds, the blues – incredible! The infrastructure works, as they are all ahead of the curve.
The fashion here is amazing; you only need to sit in the lobby here and see what people are wearing. There is a real style focus here. It’s a fun city. With Korea, you either love it or hate it, and I love it. Once you know how to find your way around here, it’s amazing. If you want sophistication, it’s all here, with great hotels and restaurants. There is a big outdoor restaurant scene here, and the nightclub scene has really taken off. The Koreans are extremely well-educated with almost a 98% literacy rate. There is a massive focus from families on education, and it’s very competitive – getting into the top universities and jobs, and going overseas. They’ll speak a minimum of three languages. When I was GM of the Park Hyatt, I went into the restaurant kitchen and I was amazed; everyone spoke fluent Italian and the Koreans weren’t speaking in their own language, they weren’t even speaking English, but Italian! Korea is also quite health conscious – all the buses run on natural gas and electricity. People are recycling in line with Europe. There are vinyl bars here – like the old juke box cafes where you drink whisky, usually one or two bottles, and then it’s time to go home.
What are the defining features of this Grand Hyatt hotel in Seoul?
It’s all about giving the guest an experience which we hope we achieve. The staff are incredible. They care about their guests. At night time, the whole lobby transforms into the most amazing auditorium. We have a band and it is really an experience – the lobby lounge here is spectacular. In the summer, we have a barbeque by the pool. It’s amazing to sit out there in the fresh air and look at that view. The beauty of this hotel is that we are a resort within the city. This is the Beverly Hills of Seoul.
When you look back on your time in the industry, what do you remember?
I remember John Cleese was staying with us and he came into the hotel – where he was supposed to be being interviewed – wearing a dressing gown and slippers and I said, “Mr. Cleese, are you going for the interview dressed like that?” and he said, “yes, it’s only for the radio.” You see a lot of celebrities. The saxophonist Kenny G comes to Korea a lot. Last time I saw him, we got into the elevator and he asked me if I had heard his latest album, which I said I had not and he said, “it’s much better than my elevator music used to be!” We sit down and he has a glass of wine just like any other person, and then he hears some music in the bar and then just grabs his bag and decides to have a 45 minute jam session. It was a free concert in the bar! He wasn’t playing the saxophone, he was playing guitar and drums and it was just amazing. We gave our musicians the night off. This was not orchestrated; it was just, let’s just have a jam session. It was just giving something back to the people. So that was a big highlight.
The other person I loved was Tina Turner. She was really fit; she had her own chef who travelled with her and cooked for her. That was the key to her health. So, mixing with the celebrities and rubbing shoulders with these people is quite fun and rewarding. This hotel has been the host to four US Presidents, The Queen, and even Princes Diana. This hotel is iconic; it’s not modern or flashy – it’s a statement. Everyone knows it. If you travel around the world and say, “I work at the Grand Hyatt,” people know it. Last week, we had the French president staying – when these guys come, it runs like clockwork, all run by the Koreans extremely well. The streets are all blocked, and the police escort the whole hierarchy. It’s amazing.
What is your biggest achievement?
My biggest achievement in my career? I think it’s important as you go through your career to be very humble and realise you can’t do it alone – it’s about building a team to work with you to achieve the results. I think that’s something that only comes with experience. It’s a lot of posing the ideas but letting people run with them. The biggest satisfaction for me is seeing the team coming together to deliver the end product. My biggest wish is that I had more time going, to go around to thank everybody!
To book a stay at the Grand Hyatt Seoul, click here . For more information about visiting Seoul, click here .
29th February 2016
Umaid Bhawan, Jodhpur
In anticipation of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s visit to India and Bhutan, bespoke tour operator, Ampersand Travel, has created an itinerary to showcase the links between England and the Indian Subcontinent, existing since the days of the Raj. This 24-night all-suite itinerary to Rajasthan and Bhutan suggests palaces and hotels that hold a personal connection for their Royal Highnesses (not least as sources say that William is keen to see a tiger and visit his father’s old friends in Rajasthan).
The Oberoi Amarvilas
William and Kate would feel at home arriving at The Imperial Hotel in New Delhi, a place that dominates the bustling markets of Janpath with its cool white Lutyens design and priceless collection of British art on India. First timers should visit the iconic Taj Mahal at Agra and stay at The Oberoi Amarvilas, only 600 metres away. As wildlife enthusiasts, William and Kate would enjoy the thrill of tracking the elusive Bengal Tiger in Ranthambhore – one of the most densely populated tiger reserves in India. Sher Bagh – a SUJÁN luxury property and the first tented camp to open in Ranthambhore – provides a sumptuous sanctuary in the wild.
Sher Bagh
The Prince might like to follow in the footsteps of his father and grandmother, by visiting the ‘‘Pink City’’ of Jaipur and staying in the Prince of Wales suite at the newly restored SUJÁN Rajmahal Palace, once home to Maharaja Jai Singh and his wife, the legendary Gayatri Devi. Over at the Blue City of Jodhpur, Maharaja Gaj Singh II – a personal friend of Prince Charles – would welcome the young Royals to his home, the magnificent Umaid Bhawan Palace, also recently voted TripAdvisor’s best hotel in the world, with the Art Deco interiors of the Maharani Suite spanning the length of the palace. Kate might like to follow the Royal household in creating her own fragrance with the in–house perfumer. Jodhpur is famed for its polo season where the two renowned schools of their respective countries, Eton vs Mayo College, go head to head at the polo club. The Duke and Duchess would enjoy seeing the fine breed of Marwari horses at the Royal stables.
The final leg of the journey will be the glorious mountain Kingdom of Bhutan. The Duke and Duchess will have much to discuss with the King and Queen regarding the recent birth of the Crown Prince. If the Duke and Duchess fancy a bit of time alone, Amankora’s five lodges here offer the opportunity to explore ancient monasteries, remarkable landscapes and the region’s rich cultural heritage – all beneath the soaring peaks of the Himalayas.
Getting There
Ampersand Travel offers bespoke tours to India and the subcontinent. The Royal Connections Package starts from £17,674, comprising 24 nights based on two people travelling together and sharing suite accommodation on a bed and breakfast basis, domestic flights, private transfers, fully guided sightseeing and Bhutanese visas. For further information, go to www.ampersandtravel.com or call +44 (0)20 7819 9770.
By Michael-Ann Rowe
9th February 2016
Quebec is a destination known for being a romantic get-away, but the entire family will find fun, frolics and festivities at one of the World’s largest winter Carnivals….
After 62 years, Quebecers are no strangers to embracing the snow. In fact, their famous mascot, Bonhomme, is a 7-foot, 400-pound, walking, talking snowman! Across from Quebec’s iconic Parliament building, the stage is set as Bonhomme’s Ice Palace. It’s called Place de l’Assemblee-Nationale and it’s just one of the locations for outdoor concerts and activities. The palace looks brilliant at night time. From January 29th – February 14th, Quebec City is like a massive snow-globe that can be shaken or stirred over three weekends!
As you journey through the cobblestone streets like Place de Royale or Quartier Petit Champlain, you’ll be surrounded by Quebec City’s historic landscape that sits on the banks of the St. Lawrence River. The foundation of ‘‘Old Quebec’’ is prevalent with its Unesco World heritage site – a centuries-old fortified wall that leads you right to the Plains of Abraham – the central playground for the Carnival, which turns into a massive open snow fortress of activity.
Activities
If you’re into speed, go for the 120 meter-long ice slide (worth a screaming ‘‘selfie’’ video all the way down!). Then grab a snow tube and spin your way to the bottom of a hill before you work your way to the Sugar Shack for traditional beaver tails. Or you might want to warm your insides with the Carnival’s signature Caribou Rum – the perfect elixir for an adventurous ride with a dog-sled team, or zip-lining across the winter fairground! The Plains have mapped out a special kiddies playground where they too can happily wear themselves out.
Competitions
If you’re into watching competitions, I have witnessed one of the most extreme sports at the Quebec Winter Carnival – Ice Canoe races across the St. Lawrence River! The event has been going on since 1955 and originated from when they used to transport people and goods from Quebec City and Levis. Each year, over 50 teams of men and women from three countries demonstrate tremendous courage and athleticism as they dig and paddle through the broken icebergs that surface the river. It’s a sight to see. Another competition to watch is the one and two-man sleigh races on The Plains. Want to participate? Enter the snow racer grand prix, a giant snow-bowling competition, a snowshoe challenge, or Yukigassen (a snow-ball fight!)
Other Spectacles
One of my favorite spectacles was watching the International Snow Sculptures Competition take shape throughout the days of the carnival. As teams from around the world are provided with a box of tools, competitors start chiselling ginormous blocks of snow into monumental art pieces. When you see the sculptures, it’s quite amazing to learn some have never made a snow sculpture before.
As night approaches, the ice and snow art come alive all over the city and performers hit the concert stages. This year, there will be a symphonic tribute to the music of the Beatles, by Beatles, Abby Road & Co. You might also plan your trip around the Carnival Night Parade. In Quebec, they take the planning of costume and character creations seriously, so it’s a spectacle of colorful Cirque de Soleil-like characters and masqueraders on stilts, music and high fire acts through the streets.
If diving into the snow in your swimsuit is on your bucket list, sign up for the traditional Snow Bath with Bonhomme, on the Plains of Abraham. It’s been going on since 1987 and a sight that will have you howling.
While you’re in Quebec, take a ride ten minutes from the city center and visit the amazing Ice Hotel; an ice and snow structure of themed hotel rooms, a bar and ice slide, and its own chapel. If you’re the extreme adventurous type, you might want to check in for the night.
What To Eat
Quebec has been applauded for some of the best French cuisine this side of Europe. Open your palate to wild game in a ground beef pie, or seafood from the Gulf of the St. Lawrence, and Quebec’s amazing local cheeses melted into a fondue. As you make your way along the intertwined carnivalesque streets, the familiar sight of maple toffee in the snow and carts of poutine are simply irresistible. Add the Hotel Frontenac’s fromagerie tasting room to your list. I was in awe sitting at their 1608 wine and cheese bar while overlooking one of the best views of the St. Lawrence River.
What To Wear
Red and white are the signature colors. Along with your signature Effigy (see the picture below), you may want to sport a red or white arrow sash, to be shown off around your waist. Add a pair of carnival winter gloves and a trendy toque and you’ve got the perfect Quebec Carnival fashion statement. Dress warm so you have nothing else to think about but pure winter fun (although hand warmers are sold all over).
Admission
The Carnival Effigy is your passport to all 17 days of festivities at the main festival sites. The Effigy is a small pendant you wear throughout the carnival and costs $15 Canadian. It has become a collector’s item, with many having collected all 62 Effigies. A full carnival pass can be purchased for $35-Canadian.
In its 62nd year celebrating a magical winter fest, Quebec City shares its joie de vivre with the world. When your day winds down, take a horse-drawn carriage back to your hotel and nestle in by the fireplace at an old Victorian-style hotel or stay at the Hilton where room views overlook the St. Lawrence River, the Ice Palace, Parliament and the Plains of Abraham. The world’s snow capital gives celebrating Mardi Gras a new meaning at the Quebec Winter Carnival!
For more information, go to https://carnaval.qc.ca . Images above courtesy of Quebec City Tourism & Quebec Winter Carnival, and Restaurant L’Echaude.
Michael-Ann Rowe is an Emmy Award Winning food and travel journalist. See more of her work at www.michaelannrowe.com .
By The Luxury Channel
27th January 2016
Range Rover and Abercrombie & Kent have teamed up to create The Most Luxurious Road Trip on Earth – a road trip like no other that combines the world’s most beautiful locations, hotels and driving routes. This is an unrivalled 21 day trip-of-a-lifetime, taking in five continents, eight countries and nine of the world’s best hotels, with truly off-the-beaten-track driving experiences from behind the wheel of the most luxurious Range Rover ever produced, the SVAutobiography.
“We set out to design a trip worthy of the ultimate luxury SUV and thanks to our partners at Abercrombie & Kent we have achieved just that,” Mark Cameron, Land Rover Experiential Marketing Director at Jaguar Land Rover, told us. “From Europe to Australia, this trip is all about the epitome of luxury but done so in a Land Rover way – the unexpected, the off-the-beaten-track and the once-in-a-lifetime experiences. This itinerary represents the definitive drive adventure, achieved in the definitive vehicle.”
Starting in Europe, the trip takes in the twisting mountain roads of Monaco, the coastal highway to Portofino and the breathtaking vistas of the Italian lakes, all from the leather-lined luxury of the SVAutobiography. Accommodation for the first leg includes Four Seasons Cap Ferrat, the Villa D’Este overlooking Lake Como and the San Lorenzo Mountain Lodge in the stunningly beautiful and remote Dolomites region of the Alps. Lunch is taken at world-renowned eateries including Joel Robuchon at the Metropole and unique, bespoke activities include a personalised fragrance-making class in the lavender scented hills of Provence and a glacier picnic – by chartered helicopter – in the peaks of the Alps.
The second leg of the trip sees guests fly to Marrakech for a three-night stay at the unsurpassed Royal Mansour. Drives in the region take in the arid desert around Ouarzazate (the perfect territory to develop off-road skills!), and a route up into the Atlas Mountains, ending with a lunch at Richard Branson’s exquisite hotel, Kasbah Tamadot.
The unique climate of the Arizona desert is the destination for the third part of the trip, as guests fly in to experience the one-of-a-kind Amangiri resort in Utah. Amangiri – meaning “peaceful mountain” – is located across 600 acres, tucked into a protected valley with sweeping views towards the Grand Staircase – Escalante National Monument. The resort is built around a central swimming pool and blends the dramatic surrounds with deep canyons and towering plateaus to create a raw and captivating landscape. Activities for this leg include a hiking and scrambling excursion into Antelope Canyon, a private dinner under the stars at a local Sandstone Butte and breakfast in Zion National Park.
The fourth leg involves an overnight flight to Chile to experience the Atacama Desert – the driest non-polar desert in the world. Staying at Awasi – one of the most luxurious and remote lodges in South America – guests are assigned a personal concierge who designs a wholly bespoke experience customised to their interests. The driving excursions in the area are some of the most epic on earth and include a day drive to the Alamo Observatory, a £1bn telescope that can see the “beginning of time.”
An overnight flight to Sydney marks the final part of the trip. A night’s stay at the Park Hyatt means the opportunity to relax after a VIP bridge climb and behind-the-scenes access to the landmark Opera House. A short hop to Tasmania the following day provides the opportunity for a stunning drive through the vast, rugged wilderness, taking in coastal heathland and forest, giving drivers the chance to put the SVAutobiography through its paces. Guests stay at Saffire Freycinet, where they experience a breakfast like no other – standing knee-deep in an estuary enjoying fresh oysters and local sparkling wine.
Prices for the most luxurious road trip on earth start from £100,000 per person, available through select boutiques in the UK, Abu Dhabi and Monaco. Land Rover Adventure Travel by Abercrombie & Kent offers a variety of incredible driving excursions throughout the year. For more information, please see www.landrover.com/experiences/adventure-travel/index.html .
By Caroline Phillips
12th January 2016
Rolling landscapes, home grown tomatoes and traditional red clay roof tiles. This is Fattoria Corleonese, a gorgeous manor house for holidays in Sicily. It’s in the heart of the country, part of a working farm and in a building that has been in the same family since 1873. It’s set in 92 hectares of beautiful countryside, among cornfields and sheep with clanking bells on their necks. All midst plum trees, cypresses, and ancient walnut trees as far as the eye can see. You’d be hard pushed to find a more pleasant place.
The house is built around an uneven cobbled courtyard with sun-bleached terracotta walls and bottle-green louvered shutters. Plus walls that are bougainvillea, oleander and ivy clad. The hot air reverberates to the sound of cicadas and the fluttering of butterfly wings. Otherwise, all is still and peaceful, save for the occasional bark of a farm dog – of which there are four large ones of varying degrees of shagginess. That is because part of the house is lived in by the owners, a charming couple – Salvatore Paternostro, a retired lawyer and gentleman farmer, and his wife Angela, a Tuscan artist elegant in white linen.
Inside our apartment there are heaven-high ceilings and antiques: think oil paintings, elaborate, free-standing cupboards with sculpted cherubs, and dripping Murano glass chandeliers with candles. Days are spent lazily on the terrace beside the apartment, underneath a parasol midst potted geraniums and overlooking a fountain with a lion’s head.
Nearby there’s a swimming pool set in a secret garden amongst olive, walnut and almond trees, overlooked by a towering limestone mountain and bordered by rosemary and lemon verbena bushes. Hours and days pass and we do little more than gentle laps and loll beside the pool, the peace disturbed by nothing more than the occasional call of a cockerel or flit of a dragon fly.
Most days the farm hand brings us a wicker basket laden with organic produce from the land. Blushing tomatoes, baby zucchini, cucumbers with thick green skins, bottles of home-pressed olive oil and cheeses from the farm: smoked mozzarella, pecorino and home made sheep’s cheese. We feast on homemade pasta – gnocchi with tomato sauce fatto in casa, drizzled with pungent olive oil – and finish the meal with sun-ripened nectarines. And there’s the local Donna Fugata sparkling wine to accompany the meals, another present from Salvatore and Angela.
When we can tear ourselves away from this rural idyll, Corleone is a fifteen minute drive away. It’s a hilltop town made famous by Mario Puzzi’s The Godfather. Tourists didn’t come to Corleone before the film. Walk into Central Bar – it’s the one with the poster of The Godfather outside – and the owner turns on the theme tune of the movie. Its walls are covered with stills from the film – pictures of Marlon Brando wearing his gangster hat and those famous cotton-wool-puffy cheeks. By the door there are some framed newspaper cuttings that record Al Pacino’s visit to see his grandmother who lived in the town.
We drink stronger than strongest coffee and fresh-pressed lemon juice in Central Bar, hiding for moments from the searing noonday sun. Then we leave the bar, past old men sitting in the shade gossiping and setting the world to right. It seems to be a town of old men. Mostly the young of Corleone have left to work abroad.
Up the street, Luca Trombaturi guides us around an upstairs room in a former monastery – the Galleria Corleone. ‘This is my passion,’ he says, pointing to this room that bears witness to his hometown. ‘La storia del nostro passato.’ The white walls are covered with photographs of the most infamous clan members who moved from Corleone and started their clandestine operations in New York. Luca wears two earrings, shaved hair sides and tresses gelled on top. ‘Extortion, prostitution, drugs charges,’ he’s saying as he flails his arms, indicating photos on the wall of former Mafia chiefs.
Afterwards Lea Savona, the dignified and first elected female mayor of Corleone, drops by. We sit in a circle on white plastic chairs. Luca translates at breakneck speed as she tells us how she is tackling the Mafia – ‘I don’t confront them and they leave me alone to get on with my work,’ she says – and how the Pope’s secretary sent her a letter to say they were praying for her good work. ‘Would you like to go to her office to see her awards?’ asks Luca, with pride.
Another day, we go further afield – a spectacular 90 minute drive to the Donna Fugata winery in Marsala on the coast. Past villages, lush vineyards, mountains and incredible rock formations. The vineyard is family owned, and they produce 2.5 million bottles of wine a year – about ten different varieties – a mixture of red, white and sparkling white, plus a sweet wine from the island of Pentelleria. Most destined for new markets in the US, Europe and Japan. Our group tries seven wines, swilling it in their mouths, the professionals among them spitting it out. ‘It’s too good to spit out,’ says Sandra, our friend, drinking it.
Closer to Fattoria Corleonese, a mere five minutes in the car, is the Agriturismo Giardinello. We go there for antipasti, delicious pizzas and home made limoncello, sitting among tables each of more than ten people, all Italian families. We’re the only people there who speak English. Afterwards, walking midst the farm dogs and playful puppies, we go further up the hill from the agriturismo, past pens with bulls and calves, to where the farmer produces hand-made cheese. There’s a room like a walk-in refrigerator with freshly made ricotta, some recently smoked mozzarella and floor-to-ceiling shelves of pecorino truckles. The master cheese maker climbs a ladder to reach a six month old one for us to taste. It is delicious, salty yet still fresh and pungent.
But we don’t want to visit many places. Fattoria Corleonese is too much of a lure. Why leave its mellow light, spectacular scenery and our broken Italian chats with its genial owners? Why spend much time away from its fine old buildings, the peregrine falcons circling in the blue sky, the friendly farm dogs and the ancient olive trees? Or away from those rolling landscapes, home grown tomatoes and traditional red clay roof tiles?
For more information, go to www.solosicily.com or phone +44 (0)20 7097 1413. Car hire is available from www.holidayautos.com .
Caroline Phillips is an award-winning freelance journalist who contributes to publications from Sunday and daily newspapers to glossy magazines and various luxury websites. To see more of her work, go to www.carolinephillips.net .
By Caroline Phillips
7th January 2016
The sky is streaked pink and purple. There are hills that recede into the distance where the Tyrrhenian Sea twinkles and the magical Aeolian islands stick temptingly out of the water. The villa is surrounded by an organic estate with olive trees, two gamboling dogs and a vegetable garden with sun-blushed tomatoes, beans and squash. Nearby are the Nebrodi mountains with walking trails, lakes, streams and woods.
Welcome to the off-the–beaten-volcanic track. This is Casalnuovo villa in Tindari, Sicily. A charming place where few tourists go.
It sleeps 15 – perfect for families or big groups or even a business conference. Its pool looks over the rolling hills and days are spent doing gentle laps. Or lying in the sun. One day Carlo, a chef, comes and teaches us how to make pizzas. Slugging back red wine and with Sicilian good cheer, he shows us how to knead the dough and flip it in the air, before putting just-picked tomatoes and tangy local cheese on top. For all this, there’s a wood-burning pizza oven in the garden.
Another day, we go riding on Arab horses that are a mere trot from the property. We canter up paths bordered by cypruses and lemon trees, the air thick with the scent of fennel.
Further afield, the Franchetti winery beckons. (Wine producer Andrea Franchetti looks like a young Yves Saint Laurent). His rosé tastes like roses, and one red tastes deliciously like caramel: these are wines that are profound, unique and superb. There’s also Cefalu for a day trip – with its Norman duomo and seafront. Plus Mount Etna – the largest and most volatile volcano in Europe. At night, it booms theatrically and spills molten lava down its sides, splashing red under the stars.
As for food, the holiday is a hit. In Montalbano – the nearest town to Casalnunovo – we find the local speciality of fresh macaroni with pork sauce. Also worth trying are its Croccantino Bianco, a hazelnut concoction covered in white chocolate. Then there’s Fattoria Grattazzo, a remote farm house with geese and dogs wandering around outside. (It’s 15 minutes from the villa). The owner, a septuagenarian, makes all his own cheeses – including the creamiest of ricottas – and home-cured meats. He offers a rustic and delicious menu with no choice.
In Palermo, a two hour drive away, we go to one of the best friggitorie (fried food shops), I Cuochini, for arancini (rice balls), timballini di pasta (deep-fried pasta), pasticcino (a sweet pastry filled with mince) and sfinciuni, a soft flat bread topped with tomatoes, onion, anchovies, cheese, toasted breadcrumbs and oregano. It’s little more than a Euro per item.
For those who wish to strike further afield (by helicopter is best), there’s a tip-top fish restaurant, Da Vittorio. (“My favourite place in Sicily is Da Vittorio Ristorante, a fish restaurant on the beach in Porto Palo di Menfi,” recommends chef Giorgio Locatelli). The antipasti includes the sweetest of red prawns, swordfish carpaccio, octopus in oil and lemon juice and whatever the fishermen have caught that day. It’s almost worth a trip from London for its pasta with sea urchins, pasta with mixed seafood, and catch of the day grilled on the barbecue.
Back at Casalnuovo, we put our feet up to watch the evening spectacle of a star-spangled sky, glasses of local limoncello in hand. We admire the 360-degree view and the twinkling lights of boats bobbing on the sea in the distance. There’s nothing in our minds but the thought of yet another lazy day. One of swimming, sun bathing and enjoying nature. Of riding on the Arab horses stabled at the bottom of the estate. What could be more relaxing?
For more information, go to www.solosicily.com or phone +44 (0)20 7097 1413. Car hire is available from www.holidayautos.com .
Caroline Phillips is an award-winning freelance journalist who contributes to publications from Sunday and daily newspapers to glossy magazines and various luxury websites. To see more of her work, go to www.carolinephillips.net .
By Isabel Donnelly
18th December 2015
One of The Luxury Channel’s very favourite “staycation” hotels is Chewton Glen, on the outskirts of the New Forest, which celebrates its 50th anniversary next year.
Chewton Glen is one of the UK’s top hotels for a reason. Featuring an award-winning restaurant, world-class leisure facilities and luxurious accommodation, Chewton Glen is the perfect destination for romantic escapes, relaxing getaways, corporate events or even for a girl’s getaway, which is what we managed to do on a wintry Hallowe’en day.
Despite its classic heritage and old-world charm, Chewton has always been ahead of the curve. Its founder, Martin Skan, had zero experience as an hotelier when he bought the property, but he had plenty of experience as a hotel guest, which he put into practice when he made the then-revolutionary decision to put an en-suite bathroom into each bedroom. Chewton was also the first country house hotel in Britain to have a Spa, and the first to feature treehouses as suites.
Since then, Chewton has won countless accolades that are true testament to the team here. Recent awards include Executive Head Chef Luke Matthews winning Executive Chef of The Year at the Hampshire Life Food & Drink Awards 2015, and the Spa was voted third Best UK Hotel Spa 2015 by Conde Nast Traveller (on that note, the Spa itself offers particularly indulgent experiences, all in the location of this world-class retreat). Chewton has also been awarded International Five Star Standard 2016-17.
The awards speak volumes about what a wonderful retreat this really is. Surrounded by acres of nature, and just minutes from the beach, this is a very tranquil setting that enables one to simply get away from it all. Understated luxury is what this hotel is all about, giving you a home-from-home feeling when you stay.
My girlfriend and I stayed in a Junior Garden Suite with a separate bedroom and balcony on the floor above. Our suite was decorated in muted colours with velvets and fine wools placed on the beds, with comfortable deep-seated sofas. What more can a girl ask for, other than an enormous bathroom, crisp white linen sheets, huge white bath sheets and soft dressing gowns? Just what we needed on a cold, blustery evening.
Chewton Glen boasts a famous literary link through the fact that Captain Frederick Marryat stayed for periods during the 1840s, gathering material for his famous novel The Children of The New Forest (Marryat’s brother George in fact owned the property from 1837 until 1855). Today, many of the rooms have been named after his novels and the characters in them.
The perfect balance between celebrating heritage whilst keeping up-to-date is definitely what makes Chewton a holiday destination of choice. New for 2016, for instance, is the Strictly Fitter, Stronger Luxury Retreat weekend on the 8th – 10th January. A luxury health-boosting fitness weekend run by Strictly Come Dancing stars Ian Waite and Camilla Sacre-Dallerup, this is definitely one to book onto to lose those extra Christmas pounds!
However, for a far gentler start to the New Year, the Spa at Chewton Glen is a must! Offering the ultimate in relaxation, the facilities include a 17 metre indoor swimming pool, a hydrotherapy spa pool, an outdoor whirlpool, aromatherapy saunas and crystal steam rooms, all designed to help you really unwind. If you feel like you want to be a bit more active, then the purpose-built dance studio and tennis centre (with indoor and outdoor courts) are worth paying a visit. We tried the hydrotherapy pool which has has nine different areas including three single person loungers and swan neck pipes. We found the water blissfully warm and the jets comfortably powerful.
Of course, one can’t come to a hotel without sampling the cuisine! Spread across five rooms, including the wonderful Wine Room and newly constructed Summer House, The Dining Room offers settings to suit all dining occasions and times of the day, from light lunches to wine tasting dinners. The menu is English at its core. We chose a favourite, lemon grilled dover sole with locally sourced fresh vegetables – simple but with enough cosmopolitan flair to tempt even the fussiest diner. Delicious!
We were particularly intrigued by the Wine Room, which is both a working cellar and private dining area. Glancing through the wall of wine bottles carefully arranged for the enjoyment of guests, the cellar is illuminated by wine cabinets that contain some wonderful wines. This is not a pretentious cellar but a fun space either for private parties or wine tastings. Chewton holds regular Saturday night open tasting sessions available to all guests staying at the hotel, which provide an opportunity to taste an assortment of varied and interesting wines from around the globe. Cheers!
We wish the staff who make all their guests feel so special a very Happy New Year and a successful 2016.
Christmas Presents….
In the meantime, it’s nearly Christmas Day! Are you still in need of that important Christmas present? Take a look below at some of the perfect gifts available….
For Ladies That Lunch
Treat all of your friends and family to lunch this New Year. Banish the January blues with a three-course lunch for only £26.50 per person. The perfect gift to give on Christmas Day, something to enjoy even after the festivities have finished!
For Those Who Have It All
Give the gift of Chewton Glen this Christmas. From an indulgent champagne afternoon tea for two to a monetary gift voucher for them to spend on whatever they choose, why not buy that someone special a gift voucher this Christmas?
For The Ones You Want To Impress
Buy them something different this year. Find out about Tiff Needell’s fast-paced Grand Prix racing career or listen to classic West End songs being sang to you over a delicious four-course dinner. Whatever their interest, there is a special event at Chewton Glen to suit everyone.
For The Ones You Love Best
Unsure what to buy that loved one that already has everything? Give them the gift of a spa day at Chewton Glen. Enjoy a breakfast box on arrival, selected treatment, lunch, refreshments and full use of the spa and leisure facilities. The perfect start to the new year!
For more information, visit www.chewtonglen.com .
18th December 2015
Image © Unique Home Stays
Bohème. Does the very name conjure up thoughts of Puccini’s opera? Well, think again. Because this Bohème is actually one of the loveliest self-catering houses in Somerset. Say the word, ‘Bohème.’ And imagine now a converted sixteenth century former cider mill turned drop-dead stylish, modern-rustic house. Say ‘Bohème’ and imagine instead a place that was also an erstwhile dairy farm and now blends original features with contemporary dash and comfort.
Image © Unique Home Stays
I’m loath to divulge its whereabouts. It’s one of those places I’d like to keep secret. It’s just so perfect for everything from extended family occasions to hen shindigs and even office parties. Oh, all right…It’s in Stawley – just over the Devon border – and set at the end of a long farm lane, midst 100 acres of green and pleasant land. A place so peaceful you can hear a field mouse squeak. The stuff of which rural idylls are made.
Image © Unique Home Stays
My family and friends stride out into the fields with our Boxer – well-behaved dogs are welcome to stay – the winter sun smiling on our faces. We clamber over farm gates and see cotton-wool-fluffy lambs bleating and suckling. (For as far as we can walk, the estate belongs to PJ and Minky Luard, the delightful owners of Bohème). Later, we wander down the drive, this time to the River Tone – with its small waterfalls – and St Michael and All Angels, a church that dates from the 13th century.
Image © Unique Home Stays
Back at the house, there’s an indoor pool with picture window onto the rolling hills, a 25-metre kitchen/dining area with 20 red chairs surrounding a refectory table, acres of bleached wood floors and miles of under-floor heating, and a barn-size games room with pool table, comfy sofas and a wall for projecting movies from the snazziest bit of techie equipment.
Image © Unique Home Stays
Then there are the ten double bedrooms: ones that have a kind of chalet vibe with their white-on-white and wood, including one known informally as ‘the love nest.’ (It’s up a secret staircase, and is as private and comfortable as can be). Plus there’s a pretty courtyard and, at the front of the house, views that put Heaven to shame.
Image © Unique Home Stays
Most of the time we do nothing, bar the occasional lazy lap in the pool (it’s heated to 86 degrees) and playing games of cards and Scrabble and sitting reading in front of a roaring log fire (in the coolest concrete, contemporary fireplace). Somerset cider plays a starring role. We take our indolence to new heights by having massage, reflexology and facial treatments from My Personal Sanctuary , mobile therapists who put the ‘ah’ into ‘spa.’
Image © Unique Home Stays
The therapists are tip-top and offer luxurious treatments. (MPS have a national network and offer their services in exclusive rental properties). There’s something so gratifyingly slothful about being in a country house and padding around in a fluffy white dressing gown, popping onto a heated couch and having a Neal’s Yard geranium back scrub before being slathered in lavender oil for a massage.
Image © Unique Home Stays
In the evening, Sam Rom caters for us. He used to be the head chef at River Cottage. He specialises in culinary idiosyncrasies like squirrels on toast and wild boar porchetta in trotter stock. Nose to tail eating. ‘I like the cuts that most people don’t use,’ he says cheerily. Afterwards, with full tummies and soaring hearts, my family and guests tumble into our comfortable beds and sleep round the clock.
Bohème. The opera’s great. But the staycation? There’s little to beat it.
Further Information
For further information about Bohème, click here , or call +44(0) 1637 881183.
Caroline Phillips is an award-winning freelance journalist who contributes to publications from Sunday and daily newspapers to glossy magazines and various luxury websites. To see more of her work, go to www.carolinephillips.net .
By Isabel Donnelly
16th December 2015
With its perfect location moments from Mayfair, The Royal Academy, Fortnum & Mason and St. James’s Palace, plus its Michelin starred restaurant, it is easy to understand why people say St. James’s Hotel is one of the most desired addresses in London.
On this occasion, I was lucky to not only spend a day with my girlfriend doing what girls like to do – lunching and shopping – but also to spend an evening at the hotel in one of their superior suites. Upon arrival, we were swept swiftly up by private lift to the St. James’s Suite on the seventh floor with magnificent views of the Elizabeth Tower and the Millennium wheel.
The décor immediately puts you in a relaxed mood in a wonderful home-away-from-home setting, complete with designer fireplace and Bose speakers. I jumped into a huge Jacuzzi bath which comes equipped with delicious-smelling Penhaligon’s products, which offered much-needed respite after a long day shopping in nearby Bond Street!
For art lovers, the hotel boasts an impressive private art collection of more than 450 paintings, pictures and sculptures. Called the Rosenstein Collection, this spectacular showcase is a brilliant display of 20th century works from across Europe. With art and pastels adorning the walls, it is truly understated elegance and sophistication.
As cocktail hour beckoned, we headed downstairs for the delicious concoctions on offer at the bar, and also for the popcorn which apparently changes flavour every day. We were told that the one of the hotel’s highlights is their cheese, wine or chocolate masterclasses. Sommelier Christophe Thuilot has extremely trustworthy taste buds and his unconventional pairings give a new twist to the classic cheese board.
In the last few years, London has become arguably the culinary capital of the world, and the hotel’s Michelin starred restaurant, Seven Park Place By William Drabble, certainly enhances that reputation. The smallest Michelin starred restaurant in London, the dining area has been stylishly designed, and the staff here are highly professional. The restaurant recently retained its star for the sixth year running, and William’s menu is influenced by classic French cuisine but made using only the very best British produce. The provenance of each dish is derived from either a local farm or caught fresh from the sea.
We were lucky enough to sample a Menu Gourmand of seven dishes, showcasing William’s new truffle and game inspired menu. The evening included insight into the best way to cook with these fine ingredients from William himself, but also from one of his all-time favourite suppliers, John Houldsworth of Cornvale Food, part of the Gressingham Duck Company.
As delicious as the meat courses – such as marmite of game with truffle – proved to be, special mention must go to the truffle ice-cream port wine reduction dessert, which was mouth-watering! This really was a perfect way to end the evening, and we retired by our private lift to our suite, where I slept like a princess in my sumptuous bed. A memorable stay in a memorable hotel.
In the run-up to Christmas, the hotel is offering the unique opportunity to experience an exclusive tour of London on a horse-drawn carriage whilst enjoying a luxurious overnight stay in a Junior Suite. This is an unmissable chance to discover all that the city can offer, and a bespoke tour can include a trip through one of the Royal Parks, or to Buckingham Palace or Westminster Cathedral. Each tour lasts two and a half hours, and the offer is valid until 30th December 2015, subject to availability, with rates starting from £995.
By Fiona Sanderson
14th December 2015
“Aman Canal Grande Venice is a hotel, it is a Palazzo, and it is also a home, a very grand one, but still a home…”
Venice is undoubtedly one of the most romantic and beautiful cities in the world. Built on water and steeped in history, Venice is a fabled destination with a glorious past. Once a major power and flourishing trade centre in the Mediterranean, Venice today is known for its architecture and its artworks. The city plays host to several internationally-renowned events including the annual Carnival, the Venice Film Festival and the Art and Architectural Biennales.
The flow of life and history in the city, for both visitors and Venetians, is measured out by the Torre Dell ‘Orologio – the Clock Tower and its large astronomical clock, masterpieces of technology and engineering that date from 1499. Venice is also home to the Piazza San Marco and Saint Mark’s Basilica, but it is perhaps the Grand Canal that is the city’s most iconic feature, which is lined with buildings that are between 200 and 700 years old.
I was lucky enough to be invited to stay at the Aman Canal Grande Venice – the place that George Clooney recently chose for his wedding – which is situated near the Rialto Bridge in one of these regal old palazzos, at the heart of the city in the San Polo district (one of the oldest parts of the city, known for its beautiful palaces, churches and the Rialto Market). The Aman Canal Grande Venice has recently undergone a 35 million Euro major restoration project, which has meticulously returned the palazzo back to its former glory, and you are instantly transformed back in time to one of Venetian splendour. The palazzo in which the hotel is housed, Palazzo Papadopoli, was built in 1550 by the architect Gian Giacomo dé Grigi.
One of only eight palazzo monumentali on the Grand Canal, I arrived by boat from the airport, docking at a landing that leads directly into the lofty-ceilinged Reception Hall. From here, a sweeping staircase rises through two levels to the first piano nobile, traditionally the grandest floor of a palazzo that the resident family would use for entertaining (at the Aman Canal Grande Venice, unusually for a Venetian Palazzo, there are two piano nobile floors). The decorations of the first piano nobile are significant examples of the Neo-Renaissance and Rococo styles that were all the rage in 19th century Venice. The Ballroom, the Bar, the Red Dining Room and the Yellow Dining Room all have soaring ceilings with original frescoes, Murano glass chandeliers, ornate stucco, gilded mirrors, silk wall coverings, terrazzo floors – and spectacular views of the Grand Canal. These breathtakingly beautiful spaces have hosted some of the grandest of parties over the centuries.
The second piano nobile is home to the Salon; a regal, high-ceilinged entertaining room featuring a grand piano and wonderful views across Venice. The historic Library, adjacent to the Salon, is a peaceful retreat with a range of interesting books taken directly from the Count Giberto Arrivabene Gonzaga’s collection.
The privilege of space in the Palazzo extends to the Gardens, very unusual features in Venice. The beautiful gardens here are a green oasis of calm in this historic district, with water all about. In the summer months, they provide shady outdoor spaces for dining and entertaining and are very popular, I am told.
The Aman Canal Grande Venice offers 24 suites, all of which are unique in layout and design. Many feature frescoes, reliefs and chandeliers that reflect the past periods of art and architecture.
I wanted a morning off and went to try out the Spa and a facial with Aman’s specially prepared beauty products. I must say that I cannot think of anywhere more serene to have one of the best facials I have ever had. With a combination of reflexology and beautiful creams and scents, the beauty therapist worked her magic and sent me to heaven and back.
The Aman signature is one of luxurious minimalism. Whether it’s in the Spa or in the rooms, every detail is meticulously thought out. It could be the comfort and freshness of the muted décor, or those little extras such as fresh lemons and ice left for your evening gin and tonic, or the little gifts that really make you feel special. This is true luxury at its best.
With so many restaurants surrounding the Palace, it’s easy to wander out of the hotel for dinner but I was keen to try the hotel’s own Red Dining Room and a meal prepared by Chef Davide Oldani. He turned out to be most charming of men and prepared the most delicious meal of locally caught fish with all the authentic Italian flavours. The menu offered a delight of choices. If only I could stay for another night….
Venice is full or colour, music and entertainment particularly at Carnival time. I was told that the Aman can arrange costumes, clowns and dancers if needed. For flowers and decorations, they work with the most wonderful florists here in Venice, who can create dazzling arrangements (in fact, the signature flower – the white amaryllis – is everywhere in the Palazzo, in hand-blown Murano glass vases). Everyone loves candles and for special events, the team at the Aman will go to town, with candles throughout the hotel, placed under the twinkling lights of the chandeliers. To recreate a Carnival evening, they work with Venetian ateliers who can provide costumes for every guest, to be waiting in their rooms on arrival. What did I say, true luxury and service at its best!
Venice is a place for walking so of course, despite the beauty and elegance of the hotel, no trip to the city would be complete without exploring it in all its magnificent glory. But first, you must get lost! Head out the back gate of the Palazzo and start wandering. It really doesn’t matter which way you go – there is beauty to be found in all directions. I was lucky to be guided by Filippo di Lenardo, Managing Director at Elite RetrEat Italia, who knows all there is to know about hidden Venice, its restaurants and attractions. Filippo sent me to meet Mauro Vianello, a glass-maker, who took me through the art of glass and how to make the perfect shell. It was fascinating, and is what Venice is all about. I also tried Filippo’s restaurant suggestions which really completed my trip.
I will certainly remember my visit to this stylish and grand Palazzo Papadopoli, and the friendliness of the Aman staff. Where else will you get the impression that you have chanced on a house party in a grand and civilised Venetian home?
A Few of Our Favourite Things In Venice
Getting very lost!
By Ramy Salameh
19th November 2015
With the Marrakech Museum for Photography and Visual Art (MMPVA) scheduled to open in 2016 and a temporary photographic exhibition housed in El Badi Palace, Marrakech is blossoming as a centre for the arts. Ramy Salameh explores one of the world’s most photogenic destinations through its timeless heritage….
Standing on the roof terrace of Maison de le Photographie and looking out toward the majestic snowy peaks of the Atlas Mountains, standing like sentries over the city of Marrakech, I realised that Morocco’s second oldest imperial city has not changed much over the centuries and that there are two levels of life in Marrakech — the one that takes place on ground level and the one that takes place on the flat roof terraces.
The gallery was inaugurated in 2009, housing a collection of 8,000 original prints and postcards within a building that encapsulated much of what makes Marrakech so enchanting. Its location is in the northern quarter of the souk, near Madressa Ben Youseff, hidden behind one of the many unassuming Marrakechi doors within the medina; thus it remains a relatively well-kept secret to stumble upon. This was to be a recurring pattern throughout my stay.
Maison de la Photographie charts the early journey of the medium in Morocco from the late 19th century through to the middle of the 20th century. The early pioneers of photography within the region first came to Tangiers, which was seen as the gateway capital before making their way to Marrakech. These exquisite images captured the very essence of the country through the eyes and architecture of its citizens.
And so it was that these stills, hanging from the stark white walls, allowed me to compare the city in the early 1900s with the present day. Very little has changed within the walled city, the same sun-weathered faces peer from beneath hooded djellabas and the atmospheric beams of light that cut through the wooden slats of the covered souk, are still to be found within the labyrinthine warren of alleys of the old city. Similarly, the only high rise feature of the cityscape are the square minarets, whose design can be traced to the Umayyad rulers of Islamic Spain. During the call to prayer, the roof terraces are the places to be, as the first Imam sets off a domino effect that bounces from minaret to minaret across the city until it creates some unity of religious devotion.
The photography gallery is housed in an ancient Fondouk. Whilst not having the religious significance of a mosque, or the political importance of a Palace, the ‘‘Fondouks’’ (the word ‘‘Funduk’’ is still often used today for ‘‘hotel’’ in Arabic) played an important role in the medieval market life of the souk, to help stimulate the passage of trade for the passing caravans. Today, they are the workshops of artisans who dye leather, hammer metal work or serve as small bakeries.
From my perch on the terrace café of the gallery, I peered over a side railing to see a young Moroccan boy laying out rows of tanned leather hides upon the roof of the neighbouring tannery, to allow them to be dried by the sun, part of an age-old tradition. In the distance, the Koutoubia Mosque’s minaret is one of the great landmarks of the city, and is also one of the oldest, dating to the 12th century and thanks to old French colonial legislation (that no building in the medina should be above the height of a palm tree), provides the ideal reference point above the maze of the souk.
As with most fondouks and riads, the footprint of the building is based around the central courtyard, beautifully tiled and featuring a central water fountain, both of which are open to the elements and allowed to interact with bright sunlight that funnels down into the central area. This cascade of light bounces off the glass-framed images adorning the gallery walls, creating a series of reflections placing the zellij mosaic tiles and arabesque stained-glass windows of the building with these early ancestors. Whether by clever design or coincidence, this fusion is illuminating.
The maze of alleyways are the ventricles of the old city, where modern caravans of trade and life continue to pass through. The tightly-packed stalls use every inch of available space to design, drape and display their wares; everything from babouche pointed slippers to fanous lanterns and leather bags, to antiques and perfumes. But the most eye-catching are the colourful rows of spice stalls, all offering the same sculpture of fresh dates, almonds, pistachios, melon seeds, cumin, cinnamon and much more. The chequer board of produce is piled high like pyramids, engulfing the vendor who pokes his head through a solitary gap between his mountainous local fare.
The contrast of aromas overlap, mix and change as you move from district to district, each one specialising in traditional crafts. The most distinctive smell emanates from the famous Tanneries district, located in the north east of the medina just next to Rue de Bab Debbagh. The process of fermenting, colouring and drying the hides is a fascinating spectacle, but also one that requires a sprig of mint positioned under the nose.
However puzzling the souk’s alleys may appear, they eventually lead to Djemaa El-Fna square, designated and considered by UNESCO as a ‘‘masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity.’’ There can be no better description of the uniqueness of Marrakech’s famous central forum. It is, of course, the most visited part of the city by tourists and the daily ritual of snake charmers, dancers, tooth pullers, highly decorative water sellers and followers is hyped to lure the tourist dollar, yet every component has its roots in the historical fabric of the city. As night descends and the food stalls move into prime position, they become a hive of activity. Steam and smoke ascend into the night air along with the rhythmic drumming coming from the huddles of people crowding around performers. Locals and visitors sit down in the square’s alfresco setting for the renowned Tagines or Harira soup, which is a spicy blend of tomato, lentil and chickpea, to contemplate and cogitate over their busy day. So it seems natural for one of the most photogenic places in the world to be the home of MMPVA, expected to be one of the world’s biggest photography galleries. Marrakech is most definitely visualising the future.
We stayed at Le Naoura Barriere . For further information about Marrakech, go to www.visitmorocco.com .
By Fiona Sanderson
19th November 2015
“The utmost pleasure of an Art Collector is to share his passion with other Art Lovers and as many people as possible” – Elisabeth Bauchet-Bouhlal, Président Directeur Général, Es Saadi Palace Gardens & Resort, Marrakech, Morocco
The Luxury Channel was delighted to meet Elisabeth and her family, who run the Es Saadi estate and whose exquisite taste has produced something quite unique in the heart of Morocco. We spent time with her to explore her passion for art, and find out why Es Saadi has become such a success….
Situated in the heart of Marrakech, Es Saadi Palace Gardens & Resort is located close to both the bustling, history-filled Medina and the quiet of the Hivernage neighbourhood in a peaceful backdrop of lush greenery. The resort resonates with the beating heart of the city and the calm of a remote oasis. The Es Saadi Palace was built by Moroccan architect Aziz Lamghar, who studied at l’Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, and has 84 suites and 8 Ksars, which are two story Berber-inspired villas. The Oriental architecture and design of the Palace is based on the ancient Palaces of Marrakesh, and every detail of the interior has been inspired by a love of art and design, overseen by Elisabeth and her team.
Elisabeth designed the interiors as though they were her own home, using antiques from around the world that she and her husband had collected. “We had a dream and didn’t know what it was,” she told me, “but when something beautiful comes along, you have to take it.”
The resort was originally created in 1966 by Jean Bauchet, not long after the Casino de Marrakech was built in 1952 (the first casino in Africa, and currently the only casino outside the US that welcomes the World Poker Tournament). The resort has been passed down through three generations of the Bauchet family and today, founder Jean Bauchet’s daughter Elisabeth Bauchet-Bouhlal and grandson Jean-Alexandre Bauchet-Bouhlal (along with Jean-Alexandre’s wife Caroline) lead the management of the resort.
“The hotel has been a success since the beginning,” Elisabeth tells me proudly. “When we opened, we were new – rather like a boutique hotel today. From the beginning, people came to our hotel because it was different and it was trendy, and in the sixties, everything was changing. My father knew that if you opened a place, you had to get photographs of it in the papers, and the best way of doing that was to get well-known people and VIPs photographed there. That’s why we had the Rolling Stones stay here for two weeks, so there were pictures in the press!”
Elisabeth’s family roots are in France rather than Morocco, but she clearly feels that this has only aided the success of the resort. “It was fashionable,” she tells me. “It was French people coming with new ideas, great cuisine and good service.” So how did the Bauchet family end up in Marrakech? After moving from a village in the north of France to Paris in the fifties, at the age of just 24, Jean Bauchet wound up working at the world-famous Lido, frequented at the time by the Pasha of Marrakech. Recognising Bauchet’s talents, the Pasha suggested he might want to do something in Marrakech – and so it was that the seed of an idea had been planted in Bauchet’s mind. “He definitely fell in love with Marrakech,” Elisabeth smiles. “It was different then, and it was love at first sight. But Marrakech has always had something different.”
Elisabeth herself, however, didn’t move to Marrakech until she was 23. “As a child, I wasn’t brought up here,” she says, looking around at the hotel that is now her home. “I was living in Paris, and that was our home. When I first came here, I actually wanted to be an interpreter, but my father said no, you’re going to work for the family – and it was a time when you didn’t say no to your father!”
Jean Bauchet’s dream was achieved by investing the money he had made as an artist living in Paris, but this artistic background has had a massive impact on the way the resort has developed and grown. “My father knew a lot of artists, and he also knew how difficult it was for them to live and to paint, to really find the time to do what they liked, because they had to earn a living doing something else,” Elisabeth says. “My father felt he had to help them. He gave a monthly salary to young artists and at the end of the year, they would give him a painting. We would go and choose what we liked, which was nice. My father was always interested in art, so he bought famous paintings, more expensive paintings, but he wanted to help the young artists succeed too. They did a lot of modern art, abstract art, which was rather new and people weren’t so accustomed to it. Today, though, Moroccan art is flourishing and it’s amazing. I’ve always supported it.”
Indeed, the family philosophy behind the entire resort is to support local and authentic design in order to maintain the spirit of a city steeped in culture, heritage and tradition, thus creating an homage to the best of Morocco. The art collection now numbers some 400 different pieces, including abstract paintings, large sculptures and interesting frescoes from a range of young emerging artists and renowned Moroccan talent, reflecting the diversity and culture of modern Morocco.
Aside from the art, what else is Es Saadi famous for? Well, the beautiful and reinvigorating Spa, for one thing! “What is important to us is to give people the feeling of being in an Arabian dream for a while, and to escape the stress of everyday life,” Elisabeth says. The Spa is certainly the place for doing just that, with 24 treatment rooms spread over three floors, including a Dior Institute – one of only two in the world. Bliss! We particularly liked the Moroccan hammams, inspired by ancient Oriental traditions in stunning eastern décor with mosaic zellige fountains and stuccoed cupolas. The perfect place to hide away and be primped, polished and pampered! It’s no surprise to hear that the Spa won at the World Luxury Spa Awards last year.
Another highlight of the trip was a hot air balloon ride, courtesy of Ciel d’Afrique. We left Es Saadi before dawn and drove to the countryside, where two balloons took off as dawn broke. The views of the Atlas Mountains were simply stunning, and we then enjoyed a delicious Berber breakfast on descent.
All too soon, though, my Arabian dream came to an end and I left Morocco and the beauty of the resort behind – although this perfect combination of the two cultures of France and Morocco, married with authentic Moroccan design and five star customer service means that I won’t be leaving it behind for long. A return visit most assuredly beckons.
For further information about Es Saadi, please visit www.essaadi.com . For further information about Ciel d’Afrique, please visit www.cieldafrique.info .
17th November 2015
Experience gourmet cuisine whilst whittling your waist in the historical spa town of Les Prés d’ Eugénie….
The hotel and spa of Les Prés d’ Eugénie has established itself and taken flight as one of the leading wellness destinations in France under the stewardship of the talented Guérard family. Whether you’re looking for Michelin starred cuisine, great hospitality and spa treatments based on the natural sulphur waters found in the Landes region, there is something here for everyone looking for peaceful rejuvenation.
Family-owned and evidently loved, the chateau and adjacent hotels were originally bought by Christine Guérard’s father, Adrian Barthelemy, and under her direction were re-opened as part of the Relais & Chateau group. The family have been revealing the alchemy of the healing properties of the natural landscape in all its glory since the 1970s.
The spa attracts those wanting to lose weight in the manner of the Empress Eugenie, the spa town’s namesake and unofficial patron, whose repeat visits made the therapeutic qualities of the waters famous across France. When Christine married the 3 Michelin starred and celebrated chef Michel Guérard, his nouvelle cuisine and slimming menu worked in perfect harmony to provide guests with the ultimate cure. Today people visit as much for the spa’s curative waters as for the truly exceptional culinary delights.
The Spa – La Ferme Thermale
The spa is housed in a fairytale farmhouse that takes inspiration from the popular, rustic architectural fantasies of the nineteenth century so popular amongst the nobility and European elite.
It is surrounded by a beautiful rose and herb garden that immediately appealed to my romantic sensibilities, providing an aesthetic harmony as well as a source of produce for the kitchen. Herbs are collected daily, with bouquets given to you before you bathe in the spa’s sulphur-rich waters. The French Medicine Academy consider Eugenie’s thermal waters to be particularly effective for the treatment of rheumatic and metabolic diseases, due to their rich sulphur content, which is recommended for inflammatory pain and to help the liver deal with blood sugar and fat.
The treatment rooms are some of the prettiest I have ever reviewed, and touches such as portraits of the hotel’s namesake Empress Eugenie and gold duck-faced taps add to the enchantment. However, this is also a spa that means serious business – some of the water treatments are far less relaxing than I anticipated! Each guest is prescribed a bespoke programme and, to be fair, the doctor did warn me that this treatment was painful but yielded great results. So for the purpose of journalistic endeavour, I was game. The reality of the situation I faced involved being naked against the stark tiles in nothing but a frilly shower cap having my thighs and stomach ‘‘needled’’ via a water jet. It was sharp, raw and made me feel vulnerable and exposed. But if you want to lose weight, the spa recommends the needle shower that triggers lymph and blood circulation helping to break down toxins and fat – no pain, no gain, as they say! Thankfully, the spa technician was delightful and charming throughout the ordeal, which took some of the edge off. In any case, it made the other treatments on my schedule all the more luxurious and enjoyable.
These included the indulgent, peaceful sulphur baths, a soak in the white mud pool – where I floated in suspended animation feeling like a classical statue – and an exceptional Decleor aromatherapy facial. All are an absolute must on your bucket list of spa treatments! My programme was exceptionally crafted to my every need. I had arrived at the spa in need of a little tender love and post-baby care. I wanted to lose some weight and soothe my aching muscles. The combination of the spa routine and the food menu meant that I was successful in whittling 1.5 inches off my waist and my skin felt much smoother. The most noticeable effect was the absence of muscular pain in my neck. Three months later and I am still free of neck pain, which is nothing short of miraculous, as I have tried everything in pursuit of a cure. Was it really that I had a sulphur deficiency? Are the curative powers of the water that strong? I can honestly say an emphatic yes! Sulphur is the 8th most common element in the human body. It is critical for metabolism so a deficiency damages fat and muscle cells, making them glucose intolerant. Sulphur is both anti-parasitic, anti-allergic and anti-inflammatory.
Guests are encouraged to play tennis, swim, explore the grounds and keep physically active so that they have a bon appetite for the exceptional culinary delights that are on offer here. The beauty of the grounds and the facilities allow for this, and provide good soul food. I found the serenity of the pool especially satisfying and there is a personal training team in place for those who need an extra nudge.
Michel Guérard Cuisine
Guérard has had his 3 Michelin stars for 39 years and deservedly so. The food at Les Prés d’ Eugénie is exceptional. So exceptional, that I was perfectly willing to scupper my vain attempt to stick entirely to the slimming cuisine for the five days. Luckily, a feast day was included in the programme. It would be too tempting otherwise! Guérard understands the psychology, stating that ‘‘every human being functions with pleasure in mind. Nobody truly wants to live an ascetic life for slimness and health. But everybody wants both.’’
Actually, there were some main courses from the slimming menu that were just as tantalizing as those found on the gourmet menu. Michel Guérard’s slimming cuisine is delicious and divine, whilst skilfully weighing in at around 600 calories per meal. The slimming menu changes every day and includes a starter, main course and dessert. Examples of the main courses could include: champvallon lamb with thyme, creamy risotto of vegetables with shrimps, sea bass ceviche with mango, Paris-Brest with chicory, and more than 200 other guilt-free recipes!
I didn’t fully follow my programme (I said yes to bread and champagne, and the irresistible gourmet breakfasts). I had travelled with my young son and mother, and the epicurean delights on offer were a crucial part of the healing vibes I craved. However, Guérard’s philosophy (encapsulated in his book Michel Guerard’s Cuisine Minceur ) highlights the essence of well-crafted slimming cuisine and I certainly brought these ideas back to my own kitchen at home.
The Key Principles:
By Harriet O'Grady
17th November 2015
Amsterdam sits on the edge of our collective unconscious. We have all heard of its canals, the tall, narrow gabled houses, its innumerable bridges and bicycles, the red light district where the girls sit in windows and the “pot” cafes. Amsterdam, as I discovered on my first visit in early October, is all these things and more. As well as its fabled museums, which house the great collections of Rembrandts and Van Goghs, this is also a 21st Century city with the streamline architecture of The Eye and Renzo Piano’s Nemo that resembles a vast green ship.
I came to Amsterdam at the invitation of Sofitel for a seminar on wine. This year, Amsterdam was chosen to launch Sofitel Wine Days 2015, a programme of events and activities that celebrates French wine, art-de-vivre and gastronomy throughout the Sofitel global hotel portfolio. These wine days have been going for many years and take place during the traditional harvest season, enabling guests to discover French wines at Sofitel hotels around the world through events such as dinners with French wine makers, wine appreciation classes and wine-based cocktail nights.
The seminar took place at the very exclusive 5 star Hotel The Grand Amsterdam, one of Sofitel’s 5 Legend hotels. The very tall and charming general manager, Remco Groenhuijzen, explained that The Grand had been, in the 17th Century, the headquarters of the Dutch Admiralty. In the 19th Century, the building became the City Hall before being transformed into a hotel in 1998. The City Hall period was an interesting one. Various works were commissioned for the building that are considered today of artistic importance and have preservation orders on them. Sofitel is proud of this heritage and has gone to great trouble and expense to restore and preserve these works. Close to the hotel’s one star Michelin fish restaurant, Bridges, stands a 1949 mural, “Questioning Children” by Karel Appel of the Cobra movement. Meanwhile the vast Council Chamber was entirely redecorated in 1924 with stained glass, wood panelling, Murano glass lights and fine examples of Art Deco carved wooden figures. Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands was married here in 1966.
But the cherry on the cake must surely be the room where the seminar took place. This is the Marriage Chamber, completed in 1926. It is still used to celebrate marriages. I don’t think I have ever seen anything quite like it. Every inch of the ceiling was painted in intricate patterns, the walls covered with life size (albeit slightly menacing) Art Deco figures celebrating man and woman’s journey from childhood to marriage, the whole thing in a predominant colour of viridian green. The artist Chris Lebeau, an eccentric figure, shut himself up with his assistant for two years in this room, not allowing anyone access until the work was completed.
Within these extraordinary surroundings the seminar took place, hosted by Enrico Bernardo, Worldwide Best Sommelier 2004. He set out the conclusions of a global study involving seven countries (France, China, Russia, India, Australia and Brazil) carried out by the French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP) to define how people appreciate wine. The IFOP study found that 76% of those canvassed drink wine. Interestingly, 92% of women in China drink wine, mainly white wine or champagne. 33% of people choose fine wines for special occasions. 51% of people in the study still associate wine with France.
Enrico, who had originally trained as a chef, realises the importance of matching wine with food. He has also noticed a significant shift in the way that we drink alcohol. The young (20 to 25 year olds) have moved from strong spirits to wine. Ten years ago, one person would choose the wine for lunch or dinner, mainly Bordeaux. Today, 64% of people choose wine to go with their choice of food. There is also a trend to drink important wines in a simple way – i.e. at a bar with finger food.
We were given an example of a Sofitel Wine Days dinner with accompanying wines. The sommelier explained why a particular wine had been chosen for a particular dish – either to complement or enhance the flavours. For example, Cour cheverny DeDe, Philippe Tessier, 2009 was served with red mullet, smoked capsicum jus and sourdough, whereas Meursault-Perrieres, Germain, 2009 was served with turbot and lobster, girolle and truffle.
I was put up at a new 149 bedroom 4 star hotel called The Ink which, along with Sofitel, belongs to the Accor Group. The general manager, Joachim de Looij, who was involved from the conception of the hotel to its completion, is 30 years old and the youngest hotel manager in the group. The hotel was opened in April and was completed in just four and a half months, which can only confirm the Dutch reputation for hard work and industry. Every detail has been thought through, from the very comfortable beds to the cutlery on the table. There isn’t one note that jars. The hotel is a conversion of an old existing building once the home of the Dutch equivalent of The Times, hence the name The Ink. Everywhere there are reminders of its journalistic past, from the colour scheme of black and white to the books lining the shelves in the bar area, and the anagram above the reception desk.
Concrete Amsterdam, the architects, oversaw the conversion. Their intention was to bring the street, in other words Amsterdam, into the hotel, by using outside materials within. This theme is carried through from the bar which leads in an open plan to the dining area and to the kitchen, where you can watch chefs busy at work producing quality fresh food. The effect is to make you feel relaxed and takes away the usual stuffiness of a hotel. What you see is what you get – but in a very good way. The whole place is stylish and the happy waiters are attentive and friendly. One has to wonder if this hotel isn’t the way forward and that the traditional commercial type of hotel has maybe seen its day (as it does seem terribly old hat by comparison).
On this note, I shall end and say that I came away feeling revived and optimistic. Amsterdam, with its historic past and its modern day creativity, still has much to offer the rest of the world. It definitely begs a return visit to explore the old and the new.
For further information or to make a booking, visit Sofitel’s website here .
By Hannah Norman
15th October 2015
“There ain’t no party like an Ocean Club party,” said probably no-one ever, but perhaps they ought to. A champagne-infused, black and gold-themed closing party ensured that Marbella’s biggest (and arguably best) night club destination had the season send-off it deserved, before everything shut down ready for re-opening on Friday 29th April next year.
As far as summer party destinations go, Ibiza may have always held sway over everything else, but The Luxury Channel was only too pleased to accept an invitation to Ocean Club’s seasonal spectacular – and boy, are we glad we did! We were comfortably seated in the specially set-up VIP section, right by both the pool and the stage, with views out across the golden sand of the beach in front of us that had inspired the night’s theme. This was how to do summer clubbing in luxury, glamour and style – and it was a seriously slick operation. The champagne was flowing all night – literally – and so attentive were the waiters that my glass was never empty. The level of customer service was simply seamless.
There were endless plates of sumptuous gourmet, with every palate catered for. Fresh sushi? Check. Spicy chicken? Check. Huge random dollops of mozzarella? Yep, check. As the sun went down over the Mediterranean, and the stars and the disco lights went up (we were outside, after all, making the most of the southern Spanish weather), the atmosphere crackled with anticipation of the night to come – and we certainly weren’t disappointed.
We were welcomed by opulently dressed girls reminiscent of an Arabian harem, before the Club’s resident DJs – Eduardo Reyes, B-NY and Nilo Contreras – took to the decks to get the party started. We were lucky enough to get to watch street dancing troops Danseurs Fantastiques and Young Boyzz warm up, and as impressive as this was, this proved a poor substitute for their spectacular performances on stage, with tricks and flips (and at one point, ropes of fire) that had to be seen to be believed.
However, the highlight of the night had to be a group known as Disco Bandits. A fusion of violin, sax and electronic music, this was a brilliant mix of contemporary disco clashing headlong with traditional instrumental arrangement. Perhaps not to everyone’s taste, but it worked. Their interaction with the crowd – and indeed each other – had every single person on their feet.
The event culminated in a spectacular pyrotechnic display to music, as impressive fireworks exploded across the sea front. We drained the last of our champagne, and the night (and the season itself) came to a close. Roll on next year. We can’t wait!
For more information, go to www.oceanclub.es .
21st August 2015
Belgrade
Belgradians and Beirutis have a shared characteristic – they love to party, and their legendary nightlife has become part of the fabric of everyday life. The other common factor between the two cities is that they both went through devastating and destructive civil wars that remain in their recent history and psyche. The latter encouraged the former; when citizens of both cities lived through the daily threat of bombardment, the local nightlife industry boomed, taking clubbing to an art form. When the sound of battle subsided, the sound of DJs became louder, allowing a hedonistic social scene to get the global recognition it deserved.
Lasta, Belgrade
Marko Savic, one of Belgrade’s key nightlife dynamos, is owner of Belgrade At Night and involved with Mikser Garden, a bar / design centre that is at the very heart of Savamala district; he says ‘‘the city is more alive than any other.’’ Mikser is also central to the district’s renaissance as a creative hub, as the former warehouse area of the bar exhibits the work of young designers that one can peruse whilst listening to the DJ play a classic set of 80s tunes amongst revellers outside.
Lasta, Belgrade
Savic buzzes around the hipster crowd, joining clusters of young and beautiful Belgradians who are kicking their night off at Mikser before going to party into the early hours on the river boat clubs. One of the most popular nightclubs is Lasta, which pulsates with light and energy on the quayside. Savamala is ‘‘alternative rather than bohemian,’’ remarks Savic, which reminds me of a Serbian version of London’s Shoreditch. Just around the corner Berliner Bar spills revellers on to the pavement, and bunting zigzags from building to building in preparation for a beer festival. The vibe is cool, relaxed and representative of a young dynamic population.
Savamala’s Berliner Bar
Neighbouring the hipster bars of Savamala the Belgrade waterfront development along the Sava riverbank, comprising of hotel, residential and commercial space, is defining the future. A model of the new development is housed within the Geozavod (Belgrade Cooperative Building), one of Savamala’s and Belgrade’s most beautiful architectural monuments, built between 1905 and 1907. It is ironic that the Geozavod now showcases the new waterfront architecture, because during the early 20th Century when the building foundations took shape, Serbia was a country demanding a renaissance in architectural style. Today, the Savamala district headlines a new spirit of design and innovation and will become the gleaming face of the capital’s future.
Belgrade Cooperative Building
The city is ‘‘compact and everywhere is reachable,’’ Savic says, reminding me that the Bohemian quarter nearby is called ‘‘Skadarlija’’ – or Skadarska Street – and is no ordinary avenue. The simple gradient of winding cobbled alleys in the heart of Belgrade has always been the centre of life, popular with urban bohemians. The traditional Kafanas (bar and restaurants) have inspired many of Belgrade’s actors, poets, directors, painters, musicians and writers, but fundamentally, this is a place for music, dance and celebration. The care-free attitude can be seen on sign boards standing in front of bars, offering “Free Jokes, Free Hugs, Free Advice – Beer Is Paid For” which keeps a smile on the face of tourists and locals alike. The cobble stones give an indication of how Serbia may have looked in the 15th Century under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. Belgradians fondness towards ‘‘Skadarlija’’ has preserved it from encroaching redevelopment.
Belgrade’s Skadarlija District
When the sun rises, the place to head for is Kalemegdan Citadel, Belgrade’s indefatible fortress. Centuries ago it was a defensive stronghold perched high above the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers and now is described as the heart and lungs of the city. The ancient walls, arches and ramparts still watch over the city and waterways, but with soft and tranquil eyes. The Citadel is Belgrade’s largest park and is an oasis of open verdant spaces, with pine trees shading the wooden benches that capture a rare breeze and a little peace in one of Europe’s most vibrant and energetic capitals.
Kalemegdan Citadel
Ramy Salameh
12th August 2015
It was as long ago as 500 years that the famous Austrian Doctor Paracelsus expressed the view that ‘‘each country is given its own illnesses, but for each of these illnesses they have been granted their own ancient medicines and remedies.’’
Standing below the thunderous and cascading Krimml Waterfalls – the fifth highest in the world, located in Hohe Tauern National Park in Salzburgerland – the doctor’s sentiments seem to make more sense. Krimml Waterfalls have been scientifically proven by the Paracelsus Medical University in Salzburg to have healing properties. The fine spray that covered my face in regular refreshing bursts accompanied by a crescendo of noise is not just visually appealing but has a positive effect on the respiratory tract and improves lung function.
The source of the Krimml Waterfalls is the mountain waters of the ‘‘Krimml Ache’’ which is a glacial stream, where the comparatively gentler flows bypass the verdant and rolling pastures so common in Austria, before hurtling down a trio of sheer rock cascades at 20 to 25 cubic meters per second. Standing at the bottom of this mighty wonder of nature, the words ‘‘glacial stream’’ seem a little tepid as millions of gallons of water is deposited into the valley each hour and the thunderous roar of nature can be heard kilometres away. The feeling is uniquely exhilarating!
The water tumbles from a height of 380 metres and hits the rocks on the valley floor with such incredible force, that the water molecules shatter into tiny fragments. The resulting effect is mushrooming clouds of micro-fine spray with a high density of negatively charged air ions which attach themselves to each droplet. When inhaled, they penetrate deep into the respiratory tract giving a long-lasting and cleansing effect on the body and immune system. As early as 1808, the late medical expert Wolfgang Oberlechner was recommending stays at the Krimml Waterfalls to his patients and this practise continues today as a natural remedy, opening up new therapeutic options to allergy sufferers and asthmatics.
The Krimml Waterfalls also have another interesting and modern historical significance, as the starting point of a journey for groups of Jewish refugees in 1947, fleeing persecution. In the summer of that year, early one morning groups of between 150 and 200 from a total of around 5000 men, women and children assembled before the waterfalls. Awaiting them was a 15 hour trek on foot. Their goal was Palestine, which could only be reached by means of illegal flight. Their lives, homes and most of their relatives from Eastern Europe had been lost during World War II and even after the war had ended, they were still being persecuted. Many survivors were accommodated in the so-called transit camps in the city and province of Salzburg. The only remaining escape route by the summer of 1947 was the arduous trek over the 2634 m high Krimmler Tauern Pass into Italy. All other routes were closed due to political pressure from Great Britain, the ruling power in Palestine at that time.
On the 60th anniversary of the exodus, the peace initiative ‘‘Alpine Peace Crossing’’ was founded in 2007 by Dr. Ernst Loschner and continues to this day. The national park APC Peace trail is dedicated to all refugees worldwide. The power and force of the waterfall and the surrounding area continues to benefit and amaze those who visit. Back in 1796, Europe’s highest waterfall was described as the “most magnificent natural spectacle in the State of Salzburg” and still today, few can argue with this, as the sheer thrill and excitement of Krimml remains as potent as ever.
For more information, go to www.austria.info .
17th July 2015
Ali Yeşilırmak and Max (image courtesy of Tamer Yilmaz)
For those who can’t bear to leave their four-legged friends at home, Pera Palace Hotel Jumeirah is the perfect destination. Istanbul’s most iconic hotel (whose impressive list of guests has included Greta Garbo, Agatha Christie and Alfred Hitchcock) has launched a new pet-friendly service to ensure pampered pooches experience the same impeccable service as their owners. A new in-room dining menu has been specially developed for pets with veterinary approval to ensure guests’ four-legged friends can enjoy delicious and nutritious food in the hotel’s iconic surroundings. From poached fillet of salmon to chopped fillet of beef, all meals are prepared without any seasoning or bones to ensure a healthy meal.
Sinem Güven and Şeker (image courtesy of Tamer Yilmaz)
Pera Palace Hotel Jumeirah is committed to helping local animals, and recently partnered with an animal welfare charity to raise funds for a nearby animal shelter. The ‘‘My Tiny Love’’ project raised awareness about the number of abandoned and stray animals living in shelters, and generated crucial funds by photographing Turkish celebrities with their pets in glamorous locations around Pera Palace Hotel Jumeirah. The pictures were taken by respected Turkish photographer Tamer Yilmaz.
Şükrü Çobanoğlu and Thor & Eva (iamge courtesy of Tamer Yilmaz)
The hotel itself is located in the heart of the vibrant Beyoglu district. The epitome of timeless elegance, its unique heritage combined with a modern touch symbolizes the cosmopolitan culture that Istanbul is renowned for. Overlooking the Golden Horn and the historical old city, and within walking distance to the Bosphorus, Galata Tower and the famous shopping street of Istiklal, Pera Palace Hotel Jumeirah boasts one of the best locations in Istanbul. The hotel was frequented by Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, and in 1981, his original room was restored and nationally recognised as being a unique historical feature, resulting in the hotel gaining status as Istanbul’s only Museum Hotel.
For more information, visit www.jumeirah.com .
By Harriet O'Grady
27th May 2015
If bling is what gets you going or if you are in search of instant thrills, then the Dordogne and the Lot departments in South West France are not for you. But, if you enjoy the finer things in life such as history, good food, fine wines, or simply countryside, rivers and landscapes that leave you with a sense of wonder, then this is, indeed, the place to go.
This is, after all, a part of France steeped in the most romantic of French and English medieval history. The Dordogne was part of the land of the beautiful Eleanor of Aquitaine, patron of the arts, courtly love and the troubadours; Queen of France by her first marriage, then Queen of England, bringing with her the land of Aquitaine to the English Crown for over 200 years. She was also mother of the tall, blond, handsome and legendary Richard the Lionheart, great grandson of William the Conqueror, who was so sure of his invincibility that he rode unprotected within striking distance of the French.
This is a wooded land of starlit skies, gentle hills, vales and valleys, limestone cliffs, rivers, gorges and ornamental grottos, to name but the famous Lascaux. It is known for its truffles, wines, walnuts, lamb and, of course, foie gras. The wisteria and lilacs are in full bloom, and the grass and leaves are bright green from new spring growth when my companions and I gather for a Relais & Chateaux Route du Bonheur trip with stays in three well established hotels: Le Vieux Logis, Le Château de Mercues and Château de la Treyne.
BMW, the official sponsors of Relais & Chateaux, have provided us with two cars, an open top 650i Cabrio and an X5M 50d. I have driven across the Massif Central, a spectacular drive in itself, through unspoilt countryside to arrive, in the early evening, at our first hotel, Le Vieux Logis, a 4 star hotel with a 1 star Michelin restaurant, set in the village of Tremolat, with its large meander in the river Dordogne. Henry Miller came to Le Vieux Logis for one night but ended up staying for several weeks. He was so struck by the beauty of this exquisite region that he wrote in The Colossus of Maroussi that “France may one day exist no more, but the Dordogne will live on just as dreams live on and nourish the souls of men.”
Originally a priory and then a large 17th Century farmhouse, the grounds have been turned into the loveliest French-style garden by the landscape architect, Laure Quonian. Estelle Arnoult, the Directrice, welcomes guests with the famous warmth of the people of this area. It is the type of hotel where one immediately feels at home, with large comfortable sofas, armchairs and plenty of prints on the walls. Chef Vincent Arnoult, who obtained the title of “Meilleur Ouvrier de France” in 2007, specialises in tasty seasonal dishes using the best local produce. We sit down to a very good dinner in what used to be a large tobacco drying barn. It is the season of asparagus. We have lamb from the Quercy valued for its aromatic flavour, strawberries as well as fine wines from the area.
The next morning, we are off in the warm spring sunshine through pastoral countryside following the Dordogne river to Beynac, a medieval town built in local pale yellow sandstone with pitched roofs that winds its way up to the large 12th Century fortified castle of Beynac which was overtaken by Richard the Lionheart. Later in the afternoon, we take a boat trip on the Dordogne from La Roque-Gageac. By now perfectly relaxed, we dream and drift along this wide black river bordered by bucolic banks where trees and grass gently meet the water. Everywhere we look there seems to be a castle. Finally, we visit the medieval village of Domme and its spectacular view of the Dordogne river.
Our second night is spent at the imposing Château de Mercues, a four star hotel. The château sits atop a ridge 100 metres above the river Lot. In the past, it had been the summer residence of the Bishops of Cahors. In 1944, it became an hotel. General de Gaulle himself stayed here in 1951. He wrote: “From the Château de Mercues, you can feel the flow of history coming up to meet you.”
The Château has been owned since the 1980s by the Vigouroux family. In the 1970s, Mr. Vigouroux’s father reintroduced the Malbec grape from the Argentine to his nearby domaine at Haute Serre. This area around Cahors had been an important wine-growing area, even more important than that of Bordeaux, until the pest known as philoxera wiped out the vineyards in the 19th Century. Today, Cahors wines are in the top ten appellations in France. When Mr. Vigouroux bought the Château, he built an immense “cave” in the cellars which produces over 200,000 bottles of wine. His son now carries on the family tradition with the same passion as his father.
We are welcomed to the hotel by the 34 year old general manager, Yann Potet. It is impossible to meet a more charming or helpful person. Not least is the brilliant 32 year old chef, Julien Poisot, who cooked us a memorable meal based on the best local produce accompanied, of course, by Mr. Vigouroux’s wines from Mercues and Haute Serre.
The next morning after a good night’s sleep and what can only be described as the most delicious and abundant breakfast, we leave the hotel for a visit to Cahors. This is a French town as one likes them, authentic and without pretence, with a twice weekly market and good local shops. One shouldn’t miss a sight of the Pont Valentre, a perfectly preserved medieval bridge. We then drive to Saint Cirq la Popie, a village nestling within the side of a white limestone cliff overlooking the Lot. Andre Breton, the father of surrealism, lived here. A community of artists gathered round him and, to this day, this little village remains an artistic centre.
There are some hotels which touch your soul. The 17th century Château de la Treyne is one of them. The setting is magical with its utterly romantic terrace set above the Dordogne. To sit here, at cocktail hour, watching the sunset and the wide river flowing peacefully below can only be described as one of those special moments in time. Dinner in the Louis XIII dining room is a must. Not only is the setting authentic, but the meal, prepared by 1 Michelin star chef Stephane Andrieux, is a reminder that France is still at the top of its gastronomic tradition.
Philippe and Stephanie Gombert own the hotel. Stephanie has that rare ability to make each guest feel special and at home. Her taste is impeccable. This is reflected from the differently themed bedrooms, which are of the highest standard of comfort, to the decor of the Château as a whole.
This is a perfect base from which to visit the famous Gouffre de Padirac , a 103m deep chasm with a subterranean river that can be negotiated by punt; the beautiful medieval town of Sarlat which was restored thanks to the efforts of Andre Malraux, one of France’s most eminent Ministers of Culture; the pilgrim site of Rocamadour and its black virgin on the road to Santiago de Compostela; as well as the magnificent Jardins d’Eyrignac, a vast private garden noted for its perspectives of architecturally shaped box, yew and hornbeam.
Whatever you do, come to this lovely land at least once in your lifetime!
For further information, please visit www.relaischateaux.com .
By Hannah Norman
21st April 2015
I’m staring out across a calm sapphire sea, barely distinguishable from the sky, with a glass of something sweet, syrupy and strawberry-flavoured in my hand. The sun is blazing and all I can hear is the gentle sound of the waves lapping at the shore. This could be the Caribbean. This could even be the Maldives. But it’s not – it’s nowhere near. I’m actually just five hours away from London. Welcome to Soma Bay , a peninsular in eastern Egypt that dips invitingly into the crystal-clear Red Sea.
This serene – and surprisingly quiet – finger of land has been turned into a postcard-picture resort, which has already been bought into by several big hotel chains, the most majestic of the current crop being the Kempinski . Morocco is frequently touted as the place to escape to for a long weekend, but with the Kempinski’s reception styled much like a souk bar, with decorative oil lamps and enormous sprays of flowers (and did I mention the glorious weather?), I would implore you to travel to Morocco’s continental cousin here instead. My room afforded me views across the enchantingly lit lazy river to the sea and mountains beyond, and a cosy bed (so big I could have got lost in it) with huge cloud-like pillows ensured the best nights’ sleep I’ve had in ages, nodding off to the sound of the sea little more than mere metres away. Bliss!
By day, it’s very tempting to retreat to one of the sumptuous loungers by the pool and just do absolutely nothing but luxuriate in the sun. With obliging waiters on hand to attend to your every whim, gastronomic or otherwise (curry by the pool, anyone? Yes, really!), it seems almost expected that you’ll want to indulge in a spot of laziness. However, adventure beckons and this is certainly the place for doing that. For golfers (and beginners), the Gary Player-designed Challenge and Championship courses allow for some truly breath-taking holes, with fantastic panoramas across the Bay and spectacular sea views whichever way you care to look.
Soma Bay is also the world’s premium destination for kite-surfing, and, therefore unsurprisingly, the world kite-surfing championships are held here every year. The guys at the Kite House claim they can turn you into a surfer with just 5 days tuition, and whilst our morning on the beach was a huge amount of fun, it was more inspiring to watch the couple of seeming pros who were out taking on the calm, performing clever leaps and tricks that made us disproportionately jealous.
However, for a more relaxing adventure and for a real highlight of your holiday, I completely recommend snorkelling in the Red Sea. Soma Bay’s house reef provides an amazing opportunity to come within inches of gorgeously coloured fish and spectacular coral. A truly serene, slightly surreal experience, this was a perfect way to spend a morning, blocking out noise and stress to appreciate the beauty of the Bay at its most staggeringly visceral.
All this adventure, however, is hungry work, and we were completely spoiled for choice when it came to gourmet. My personal favourite, however, has to be Bamboo , located at the Kempinski. Executive Chef Mehmet Koyuncu and his team served the smoothest butter chicken curry, and the most delicious vegetable sushi (yes, such a thing evidently does exist!). Baked ice-cream for dessert, washed down with fine Egyptian wine, was surely the perfect end to a lovely evening.
Soma Bay is a truly beautiful part of the world, and the perfect place to come to escape from it all. The combination of sun and sea (and Spa !) was unbelievably reviving, and we were already looking up flights to come back before we’d even left for the airport to go home. But every paradise on earth has its downsides. The internet here is ridiculously elusive, but short of running around waving your phone in the air to try to get some sort of Wi-Fi signal, the best thing to do is to treat this as a real escape – from work, from worry, and from the weather back home. Switch off and do nothing, or get out and do everything. Either way, this is entirely restorative – and it only means taking a couple of days out of the office (although, of course, a week may be more in order). Your frazzled, stressed self will thank you for it.
Getting There
Seven nights staying in a Lagoon View Room at the 5* Kempinski Hotel in Soma Bay on a Bed & Breakfast basis is from £635 per person. Upgrade to Half Board for an extra £145 per person. Prices include return flights from London Gatwick, airport tax, 20kg baggage per person, private transfers and airport meet & greet service. Prices are subject to availability and may change without notice. Call 020 3384 0030, email [email protected]
or see www.holiday-designers.com for more details.
Kempinski Christmas & New Year Package
Prices start from £68pp per night and are subject to 24.32% taxes and service charge. Offer valid for stays from 18th to 31st December 2015 for stay dates up to 10/01/2016 (minimum stay 7 nights)
Rate includes:
By The Lex Chapter
20th April 2015
As I stepped out onto the cobbled streets and looked up at the terracotta tiled rooftops against the vivid blue skies, I just knew two days here wasn’t going to be enough. The reason? Despite the city of Florence being a world heritage site, it is as busy and vibrant now as it was when it was the beating heart of the Renaissance. There’s so much to do here that planning your itinerary can seem overwhelming, so my advice would be to concentrate on key sights and indulge in some lazy lunches. If the three hour queue for the Uffizi gets the better of you, scold yourself for not pre-booking entrance tickets….and then use it as an excuse to come back again.
Michelangelo’s David
Michelangelo’s 14ft Renaissance masterpiece, David, was created from an enormous block of white marble which had previously been rejected by two other sculptors. They claimed it had too many imperfections so it lay neglected outside for 25 years before a young Michelangelo took it on as a commission for the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. Michelangelo worked on the commission in secret between 1501 and 1504. Preferring to work outside, he would sculpt in the pouring rain in order to perfect the last detail. Michelangelo was the first artist to capture the biblical figure David before his fight with Goliath. Michelangelo chose to show David at the apex of concentration and he now stands contrapposto in the Galleria dell’Accademia under custom-built sky light. Be sure to get here early to beat the crowds and groups of chattering school children.
Via Bettino Ricasoli, 58/66, 50122
Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella
Although a little tricky to find the inconspicuous door, once you enter inside you’ll discover the longest established pharmacy in the world. It was set up in 1200s by Dominican Friars desperate to find a lotion or potion to alleviate or even cure the Black Plague. In the 1500s, Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella created what could be called the first celebrity fragrance when it was commissioned by a young Catherine de’ Medici to create a signature fragrance. ‘‘Acqua della Regina’’ caused a sensation amongst the court, with word spreading from Italy to France and England. Nowadays, Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella still creates bespoke, high-end colognes and fragrances. If your budget doesn’t stretch to a luxury perfume then you can always treat yourself to some beautiful scented soap.
Via della Scala, 16, 50123
Ponte Vecchio
This segmental arched wonder has been standing over the narrowest point on the Arno River since 1345. During Medieval times, the bridge was home to butchers and grocers who would clear their waste directly into the river. When Cosimo, Grand Duke of Tuscany, moved into Pitti Palace on the south side of the river, he decided he didn’t want to walk amongst the masses so built a one kilometre walkway that would link his home directly to his office. This sits on top of the original bridge and can be seen to this day. He also decided that silver and gold merchants would be more suitable businesses for the bridge, a tradition that remains to this day. My favourite time to visit this bridge is at twilight. Grab a spot to admire the sunset which makes the muted tones of Florence glow, providing the perfect photo opportunity.
Via Por Santa Maria / Via Guicciardini, 50125
Caffe Coquinarious
You’d be forgiven for thinking Caffe Coquinarious is another simple Tuscan restaurant but a quick glance around reveals that it is full of animated locals. Conveniently located one block away from the Piazza del Duomo, Caffe Coquinarious’ vaulted room provides a cool oasis from the intense heat and crowds. The stand out dishes include pear and pecorino ravioli and venison carpaccio. If you fancy something a little bit lighter, the salads here are generous and interesting, something not always easy to find in Italy. Caffe Coquinarious offers a wide selection of wine, including some produced by local vineyards that are not commonly known.
Via delle’ Oche, 11R, 50144
Basilica di Santa Maria Del Fiore, Duomo
Basilica di Santa Maria Del Fiore, or the Duomo, is arguably the most famous landmark in Florence. This grand structure has dominated the sky line for over 800 years. If you are fit and able, then it is well worth taking the trek to the top. Get up close and personal with the late 16th century frescos which depict ‘‘Giudizio Universale,’’ or ‘‘Last Judgement,’’ and peer through the tiny dome windows for a snapshot of this terracotta-roofed city. As you reach the top of the dome, you are forced to climb almost horizontally before clambering up a ladder. All your effort pays off when you step up onto the viewing platform and find yourself at the very top of Brunelleschi’s dome. Appreciate the light breeze that will cool you down, take a deep breath and absorb the most spectacular panoramic view of this medieval city.
Piazza del Duomo, Firenze
Gelateria La Passera
I’m pretty sure it’s a statutory requirement to try at least one portion of gelato whilst in Italy. This little gem is located on a backstreet in Oltarno district not too far from the Palazzo Pitti, and was somewhere I stumbled upon accidentally when trying negotiate the backstreets of Florence. This small establishment is easily identifiable by the small queue of locals snaking around the corner. The flavours are both creative and dynamic, and the pear sorbet was my ultimate favourite. Gelateria La Passera is also open until midnight so you can give in to your ice-cream cravings at any time of the day!
Gelataria Della Passera, Via Toscanella,15R, 50125, Florence
Gucci Museo
This museum isn’t just for fashion fans but for people who appreciate exquisite craftsmanship. Guccio Gucci was born in Florence and was inspired to start producing long-lasting, luxury travel wear when he was working at The Savoy in London. As his popularity grew, he expanded into ladies fashion and went on establish himself as a leading Italian fashion house. One of his particularly famous pieces is the ‘‘bamboo bag.’’ The original design had leather handles but due to a post-war material shortage, he adapted the original bag design. Gucci Museo is also home to a sleek bistro recommended for a delicious lunch and a world-class fashion bookshop.
Gucci Museo, Piazza della Signoria, 10, 50122, Florence
By Antonia Peck
27th March 2015
From restaurants to museums, we discover where the founders of private family club Maggie & Rose go to keep their little ones entertained (as well as the best places for ‘‘date’’ night!)
Best Restaurants For Families
Maggie: We both love the Soho House Group – The Electric and Shoreditch House especially. My kids love going to Shoreditch House and it’s cool for them to go east. You can swim in the morning, have breakfast and then wander around.
Rose: Soho House gives the times that it is okay to bring your children, so you know that you are okay! On occasion, I take my seven-year-old out for a nice lunch to Bellamy’s , which is where my husband goes on business meetings. She will have the Dover sole, which is such a treat and she has got to that stage where she can behave herself, have green beans and not spit them out on the floor!
Maggie: However, we usually don’t tend to take kids to restaurants, as I don’t actually believe that they want kids in there! When they are newborns, you can go pretty much anywhere. When you’ve got toddlers, you have to go to a chain like Byron Burger. Byron deals with kids really well. You go in and they’ve got activities and it is a little bit chaotic in there anyway, so you don’t feel like people are looking at you.
Best For Date Night
By Caroline Phillips
10th March 2015
Aqua Wellness Resort in Redonda Bay, Nicaragua, is for the zen seeker who wants marshmallows on the campfire after her yoga session. Or a pizza night after her papaya body scrub.
It comprises 28 tree houses set in a tropical forest chokka with cacti, iguanas and howler monkeys – and overlooking an ooh-ah bay with sweeping beach, the Pacific and diving-for-fish pelicans. Not to mention the beautiful Giant’s Foot rock formation.
The tree houses are jungle chic with mahogany, Brazilian cherry and teak – think open-plan bedroom with wooden shower in the corner and a top-notch kitchen in the adjoining villa. Plus, there’s a private deck plunge pool too – though whether anyone ever uses one for anything aside from washing her feet is a question of metaphysical importance. (Eco warriors please note: the tree houses get eco-brownie points for being above the canopy of the rainforest – which means they don’t interfere with the delicate environmental system).
The beachside restaurant serves top nosh – all delivered by super-friendly waiting staff. They offer organic greens and catch-of-the-day steamed in coconut milk. Or zero-size-me green papaya salad with a glass of fresh-squeezed tamarind or passion fruit juice. (If you want to forget all that wellness blah, you can feast on steak and egg burrito). You’ll find the thirty-something crowd here – families, couples and the occasional yoga bunny – mostly Americans and Canadians.
What else? It’s a deliciously unplugged experience of no TVs and dodgy Wi-Fi (after all, it is a remote area). There’s kayaking, paddle boarding and snorkelling, and if you want time away from the noonday sun, take the chocolate-making class and get creative with roasted cacao beans, which you peel then blend, sprinkling afterwards with chilli, sesame or cashew. Yum.
You can do your downward dogs on an ocean-view wooden yoga platform. But there are so many steps everywhere that you’ll have done a workout even before you get there (luckily, they give you a mobile phone if you want to call reception). The yoga platform is so windy your mat flies away – but it’s worth it for the bird’s eye view of the demerara-sugar beach and emerald coast with jade water.
As for the yogis, they’re peripatetic teachers – from Acro to Ashtanga ones. Learning the Acro (as in ‘acrobatic’) yoga poses must surely allow you to run away to join the Cirque du Soleil.
There’s also a small spa (two rooms) which deals in splendiferous views, cacao exfoliation and Mombacho massage (which apparently mimics the rhythms of the volcano). Try the rejuvenating facial – it involves some plastic cupping and does what it says on the tin. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a therapist charmingly called ‘Darling.’
Peak experience? A full moon with a turtle burying her eggs on the beach, scattering sand with her flappers in the process. Who could beat that? Certainly go there to get away from the hurly burly of life in the fastest lane.
Journey Latin America specialise in tailor-made holidays to Central & South America, including Nicaragua. A 7 night stay in Aqua Wellness Spa Resort costs £1930pp based on two people sharing, including return transfers from the airport and international flights with United Airlines (who offer three daily non-stop services from London Heathrow to its hub at Houston/George Bush Intercontinental Airport, with onward connections to Managua, Nicaragua, and over 300 other destinations across the Americas).
Tel – +44 (0) 208 600 1881
By Caroline Phillips
5th March 2015
It’s an earthly paradise. Mt Etna fumes theatrically behind, red molten lava slipping dramatically down its slopes, and the Ionian sea sparkles in front. Welcome to Monaci delle Terre Nere – the boutique hotel that’s pulling all the awards.
The gods were smiling the day Guido Coffa (an erstwhile automotive engineer) fell in love with this 19th century putty-pink aristocratic villa – a piano nobile turned winery then organic farm. It’s now a small and discreet hideaway – 19 bedrooms/suites, some dotted on the estate – that’s set in a 40-acre private organic property that’s being planted with enough trees to save the planet and make chef Clelio Mocerino’s wizard jams (from mandarin groves, vineyards and fig trees on volcanic land tended by the Saint Ana monks for centuries, and suffused with their special energy).
Guido’s girlfriend, Ada Calabrese, has created achingly stylish but comfortable, rustic-meets-cool-contemporary interiors with squishy B&B Italia sofas, and king-size and floating beds against walls of blackest volcanic rock and soaring wood-beamed ceilings. The cavernous reception houses the original antique ‘palmento’ press formerly used for crushing grapes and the old cistern where once they washed the wine barrels. It doesn’t take much snooping to find other eccentric artworks and antiques.
Although it’s hard to choose between a spectacular garden, Mediterranean or Mt Etna view, bag the romantic Suite Amabile to overlook the crater (and for a free-standing Jacuzzi by the bed). If you want quirky, book the Suite Dependance Sontuoso – it’s approached up lava stone stairs – a small palmento with the bed tucked into the original rock structure.
As for the food, for breakfast imagine a full buffet served in the ancient wine press or outside, on the sea-view terrace, under pine trees and with homemade cakes, bread and jams plus fresher–than-freshly squeezed juices. At dinner, on the terrace by the old stone water well, the unfussy Sicilian family cuisine puts the ‘oh’ into slow – think sun-ripened tomatoes and zucchini plus still-flapping fish with zero miles, cooked slowly and eaten leisurely . On the estate, they grow over 100 different types of fruit, all their own veggies, herbs and life itself. Plus they keep their own chickens.
As for eco credentials, it gets the thumbs-up too: over 50% of the hotel’s energy comes from sustainable forests and the sun. But there is also Wi-Fi and air-conditioning; not always a given in Sicily.
When it comes to entertainment, there’s an outdoor bar and an infinity pool for lazy laps, yoga on the lawn, cinema under the stars (deliciously, the rooms are without televisions) and a library – or billiards to be played at the Victorian table. Otherwise, Guido is on hand to point guests to wine tastings at local vineyards, trips to the nearby sandy beaches, or even a tour of Mt Etna by mule. That much said, it’s hard to pull yourself away from lolling in a lounger overlooking nectarine groves….but worth it just to find yourself a day bed under a palm tree. Full marks and more for soul. The only hiccup? Those lava paths kill the Laboutins.
By Roz Kempner
26th February 2015
The grandiose Badrutt’s Palace Hotel has to be the Grande Dame of the Swiss mountains. With pride of place by the lake, the interior is as impressive as the exterior. Expensive cars, including the hotel’s Rolls Royce, adorn the forecourt.
Within, the stately Grand Hall has dark wood panelling and furniture reminiscent of the 50s. The vast dining room even has a harpist playing during breakfast, and the hotel retains an element of an era gone by. It is indeed the most polished of hotels. Staff are of the “old school,” immaculately uniformed and truly professional.
The bedrooms are large, and most have balconies overlooking the lake. The bathrooms are luxurious, and the hot water bottles are a charming touch. The clientele is chic and glamourous, with many flying in by private jet. By no means are they all there to ski. Many come for polo, horse-racing on ice , parties, good food, shopping, or simply to walk in the mountains. An added draw is the famous Kings Club, the nightclub within the Palace which, in the main, is packed with young, beautiful Italians.
The Spa is bliss, with the most wondrous swimming pool, a magical, steaming outdoor jacuzzi and several steam rooms and saunas.
The hotel has six restaurants, but my favourites are housed in the beautiful, ancient Chesa Veglia building opposite. There is a dignified Grill Room with a pianist, a buzzing Pizzeria, and mountain fare on the lower floor. All are excellent.
Up on the slopes, Mathis Restaurant is easy to reach by train or on skis. Resembling a space station from afar, it has enormous glass windows providing a panoramic view from inside. The setting and the service are demure and efficient….but bring on the huge tins of caviar, stunning displays of fresh fish, the very best smoked salmon and the intoxicating aroma of truffles escaping from the mountain.
The latter are lavishly served on almost everything, from the flakiest pizza to tagliolini to melting cheese. Caviar is generously dolloped on blinis with glorious smoked salmon. Home comfort dishes include Bollito Misto with loads of bone marrow, game with polenta, and a fabulous seared tuna with wasabi mash. All of this served with great aplomb.
Another favourite haunt on the mountain is the breathtaking Il Paradiso. The Members’ Club terrace is sumptuous, with the most glorious views, wooden decking, checked tablecloths and lots of sheepskin. Most dishes here are also smothered in truffles; however, there is a lot of cheese, and the fondue is superb. Veal sausages, pasta and steaks are simpler but very high quality.
A frightfully smart establishment with a clubby atmosphere, frequented by frightfully smart regulars and residents of St Moritz. What a glorious weekend!
25th February 2015
An intrepid journey into the core of Iceland, to discover the inner sense of adventure….
As we land on a white runway at Reykjavik Airport, the weather front is starting to draw in. This is clearly going to be a true adventure – or at the very least, similar to something we usually watch from the comfort of our homes when we sit down to the Bond movie Die Another Day. The landscapes on the screen at the briefing in the airport recall the iconic ice-chase driving scenes on the Jokulsarion Glacier Lagoon, the largest lagoon in Europe, which was the setting of the Ice Palace where Pierce Brosnan challenges his Korean counterpart. Lara Croft also springs to mind in her scenes in Tomb Raider, where she rides dogsleds across white plains in Iceland….then, Batman Begins; again, this glacier was used for the iconic training scenes with Liam Neeson.
I look around the room for some of our own heroes – the group counts 3 women and 21 men, all from global media outlets, and to my delight, in the row behind I can spot our true British heroes. Ben Saunders sits beside Kenton Cool and Monty Halls , and they all smile cheerfully at the sight of cold dark waters, ice and snow. Ben Saunders (the pioneering polar explorer and record-breaking long-distance skier, who has covered more than 6000km on foot in the polar regions since 2001, and has just accomplished the longest human-powered polar journey in history retracing Captain Scott’s ill-fated Terra Nova expedition ) is comparing techniques with Kenton Cool, who has summited Everest no less than eleven times and has scaled peaks in Alaska, France and India. Today, he is still the world’s leading high-altitude climber reaching his personal best each time, and has led Sir Ranulph Fiennes up both the North Face of the Eiger and the summit of Everest. His next venture will be heading up Everest again, as vice-president and adviser of the G200E Expedition to mark the bicentenary of the Gurkhas’ outstanding service and loyalty to the British Crown.
Monty Halls, sitting beside them, is leading this weekend’s group, and as a marine conservationist, global expedition leader and film-maker (having explored sunken cities and mysterious underwater caverns), his experience once again is unique to most mortals. All in all, with these three incredible brand ambassadors for Land Rover , we can trust to go with the spirit of adventure. The new Discovery Sport – our fourth hero – will for sure also be put through its paces, using all its defensive hardware.
Once outside the airport, we are met by a line-up of Land Rover Discoveries ready and waiting, seats heated and headlights on to lure us to their comfort. Sleet and snow are carried across the landscape in howling crosswinds. The sat navs on the cars’ iphone6 are set to a distant location off the grid, to the Ion Hotel .
Moving fast down the deep snow-covered lanes in the dark (it’s as dark as midnight at 5pm), we head into the hills as the low-slung clouds are closing in and the snow-drift is building up as we drive. The only reassurance now is the long trail of glowing rear lights ahead, as we drive into the snow-storm. We come to a halt as the front of the convoy reaches an obstacle and the snow starts building along the side of the cars. Brave Land Rover crew appear from nowhere in the storm, to manage the crisis, and to reassure and redirect us back down. Everyone performs an array of manoeuvers in a very tight space between the edge of the road and ice beyond, and the 27km hot-water pipeline that lines the road and reeks of sulphur as it takes hot water into the capital, drawn directly from the spring ahead in the Golden Circle.
The cars are in their absolute element here and the wheels enjoy the control and traction on this extreme surface, which is totally above and beyond the norm. We allow the Terrain Response System to engage and the car comes into its own as you let it loose in its ideal snow-playground. If only all Land Rover owners could have such an experience near their home to feel the total security and complete control in extreme conditions. We reach Reykjavik again, and on the way back, pass many brave Defenders which have paved the way for our descent where possible, with their snow-plough accessories and snow tracks.
The programme for the evening and the day after is seamlessly adjusted, due to the redirection back to Reykjavik, and with no trouble at all, we begin the next day at Silfra dive site . This site is a fissure between two continents in Iceland’s National Park, which tops the charts as one of the top ten dive sites in the world for two good reasons. Firstly, for its location between a natural crack splitting North America from the Eurasian continents, and secondly, its underwater visibility promising the clearest and cleanest water on earth, at 2 to 4 degrees Celsius all year round.
Monty Halls here leads our expedition down this volcanic seam, and into its dark, icy waters, which have filtered through the porous underground lava for 30-100 years, until reaching this north end of the Thingvellir Lake, where we are. We are fully equipped in dry suits to be as comfortable as possible in these temperatures and if we need any refreshments, we are told to sip this exquisitely pure water – and it sure is the freshest-tasting water I have ever sipped while diving!
The dive puts us all on equal terms and Ben and Kenton join us, with Monty as our escort into the epochal waters, reassuring us that they can all work just as well at sea-level as at high altitudes. The visibility once we immerse is absolutely astounding and the colour blue unique to this space of natural raw beauty, where nothing lives other than your dreams.
Our schedule continues after the dive, and we follow a long route along hardcore, icy landscapes of black lava rock, to a very welcome stop at the Ion Hotel, which on clear nights enjoys the playful lights of the Aurora Borealis – the Northern Lights . This time around, we reach the luxury adventure hotel with more ease than the night before, and Ben and Kenton are set to take us on a snow hike after lunch up to the Ice Hut.
The hike, with snowshoes and again the Land Rovers within reach, is just a mere glimpse of what these pioneers go through on endless hikes of hundreds of days in barren, hostile, icy conditions, either dragging 200kg sledges in back-to-back white-outs on the Antartic ice, and in Kenton’s case at 5000 or 8000 metres above sea-level. Ambassadors to experiential adventures is an understatement, and the importance of their participation becomes ever more apparent and in synergy with this unique adventure weekend.
To round off the overall challenge of endurance and physical performance, we are indulged once again in the wonders of this geothermal region, and the Land Rover’s sat nav now leads us to the Blue Lagoon , a short drive from the 101 Hotel were we slept a full 10 hours in designer comfort, after all the exhilarations of the day before. This oasis of geothermal water comes form 2000 metres below the surface, where fresh water and sea water combine at extreme temperatures. As it travels to the surface, it reaches a perfect 38 degrees Celsius, picking up beneficial silica, algae and minerals which colour it a unique shade of blue; a reflection created by the sun we are told, as if you pour the water into a cup, the water is white, as white as the snow and ice which covers the black lava rocks bordering the lagoon.
LAND ROVER ADVENTURE TRAVEL BY ABERCROMBIE & KENT – ICELAND EXPERIENCE
If you are a group of eight or more, Abercrombie & Kent can arrange special departures for you, as the scheduled trips are now sold out. But it is worth every exhilarating minute. Email [email protected]
for info and packages.
DAY 1: Drive along Iceland’s famous Ring Road to Thingvellir National Park, following the Sog River to your first hotel, the magnificent ION.
DAY 2: Take in Thingvellir and the Golden Circle, visiting the rift valley, the geysers and the famous Gulfoss waterfall. Spend the afternoon snow-mobiling on the Langjökull glacier.
DAY 3: Drive into the highlands of Kaldidalur, driving through majestic glaciers to the tumbling waterfalls of Barnafoss and Hraunfossar, to the powerful hot spring at Deildartunghver. Finish your evening in Reykavík, and stay at Hotel 101.
DAY 4: After a final chance to explore Reykjavík, you’ll be chauffeured to the airport for your flight home. Alternatively, you could extend your stay in the city or take a tour of the Blue Lagoon.
By Fiona Sanderson
25th February 2015
If you are lucky enough to see the Northern Lights in Iceland on a clear evening, it’s probably one of the most spectacular sights on earth.
If you are going to Iceland for the first time, like me, it’s well worth allowing Icelandair introduce you to this spectacle. They have just launched the Hekla Aurora, a northern lights themed plane (the iconic lights are painted onto the exterior), whilst delivering the ethereal and elusive magic of the Aurora Borealis to it passengers.
The Hekla Aurora plane flies trans-atlantically from London to destination cities in the US and Canada via a stopover of up to seven days (at no additional airfare) in Iceland, to take in the nature, culture and cuisine of the country.
I was on board for the new plane’s inaugural celebratory flight from Reykjavik International to the domestic airport, where we arrived to a fanfare welcome and light illumination of the city’s Hallgrímskirkja Church, as a prelude to the city’s annual Winter Lights Festival. It seemed that the whole country of over 320,000 had turned out to meet us.
Birta Líf Kristinsdóttir, a renowned Icelandic meteorologist and former Icelandair pilot, brought the science of Aurora Borealis alive by providing us with a talk on this natural phenomenon.
As part of our experience in Iceland, we took a private dip in the Secret Lagoon , a natural hot spring pool located about 800 metres from Icelandair Hotel Fludir. The temperature of the pool is 38°- 40° all year round and is surrounded by several geothermal spots, which erupt spontaneously at regular intervals. Apparently during wintertime, the Northern Lights can be seen above the secret lagoon, which makes it an even greater experience to sit in the hot pool and enjoy the colours dancing above. Sadly, it was too cloudy for us to see anything but a hot dip under the sky was quite surreal and certainly won’t be forgotten.
The following day, we headed to Gullfoss (or Golden Waterfall), which proved a spectacular example of the force and beauty of nature. Gullfoss is part of the Golden Circle, located in South Iceland on the Hvítá River, which is fed by Iceland´s second biggest glacier, the Langjökull. The water plummets down 32 metres into a rugged canyon, the walls of which reach up to 70 metres in height. I’m told that if the sun’s out, shimmering rainbows can be seen over the falls.
However, one of the greatest natural attractions of Iceland, and part of the famous Golden Circle route, is The Great Geysir – although it has been dormant since 1916 when it suddenly ceased to spout. It has come to life only once, in 1935, and as quickly went back to sleep. No sudden eruptions on our visit, though! The Great Geysir was once among the most notable geysers in the world, such as those in Yellowstone Park and New Zealand. Though The Great Geysir itself is now inactive, the area surrounding it is geothermically very active with many smaller hot springs. The attraction of the area is now Strokkur (The Churn), another geyser 100 metres south of The Great Geysir, which erupts at regular intervals every 10 minutes or so, and its white column of boiling water can reach as high as 30 metres.
A real highlight of the trip for me was lunch in the surreal surroundings of a greenhouse! Iceland is dark and cold for much of the year, but tomatoes grow merrily under artificial light at Friðheimar . The environmentally-friendly greenhouses yield about one ton of produce per day. Upon entering the greenhouse, you are hit with the fragrance of tomato plants, before you sit down to a feast of famous Friðheimar tomato soup with fresh-baked bread – and tomato plants all around. Don’t forget to try Bjork, a liqueur made from birch trees – delicious!
Later that day, we got to experience Iceland’s only horse park, Fákasel , home to the country’s unique breed of horse. The Icelandic horse is a hardy breed developed in Iceland. The breed is still used for traditional farm work in Iceland, as well as for leisure, showing, and racing. Fákasel Horse Park is Iceland’s leading tourist attraction for all things “Icelandic horse” and is one of the country’s best equine competition facilities. I found it all a little bizarre watching elves jump out from behind rocks and young, blonde maidens lying down to sleep beside their ponies. This, I was later to learn, was based on Icelandic folklore and some still believe the Huldufólk (the elves) really exist. Apparently, local building projects are sometimes altered to prevent damaging the rocks where they are believed to live. According to these Icelandic folk beliefs, one should never throw stones because of the possibility of hitting the Huldufólk.
All this is hungry work, and I was looking forward to dinner at the widely-acclaimed brasserie style Kopar restaurant , which certainly didn’t disappoint. The food was absolutely delicious. The menu is full of local and sustainable Icelandic produce, and prides itself on being the only place in Reykjavik to serve Icelandic Rock Crab from the Hvalfjörður fjord. The Kopar Restaurant also offers delicious salmon, redfish and blue ling. I went for the full crab experience, and had crab cake, rock crab soup and snow crab salad all on one platter! My guests had the Icelandic fillet of lamb with crispy fat with mushrooms, port and lot of garlic, potato and bearnaise. The perfect end to a great trip to Iceland, before I headed off across the Atlantic to New York as part of my stopover on Icelandair. I will definitely be back and next time perhaps in the summer to experience the ‘‘midnight sun,’’ which effectively keeps shining for 24 hours a day!
Iceland Gourmet Specialities
By Caroline Phillips
17th February 2015
Morgan’s Rock really rocks. The Ecolodge is set on one of Nicaragua’s most gobsmackingly gorgeous and deserted, private beaches….a bay of sugar-fine sand and gently lapping Pacific waves. Gallop along the mile-long stretch of beach on horseback – “giddy up Pirata” – or saunter along it to watch sea turtles laying their eggs. The Ecolodge itself comprises 15 wood and thatched bungalows – so eco they’re enough to make anyone weep recycled tears of joy – with simple local furnishings, almond tree floors and the grooviest of upcycled copper taps and shower fittings. There’s no air-conditioning – just the freshest of sea breezes, plus fans and views to beat those in Adam and Eve’s back yard.
The whole place is set in an 4500-acre private estate of mahogany forests, mango trees and bamboo – chokka with everything from howler monkeys to possums and herons. Plus there’s an awesome – and vertigo-inducing – walnut and nispero wood suspension bridge over a gorge, connecting the villas to the reception, restaurant and bar area.
The staff come wreathed with smiles and are super-attentive. The food is fresh, organic and local – with ceviche so good you’ll probably think about smuggling it home. There are enough activities on offer to make a guidebook creak – including deep-sea fishing, exploring the estate on two wheels, a kayaking trip down the mangrove estuary for tropical bird-spotting, and a jungle tour by torchlight. (In the last, you get to spy mud crabs, tarantulas and skunks under a star-spangled sky).
Morgan Rock’s French owners also have a hacienda on the estate with a reforestation project – they plant fruit trees to hardwoods – and an organic dairy and shrimp farm. Visit the dairy farm for a spot of agro-tourism and to re-confirm that milk doesn’t come from cartons – you get up at crack of dawn to milk the cows yourself, pick out the brownest eggs from under the butts of free range chicken, and then feast on your pickings for breakfast alongside authentic rice and refried beans with tortilla that you’ve been shown how to make yourself. Or simply lie in your hammock watching the sunset, knowing that your holiday spend is helping sponsor six local schools. Barefoot luxury at its best.
Getting There
Journey Latin America specialise in tailor-made holidays to Central & South America, including Nicaragua. A 7 night stay in Morgan’s Rock Hacienda costs from £1,944 per person based on two people sharing, including transfers and international flights with United Airlines (who offer three daily non-stop services from London Heathrow to its hub at Houston/George Bush Intercontinental Airport, with onward connections to Managua, Nicaragua, and over 300 other destinations across the Americas).
Tel – +44 (0) 208 600 1881
By The Luxury Channel
4th February 2015
As India celebrates a 30% increase in tiger numbers, enjoy the finest safari experience at The Oberoi Vanyavilas, Ranthambhore….
With the news revealed by the latest tiger census that India now has a third more tigers than it did four years ago, comes all the more reason to stay at The Oberoi Vanyavilas, Ranthambhore. Situated just ten minutes’ drive from Ranthambhore National Park, the hotel offers guests the opportunity to see Royal Bengal Tigers in their natural habitat.
India is home to around 70% (or 2,226) of the world’s tigers; approximately 60 of which inhabit Ranthambhore National Park in Rajasthan, making it the most densely populated tiger reserve in India. Thanks to the dedicated efforts of the Park’s conservationists who closely monitor the behaviour patterns of their resident tigers, visitors to Ranthambhore stand a very good chance of witnessing these majestic animals in the wild. The Oberoi Vanyavilas is located right in the Park, making it the perfect spot for a tiger sighting. Accompanied by expert safari guides and botanists, guests will be guaranteed an enchanting and informative experience while exploring the territory of the tiger. You can also even help to bathe the resort’s beloved elephants.
Starting the day with an exciting jungle safari, you can drive along rugged tracks, past fields of long grass and watering holes, experiencing the reserve’s diverse wildlife and the opportunity to see the majestic tiger in its natural environment. After a day of adventure, you can enjoy romantic sunset views and champagne at the top of the observation tower (on that note, romantic dinners can also be arranged under the stars at special locations within the resort).
After a busy day in the jungle, guests can retire to their cool, triple-canopied luxury tents appointed with four-poster beds and stand-alone baths. With private gardens protected by authentic Rajasthani mud walls and connected by lit pathways, the luxury tents provide the ultimate comfort whilst adhering to the subtleties of their natural surroundings. The tents are embellished with frescoes, ornaments and upholstery that celebrate the existence of the tiger and its continued prominence in the jungles of Rajasthan.
A night in a luxury tent with private garden at The Oberoi Vanyavilas, Ranthambhore, starts from 44,500 INR (£478 approx), based on two people sharing.
By Rosalind Milani Gallieni
28th January 2015
It is at this time of year, when the schools are back on track and the slopes are less crowded and fresh New Year snow has finally laid its mantle, that it’s time to get some tranquility out of a long weekend in the mountains.
There is a new thrill in the village of La Thuile, in north west Italy. The village itself is full of local character: the church bells chime on the hour and the sound of rushing water from the icy blue River Dora, which runs through the village, is a constant reminder of the water coming from the glaciers high up on the summits. The parade of small shops that flank the gushing river sell local produce, home-grown (and strictly seasonal) vegetables, endless varieties of organic cheeses and plenty of shabby-chic interior accessories for the stylish Milanese apartments which only get used, at a stretch, for about four weeks per year. Two small banks seem to be able to handle the business of foreign currencies and local transactions, and many excellent restaurants are dotted all around the town. The houses, both new and old, are made of wood and stone, with uniform grey slate tiled roofs – thuiles – which reflect authentic local colour and respect the heritage of the place, unchanged for centuries.
La Thuile is part of the Espace San Bernardo ski area, with access to 286km of downhill skiing, with 156 individual pistes. In addition to the skiing in La Thuile itself, the appropriate ski Lift Pass will allow you to ski or snowboard in the other Espace San Bernardo ski resort of La Rosière over in France. Skiing and snowboarding is assured throughout the season, but the region is steeped in activities and experiences from cycling and golf to hiking and white water rafting, and further down the hill lie the restorative thermal baths in Pre-St. Didier, open all year round.
New luxury hotel group Nira Hotels & Resorts has recently opened a new hotel (its fifth), the Nira Montana, in La Thuile, in the heart of the Valle d’Aosta. Set at 1440 metres, the picturesque hotel enjoys the views that surround this beautiful alpine basin, framed by the highest summits in Europe. A true newcomer in both style and offering to La Thuile, Nira Montana is a city-style hotel meets cute ski resort.
Built in the style of the valley’s traditional houses, this well-appointed, 55-room luxury boutique hotel is constructed of wood and stone, and uses energy-saving systems. It features an authentic Italian restaurant, serving the finest ingredients sourced from across the country, and the bar and restaurant are very much design-led, with floating light bulbs, steel chairs, and solid wood tables and floors. Down below, an extensive and well-edited wine cellar is prepped for local wine and food tastings. The immense lounge area looks out to the snowy fields beyond, the low coffee tables are piled high with designer style books, and the rooms upstairs are furnished with Hästen beds. The international fashion élite come here from Turin, Milan and Geneva to share the comfort of this 5 star hotel, with its cow-hide sofas, cosy lighting and heartening fireplaces; every detail is considered to ensure an elegant après-ski experience with local aperitivi Valdostani.
A facility which will be as popular with guests as with local visitors is the extensive wellness spa, which includes an indoor pool with a view across the snow outside, plus a whirlpool, Vitarium and steam bath. Ideal for après-ski, there are the indispensible sauna, steam rooms, and six treatment rooms for the many interesting holistic massage techniques, from Swedish, sport and deep tissue to Shiatsu, Balinese, Intonga Amasatchi, Tibetan sound massage and more…and of course, to prep for the slopes, there is a fully equipped Technogym fitness centre.
Growing the collection even further, Nira Hotels & Resorts is opening another property – Nira Yana – on Pemba Island in Zanzibar in early 2015. The two hotels will join the group’s three existing properties: Shanti Maurice in Mauritius (2010), Nira Alpina in St. Moritz (2011) and Nira Caledonia in Edinburgh (2012). MPS Puri, Chief Executive of Nira Hotels & Resorts, revealed he was “delighted to launch two new hotels under the Nira brand, bringing our portfolio to five. I’m confident that both properties will be great additions, providing our guests with more choice of where to enjoy the Nira experience.”
That experience can be enjoyed at Nira Montana all year round, as there is a great deal to do come winter or summer. However, don’t overlook Ristorante Lo Riondet in summer, on the way up to the Piccolo S. Bernardo, well-known for its rustic Aosta Valley cuisine of Alpine cheeses, local wines direct from the barrel, and home-made Genepy and other liquors. In winter, make a plan to book at this buzzing, picture-perfect restaurant. Accessible by day from the ski slopes, evening excursions offer much more memorable chalet dinners as arrival is strictly by snowcat and you return on skies by torchlight under the moon.
By The Luxury Channel
12th January 2015
Zambia’s Royal Livingstone Hotel, perched on the forested banks of the Zambezi River and just a few metres upstream from the mighty Victoria Falls, has created bespoke Water Retreat Experiences for health conscious luxury travellers looking for an alternative wellbeing break combined with lifelong memories. With your own personal butler, you can experience sophistication and sheer opulence as well as the elegance and luxury of an earlier bygone era.
Water defines The Royal Livingstone. You arrive at the 5* retreat by water taxi – the only hotel in Africa to offer this exclusive transfer, where the journey often includes a glimpse of wildlife such as hippopotamus. The sound of the Victoria Falls is always present during your stay, where you have access to your own private entrance to the Falls – one of the Seven Wonders of the World.
The New Water Retreat Experiences
o The Tips of the Falls:
• Full body exfoliation with red dune sand: Increases the blood circulation and purifies the skin
• Botanical clay wrap: Contains Kalahari clay to purify the skin. Buchu is known for its medical purposes to detox the body and red bush extract acts as an antioxidant.
• Mist system massage to cool down: choose between Khoi San with Buchu to detox; Aromatic blend with spice and wood blends to relax; Tsamma Blend with Tsamma (Khoi san watermelon) to moisturise; Wild Honey: with wild honey to restore skin cells and repair sunburn.
o Experience the Ukuchina massage in one of the Cabanas along the banks of the Zambezi River:
• A lymph drainage treatment – perfect to fight water retention.
• Hot water compressed with lemon scent is used to drain the muscles and alleviate depression.
o A foot massage on the deck to support and rebalance the digestive tract.
Additionally, The Royal Livingstone gives guests the opportunity to enjoy more adventurous experiences, such as a River Safari or a Cheetah Interaction experience.
General Manager Emmanuelle Moneger revealed he is “extremely proud to introduce bespoke Water Retreat spa experiences for guests of the Royal Livingstone. We also invite our guests to reconnect with Mother Nature by exploring the Victoria Falls or swim in the Devil’s Pool at the edge of the Falls, discovering the endless rainbows and range of colours the waterfall produces and enjoy a refreshing shower of negative ions known to increase levels of serotonin, therefore helping to alleviate depression, relieve stress and boost daytime energy. Thanks to the unlimited complimentary entrance to the Victoria Falls, the hotel’s guests can enjoy a daily walk at the Falls and recharge their batteries in the most natural way.”
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By Isabel Donnelly
7th January 2015
I decided to return on New Year’s Eve to the Victoria Jungfrau Grand Spa Hotel for their New Year package, which I last did eight years ago. My memories were of sheer elegance, 7 star service and outstanding facilities at this 224 room hotel, situated in picturesque Interlaken in the heart of central Switzerland.
Upon arrival, I was greeted by the incredibly efficient concierges, Dracken and Jose, whom I have known for many years. It is always a delight to arrive back here. Check-in was smooth and swift, and I was shown to a junior suite with a large double bed and sitting room area. There were plenty of wardrobes and the whole suite was tastefully decorated with all you would expect from a five star hotel.
On New Year’s Eve, a reception in the grand entrance – where general managers Urs and Yasmin Grim Cachemaille greeted guests – was followed by champagne, canopies and a black tie ball. The theme was The Great Gatsby, and the decorations were sublime. Beautifully displayed, the gastronomic delights included caviar, crayfish, salmon, foie gras and oysters. We had sole and veal with truffle, and dessert was a chocolate fountain with all kinds of fruit, crepes suzette, so many tarts and masses of cheeses. Midnight struck, frivolity ruled and then farmers appeared playing cow bells. All in all, a lovely evening executed brilliantly.
The next day, I hit the luxurious spa. After a much-needed massage, I went to the sauna and steam room, and then to the relaxation room where I could chill with views of the snowy Alps. For the more energetic, you can go swimming in the indoor Roman pool, but I preferred the two Jacuzzis and the outside hydro pool, where I could look up at the majestic mountains and watch the moon come up. This was the life!
Later that evening, I went to watch a wonderful firework display across from the hotel in the park. The theme was 007 and the fireworks were done to the famous music from the films. Just magical. Alp horns performed, brass bands played and there were stalls selling glühwein and bratwurst. Bond aficionados visiting Interlaken can visit the Jungfraujoch – the top of Europe – made famous by the legendary spy, and also The Schilthorn for the James Bond trail and some wonderful skiing. You can also add to the whole 007 experience with a helicopter flight over the Alps to see the glaciers at Lauterbrunnen, or by going paragliding.
So, the big question – has the hotel changed eight years on? They continue to upgrade twenty bedrooms and suites a year, they are fastidious about standards, and service remains of the highest quality. Will I return? Yes, definitely! I left feeling wonderfully relaxed and energised. The ambiance and sheer luxury of the hotel makes it the perfect place to indulge oneself, and I left feeling totally ready for the year ahead. Bring it on!
Further Information
The Victoria Jungfrau Hotel offers many packages – go to www.Victoria-Jungfrau.ch for more details. Staying in mid-January in a top-end suite for three nights will cost 12,619.20 Swiss francs. The package includes a delicious breakfast buffet with a wide choice of warm and cold dishes, one bottle of Laurent Perrier Champagne (or alternatively, one carafe of non-alcoholic applesecco) and use of the Victoria-Jungfrau Spa. Free cancellation possible (until 5 days before arrival). Zurich Airport is 2 hours by car and rail, and Bern airport is 1 hour by car and rail.
By The Luxury Channel
17th December 2014
Christmas is the perfect time to visit Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire, Scotland – just an hour’s drive from Edinburgh. A haven of luxury British heritage set in 850 acres of beautiful countryside, the world-famous, 5 star hotel has been transformed into a magical winter wonderland. From Christmas Day festivities to a traditional Boxing Day Ceilidh (not to mention a custom-built ice rink!), it will provide a joyful mix of relaxation and festive indulgence, with roaring log fires surrounded by beautifully decorated Christmas trees.
Christmas Cracker Break
From 24th – 26th December, guests booking this three night package will receive a complimentary night on either 23rd or 27th December. Gleneagles has planned an array of exciting activities, including an exquisite Christmas Day banquet, the hotel’s private ice rink, lively Christmas carols, food and drink tastings, festive fireworks and a traditional Boxing Day Ceilidh to crown this year’s events. For wine lovers, a behind-the-scenes tour of the Gleneagles wine cellar is an opportunity not to be missed. Led by an expert sommelier, guests will be guided through the hotel’s extensive collection, sampling delicious vintages on the way.
• Prices start from £3,495 per room, based on 2 sharing a Sovereign Room
Hogmanay Heroics
Hogmanay (New Year) is the highlight of many people’s calendar and at Gleneagles, the event is an unashamedly grand affair with a sumptuous black tie dinner, live music, pipes and drums. The special Hogmanay Heroics package runs from 30th December to 1st January, where guests will be eased gently into 2015 with a lazy breakfast before three exciting days of activities and a spectacular fireworks display to celebrate the arrival of the New Year in style.
• Prices start from £4,255 per room for a 3 night stay based on 2 sharing a Sovereign Room
Halfway Holiday
For those who fancy a quiet retreat between Christmas and New Year (27th – 28th December), there is plenty to see and do at Gleneagles. Foodies will delight in the festive tasting sessions, and the multi award-winning Spa by ESPA is the perfect place to pamper yourself before the whirlwind of New Year. Alternatively, explore the array of exhilarating outdoor activities including off-road driving, clay pigeon shooting, horse-riding and falconry, or take the opportunity to play on three of the finest 18-hole championship golf courses in Scotland.
• Special rate of £580 per room per night based on 2 sharing a Sovereign Room
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By Bella Chalmer
16th December 2014
November is a strange month. Not close enough to indulge in Christmas celebrations and yet the late summer evenings are a faint memory. In need of something to look forward to before the New Year, I decided to book a night at the renowned, 5 star boutique hotel – Chewton Glen. A luxury country house hotel and spa set in 130 acres of Hampshire countryside on the edge of the New Forest, Chewton Glen is also just a few minutes’ walk from the sea.
A lot has been said about this award-winning hotel – I’ve read it’s the perfect setting for a romantic escape and, more recently, it has become increasingly popular with families. I decided to see what it would be like if I took one of my friends for a girly weekend away. In under two hours, we were in the middle of the New Forest, away from the grey skies and traffic in the city. From the moment we stepped inside, I knew we were somewhere special. The fire was lit, the grand piano was playing and guests were enjoying Bloody Marys whilst reading the Sunday papers – perfection!
There is so much on offer at Chewton Glen. Set within its beautiful acres of land is a golf course, a croquet lawn, tennis courts and a great selection of walking and mountain biking trails. Clay pigeon shooting and falconry can also be easily arranged. But the long list of facilities doesn’t take away the fact that this place is more of a boutique home than a hotel.
We checked into a newly refurbished suite with two interlinking bedrooms. Wow, what a dreamy room – spacious and stylish with a sort of “Hamptons” feel about it. Within a few moments, we were in our robes and off to the Spa. The decadent swimming pool and impressive hydrotherapy pool is a calm oasis – exactly what I needed and better than I had imagined. The spa menu is designed using Linda Meredith and ILA products, offering a wide range of treatments from rehydrating oxygen facials to holistic body therapies. I was booked in for a personalised facial, where the therapist discussed my lifestyle and habits before choosing what specific products to use.
The Linda Meredith skincare range has been developed to deal with skin problems and not skin types, with all of the products working to increase hydration levels and helping to slow down the ageing process. My facial focused on the fine lines around the eyes, general dehydration and the congestion around the T-zone area. After my 60 minutes of pampering, the results were instantly noticeable – my skin looked relaxed and rejuvenated. Not surprisingly, the Spa at Chewton was voted in the Top 10 of UK Hotel Spas at the Conde Nast Traveller Magazine Reader Spa Awards 2014.
All too soon, our dinner reservation in the hotel’s Vertier restaurant had crept upon us so after a quick aperitif at the Red Bar, we sat in the restaurant ready for dinner. The room was surprisingly large and modern in decor with an impressive wine collection and private dining area. We spoiled ourselves with oysters and champagne, and freshly-caught scallops followed by delicious salmon with hollandaise for main course. The focus on seasonal ingredients and creative cooking was obvious. The restaurant lived up to its wonderful reputation – spectacular food with great service (especially the sommelier).
Soon enough, my super-king bed was calling – I was a lot more tired than I realised. Was it the effects of the relaxing spa, the wine during supper or the country air? Either way, I had the best night’s sleep I’d had all year at Chewton Glen.
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By The Luxury Channel
10th December 2014
The Luxury Channel is delighted to announce our new partnership with Tim Best Direct . Dedicated conservationist Tim Best is a well-known and respected personality in the travel world, who has been organising safaris and holidays for families, honeymooners and small private parties of friends for more than two decades. Having sold his business a few years ago, he now arranges travel worldwide on a personal basis, bringing into play his unparalleled network of top field operators, and owners of camps and lodges, to make the best arrangements for each individual itinerary. The below is a taster of the type of itinerary Tim can offer.
The Born Free Safari – Kenya
A 12 Day Itinerary:
By Hannah Norman
18th November 2014
When was the last time you went to Geneva, and more to the point, why were you there? Business? To head up to the mountains to ski? Or as a stopover before departing off elsewhere? Such a shame, as this city has so much to offer.
Courtesy of a total re-brand by Tourism Genève , we were invited to the Swiss city for the launch of The Girls’ Guide To Geneva . The brainchild of Tourism Genève’s PR Manager Pascal Buchs, this package has been put together to encourage more weekend breaks in a city that gets its fair share of travellers during the week, but is essentially the domain of locals come Friday. Accordingly, Tourism Genève has undertaken the (somewhat unenviable) task of rebranding the city as the place for girls to go for a long weekend away. They’ve teamed up with several of the city’s leading hotels, as well as Geneva’s best-known female influencers, to create packages that mean you and your girls get to holiday in style for much less than you would do otherwise, but with insider’s tips as to what to do and where to go. So essentially, this is completely win-win.
Geneva really is a city to suit all tastes. For the ultra girly, you can enjoy massages , have your nails done, and make yourself at home in the city’s chic-est shops (we did!). Everyone from Burberry to Zenith sells here, not to mention backstreet boutique Septieme Etage – worth seeking out for red carpet glam guaranteed!
For culture vultures, the beguiling beauty of the Old Town, not to mention what has been dubbed the Longest Bench In The World (I’m dubious as to whether 180 boards attached together really constitutes one bench, however!), but it is the perfect destination to while away the hours whilst soaking up the history, the serenity and the coffee from the many cosy cafes.
If you’d rather go in search of something more traditional, Geneva’s world-famous Jet d’Eau is definitely worth seeing, and the best way is by boat. Beautifully scenic, and also a brilliant way of getting from A to B, the lake boasts impossibly clear water, with umpteen opportunities for making your friends jealous with your social media posts. Oh, and stock up at chocolatier Auer before you sit back and set off across the water – well, when in Switzerland!
As day gives way to night, the city comes alive, and there are several establishments worth investigating. From the slightly quirky ( Barbershop Bar ) to “the best place to hunt for hot men” (that’s a direct quote from the Guide – and Brasserie Halles de L’Isle ), to the achingly hip (nightclub Silencio ), there is a bar or club to suit all tastes. For those who prefer dining to drinking, we recommend Café des Bains (their curry is delicious). Incidentally, they have the coolest clock inside, which is definitely worth a mention! But a word to the wise – whilst Geneva is ridiculously easy to navigate, just make sure you have your Guide when you go out, as the handy maps within make it a lot easier to work out where everything is, particularly after a late night out! On that note, another perk of purchasing the Guide means you also get a transport card , allowing for free rides for the duration of your trip. Perfect – as long as you remember not to leave it in the hotel!
Of course, we all love a bargain, and the Guide’s handy discounts are definitely a bonus. With discount meals and free gifts in certain shops, the Guide really is a one-stop-shop and all you could possibly hope for on a “girls’ retreat.”
Recently voted Europe’s Leading City Break Destination at the World Travel Awards, there is a reason why Geneva is becoming the place to go. So get your girls together, grab your passport and experience this city in all its many guises – this really is a weekend away you won’t forget.
Useful Information
By Antonia Peck
5th November 2014
Antonia Peck escapes to the Lake District to try a luxurious massage room and spa set high in the tree canopy, and discovers a romantic getaway with a difference….
With fur-lined wellington boots on and hoods up, guests walk happily across to The Gilpin Hotel & Lake House (part of the Relais & Châteaux group but owned by the Cunliffe family since 1919). The Gilpin provides the most serene, bucolic weekend retreat, with a deserved reputation for homely hospitality and luxury detailing. There are six characterful suites at the Lake House, each interior designed in a palette of earthy, country colours with sumptuous big beds and modern fixtures and fittings. The rest of the Lake House invites you to enjoy its furnishings as if it were your own ancestral home. Guests (a maximum of 12 at any one time) can take afternoon tea in front of the roaring fire, with an ear-marked book and soft blanket after a long walk in the beautiful surrounding countryside. It’s a homely vibe that is personified by the dedicated approach of Zoe Cunliffe, whose passion for the hotel comes across in her commitment to making guests feel as happy, relaxed and as welcome as possible.
Guests choose The Gilpin Lake House over the hotel for its more intimate vibe, making it perfect for couples in need of relaxation and escapism. Accordingly, Zoe describes how “The Lake House is the perfect decompression chamber for couples needing some precious time together.” It is for this reason that the spa offering has been developed further. The Lake House previously offered guests a small indoor pool and sauna with an open-air hot tub and in-room spa treatments. This was perfectly lovely, but the Lake House has now become an even more desirable destination for those in need of some tender love and care with its new Jetty Spa Trail. The new spa has a Swedish-style treatment room built to blend into the environment by being raised three metres into the tree canopy, with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the lake and (fake) fur rugs languishing over the massage tables.
The sensory experience begins with an aromatherapy consultation in which a bespoke blend is created depending on your ailments. Guests are then invited to enjoy a private swim in the pool followed by a relaxing salt snug with an iced fruit frappe and reviving salt scrub shower. From here, guests go through the woods to the treatment room in the tree canopy to enjoy a massage. Choose from aromatherapy, “al fresco” or Lava Shell massage. Treatments are followed by cream tea in the boathouse and a little champagne in the open air Japanese Ofura hot tub. It’s a spoiling and unique experience to have a spa treatment that brings you so incredibly close to nature, and it has a very grounding effect. City dwellers used to spa treatments where the surroundings amount to a damp ceiling and spotlights will really revel in this spa trail. Whatever the British weather brings, this is a sensory spa journey that has a deep impact.
The Jetty Spa Trail is exclusive to guests staying at The Gilpin Lake House and costs £300 per couple. The Gilpin Lake House offers suites from £485 per night including dinner, bed and breakfast, and complimentary transfers to and from The Gilpin Hotel for dinner (based on two people sharing).
The Gilpin Lake House is two miles from Lake Windermere and a short distance from Oxenholme Train Station, with regular trains running from Euston Train Station.
Additional Information
The Suites: Named after the six Cunliffe sisters – Harriet, Gertie, Adgie, Beatrice, Maude and Ethel.
Award-Winning Food: Breakfast and Afternoon Tea are served at The Lake House. For dinner and lunch, a private chauffeur takes Lake House guests to dine at the main hotel to enjoy a five-course meal of locally sourced, fresh and mainly organic produce. Alternatively, guests can commission head chef Daniel Grigg to create a bespoke dining menu for a party of up to 25 guests. Guests can also browse a collection of over 200 wines in the wine cellar.
Places To Visit: Dalton Castle, Holker Hall, Hill Top Near Sawrey, Hawkshead (the home of Beatrix Potter) and Wordsworth House, Cockermouth.
Activities: The Gilpin team can help organise a round of golf with the Gilpin Golf School, pony-trekking or horse-riding, mountain biking, fishing and even a Food Safari with a champion of the Slow Food movement – Annette Gibbons.
Contact: Go to www.thegilpin.co.uk or call 015394 88818.
By Caroline Phillips
17th October 2014
There’s something special about Sicily. As Vogue Editor Alexandra Shulman has written, ‘Oranges are more orange in Sicily.’ And as Goethe wrote, ‘The key to Italy is Sicily.’ Whichever way you look at it, this once-rich island, the biggest in the Med, is magical. It’s famed for its Baroque, Byzantine and Corinthian architecture, cliff-top villages, beautiful beaches, stylish hotels and superb cuisine. I experienced first the luxury of tranquillity and life in the slowest of slow lanes in agroturismo Il Vignale (a week in a way-off-the-beaten-track north coast villa), before taking to the road for a further week to round up the best of the rest of places to stay.
Il Vignale
If it’s the luxury of utter tranquility and a charming rural retreat way off the beaten volcanic-lava track that you’re after, Il Vignale near near S. Stefano di Camastra on the north coast of Sicily is just the ticket. The road there is a character-building mixture of hairpin bends and crumbly tarmac – but it’s all worth it once you arrive. As we shut our car doors, we turned to face the panorama laid out in front of the house. The feeling of peace and expansion was rejuvenating; just the valley with its wild rocky hills, a fierce blue sky – and silence.
There were, of course, immediate plans to hike up one of the hills, but I’m glad to say that our stay at Il Vignale undid every scrap of our willpower – as all good poolside holidays should. You go there to lounge by the pool with 360-degree valley views, to chill with friends, catch up on star-gazing and to combine beach and countryside in the laziest of days. Oh, and to drink excellent local wines and feast, feast and feast. Maria, the chef, magics up zucchini flowers delicately stuffed with the freshest ricotta, melting pastry parcels of porcini or melatzane, and spinach-like tenerumi with homemade pasta, plus tender black-skinned pig – a speciality from the nearby Nebrodi Mountains.
The house itself is an attractive brick villa with a cool, stony interior and seven bedrooms from which to choose. The rooms are simple and authentic, with stone floors, white walls and heavy wooden shutters. The master bedroom has a four-poster bed and a better-than-Heaven view across the valley. Think location, location, location. At the front of the house, there is a forecourt with a path winding down to the pool, and at the rear is a shady terrace with a long wooden table for group meals. The kitchen is industrially large, perfect for conjuring up meals out of food with zero miles – the owner brings in his olive oil and baskets of organic vegetables – and it’s equipped for catering for large numbers, with the emphasis on function over charm.
Most of our time at Il Vignale was spent meandering – paperbacks and sun-cream in hand – between the infinity pool and the house, between breakfast, late lunch and long, convivial suppers on the terrace. But we did venture out once or twice, driving up the steep road, past Il Vignale’s olive groves, into nearby Santo Stefano di Camastra. The town is renowned for its hand-painted ceramics and pottery – there are exhibitions and workshops to visit. Plus there are plenty of little restaurants for a supper of still-flipping seafood. We chose to forego our restaurant dolce in favour of local gelati available at cafes throughout the town. These we licked happily while strolling beneath the stars and watching little boys play endless late night games of football in the main square. Television? What’s that?!
In the surrounding area, the seaside villages Pettineo, Motta D’Affermo and Mistretta, are simple and pretty. You can also visit the Aeolian Islands by hydrofoil from Milazzo or Cefalu, and the nearby Nebrodi Mountains – if you want animals, plants and trees. On the sea-facing side of the mountains, you can descend directly to the shore and the Tyrrhenian Sea. Or so I’m told. But did I tell you about the infinity pool, the sun-cream and our Kindles?
Despite the opportunities for exploring, Il Vignale is best suited to families or friends who want primarily to laze by the H2O. It’s easy to lose track of time, but the villa features a novel device: a daily influx of swooping little birds who announce the cocktail hour and the end of a hard day’s sunbathing.
Book through villa specialist soloSicily – www.solosicily.com . Tel – +44 (0)20 7097 1413.
Best of The Rest
Donna Carmela
Donna Carmela is a corker of a hotel, boasting as it does rooms with both a volcano vista and a sea view. Mount Etna booms theatrically in the background, red molten lava burning down its slopes, and the Ionian Sea twinkles happily in the foreground. This stylish boutique hotel of just 18 bedrooms in Sant’Alfio nestles in a nursery of 5000 Mediterranean and sub tropical plants – giving guests strolling rights among bonsai olive, fig trees and ginormous cacti. Add to this an interior that’s decorated with flair and quirkiness – it boasts rough plaster walls and ornamental antique farming implements alongside funky contemporary pieces (think Philippe Starck chairs, a metal staircase and a fabulous table fashioned from an tree trunk on sculptural metal legs), and bingo, you have the perfect romantic getaway. Forget the land of milk and honey. At Donna Carmela, they go one better – it’s the land of Mount Etna cheese and honey.
Book through Just Sicily – www.justsicily.co.uk . Tel – +44 (0)1202 489040. For car hire, go to www.sbc.it or email [email protected]
Eremo della Giubilana
If you want to stay in the home of noblewoman Vincenza Iolanda Nifosi, then Eremo della Giubilana, near Ragusa, is the place (you can arrive there on its private airstrip.) It’s a 15th century, family-run former convent snapped up by the Knights of the Order of St John, who then sold it to the Vincenza’s family in 1750. Since then, it’s been lovingly restored by her son, architect and Renaissance man Salvatore Mancini and now has 19 bedrooms and five cottages. It has an imposing ancient tower – once a defence against pirates – dry stone walls and secret hidden courtyards. Reception is in the former chapel and comfortable bedrooms are in erstwhile monks’ cells, some with ancient limestone floors and four-poster beds. Everywhere there are antiques, heirlooms, suits of armour and religious artefacts. Plus there’s a vaulted gunroom with shotguns dating from 1900. Breakfast in the one-time refectory is a feast of local, creamy ricotta, home-cured hams, the tastiest of homemade flans and prickly pears. While lunches and dinners are elaborate Sicilian affairs using local, organic and seasonal ingredients – the food too complicated for some tastes – taken in the courtyard and served by staff who are super simpatico. Days are spent idly by the pool or in the garden among ancient quince and medlar trees, drinking wines pulled from a cellar in the former crypt, and having Sicilian cookery lessons – using the estate’s antique grains and following ancient recipes from the Hyblean aristocracy. Salvatore with perfect English and an encyclopaedic local knowledge also takes guests in his 4WD to the family’s UNESCO-listed gorge and valley nearby – which boasts 12 ancient mills, natural swimming pools, and air pungent with the scent of figs and wild herbs. Plus the nearby Baroque splendours of Syracuse and Noto, and ancient catacombs, are enough to make the largest guidebook burst cheerfully.
Book through www.eremodellagiubiliana.com . Tel – +39 0932 669119. For car hire, go to www.sbc.it or email [email protected]
Grand Hotel Villa Igiea
Grand Hotel Villa Igiea, built in 1904, is one of those majestic, old-fashioned and delightfully faded hotels with bedrooms of gold, damask and gilt – including original decorations, frescoes and Art Nouveau furnishings – and it has a glorious terrace looking onto wide gardens of pine, palm and bougainvillea that extend prettily to the sea. It has Monte Pellegrino as a backdrop and overlooks the Port of Palermo with its sailing and pleasure boats. This five-star hotel’s big lure is that it’s bursting with history – from the 1934 documentary about it, complete with flapper gels in bathing costumes – to its walls decked with big photos of King Carlos and Edward VII staying there. Add to that the fact that the villa was restored by Art Nouveau architect Ernesto Basile at the end of the 19th century for the Florio family, and you get the picture. The food isn’t tip-top. But where else can you walk past a massive Giovanni Boldini 1924 oil portrait of the original owner, Donna Franca Florio, (bought for $1m 12 years ago) in the ballroom-size breakfast room to pick over the buffet of pistachio and plum slices, cannoli and crema di Ricotta and brioches with coffee granita?
Book through www.villa-igiea.com . Tel – +39 091 631 2111.
Caroline Phillips is an award-winning freelance journalist who contributes to publications from Sunday and daily newspapers to glossy magazines, to various luxury websites. To see more of her work, go to www.carolinephillips.net .
By Ainslie Foster
9th October 2014
The thought of escaping from one’s busy life – even for just one night of pampered luxury – was just too tempting to resist. But such getaways, so hotly anticipated, can often be fraught with disappointment if the hotel doesn’t live up to the promise of its website or brochures. Luckily for me, on arriving at the impressive, 19th century country house hotel, Matfen Hall, I knew I’d found just what I’d been hoping for. Set in 300 acres of some of Northumberland’s finest landscaped parkland, it’s a favourite spot for weddings, with a newly refurbished spa guaranteed to deliver a bride glowing from head to toe. It’s also the place to go if you’re a golfer, with a 27 hole course to challenge you before collapsing for some well-deserved refreshment at the 19th (at the Keeper’s Lodge).
Matfen Hall is a 53 room, Gothic gem, privately owned by Sir Hugh and Lady Blackett. The Hall has been in the family for over 260 years, and opened as a hotel in 1999. No doubt, such a history and pedigree meant that it was no surprise that I was made to feel more like a favoured guest rather than a mere hotel visitor – the service was impeccable!
Of the four restaurants to choose from, I opted for dinner in the 2 AA rosette Library Dining Room where Head Chef, Chris Delaney, has conjured up a superb, French-inspired menu, sourcing seasonal, local produce. A complex, very crisp Puligny Montrachet put me in a very rosy mood, while completely spoilt for choice. Foie Gras purists will be won over by the Foie Gras Crème Brulee, truffle shortbread with fig and port compote, while I found the Southgate crab and lobster plate with pickled celery and mango relish deliciously fresh. The Northumberland rib eye steak was perfectly cooked and the corn-fed chicken with hand-rolled pasta, summer garden greens and girolle mushroom cream was succulent enough to satisfy but light enough to leave room for pud, which is ever my weakness!
My melting chocolate heart cake made me wish for baking skills, but I can’t imagine ever being able to produce such an irresistible concoction. Fortunately, my sumptuous room with panoramic views across the parkland (you can still sense them, even in the dark) was only a stagger away. Bliss….
Rates
By The Luxury Channel
26th September 2014
For the past 26 years and perhaps longer, surfing aficionados from all over the world have been making the journey to the Indonesian island of Sumba to experience the left-hand wave at Nihiwatu, a magnificent surfing paradise. It was in 1988 that Claude and Petra Graves first arrived and painstakingly set about building a small resort with eleven keys. They continued to attract surfers, limiting the number to ten per day, giving the resort almost cult status and building a successful business that has garnered more than its fair share of awards from leading publications around the world.
The exotic, secluded resort is nestled upon 567 acres of land, only 65 acres of which are developed – and it is capped at that. Formerly a Dutch colony, Sumba is home to 650,000 residents and is categorized as a deciduous forest eco region due to its special flora and fauna, and Nihawatu features a spectacular 2.5 km of pristine beachfront.
Each suite at Nihiwatu has a dedicated butler – always at the ready with a smile to cater to guests’ every need in a charmingly unobtrusive way. They are part of the 300 terrific Sumbanese staff led by a hand-picked group of ex-pats who truly appreciate the culture and the island, who offer bespoke luxury service.
For authentic culinary excellence, Nihiwatu’s main restaurant, the Wavefront, has unparalleled views and a renowned executive chef Bernard who has a lot of experience in Asia. Guests can also eat at the Nio Beach BBQ or gather at the iconic Boathouse Bar where the beach fire pit invites inspired nightly discussions of the day’s activities. Resort rates include breakfast, lunch and dinner, and non-alcoholic beverages.
Nihiwatu features every form of water sport imaginable from surfing and snorkelling to scuba-diving and deep-sea fishing. Active pursuits on land range from trekking through the natural and unspoiled beauty of the landscape, to riding on Sumbanese horses (smaller than western horses but sturdy and ready for a canter on the beach), to yoga beside an enticing waterfall. Cooking classes are offered in the beach kitchen, perfectly positioned between the forest and the sea.
The next phase of the journey is in process, with plans to grow responsibly. Looking to take the resort to the next level, U.S. entrepreneur Chris Burch purchased Nihiwatu and, together with his Managing Partner James McBride (best known for his time at the Ritz Carlton Hotel Company, Rosewood Hotels & Resorts, and most recently as President of Malaysian hotel conglomerate YTL Hotels), set about transforming the property. Adding suites including a five bedroom master suite, four tree house apartments and additional rooms, the resort will grow to 32 spacious villas and a tree-house Jungle Spa by Spring 2015.
The deep-rooted commitment to give back will be maintained and all profits repatriated into the Sumba Foundation. The result? A unique collaboration between Nihiwatu and the local community that today co-exists with compelling interdependence: the resort has become the biggest employer on the island.
Additionally, in October, Nihawatu will launch its Guru Retreat programme. A Guru Village has been created that will accommodate up to twelve Gurus, each invited to stay between one week and one month, to share their passion and enhance the experience of guests. Nihiwatu is a place for life-changing and life-enhancing experiences and is the perfect intimate setting to discover and renew a sense of adventure. From adventurers redefining hiking trails, to world-class spear fishermen, to surfers who have broken boundaries; from photographers sharing their secrets or artists inspiring guests to paint – these Gurus will share their crowning creations.
So you no longer have to be a surfer to enjoy this resort (although it certainly enhances the experience). More important, however, is an appreciation of the Sumba Foundation that exists because of the generosity of hotel guests past and present, proving that in the hospitality industry at least, a responsible citizen can have a lasting effect when he puts his mind to it.
Traveling To Sumba
Sumba is an hour and 20 minutes by air from Bali, with several daily turbo prop flights to Sumba. Nihiwatu also organizes charter flights for guests that can be booked via their Bali office. For information, contact [email protected]
23rd June 2014
STAY – EAT – EXPLORE
Paris is a city of incomparable beauty and history, shaped by a tumultuous and glorious past reflected in its boulevards, palaces and the savoir-faire attitude of its inhabitants. Whether as a centre of education and culture, or the epicentre of fashion and gourmet decadence, Paris has something for everyone. The Luxury Channel (with a little help from the travel gurus at Parnassus Luxury Travel) explores the myriad of possibilities and reveals their essential high-end city guide to Paris:
WHERE TO STAY
Mandarin Oriental, Paris
You can’t beat the level of service (the staff are utterly charming) and the hotel’s exceptional city centre location. A relative newcomer to the scene, The Mandarin Oriental, Paris, opened its impressive and monumental doors in 2011. The hotel is located behind the Tuileries Gardens, on the fashionable Rue Saint-Honoré. A nod from the liveried doormen and you are beckoned through the dark marbled lobby into the light greenery of the central inner courtyard. A butterfly motif (that informs design throughout the hotel) weaves its way through the delicate trees and sculptures in the garden, creating intimate and inviting corners for guests to enjoy Bellinis or perhaps a cake from the Mandarin’s very own patisserie. It’s a real oasis amidst the hustle and bustle of the city and it’s this that gives the hotel such a special and intimate quality.
The rooms (with courtyard views) are some of the biggest in Paris with an elegant art deco theme, such as Man Ray prints on the walls and sumptuous velvet fabrics, as their interior inspiration. However, the magic is in the details – Frette sheets, Diptyque candles, Bang & Olufsen TVs and an iPad for every room that serve to make each room homely and spoiling. The spa area provides a perfect sanctuary, with a 15m pool surrounded by mosaics and a butterfly projection.
The cuisine is haute and seriously yummy – the restaurants, Camelia and Sur Mesure (the latter being the more formal of the two), are curated by two Michelin starred chef, Thierry Marx, with an emphasis on fresh, seasonal produce and a little bit of showmanship’s magic!
Address: 251 rue Saint-Honoré, 75001 Paris, France
Words and images by Rosalind Milani Gallieni
20th June 2014
Summer destinations of peace and quiet and away from the madding crowds are always a gem to find, and after a forty minute drive from Bari airport on the smooth new motorways which cut the sun-drenched landscape, we are greeted by a handsome smiling doorman, who emerges from his designer cream stone gatehouse to welcome us. Dressed in a crisp white polo shirt and pressed chinos, he hands us a bottle of local chilled water, and the gates behind us glide shut, in absolute silence.
An imposing cream stone courtyard, entirely built from soft tufo stone typical of Puglia, greets us. Fresh white potato vines in full bloom dangle from the architraves and lemon trees, and large sturdy storm lamps line the perimeter. The power of this main structure does not quite prepare you for the softly sophisticated, off-white, candle-lit lobby, infused in natural essential oils.
These first impressions of “arrival” have brought friends, celebrities and guests from all over the world back to the San Domenico Hotels time and time again, be it for holidays, weddings, private parties or for time for total seclusion. It is since 1996 that the Melpignano family (with Marisa Melpignano, the visionary and hands-on manager behind the projects), has been painstakingly creating this series of havens of perfection and tranquility, namely the Borgo Egnazia, and close by, the Masseria San Domenico and Masseria Cimino. Golf courses, beach clubs and high-profile spas in and around the properties all share this same common denominator of style and discretion for their high-profile international client base.
The Borgo Egnazia is a low-lying contemporary structure of rooms, swimming-pools, village houses, large private villas, courtyards, stables and even a church, which encompass three very distinct types of Puglia’s lifestyles designed by Pino Brescia, of Puglian descent. La Corte, the main hotel, has been created as the initial first section of this local experience, and a sophisticated concept has been rolled-out across the 63 guest rooms, which are immaculately designed and decorated with witty, unexpected and touching local elements, giving the rural life outside a twist of fashion appeal inside, drawing the interest of fashion designers, young executives, discerning business travellers, families and high-profile guests. Following the greige cushions lined up on the seating areas in the softly-lit niches along the lobby, the warren of cream-on-cream, high-ceilinged, stone corridors leads to white dining areas extending beyond.
All the highly appointed bedrooms in La Corte and its suites have their private balconies overlooking the secular olive trees on the estate, the soft turquoise swimming pools lined with white sun-loungers, and the entire Borgo with the Apulian mountain range and blue seas in the distance.
The Borgo itself is a village-style complex, again entirely of tufo stone, which has been used for the streets, the church tower, the central piazza and the restaurants within. Everything here has been created with families in mind, who can freely enjoy the safety of this resort, with its rustic, small town houses.
These chic yet cosy homes reflect the elements of daily farm life, and again, authentic traditional agricultural elements and tools from the farmers’ trade have been brought into the homes: iron bundles of wire used for the vines, agricultural digging and planting tools, jars and bottles for the preserves of sughi and olive oils, gardening utensils, twine, herbs and not least, an upturned chair in every home (a token to the local superstition that this would bring on the rain for the crops). Every imaginable item has its place in this charming décor. Comfort, service and hotel facilities have in no way been overlooked in these bijoux homes and luxury lives in total harmony with the soul of the country-side….and there is even a little bit of country-side outside every home in the way of a small private garden.
Stepping up the ante, on the fringe of the Borgo’s vast estate, lie the 29 independent villas, strewn around the edge like a strand of beautiful stones. Here styling and design is classic and of high definition, offering top comfort, total privacy in the walled gardens, and all the services of the hotel.
Residents have their own golf-caddy as a means of transport to and from their homes, and each villa boasts a breath-taking vista over the olive groves, the landscaped gardens, and further afield, the vegetable patches which serve the estate, the immaculate San Domenico golf course and the Mediterranean Sea. Of course, if one didn’t fancy the open seas, there is the comfort of one’s own pool to do the daily lengths in, in total privacy, without a crab in sight!
BORGO EGNAZIA – NOWHERE ELSE
La Masseria San Domenico – Fashion Grown Up
A ten minute drive away from Borgo Egnazia lies the Grand Dame of the Melpignano properties; a set of beautiful farmhouse buildings dating back to the 15th century, now all carefully restored. Immersed in natural beauty, we feel the power of the millenary olive groves, with tree trunks which would take at least two people to embrace. UNESCO has declared these trees a world heritage sight, and they share their accolade with the bright yellow, scented gauze bushes, jasmine corridors, rose gardens, wild rosemary borders and caper bushes that surround the Masseria.
The silence of the gardens and the elegance of the hotel is conducive to total relaxation and rest, yet the gardens and these landscape awaken the soul and the senses. Marisa Melpignano has been able to capture an atmosphere of history and comfort here, which is enjoyed by a very elegant, discerning and cultivated clientele, primarily couples, who come for both time-out and for therapeutic cures at the Spa & Talassotherapy on the property.
This travel destination, known for its award-winning wellbeing Spa, focuses again on only the very best treatments with a definitive, marked benefit to body and mind. Daily, or indeed weekly packages, are enhanced by a healthy Mediterranean diet of strictly locally-grown vegetables and olive oil, fresh fish and a burrata which (anyone would agree!) is second to none, in amongst the local cheeses.
The treatments, being created for a noticeable effect, are not for the faint-hearted, and a medical overview is de rigeur before embarking on energizing Aquagym classes, Kneipp routes, saunas, ThalgoJets, Thalatherm, Algotherapy and other à la carte treatments.
Marisa here again has focused on world-class standards in her wellness centre and spa, and she has trained the staff well over the years, some having been with her since day one, 18 years ago. All are through and through knowledgeable, informed, proficient, discreet and of course local, which has been an important entrepreneurial effort the region has enjoyed beyond what is the influx of international tourism.
CONTACT
16th June 2014
Claudia Cardinale
All eyes are on Sicily this week during one of Italy’s most historic and glamorous festivals, Taormina. At the festival’s opening on Saturday was Claudia Cardinale, the unforgettable actress who starred in The Leopard, filmed on Sicilian soil. Also arriving at the festival were Bo Derek, Melanie Griffith, Eva Longoria, Pamela Anderson and Paz Vega.
Pamela Anderson
The Taormina Film Festival has been hosted over the years by many stars of international cinema, including Elizabeth Taylor, Marlene Dietrich, Sophia Loren, Cary Grant, Robert De Niro, Marlon Brando, Charlton Heston, Audrey Hepburn, Gregory Peck and Tom Cruise, amongst others.
I was lucky enough to stay at two of Sicily’s finest hotels – Hotel Timeo and Villa Sant’Andrea, which are two of Hollywood’s A-listers’ favourite destinations.
THE GRAND HOTEL TIMEO
Adjacent to the ancient Greek Theatre, which was founded in the third century with Mount Etna as a backdrop, The Belmond Grand Hotel Timeo, set high in the hills, really has spectacular views over the Sicilian coastline. No doubt the stars of this week’s festival will be enjoying their champagne or Aperol spritz on the terrace before dining in their fine restaurant.
The English writer D.H. Lawrence stayed at the Grand Hotel Timeo, and was inspired by its view. It is said that he wrote Lady Chatterley’s Lover during his time in Taormina. I took my husband, and I can attest to the romance of the hotel.
The hotel consists of 140 units, rooms and suites. At the top of the hill, the presidential suite features two elegant bedrooms, a lounge and dining room, and a large terrace with a private jacuzzi.
Dining by candlelight, the hotel restaurant blends into the Sicilian hills, and the mixture of Sicilian and Mediterranean cuisine gives us a sense of why the famous come back time and again. The food is delicious and our highlights were thin sliced cod fish on watercress salad with olive capers and tomatoes (which was very refreshing) before having rack of lamb au gratin with sweet almonds. Both are utterly delicious.
My colleague tried eggplant gnocci with tomato and fresh oregano sauce, and Carnaroli rice with zucchini flowers, sea urchin eggs and goat ricotta cheese. I wasn’t sure about the sea urchin but apparently it was an exotic and mouthwatering dish!
Their speciality is “Razza Modicana,” thinly sliced grilled Sicilian beef served with a selection of sauces.
Our evening ended in the early hours when the piano player finished his finale of the evening – time to retire to its sister Hotel Villa Sant’Andrea, we thought!
VILLA SANT’ANDREA
I have stayed at many top hotels over the years and as one of Belmond’s sister hotels (The Splendido in Porto Fino) is one of my very favourites, I was expecting similar exemplary service. The Villa Sant’Andrea certainly did not disappoint.
Set on its own exclusive beach amongst subtropical gardens, it was built by an aristocratic family in 1830 and has retained all the charm of a private retreat. Red and white geraniums surround the entrance to the hotel and with a warm greeting from the staff, you really feel as though you have come home. The light marble white walls and fine arts give you a feeling of cool and simple elegance. This is not overbearing, but restful and calm. Remember to find Mario, who will give you the “insider’s track” on all the local happenings (and a little gossip besides!).
With the Grand Hotel Timeo a cable car ride up the hills and situated in the centre of town, the Villa Sant’Andrea is an escape away from the hustle and bustle. A honeymooners’ choice, I would say.
With romance their priority, they think of everything – a little Evian bottle to spray over you on the beach when the temperatures get too much and a bookmark when you doze off on the sun lounger by the heated pool if you prefer that to the sea. In their Wellness Centre, they even offer a Full Moon massage in an open air gazebo. Definitely for honeymooners!
I stayed in one of their recently opened suites, which was light and sophisticated, and whose turquoise ceramics set off the pool and clear blue sea below. The furnishings were cool marble, soft grey leather and contemporary art work. Cashmere blankets and linen sheets were definitely a plus compared to hotel sheets and duvets.
My favourite pastimes? Breakfast of eggs Benedict on the terrace overlooking the sea, a dip in the ocean followed by salade nicoise, enjoying a bottle of rose with my friends, an afternoon lazing on the sun bed, catch-up time with a book, cocktails on the hotel suite terrace before dressing for dinner, and taking the cable car into Taormina town. For those who need to explore, the Isola Bella Natural Reserve is perfect for snorkelling, and a boat ride on Mazzaro Bay can take you around the caves of the Grotta Azzurra of Sicily.
Frankly, I found little fault with Villa Sant’Andrea and for a touch of Sicilian history (Mafia included!) romance and utter tranquility, I would definitely recommend this hotel.
Drawbacks? Well, not many. The shopping, restaurants and nightlife are a taxi ride away but then, who needs any of that when you can just melt away to the sounds of the sea….?
CONTACT
By David Corke
9th June 2014
Italy is a place with much history, rich culture, and some of the most beautiful scenery imaginable. I couldn’t wait for the chance to see all of its beauty. The Baglioni Hotels Collection, known for having the unforgettable Italian touch, has much prestige and an undeniable reputation for all things luxury. I knew I’d be in great hands for what I knew would be a memorable trip.
As I travelled from the Regina Hotel Baglioni in Rome to my final stay at the Carlton Hotel Baglioni in Milan, there was a clear sense of genuine Italian hospitality that was weaved through each of the properties, creating an unforgettable experience. This is a 100% pure Italian brand. The company started 40 years ago in the Tuscan coast town of Punta Ala by the Polito family, so that family feeling is reflected in the employees, who evoke a genuine and welcoming hospitality. It’s no wonder that the minute you walk into any of the Baglioni Hotels, you feel like you’re walking into someone’s home,
albeit a particularly majestic one! There’s a sense of true elegance yet familial experiences at every touchpoint.
I do wish I had seen The Last Supper mural at the Museo Cenacolo Vinciano in Milan, though. It’s a tough ticket to get — you need to reserve at least a month before. However, you can work with the Concierge at the Carlton Hotel Baglioni in Milan to see if last minute arrangements can be made.
Everyone has a favorite Italian destination, and I’d have to say mine is Florence – the gateway to Tuscany.
The city is the perfect size, not too big or too small. You can explore all it has to offer in three or four days but still have so much more to see the next time. One of the most magical moments was when I climbed the steps to the top of the Duomo. I made it to the top of the dome just in time for sunset to experience the most amazing view over the city.
One of my favorite meals during the trip was when the concierge at the Luna Hotel Baglioni recommended a great restaurant that local Venetians enjoy. It’s called Osteria Enoteca San Marco, located down a quiet alleyway close to the San Marco Piazza. I started with rabbit fussili, then chopped liver with polenta and local vegetables for the main course. Then I washed it all down with a bottle of the most amazing local red wine. Salute!
The three words I would use to describe the Baglioni Hotels collection are genuine, sumptuous, and one-of-a-kind. I could use so many more words but I think these words really bring the brand to life. My experience with each of the Baglioni Hotels was truly incredible.
For more information, go to www.baglionihotels.com .
By Isabel Donnelly
28th May 2014
Having lived near Gibraltar for some years, it was a delight to hear that a ship has been docked in the harbour where you can eat gourmet food and drink cocktails on the top deck (Gibraltar has many restaurants, but none that are Michelin standard).
The Sunborn Gibraltar is a 147 metre long floating luxury yacht hotel – a first for Gibraltar, and a totally new concept. Spread over seven decks, the ship has been designed in a very modern, minimalist style. The owners are from Finland and this is portrayed in the design throughout the ship. Sunborn was created to offer destinations with limited development space an additional luxury hotel. Designed to meet very high environmental EU standards as a European Green Building, on-board the yacht features innovative, eco-friendly technology, and will not be using engines or generators while in mooring. As movable properties, yacht hotels can be located in protected locations, both natural and historic (such as Gibraltar), where they have the advantage of leaving no environmental footprint after removal.
Arriving on board the Sunborn Gibraltar, there is the grand entrance, with a large chandelier being the central feature. A team of enthusiastic staff are there to greet you. Down one deck is the ballroom, perfect for corporate entertainment or parties. The suites are spacious and each has its own large terrace – ideal for a drinks party. The standard bedrooms are a smaller version, but with a balcony terrace. All have marble bathrooms. They also have the phone programmed for lighting effects and electric blinds. No more information in a pack – it’s all very state-of-the-art here! Plus floor to ceiling windows throughout the yacht allow for stunning views across the straits to the tip of North Africa.
The main restaurant, with over thirty chefs in the kitchen, is on the top deck with views of nearby Spain. The food is international cuisine and was perfect for the lunch we were having – pea soup and salmon in tzatsiki for starters, and sea bream on a bed of cauliflower with polenta and mushroom risotto for the main course. Our mint tea was made with fresh mint – a real plus! – and the service was friendly and efficient.
A soft opening is in the pipeline and many projects are still to be completed, such as the linen restaurant, the spa and the gym. On our visit, there were many artisans at work completing decks and fitting out bedrooms and the casino. The casino tables will have a minimum chip, which will be attractive to poker players around Gibraltar and the Costa del Sol, as well as to those from further afield.
I look forward to returning when the ship has been completed and is full of the buzz of guests. This will be the perfect choice for corporate types and companies for board meetings, conferences and entertaining but, better still, will be a great place to hang when you have downtime in Gibraltar.
By Caroline Phillips
23rd May 2014
After years of being so-so, Cliveden – the stateliest of stately home hotels – now deserves a trillion regal curtsies. Prepare ye for a (rare) eulogy – because the hotel’s new leaseholders, the Livingstone brothers, have been making changes with oodles of fairy dust, cash and sophisticated taste, and they have pulled not so much a rabbit out of a hat as a voluptuous grande dame dressed in fashionable finery.
The newly refurbished East Wing – the first stage of restoration of the principal bedrooms – has just opened (in April). It’s gaspingly gorgeous in a silk and hand-painted-wallpaper type of way. Plus, chef André Garrett (formerly head chef at Galvin at Windows) recently started cooking up a classical French storm for his sublime, eponymous restaurant here. The dining area has been moved from the (dingy) basement to the ground floor, now giving breathtaking views over the Parterre. Even the staff have morphed into perfect prototypes – friendly, super-attentive and solicitous without being unctuous or heel-clicking.
Let’s wind back. Some things stay the same. Like entering Cliveden – set in 376 National Trust-owned acres and with 21,000 tulips in its Walled Garden – and driving excitedly past the 19th century shell fountain, called the Fountain of Love, and catching my breath at the sight of Cliveden, the Victorian Italianate mansion where Palladian meets Cinquecento (this in Taplow, Buckinghamshire?), before clocking its clock tower – actually a water tower – in all its Victorian showiness, flamboyance and oomph. Then entering the Great Hall, with its oak paneling, ginormous 16th century carved fireplace, portrait of Nancy Astor by Sargent, 18th century Belgian tapestries and suits of armour.
For more than three centuries, Cliveden has been home to English nobility, and past guests include Charlie Chaplin, Winston Churchill and George Bernard Shaw, and every king and queen since George I. It’s where John Profumo, then secretary of state for war, famously met Christine Keeler, a party girl who was involved with a Soviet naval attaché – leading explosively to the Profumo Affair.
In the Roaring Twenties, you’d have needed a personal invitation from Lady Astor to stay here; now you just need a few hundred quid. Or £1,572 per night for Lady Astor’s former bedroom – a suite with enough space to swing 60 wedding guests (or hundreds of cats). Ah yes, the suites – ‘Garibaldi’ and ‘Mountbatten’ and the like, named after those who slept there before me. The décor is by Mario Nicolaou, each in a different style with layerings of beautiful fabrics, delicate and intricate trimmings, eclectic furnishings, antiques and artworks.
The Chinese suite with Nancy Astor’s fireplace, its luxurious wallpaper, scintillating sun, yolk and sand colours suffused with light, and its four-poster dressed so well she could go to a ball, is exquisite. Then there’s the Mountbatten suite – an erstwhile billiards room – with acres of deep oak panelling, gentlemen’s club vibe and rich greens. Plus Spring Cottage – a summer house built to entertain Queen Victoria and with bespoke stone steps to a landing stage on the Thames – peaceful with its sea blues, mustards and sage fabrics midst the bluebell woods and fields of daffs.
And what of the master chef, André Garrett? He’s clearly en route to a Michelin star or ten. His technique is faultless. His combination of flavours, textures and temperatures is magical – it’s complex, multi-layered, imaginative cooking with an incredible lightness of touch. He whirls up a tantalising tartare of hand-dived Orkney scallops with black radish, smoked eel beignets, cod roe and English caviar; a beautiful ballotine of foie gras and Cotswold white chicken, Cumbrian ham and salt-baked celeriac, golden raisins, hazelnuts; and sweetest of Scottish langoustine thermidor with grilled baby gem; all followed by slow-cooked Cox apple, rosemary caramel, raisin puree, beure noisette crumb, walnut ice-cream – a menu so delicious I want to eat it. (The menu, that is.)
Is anything wrong with the place? The wonderful Twenties outdoor swimming pool is still there – built to stop Nancy Astor swimming in the Thames – but it hasn’t benefited aesthetically from the recent addition of two wooden hot tubs beside it. The Spa needs a major face-lift, if not radical surgery – but that is planned. Word is they’re going to refurbish the Club Room restaurant in the former stable block, but I hope they don’t – it’s kitsch and delightfully eccentric. Finally, I find myself praying for plagues of locusts and hail, but that’s only because I’m enough of a fantasist to want to keep National Trust day trippers out of ‘‘my’’ Cliveden garden.
This is me looking to find fault. Really, Cliveden is Sophisticate Central. There’s everything – and more – for the discerning traveller. The hotel’s motto is apposite: nothing ordinary ever happened here, nor could it.
By Mário de Castro
17th March 2014
Don’t worry about hotels anymore – the latest travel trend is to just embrace La Dolce Vita of home exchanging. We spoke to HomeExchange.com ‘s new Chief Operating Officer, Jim Pickell, for some advice.
From Sony to OpenEnglish and now HomeExchange – what made you leave a major, universally known company to become an entrepreneur?
I’ve always thought of myself as an entrepreneur. I left Sony in 2007, after seven years. I was ultimately responsible for the digital distribution of film, music and eBooks. This was an exciting time as the traditional means of distributing physical products was being fundamentally transformed, and I am proud of what we accomplished during that period. While at Sony, I found the evolution of Apple’s educational content offering via ITunes University to be compelling. Using a personalised platform that would offer online English learning presented an exciting opportunity. My wife was born in Italy and learned English the old fashion way – by watching television. That’s where the concept was born. Making learning entertaining and accessible with personalised edu-tainment. OpenEnglish now has over 2000 employees.
Ironically, home exchanging is how I met Ed Kushins. I realized the most effective way to relocate my family for a short period was with an exchange. I sent an inquiry to Ed through HomeExchange.com, not realising that he was the CEO! While the exchange with Ed didn’t pan out, we got together and realised we shared a vision for the concept. My wife ended up giving birth to our child while on my first exchange so it certainly has had an influence on our family in more ways than one.
With your background as a digital business expert, do you think technology will allow pure players such as HomeExchange to revolutionize the travel industry?
I recently read that more than 10% of weddings in the United States were initiated on dating websites. Services like this have changed the way we make one of the most important decisions in our lives. With home exchanging, you’re trying to find a perfect “match.” The cost of a mistake can be high and establishing the trust of the intermediary is critical – and yet we’re getting far more sophisticated at suggesting prospective matches. HomeExchange now has members in 150 countries and supports 16 languages. This is a trend that I certainly don’t see ending anytime soon.
Is HomeExchange a player in the sharing economy, and how?
Well, HomeExchange has been a leader of the sharing economy before anyone called it the “sharing economy.” Our CEO Ed started the company over twenty years ago. Homes are the largest personal asset class in the world. With a home exchange, you release value that’s otherwise constrained. This is increasingly important, as homes are not always the piggy bank we thought.
What are some of your favourite places to visit, or ways to use HomeExchange?
In the past two years, we’ve arranged about six trades. All of them had unique motivations and have facilitated friendships I expect will be life-long. For example, my four year old son is just learning to ski. I was shocked how expensive the sport has become to learn. We have a second home in Baja in Mexico and worked out an ideal situation with the owners of a beautiful, four bedroom family home in Mammoth Mountain in California. In fact, this week the owners are staying in our primary residence in Newport Beach while we’re at our second home. This is a prime example of how these relationships can evolve if you’re a bit creative.
We’ve also exchanged with Palm Desert, California. This is a great weekend escape for us and we expect to repeat this. We love Hawaii and traded last year with professional chefs in Kauii (what a tremendous kitchen!). We spent a month last summer in Sardinia, off the coast of Italy. One of the owners was having some health issues before our trip and couldn’t come to the U.S. when the exchange was scheduled. Instead of cancelling, they rented a home for us down the street. It was certainly over and above what we expected. Our families spent much of our month together and we saw what living in Sardinia would be like. This Christmas, we received five pounds of fresh salmon in the mail from an owner of another swap we arranged in Alaska, even though we’ve yet to make our trip! The generosity of exchangers never ceases to amaze me.
The key today lies in the internet, which mixes our dynamics and sense of adventure, bringing out the flexibility of work and life. We all use technology to our advantage in our contemporary lifestyles, and in fact, we have just recently seen the launch of an all-new Definitive Guide to HomeExchanging , created as an E-guide by global travellers Chris and Hannah. They are long-standing home-exchangers, and I feel they depict how the new world is developing, allowing work, family, freedom and travel to co-exist.
We typically take a number of local trips every year and one larger trip. I can work while I travel, so pretty much anywhere that has the internet is on our list. Our next exchange is to the San Juan Islands off the state of Washington in the U.S. As a sailor and someone that loves the outdoors, this has always been the top of my list. In the future, we have plans to visit Vietnam and Tahiti as well.
Words and images by Rosalind Milani Gallieni
28th January 2014
A warm, balmy weekend away can quickly fix your spirits and lift the winter mood. Marrakech is the destination where spring and summer come to mind all year round, and knowing these prospects are under four hours’ flight from London is like knowing you are going to be given your favourite treat as a child.
Arriving in the main square of Jemaa el Fna, you realise that too much is still not enough! A fully-fledged expanse of people, animals and activities stretch out before you, and as once upon a time, it all still creates an incredible tapestry of life. The 11th century Minaret still watches over you, as you make your way through fortune-tellers, snake-charmers, orange-juice stalls, hat sellers, determined henna painters, berbers and their (undernourished yet placid) donkey-drawn carts, sword-swallowers, birds of prey, monkeys, kids, mothers and men.
We head on through this sight of living history, enjoying the colours and the sun setting beyond the roof tops, where you can just see the silhouettes of the visitors gathered to watch this live show from the top terraces, sipping an all-too-sweet mint tea made from dark leaves which have seen many a mash! Hassan, our taxi driver, pops out from one of the side streets into the square and collects us to take us to the Riad Farnatchi, which I had insisted on finding on my own without the GPS….but the prospect did not please him, and spending the next 1/2 hour circumnavigating the souk and the outskirts was far more interesting, and less stressful. His vintage 1973 Mercedes Benz, with its zealously polished dashboard with glued-on ashtray (so well-polished the corners have worn out), floats down the narrow lanes. Scooters miss us by a whisker and busy stall holders don’t bat an eyelid as they pack and wrap their customers’ figs and nuts. This is where the true treasures and experiences of Marrakech lie.
Once stopped at a local stall holder, Hassan opens the car doors. We later find out he is one of the best craftsmen around and has in fact built all the four-poster beds we have been sleeping in at Marja’s home. Our great friend and interiors designer in Marrakech, she has created many a home and elegant Zen interior for the English-owner riads dotted outside the main town.
Marja joins us to introduce us to the bearded carpenter, and we marvel that such large beds, cupboards and tables, such superb handy-work, can come from this small worktop, the size of a school desk. His tools are his wealth and they show the years of hardship and passion.
A lad on a bicycle with a cage strapped to his bike then hustles to take our suitcases and before we know it, he is off, somehow knowing where we are due to be resting our heads. If Hassan weren’t here with Marja, directing what resembles a movie set, it would be a different day!
We follow the top of the lad’s head beetling along behind him, down the orange, terracotta alleyways. Kids no more than seven years old are jumping over roaring fires in the middle of the streets, defying the lick of the huge, angry flames; Marja tells us that today is a the Festival of Children, which might appear as a good explanation for this incredibly dangerous game, accompanied by the roar of flares and rockets going off, but they are having the time of their lives.
Through one more archway, dodging a few murky puddles, and a right turn past an alluring store selling striped Hamman towels, contemporary design kilims and old silk carpets, we spot the landmark: the sentinels’ sentry post smartly painted in English gloss paint. The suitcases have been delivered and the Souk-courier tipped. The unbranded, simple front door of the Riad Farnatchi swings open, and to our surprise, we are in peace and quiet in the courtyard of the Wix’s first Raid, with its gentle trickle of water coming from the tap which keeps a green-tiled swimming pool full to the brim.
James – elegant, British and incredibly hospitable, still bearing all the impeccable traits of his career at Jonny Roxbrough’s Admirable Crichton – takes us through the cool, tranquil corridors of his properties, explaining how the family have now taken on five adjoining Riads, and have two more they plan on developing into a Hamman and a restaurant.
This cluster of compact townhouses at Farnatchi boasts individuality in every room, and the suites have their own front doors off the first floor balconies, allowing the real experience of sitting on your own private internal courtyard, dripping with scented jasmine. The Berber-inspired suite is both local and homely, with large red sofas ready to catch you after the hurdles of the Souk, and a fireplace ready to stoke if needs be, for an (unexpectedly) chillier winter visit. Local Moroccan-style doorways and filigree work in the walls and door frames have been painstakingly kept intact.
Beyond the decorative ironwork on the windows, the bright blue sky expands above the roof tops. Waking up to this colour is an instant fix first thing in the morning, accompanied by unfamiliar African birdsong. That same bird lures you up an old circular staircase to the roof top, where a most breathtaking view expands 360 degrees across the Souk, new developments with angled cranes, and beyond as far as the Atlas mountains. Cool curtains sway in the breeze up top and breakfast is served from a black Targine set, revealing local breads, fresh homemade jams and yoghurts, local fruit, and a tremendous pot of fresh coffee.
The waiting staff are on hand 24/7 but not readily visible, making you feel quite at home whether you want to sit, read, snooze or entertain. James tells us how the Riad is currently preparing for an entirely private hire for one of his guests, who has returned every year. This year though, he is bringing 30 of his nearest and dearest for a weekend birthday party, with a differently themed evening at the Farnatchi every night. James has an incredible knowledge of Morocco having spent many years here with his father and British hotelier Jonathan Wix, managing both the hotel and its international guests and celebrities such as Russell Crowe, Scarlett Johansson, Angelina Jolie….to name a few. On our second day, James steers us to the Beldi Country Club. He recommends a day is allocated to this, with the evening flight back to London at 8pm. We wander mainly in the warm, scented Hamman, a very traditional and restful space, heady with essences of rosemary, roses and lavender.
The Hamman & Beldi Gommage, lying on the warm grey polished marble, is the best ever, and afterwards we hovered out of the Hamman, floating along the lavender-lined pathways and olive groves, to the pool-side lunch table. Nature and local culture rule here. The rose gardens grow in full bloom, in wild and unkempt beauty, and the extensive “village” of Beldi now also has 27 hotel rooms dotted off the narrow olive-tree lanes running through tall grass verges. There are several splendid pools to enjoy with tables and loungers always nearby, two good restaurants and small workshops housing local craftsmen who make carpets, rugs, pottery, glassware, hand-embroidered linen and essential oils.
It’s a more distinguished Souk-style experience at Beldi, comparing the streets of the Medina leading to the Riad Farnatchi, owner and manager Géraldine tells me, walking through her blend of botanical wonderland and eco-minded retreat, and the balance between city and country could not be better matched than with these two locations. I realised, when I queued for the flight back to rainy London, that I had truly had a very exceptional weekend. I now wait for a “feasible” amount of time to pass, before needing another gommage.
20th November 2013
Image courtesy of Emily Mott
This calls for some scene-setting. High above the beaches of Malibu, we unsaddle our horses and return them to a corral. It is just behind the ravishing holiday home my wife found on HomeExchange.com , a home-swapping website. Ironically, we ride every day 6,000 miles away from here in the Yorkshire Dales but on an exotic break in California – traded for a week in Wensleydale – it is a delight, not a chore.
For an extra-special holiday without breaking the budget, swapping your home, car and fridge contents – and maybe even your horse! – with someone else’s somewhere glitzy was irresistible. No money changes hands, so the only fly in the ointment is finding the airfare. To make it work, you must live in a place a visitor will enjoy or you may struggle to find a taker. Are your vegetables award-winning, is the local beer famous, your local town historic or nearest theatre and seaside not too far away?
While our five-bedroom former farmhouse is on the weary side of rustic, it is a family home with bags of character. In an accessible village on the edge of grouse moor, it is close to country pubs, is criss-crossed with excellent walks and the ravishing local scenery has featured in screen and TV adaptations of All Creatures Great And Small, Heartbeat and Wuthering Heights. This makes it a sure-fire hit, particularly with Americans, which is why our no-nonsense hosts Nick and Penny Rhodes warmed to us online.
On the website, their Malibu home has a Gold listing to underline its stellar ambience. In going for Gold – for a higher annual fee of US$500 rather than the basic US$120 – you have exclusive access to 700 other Gold members in 60 countries. Rather pretentiously, it is where we listed our place with photographs of our two girls on a pony in the kitchen. “That’s what did it for us – we love that sort of thing,” enthuses Penny, who has lived in Los Angeles for 24 years with her TV producer husband.
Although sixty five per cent of swaps are simultaneous, Nick and Penny will not descend on Yorkshire until later this year. This meant that they welcomed us before moving out for a week.
It was the romantic comedy The Holiday – released in 2006 – that first caught their imagination. In the movie, two characters – played by Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz – meet online and exchange homes in the Cotswolds and Beverly Hills. “The women hook-up on the actual HomeExchange website,” begins Nick. “The concept appealed to us as we’re big travellers. We’d often leave our place empty for two to three weeks at a time and then pay to stay in a hotel in two rooms or a suite, so it got us thinking. While there are fixed costs in running your home whether you’re there or not, we now recoup the listing fees with our first night’s stay.”
Good-natured, polite and hospitable, they have exchanged homes in Copenhagen and Dublin. “There was a piano in the house in Dublin and we played at least an hour a day,” says Penny. In exchange, “our housekeeper is available if you would like and we leave a folder of restaurants. Everyone serves as a concierge for each other. I love the barter system – it’s a like a sweet exchange of goodness,” she says. “We scarcely even tidy up before we move out, rather we just clear some space,” laughs the mum of eleven year old twins, Dusty and Jade. “The last family staying here found an I-Pod, which we’d lost months ago.”
Image courtesy of Emily Mott
They bought their home 12 years ago. A Mediterranean villa with no corners, it is a stunning house on two levels that is always on the curve. It sits on a hill top 550ft above the bay where you can’t miss the anchored super-yacht owned by multi-billionaire, Larry Ellison. While it is warm at 25 degrees, it feels airy and there is no need for air-conditioning. Alfresco eating is encouraged with several outdoor hearths, ovens and barbeques to choose from when we stock the fridge.
Image courtesy of Emily Mott
The ground floor opens onto an outdoor pool with the sloping terraces of the surrounding gardens garlanded in a covering of drought-loving lantana and rosemary, and an orange grove that fruits twice a year. Upstairs, the master bedroom’s wide balcony looks down onto an unheated outdoor pool, which is warmer than the river we swim in at home.
Image courtesy of Emily Mott
The panorama inland is breathtaking with the Los Flores canyon in the near distance and high peaks beyond. “The entire mountain range is protected and is criss-crossed with hiking, biking and riding trails. Much of it belonged to actors Barbara Streisand and Jack Carson, who gave vast tracts of it away,” says Nick.
It takes just 15 minutes to drive to the beaches where you can learn to surf, body-board or simply swim or eat at an ocean-front restaurant. To see the famous sights in Los Angeles requires determination and takes 45 minutes when the traffic on the freeway into town is heaviest. It is worth it. Taking our life in our hands in a borrowed car, Penny sends us for a full-body exfoliation at Wi Spa , a Korean massage studio on Wilshire Boulevard before supper in The Parish in Spring Street, the latest take on an English gastro-pub.
Later in the week, we make it to Sunset Boulevard for lunch at Chateau Marmont , the Hollywood A-listers’ favourite hotel, where we meet Ed Kushins, the founder of HomeExchange.com, which is based in LA.
Ed Kushins, Founder of HomeExchange
Image courtesy of Emily Mott
“When I started the business in 1992, trading homes wasn’t new but this was in a pre-internet age,” says Kushins, who lives on Hermosa Beach. “I’d just got divorced. I took my children on an exchange to Washington DC to a place with a pool. I was impressed.” With a background in marketing, he invested $40,000 and soon had his own business with 100 listings at $40 each, all of them in US. Then in 1994, the web changed everything and he launched the first online directory.
“It’s like internet dating,” he says. “For a first-timer, there is a little apprehension but it soon fades because you can verify the home and the owners with real-time videos and Skype. Most ask others what they think of a place and referrals are now the way many members decide.”
Image courtesy of Emily Mott
He admits that The Holiday was a public relations masterstroke; with the subsequent media coverage, subscribers leapt from 6,000 to 15,000 – many of them overseas. He now has 46,000 subscribers in 152 countries (2,500 of them in Britain), and there were 1.1 million enquiries in 2012, resulting in 75,000 swaps. “Exchanging homes can change your life,” he beams. “Some of our members are lucky enough to retire at 55 – since then, they’ve been using HomeExchange as a way to travel the world virtually for free.” If only!
For a house swap and to live like a local, visit www.homeexchange.com . For LA tourist information, visit www.discoverLosAngeles.com .
9th October 2013
Gateway at Angkor Thom
Global Heritage Fund is a not-for-profit organisation, whose mission is to protect, preserve and sustain the most significant and endangered cultural heritage sites in the developing world. Through forming new alliances, establishing partnerships and building a network of conservation and development leaders, Global Heritage Fund is providing projects with new ideas, resources and supporters that will exponentially benefit these sites and build momentum for our global campaign to save vanishing heritage sites in developing regions. Global Heritage Fund is organising a tour to Cambodia in November, the details of which are below:
NOVEMBER 9TH: ARRIVAL IN PHNOM PENH
Arrival in Phnom Penh, then transfer to Raffles Hotel Le Royal, where the group will be joined by John Sanday OBE, Global Heritage Fund’s Regional Director for the Asia and Pacific region, who will be our guide during our visit to Cambodia. Early arrivals can enjoy a tour of the colonial highlights of Phom Penh or relax at the pool. In the afternoon, enjoy a sunset boat cruise along Mekong River, providing a picturesque view of the Royal Palace, the National Museum, and bustling riverfront of Phnom Penh. Accommodation is at Raffles Hotel Le Royal (Landmark Room) in Phnom Penh.
Our guide John Sanday OBE with a Garuda at Preah Khan, Angkor
NOVEMBER 10TH: PHNOM PENH
Visit to the National Museum: The morning begins with a visit to the National Museum; The museum houses one of the world’s largest collections of Khmer Art, including sculptural, ceramics, bronzes, and ethnographic objects. The Museum’s collection includes over 14,000 items, from prehistoric times to periods before, during, and after the Khmer Empire.
The Royal Palace in Phnom Penh
Visit to the Royal Palace: The Royal Palace in Phnom Penh was constructed over a century ago to serve as the residence of the King of Cambodia, his family and foreign dignitaries, and as a venue for the performance of court ceremony and ritual. It serves to this day as the official residence of HM King Norodom Sihamoni. Among the highlights of this working Royal Palace are the Throne Hall and a cast iron pavilion donated by Napoleon III.
Visit to the Silver Pagoda: The Silver Pagoda’s proper name is Wat Preah Keo Morokat, which means “The Temple of the Emerald Buddha,” but has received the common moniker Silver Pagoda after the solid silver floor tiles that adorn the temple building.
Wall mural at the Silver Pagoda in Phnom Penh
Visit to Toul Sleng Genocide Museum: Formerly a high school, the complex known as Toul Sleng, was converted into a prison, interrogation and torture facility by the Khmer Rouge in 1975. Known simply as S-21, from 1975-1979 the prison processed and sent to execution over 17,000 people. Left largely in the condition it was found in 1979, the Tuol Sleng compound now serves as a museum, a memorial and a testament to the horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime. It is an important site for understanding the history of modern Cambodia.
Accommodation is at Raffles Hotel Le Royal (Landmark Room) in Phnom Penh.
NOVEMBER 11TH: FLIGHT FROM PHNOM PENH TO SIEM REAP
Transfer to airport for your flight to Siem Reap, where we will be greeted by John Sanday’s old friend and renowned expert on Angkor, Sokhon Yeang, “Mr. Khon”, who will be our official guide during our visit to Angkor. The visit begins in the afternoon with a guided tour of the temple complexes of Ta Som, Neak Pean, and Preah Khan.
Dancer at Preah Khan
Visit to Ta Som: Among the smallest temples of Angkor, Ta Som was built at the end of the 12th century for King Jayavarman VII. The King dedicated the temple to his father, Dharanindravarman II, who was King of the Khmer Empire from 1150 to 1160. The temple consists of a single shrine located on one level and surrounded by an enclosure of laterite walls.
Visit to Neak Pean: One of the most unique and beautiful designs of all Khmer architecture, Neak Pean, or the “Coiled Serpents,” is a small temple, which served as a ritual bathing place for pilgrims. Seemingly rising from a lotus, which is floating on a pond and guarded by giant serpents, its design, layout and decoration is rich in symbolism recalling Buddhist mythology.
Gate at Preah Khan, Angkor
Visit to Preah Khan: Built in the 12th century for King Jayavarman VII, Preak Khan, the “Sacred Sword,” was among Angkor’s most active and complex religious sites populated by almost 100,000 officials, dancers, teachers and servants. The temple’s sacred plan, with its successive rectangular galleries around a Buddhist sanctuary orbited by a series of Hindu satellite temples, contains a spectacular array of Khmer sculpture and unique architectural forms.
Accommodation is as Raffles Grand Hotel d’ Angkor (Landmark Room) in Siem Reap.
Face Tower at Banteay Chhmar
NOVEMBER 12TH: OVERLAND SIEM REAP TO BANTEAY CHHMAR
This morning, we will take an overland transfer to Banteay Chhmar. Lunch will served at the GHF House in Banteay Chhmar – a typical Khmer lunch of local vegetables from the market and fish home cooked by Sun, who has been John Sanday’s cook since 1992.
Banteay Chhmar
Visit to Banteay Chhmar: This afternoon, we will visit the Banteay Chhmar temple. John Sanday OBE, Regional Director of the Global Heritage Fund Asia and Pacific will lead the tour and will explain the interesting history of Banteay Chhmar and its relationship to Angkor. He will give you an insight into the GHF project at the site, including the moving, repairing and conserving of the massive stone blocks and the principles and philosophy of conserving and presenting such a site the size of Banteay Chhmar. He and his team will demonstrate many of he innovative techniques being used at the site, including the development of a means of recording the structures using a 3D digital scanning program, which is currently under research.
Porch of a traditional guesthouse in Banteay Chhmar
Dinner will be a banquet under the stars, which will be prepared by Sun and her team, following a musical performance with drinks at the temple site. The accommodation available in Banteay Chhmar will be in simple traditional houses involved in the local home stay program. The rooms are spartan, clean, and there are newly installed showers and toilet facilities. The local Community Based Tourism Project (CBT) hosts the program, which is an important aspect of the GHF’s community development work at Banteay Chhmar.
Community-Based Tourism Sign
NOVEMBER 13TH: BANTEAY CHHMAR TO PREAH VIHEAR
Visit to The Community-Based Tourism Programme and The Silk Weaving Center: The Community-Based Tourism Programme is a vital part of Global Heritage Fund’s community development program at Banteay Chhmar. Tourism is an excellent long-term, sustainable and low-impact way to improve the livelihoods of the community. The GHF, through its support of the CBT, is helping to protect the cultural heritage and environment, as well as increase income for villagers through tourism activities – home stays, tour guides, cooks and other activities. Another important community development project is The Silk Center, which has been training young Cambodian women in the art of silk weaving since 2001. Today, about a hundred people are actively contributing to the creation of Soieries du Mékong’s collections: weavers, seamstresses, embroiderers, and dyers. All creations are entirely handcrafted and reflect the talents of the local Khmer women. This afternoon, we will drive to Saem Village, via Anglong Veng. Dinner will then be served at Boutique Hotel Preah Vihear Boutique Hotel, where we will be staying the night
NOVEMBER 14TH: PRASAT PREAH VIHEAR
Visit to Preah Vihear Temple: an ancient temple built during the reign of Khmer Empire, situated atop a 525 metre (1,722 ft) cliff in the Dângrêk Mountains, in the Preah Vihear province. Affording a spectacular view of the plains across the border in Thailand, Prasat Preah Vihear has the most amazing setting of all the temples built during the six century-long Khmer Empire. As a key edifice of the empire’s spiritual life, it was supported and modified by successive kings and so bears elements of several architectural styles. Preah Vihear is unusual among Khmer temples in being constructed along a long north-south axis, rather than having the conventional rectangular plan with orientation toward the east. The temple gives its name to Cambodia’s Preah Vihear province, in which it is now located, as well as the Khao Phra Wihan National Park which borders it in Thailand’s Sisaket province and through which the temple is most easily accessible. On July 7, 2008, Preah Vihear was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Tonight we will be staying in one of the hotels in the town of Tbeng Meancheay.
Khmer carvings at Angkor
NOVEMBER 15TH: KOH KER AND BENG MEALEA
Visit to Koh Ker: Under the reign of the kings Jayavarman IV and Harshavarman II, Koh Ker was briefly the capital of the Khmer empire (928–944 AD). Jayavarman IV undertook an ambitious building program, which included the construction of about forty temples and an enormous baray (water-tank). Unparalleled is the seven‑tiered pyramid, which at 36 metres (118 ft) high, probably served as the state temple of Jayavarman IV.
Visit to Beng Mealea: The “Lotus Pond” Temple from the early 11th Century built by Suryavarman II was built as a Hindu temple, but there are some carvings depicting Buddhist motifs as well. Its primary material is sandstone and it is largely unrestored, with trees and thick brush thriving amidst its towers and courtyards, and many of its stones lying in great heaps.
Accommodation is at Raffles Grand Hotel d’ Angkor (Landmark Room) in Siem Reap.
Bas Relief of Battle Elephant at Angkor Wat
NOVEMBER 16TH: ANGKOR, BANTEAY SREI AND BANTEAY SAMRE
Visit to Angkor Wat: The largest temple in the world, with a volume of stone equaling that of the Cheops pyramid in Egypt, Angkor Wat is unlike all the other Khmer temples in that it faces west, and is inspired by 12th century Hinduism. Its symmetrical towers are stylized on the modern Cambodian flag. Conceived by Suryavarman II, Angkor Wat took an estimated 30 years to build. It is generally believed to have been a funeral temple for the king. It has been occupied continuously by Buddhist monks and is well preserved. Intricate bas-reliefs surround Angkor Wat on four sides. Each tells a story. The most celebrated of these is the Churning of the Ocean of Milk, which is located on the east wing. In it, the Naga serpent is twisted by demons and gods to spurt out the elixir of life.
Doorway at Banteay Srei
Visit to Banteay Srei: This afternoon, you drive to Banteay Srei, the citadel of women – a tiny, enchanting temple, which is one of the jewels in this remarkable city. Built of red sandstone in the tenth century and dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva, the carved male and female figures in the niches are exquisitely executed in both style and proportion. This is the most Indian of all the temples in Angkor and in the words of H.W. Ponder, is a fairy palace in the heart of an immense and mysterious forest. The quality of the stone carvings are exceptional – a factor which has made the temple extremely popular with tourists, and has led to its being widely praised as the “jewel of Khmer art.”
Banteay Samre
Visit to Banteay Samre: This is on the road back to Angkor, located east of the East Baray. Built under Suryavarman II and Yasovarman II in the early 12th century, it is a Hindu temple in the Angkor Wat style and one of the most complete temple complexes. It also has a paved moat, a unique feature among Angkor’s temples. We will then go to Abacus Restaurant for our farewell banquet.
Accommodation is at Raffles Grand Hotel d’ Angkor (Landmark Room) in Siem Reap.
Demons of The Causeway at Angkor Thom
NOVEMBER 17TH: SIEM REAP DEPARTURE
Visit to Angkor Thom: King Jayavarman VII established the last and most enduring capital city of the Khmer Empire, Angkor Thom or the “Great City,” in the late twelfth century. It covers an area of 9 km², within which are located several of Angkor’s greatest monuments from earlier eras, as well as those established by Jayavarman and his successors. At the centre of the city is Jayavarman’s state temple, the great Bayon, with the other major sites clustered around the Victory Square immediately to the north.
Visit to the Terrace of the Leper King: Faced with dramatic base-reliefs, the Terrace of the Leper King is so called after the naked statue of the Hindu god Yama, the god of death, a fifteenth century creation which, when discovered at the site, was discolored and covered with moss resembling leprosy.
Carving at Banteay Srei
Visit to the Terrace of the Elephants: With three main platforms, which are believed to have held three wooden pavilions, the Terrace of the Elephants is best known for its near life-size depictions in stone of elephants and their riders. Engaged in a hunt, the elephants are seen to use their trunks to fight against tigers, which furiously claw at them.
Visit to The Bayon: Built in the late 12th century or early 13th century as the official state temple of the King Jayavarman VII, the Bayon stands at the centre of Angkor Thom. The Bayon’s most distinctive feature is the multitude of massive stone faces on the many towers, which jut out from the upper terrace and cluster around its central peak.
Transfer to the airport.
The total price per person (without flights) is US $ 3470 / UK £ 2227. For further information, please contact Cathy Giangrande at [email protected]
or on +44 (0)7789 991 411, or visit www.globalheritagefund.org .
Interview by Fiona Sanderson and words by Hannah Norman
7th October 2013
“Squatters’ rights!” laughs Jose Koechlin when describing how he came to acquire the land for his hotels in Peru. “When we started out, local government didn’t exist. When we finally got recognition from the government, we were the first company to receive a concession to have a national park.” Koechlin is the founder of Inkaterra , a Peruvian eco-tourism company that aims to sustain and conserve the rainforest of the Amazon basin in Peru. “All this is possible because of tourism,” Koechlin says of the on-going research into protecting the flora and animal species that Inkaterra has assumed responsibility for. “Tourism is good because it translates into money to fund research.”
Set up in 1975, Inkaterra was founded to promote but ultimately protect the eco-systems of the Peruvian rainforest, as well as the customs and cultures of the local populations, through the concept of eco-tourism. “Via tourism, you can create knowledge, and then pass on knowledge,” Koechlin says. The company now has five hotels, with plans for several more, including one in the grounds of a Jesuit cathedral. In the process, Inkaterra has raised money from its tourism ventures to fund the vital research that helps the conservation efforts across the basin. At the Inkaterra Machu Picchu Pueblo Hotel, for instance, they have restored five hectares of cloud forest, “by looking at the birds and what they would like to eat.” This understanding of the delicate balance between animal populations and a reliable food chain has led the region to flourish. “It is a paradise,” Koechlin smiles. “Now, within the hotel, we have 205 bird species. We have big birds, small birds and eighteen species of hummingbird. We also found orchids there. Nobody could tell the name [of the orchid], so it was a new species for science. This year, there have been three orchids, and last year, it was two orchids, all new to science. So that’s an extraordinary thing, that a tourist company can describe new species to science.”
Koechlin is perhaps being modest. He reveals that in 2005, “Cornell University Press published a book in our name, on the lives and appearances of reptiles.” That book was William E. Duellman’s Cusco Amazónico, and was hailed by the University Press as being “the baseline against which all future studies of Amazonian amphibians and reptiles (and even other organisms) will be compared.” When pushed, it transpires that Koechlin not only knows this but can quote the comment by heart, evidence of how justly proud he is of his life’s work.
But it’s not just plants and birds that hold Koechlin’s interest. As well as setting up a butterfly breeding facility and rehabilitating bears back into the wild (just two of many conservation projects), he is also looking at restoring the ocean. “In the 1950s, this beautiful ocean was called Marlin Boulevard,” he explains. “Why was it called Marlin Boulevard? Because of the big, black marlins. They were abundant here. The record for the biggest fish ever caught here was 1560 pounds. This year marks sixty years of that record, so we decided why not bring back the ocean to what it was?” He adds that, “we pushed the government to create the first marine park in Peru. The government came back and said, we can’t handle it – why don’t you handle it?!”
Aside from the preservation of the biodiversity of the ocean, there is another reason for wanting to protect this stretch of coastline. During August, several events took place to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the big marlin catch, and Koechlin was taking part because “the visible thing to show is the boat that the fisherman had – that’s the Miss Texas. When this big fish was caught, by chance on another boat, there was a film crew from Warner Brothers, and so there is footage of it.” But the reason for the film crew? “The Miss Texas is the boat that Hemingway used to go fishing,” Koechlin reveals. “[The film crew] couldn’t get a good shot elsewhere, so they went to Peru to film The Old Man And The Sea.”
Koechlin is in the process of restoring the boat to its former glory. “It is a nice story to tell,” he says. But of his coastal conservation efforts, he adds that “to make it happen is not easy. But the local people are with us, and the fishermen. They want to protect the ocean as well.” In the future, Koechlin plans to open a research centre here (for research into natural and marine resources, as well as training on ocean fishing) and a hotel, to continue to obtain the money to fund his work. Such a prime location will, of course, provide tourists with “the pleasure of having an ocean view.”
Inkaterra has certainly come a long way since it opened its first hotel, a simple jungle lodge, nearly forty years ago, having now evolved into a range of hotels that are (almost) as diverse as the terrains on which they are situated. This is nature travel at its most authentic, where history is created through an ongoing understanding of the unique but ultimately beguiling biodiversity of the basin. Long may Koechlin’s work continue.
Inkaterra Hotels
Inkaterra La Casona was the first Relais & Châteaux hotel in Peru and is an exquisite 16th century colonial mansion.
Inkaterra Reserva Amazonica is a luxury eco-lodge located on the banks of the Madre de Dios river and at the edge of the Tambopata Reserve in the Amazon rainforest of Southern Peru.
Inkaterra Hacienda Concepcion is located in the Amazon rainforest near a natural lake, which is home to a variety of ecosystems, tropical plants and wildlife.
Inkaterra Machu Picchu Pueblo Hotel is a fusion of opulent comfort, excellent cuisine and Incan style, located within five hectares of cloud forest.
El MaPi Hotel byInkaterra has been completely renovated in a contemporary urban style.
For more information, visit www.inkaterra.com .
30th August 2013
Château Pape Clément
Is there really anything better than being chauffeur driven in a Bentley once owned by Ian Fleming, before being given the keys to your own castle, all the while being plied with hearty French food and Merlot? Well, perhaps just one thing – being flown by helicopter from chateau to chateau to UNESCO world heritage site, all whilst sampling some of the finest wines to have come out of Bordeaux.
La Cave at Château Pape Clément
But before I get entirely carried away with the sheer degree of deliciousness, let’s remind ourselves of why I was here….I was in the heart of south west France’s wine-growing territory for a tour of the vineyards, cellars and chateaux of Bernard Magrez , one of France’s prominent wine-makers. Increased consumer sophistication has created a rise in the demand to get closer to brands, and in response to this, Bernard Magrez has developed the concept of Luxury Wine Tourism, a bespoke holiday experience quite literally a world away from the anonymous package tour of old.
Rolls Royce Phantom – be chauffeur driven in style!
The choice of experiences on offer here is simply astounding. From chauffeur-driven cars to helicopter tours across the valley, to private wine tastings with the knowledgeable cellar masters to blending your very own bottle of wine (on a personal note, I recommend doing this – lots of fun!), there is plenty of opportunity to soak up the history and heritage of the brand.
Château Pape Clément
Our base for our trip was the quiet romance of Chateau Pape Clement, where we were given a tour of the majestic wine cellars, which are all under the chateau (complete with a recumbent effigy of the eponymous Pope Clement V!). After sampling four of the chateau’s delicious, earthy wines, we enjoyed a cookery master class with Chef Jerome Bourcie. I’m really not much of a chef (so I was pleased to see that the supper Chef Bourcie had prepared for us afterwards was all of his own doing, as opposed to my rather poor attempt at fine cuisine!).
Château La Tour Carnet
The following day saw us whisked off by helicopter across the stunning vista of the Médoc valleys, where vineyards stretched for as far as the eye could see, with the occasional castle dotting the picturesque landscape. Touching down opposite Chateau La Tour Carnet, with the warmth of the French sun shining down, it was all too easy to be seduced by the beauty and the romance of one of the region’s oldest castles. Sympathetically restored to something like its former glory, the chateau has all the trappings one would expect for a day of playing king of the castle. Although it isn’t consecrated – yet – I couldn’t help but think that the tiny private chapel and intimate, beautifully furnished dining room would make the perfect setting for a wedding (on that point, Bernard Magrez does offer weddings at other chateaux, but book early – as in, a year in advance – to avoid disappointment!).
The Dining Room at Château La Tour Carnet
For those who love their history, a Bernard Magrez Luxury Wine Tourism holiday is the ideal getaway. Not only is there the history of the brand and the chateaux to discover, but the town of Saint Emilion (a UNESCO world heritage site) is perfect for an afternoon stroll, aided by one of the friendly guides to explain its unique history, followed perhaps by an aperitif outside one of the local cafes. For panoramic photo opportunities, standing at the base of the bell tower of Europe’s largest underground church provides the perfect height to get a good glimpse across the rooftops of the town below (although the only way to truly take in Saint Emilion is from the air. Just as well we had a helicopter at our disposal!).
Fly by helicopter, or arrive in style on a private jet!
Whether you’re a committed connoisseur or simply enjoy the odd tipple, a Bernard Magrez Luxury Wine Tourism holiday ticks so many boxes. It sounds like a journalistic cliché to say, but this really is one experience that cannot adequately be described with words, so you’ll just have to get out here and savour it for yourself. Make space in your suitcase for all the wine you’ll be purchasing – trust me, you won’t regret it!
Barrels at Château Pape Clement
For further information about Bernard Magrez wines, visit www.bernard-magrez.com . For further information about the tours and experiences on offer, or to book a Luxury Wine Tourism holiday, visit www.luxurywinetourism.fr .
27th August 2013
The itinerary for our 8 days in Bhutan gets to us two weeks before departure, listing
a hot-stone bath in a local farm-house, horse-treks up to the Tigers’ Nest, visits to musically named Dzongs, temples and monasteries, walks high-up at 3800mt on the Dochu La and even an audience with Doctor Karma Phuntso about the principles of Buddhism and meditation. Will it all get ticked off?
Marina, my cultural attachée, gets set on this most unique trip and reading up on our material provided by Choki of Blue Poppy, we realise it is only since the 1970s that a few, fortunate visitors have been able to tour Bhutan. We will have a 4X4 Hyundai at our disposal, which later gets nick-named the Korean guest-house by our English-speaking driver and guide when it became their lodging for a night or two down in Punakha. Meanwhile, we stayed at the Amankora lodges (Aman meaning peace, Kora meaning circuit).
Upon arrival in Bhutan, our guide Rinchen, and Tshering, our driver, are outside the airport, dressed in their elegant national costume: a heavy knee-length robe, a gho, belted at the waist and folded to allow for a pocket on the chest for the all-essential mobile phone, notes, passes and cash for the temples. By order of His Majesty King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wanghuck of Bhutan, also casually known as K5, all Bhutanese dress in their national costume during daylight hours, which means very little external influence and sloppy Western denim and tees can be seen on the streets.
The drive to Thimpu is equally manicured, and takes us just under an hour, through a leafy green countryside, and then through the city, which is buzzing with new Bhutanese-style buildings being constructed inside the bamboo scaffolding. No signs or billboards about new movie releases or cheap flights along the way – so refreshing!
Amankora – Thimpu
Our first night is at the 16-suite Amankora – Thimpu lodge, a dzong-inspired white construction set above the capital, where a colourful local dance is taking place to welcome guests. The wood-panelled rooms, low comfortable seating, high windows and floating wooden staircases have a calming influence, and in good Aman-style, we are greeted by a courteous and elegant Bhutanese young lady, called Sonam (meaning good luck), who speaks immaculate English and offers us warm, lightly-scented towels to refresh ourselves. There is no noise from the urban centre below, just birdsong and the crackling of the logs in the fire pit. Aman is unique in creating an atmosphere that mirrors the peaceful place within the mind where all stands still.
The first visit to the colourful Trashi Chhoe Dzong (fort-monastery) in town is of course memorable. The sun is sharp, the gardens and roses around the whitewashed two-storey structure are being tended to and the inner dochey (courtyard) of the monastic quarter is humming with monks in their red flowing robes. We try our first hand at spinning the prayer-wheels, to give the hundreds of prayers rolled inside continuous life, feeling a little self-conscious of this important Buddhist ritual. The temple inside is a burst of colour, patterns, patch-work and carpets, and a hundred natural smells of bark, flowers, leaves, fruit and roots surround us, coming from the organic incense burning day and night under the great Buddha’s toes. We could have just sat there for hours, watching, smelling and not thinking, but a quick (rather frivolous) shopping-spree on the high street is planned, and we buy interesting woven textiles, natty silk Bhutanese jackets, beads and hand-made papers, before heading back for the scheduled meeting with the great master of Buddhism and former monk, PHD at Oxford and former researcher at Cambridge: Doctor Karma Phuntsho.
Karma arrives ten minutes before time. We see him crossing the inner courtyard from the large bedroom windows. He wears a sober chocolate brown gho (bespoke, he adds later), and the regulation immaculate white cuffs and cream socks (the latter a sign of a higher rank to those wearing dark socks) with dark brown shoes. The only ornament is a wooden rosary, with a well-worn patina, wrapped loosely around his left wrist. He later tells us this is the tool of prayer and meditation, and it is his constant reminder for mindfulness. As we speak about life, Bhutan, Cambridge, the temptations of London, religion, food, urges, sex, yoga, visualisation and meditation, we cannot help but notice his calmness and presence throughout the topics.
His mind is focused and sharp, his answers deep and to the point. His knowledge of western religion and philosophy is vast, and he draws easy parallels with Buddhism: a delight for the spirit. One statement stirs the mind, as he says that when in London, he likes to meditate on the underground, in the chaos of this space. A most unlikely venue, we say, but being trapped inside, he finds the challenge of the bustle of life and noise a useful interference to work and train with. He doesn’t like to waste time and as he says that, his phone rings with a Chinese voice-alarm to remind him of his Mandarin lesson. He rejects the notice, and joins us for dinner instead, to reflect further on the four truths of Buddhism: Loving Kindness, Compassion, Joy and Equanimity.
Amankora – Punakha
Reaching Punakha after three hours of bumpy roads and temple stops on the highest peaks whipped with soft clouds, we wind our way down the zig-zagging dusty roads, enjoying the witty company and local tales of Rinchen and Tshering Dorji of Blue Poppy Tours, who have travelled on with us on the Kora (the circular pilgrimage) of the Aman lodges. The stop at Dochu-La, at 3140mt, is an absolute must and it is marked by a large array of prayer flags, which we add ours to, and an impressive new-build collection of 108 chortens, set overlooking the magnificent Himalayan peaks.
After the stop at Druk Yangyel Lhakhang, sitting on the crest of Dochu-La pass, we hear the Royal K5 couple had apparently just been by, calling into their Royal verandah to consider the peaks. We drive on and wind down again to ground zero all the way to Punakha and to the much-anticipated rickety bridge, which crosses a very lively Mo Chhu River. Once we park up, we consider the Indiana Jones style crossing, and start out, treading niftily across the planks, keeping a steady eye on the end of the traverse as the bridge swoops down closer to the ice-blue water and up again the other side.
As Rinchen had explained, the Aman-buggy awaits us under the shade of the weeping willows lining the river-bank. It’s a 5* buggy with a difference, as it has been kitted out with a hand-made dashboard carved from the local pines. We are in for attention to detail. We cannot quite believe where we are, suddenly winding through paddy fields glistening in the evening sun, and beyond, we can hear the bells ringing in the distant prayer wheels. One last turn, and there stands the Lodge with its eight suites, which was built approximately eighty years ago by Je Khenpo (the supreme religious leader in the Kingdom).
Image courtesy of Amanresorts
The Lodge is a traditional farmhouse, set in an orange orchard, overlooking endless rice terraces stepping up the hills, and layered mountains stacked up beyond in shades of dusk. The interiors are beautifully hand-painted, and navy blue wooden staircases run throughout and the open windows make every room airy, allowing a connection with the day or night outside. The courtyard below is set for breakfasts, lunches and dinners, which are served under an aged fig tree. As night falls, a fire-pit burns to light up the house and announce a group of Bhutanese dancers, who sing a series of local chants and songs, which, to our great surprise, we are invited to join in on. At first, it is a strange experience, but then the music, the rhythm of their steps, the light of the fire and the history we are all steeped in, make this welcome ritual quite unique. Anything here would melt the hardest hearts.
The next day, a cool breeze flows in the day-room in Amankora – Punakha, and outside, we hear the sound of gentle scrubbing on the flagstones. I recall the routines in Amanwella in Sri Lanka : I know I am at an Aman. Today’s activity here though, is about cleaning, and at the same time, tidying up the neat little droppings a mother-bird has left, whilst feeding her three young chicks huddled under the fig tree, as they are not quite savvy-enough to take flight into the clear blue skies. The staff at Punakha, naturally connecting to their inner Buddhist principles, ensure their safety, as these birds may well be reincarnations of one of their family members, who have passed away….it is a beautiful connection. In all these details, once again, you can appreciate the pleasure Adrian Zecha must have enjoyed in finding and creating this most idyllic outpost for Amankora – Punakha, set in this green sunny valley away from the dancing prayer flags, but surrounded in tranquillity and rest for the soul.
Amankora – Paro
Winding our way back towards Paro on day five, we are getting closer to the airport for our last two nights, where architectural style continues to mix subtly with the Bhutanese cultural experience. As we arrive at the third lodge, we note the similarities in the modular architectural format, which are creating a continuity in our stay, yet giving each resort an individual identity brought out in the furniture, the local woods and the natural beauty of the surroundings. Upon arrival at Amankora – Paro, we walk through a forest and onto a deep pathway of thick, fresh, rust-coloured pine needles, which give out an incredible pine-oil aroma. The main reception lies up an impressive staircase and once inside, we see an elegant old man sitting on the floor, block printing prayer flags by the sofa in his immaculate Bhutanese gho. These flags are for guests to take up to the Tiger’s Nest during this part of the stay. We enjoy a convivial dinner with Bradlie Goian, the resident manager at Amankora – Paro.
Image courtesy of Amanresorts
We are then up at 6am and join our guides at the stables where horses wait to walk us up to the Taktshang Goemba, the Tigers’ Nest monastery. With this iconic spectacle finally within our reach, I wonder how we will cope with any fear of heights as we trek up and up towards 900m to see these colourful temples huddled into the rock-face overlooking the Paro valley. This journey continues to surprise, and once up at the top, we comply with the required prostrations, which we run through smoothly now, with Rinchen setting the pace. It is said that Guru Rinpoche flew to this holy site on the back of a tigress (a manifestation of his consort Yeshe Tsogyal) to subdue the local demon. He then meditated here for three months, creating a hub for all Bhutanese pilgrims, until a great fire in 1998 destroyed the main structure. Fortunately, as a focal point in Bhutan, it was soon rebuilt to its current state with the contributions requested by the Royal Family from every Bhutanese national. We thank you all for this.
Our one-week journey ends here in Paro, and casting our minds back, we feel this country has something fairy-tales are made of, hidden in these deep green forests of natural beauty. Since the 7th century, birds have sung from dawn till dusk, flags have fluttered day in, day out and the mesmerising hum of Buddhist chants has been on-going every day, while high winds have swept immense clouds across the highest mountain tops rising to 7,000 metres. Bhutan’s thin air and lack of pollution give a most vivid quality to the visual experience and we are left with the impression that our eyes and minds have never lived a clearer day.
Getting There
Bhutan will change, but before it does, discover this most extraordinary space and its unique service and experiences with Amankora: www.amanresorts.com , in Thimphu, Paro, Punakha, Bumthang & Gangtey. Tel: 00 800 2255 2626.
Blue Poppy Tours & Treks: www.bluepoppybhutan.com . Tel +44 (0)20 7609 2029, for all travel, treks, visas and ground transport services.
DrukAir is the national carrier of the Royal Government of Bhutan: www.drukair.com .
Required Interesting Reading
By Hannah Norman
21st August 2013
A picturesque walk along the beach followed by a surfing lesson, before being whisked off in a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce Corniche convertible for a half-day pampering session at Harrods, to then return to sink into a sumptuous bed by a warming, wood-burning stove – sounds like the perfect holiday, right? This, however, is not for humans, but for our four-legged friends, courtesy of The Paw Seasons.
A five star “hotel” for dogs run by the lovely Jenny Hytner-Marriott, The Paw Seasons is a kennel-free retreat, allowing your dog plenty of fresh air, exercise (watch this video! )….and no end of luxury extras, should you feel persuaded to over-indulge your dog (admit it, don’t we all?!)
The Paw Seasons has several locations across the south west of England, which cater for your dog depending on age and breed. Walks include the five miles of sandy beach near Burnham-on-Sea, and Gloucestershire’s National Arboretum, allowing your dog to get in touch with his inner tree-hugger. For a more relaxed tour of the scenic West Country, dogs can even board a Dunkirk little ship for a river cruise around historic Bristol Harbour.
Whilst owners are requested to supply their own food for their furry friend, The Paw Seasons are more than happy to accommodate any dietary extras (organic steak, anyone?)
The luxury extras don’t stop there. As well as offering a shuttle service from your home to theirs (saving you time whilst you’re running out of the door to catch your plane), The Paw Seasons use the same service to transport your pooch up the M4 to the Pet Spa at Harrods for a luxurious pamper session. Once your pet is happily ensconced back at The Paw Seasons, they can relax on one of the doggy beds set up around the cosy, kitchen wood-burner. Of course, if your dog’s tastes in sleeping quarters are a little more refined, Bespoke Impact can create a replica of your home for your dog to sleep in instead. Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase, “in the dog house!”
Speaking of being in the doghouse, if your troublesome terrier or mischievous Maltese needs a little help in the behavioural department (don’t worry, mine too!), The Paw Seasons offer the services of Stan Rawlinson , a canine behaviour specialist and obedience trainer.
Just in case you’re concerned that your dog might be having a better holiday than you are, The Paw Seasons staff use their Facebook page to upload snaps of your dog dashing about the country-side so that you can see what they’re up to. It really is a dog’s life!
To book a holiday for your dog at The Paw Seasons, go to www.thepawseasons.co.uk .
By Saira Malhotra
15th August 2013
When the heat dials up and gets trapped by NYC’s skyscrapers, there is a charming place to seek refuge: Mohonk Mountain House, a national Historic Landmark, which lies deep between the peaks and troughs of the Hudson Valley.
Once there, you can check your sweaty, tired self at the door and prepare for Mohonk Mountain house to pamper, rejuvenate and feed you well. Being rated as being the Number One Resort Spa in the United States and within the top ten for Green Spas around the world, one is offered all kinds of treatments from Mohonk Red Massage using property-grown witch hazel to Peace In The Pool with Tai Chi and meditation.
With a spa perched above the trees in one corner of the House, the rest of the house is a place you can call home, with milk and homemade biscuits served to all the guests at tea-time (have as many as you want, no-one is watching!), children scurrying to the Kids Club where they are taught tennis, meet animals and get together every evening again (for non-cheesy entertainment). And for you, there are acres of grounds to hike, boat, horse-ride, swim and play golf.
As the evening draws in, it is nice to take your glass of wine to one of the many porches that line the House and watch the sunset over the mountains. The clean air will certainly make you work up an appetite and the House’s restaurants will be happy to oblige with locally sourced ingredients and an international touch with ingredients like cumin and lemongrass.
The drive from Manhattan is one hour and 20 minutes – a perfect local retreat for the city dweller.
Mohonk Mountain House Spa , 1000 Mountain Rest Road, New Paltz, N.Y.; (877) 877-2664.
Saira Malhotra is a chef, food writer and cooking instructor based in New York City. To see more of her work, visit www.passportpantry.com .
By The Luxury Channel
24th July 2013
Following on from its success last year, the Peligoni Club has announced the return of the September Club, inviting guests to treat themselves to an indulgent break and the chance to soak up some late summer sun on the stunning Greek island of Zakynthos. The September Club is an adult-only, week-long, child-free break – perfect for socialising, water-sports and relaxation.
This follows the success of the first ever September Club in 2012, and even if you’re not able to commit to a full week, then long weekend options are available too.
The September Club has been carefully planned to include everything that the Peligoni Club usually offers guests at other times of the year, only more grown up! During the week, guests can take part in everything from backgammon tutorials and tennis coaching, to wine-tasting and water-skiing, mixing with like-minded people and enjoying some much-needed “me time” at the end of the busy summer period.
The Peligoni Club offers a wide range of accommodation options available to guests throughout the week, ranging in style, size and location. Choose from hilltop villas with infinity pools and far-reaching views which lend themselves perfectly for large groups, or for those looking for something more intimate, smaller properties are also available, which can be found nestled in the hills, surrounded by olive groves. Solo travelers are also welcome and Mimi’s B&B proves to be a popular fuss-free option located just a ten minute walk from The Club.
The Peligoni Club’s ( www.peligoni.com ; 020 8740 3001) September Club is a week-long event, which includes all activities with breakfast, lunch and dinner provided at The Club or local tavernas on a daily basis (drinks are only included with breakfast).
By The Luxury Channel
16th July 2013
The Oberoi Group has announced the opening of The Oberoi, Dubai – the Group’s first property in the United Arab Emirates. The hotel overlooks the iconic Burj Khalifa and each of the 252 rooms and suites has floor to ceiling windows, which afford spectacular views of the city’s skyline. The Oberoi, Dubai also boasts the city’s first ever 24 hour Spa. The hotel enjoys a central location and is a few minutes drive from downtown Dubai and the Dubai Mall. Legendary service delivered by attentive and caring team members will make The Oberoi, Dubai the preferred choice for discerning business and leisure travellers to the United Arab Emirates.
Mr. P.R.S. Oberoi, Executive Chairman of The Oberoi Group said, “We are pleased to present The Oberoi, Dubai, which offers the highest standards of luxury and hospitality. The opening of the hotel is significant for us. A number of Oberoi Hotels have been consistently recognised as amongst the best in the world. I am confident that The Oberoi, Dubai will continue this tradition.”
For more information, go to www.oberoihotels.com/oberoi_dubai .
26th June 2013
Christian the lion and George Adamson
Journey through Kenya with Exceptional Travel, escorted by John Rendall, co-author of A Lion Called Christian, the best selling story of the lion Christian, whom he bought from Harrods in London, with fellow Australian Ace Bourke.
Christian lived with John and Ace on the Kings Road in Chelsea but when Christian ‘out grew’ his surroundings, George Adamson (of Born Free fame), accepted the challenge of rehabilitating him back into the wild. Christian was successfully rehabilitated in Kora National Park in Kenya, with George describing it as a “monument to a mischievous and brave little lion from England.”
After successful safaris throughout the last few years, John will lead this unique safari through Kenya again in 2013. As a Trustee of the George Adamson Wildlife Preservation Trust and original co-owner of Christian, there is no better person to showcase the lives of the Adamsons and escort you on safari through Christian’s final home. To view a full itinerary, click here .
Estimated cost is £5,250 per person sharing, excluding international flights. Single supplement available on request. Space is strictly limited to ten spaces. Get in touch quoting “The Adamson Trail” to enquire about availability and booking, by calling +44 (0)845 163 5883, or send a message . For more information about Exceptional Travel, visit www.exceptional-travel.com .
By Hannah Norman
15th April 2013
“Flying at speed on snow-mobiles across freshly-deposited powder in the dark is an experience unlike any other, with just the roar of the engines and the beam of the headlights to guide us.”
Port d’Envalira (image courtesy of Jordi Troguet).
Once upon a time, a destination holiday was all about how far you could travel, and how exotic your destination vacation was. Times have changed however, and the trend today is not so much how far you can go, but what you can experience once you’re there. Hidden high up in the Pyrénées between the borders of France and Spain lies the tiny country of Andorra. Despite being surrounded by beautiful, rugged mountain landscapes, it would seem that this little gem is deservedly being put back on the map by a group of business entrepreneurs. Targeting the Russian market through the web portal cometoandorra.ru , the business partners have asked Russian model Dasha Kapustina to act as the figurehead of their campaign. Known as an international model and girlfriend to Formula One ace Fernando Alonso, Dasha’s appeal is obvious, as she embodies exactly the young, fun, fashionable credentials that the Andorrans are hoping to attract.
Dasha was in Andorra to shoot a series of photos which will be used to promote the Andorran tourist trade, and I was invited along to experience this exclusive, access-all-areas event, by Stephanie Steinbrecht-Aleix and Txeco Llorens.
Arriving in balmy Barcelona, I was chauffeur driven the 3 hours to my base for the next 3 days, Sports Hermitage Hotel , a 5* ski resort set at the top of the mountains. It’s worth mentioning that if you decide to take a hire car instead, there’s no shortage of places to fill up. Also, Real Madrid fans, look away now – the drive also means that you end up going past Barcelona’s impressive Nou Camp.
The Sports Hermitage Hotel
Arriving as I did at the hotel in the town of Soldeu – in the pitch black at 9 o’clock at night – meant that I couldn’t fully appreciate my surreal and beautiful surroundings, and the only real indication I had of how high up I really was came from my popping ears as we’d climbed further up into the mountains! Although driving through the capital, Andorra La Vella, with the shop lights illuminating our way just as the snow was starting to fall, gave the pretty scene a slightly ethereal feel.
Dinner that night, in Restaurant Origens, with Stephanie and Txeco, Dasha and Luis Garcia Abad (Fernando Alonso’s manager), and hotel owner Josep Calbó, came courtesy of resident Michelin starred chef Nandu Jubary. The Sports Hermitage has two chefs (Jubary is one, and Carles Graig is the other). The delicious array of food we were offered (some 10 different dishes, to be precise!) was exquisite, with every single detail catered for. I don’t eat seafood and Dasha is a vegetarian, but the attentive staff took care of our every gastronomic need. The chicken cannelloni with truffle cream was a taste sensation, and just one word sums up the pumpkin gnocchi – sublime!
Sports Hermitage chefs Nandu Jubany and Carles Graig
Next day, we went to Inúu Wellness Spa , situated in the heart of the capital. Inúu is a new concept entirely. Although the Spa is open from 10 in the morning until 10 at night, what you pay for at Inúu is time. Whilst there is a flat basic rate of 65 Euros for the whole day, they really want you to experience the wellness side of things, and you leave with a whole new attitude to wellbeing. Subsequently, upon arrival, all guests are given a health MOT, to ascertain exactly what they need in terms of wellness. You then tell them how much time you have, and they’ll devise a programme for you accordingly, depending on what you need and how long you’ve got. This is a spa that essentially takes the stress out of decision-making for the time-poor client, allowing you to focus solely on yourself.
Inúu Wellness Spa (image courtesy of Laia Buira Images)
COO Beatriz Fernandez gave me a guided tour of the facility, designed by French architect Jean Michel Ruols, granting me access to the thermal hydropool, with the temperature of the thermal spring water set at a blissful 34 degrees, and the saunas, steam rooms and halotherapy chamber. Having explored upstairs, Beatriz took me on a tour of the treatment rooms downstairs, by way of a spiral staircase encircling a giant fish tank, where Dasha was attempting to encourage the fish to swim behind her for a photo.
Dasha at Inúu Wellness Spa
The treatment rooms are strategically split off in a clover shape depending on what you’re opting for, be it shiatsu massage or simply the chance to chill out for fifteen minutes and grab some much-needed shut-eye! For couples looking for a cosy retreat (anyone got an anniversary coming up?), Inúu also has a private treatment room, for up to four people, with a Jacuzzi and massage beds. Heaven! (Especially at just 250 Euros for a minimum of two and a half hours).
As hard as it was, I had to tear myself away from Inúu, as we were heading to Anyós Park , a wellness resort located up in the mountains a mere 10 minute drive away. This is where the great and good (by which I mean the southern Spanish sporting elite – namely a few Barca FC pros) come to exercise, away from the attentions of the Spanish press. Anyós Park is owned by Carles Naudi D’Areny Plandolit Balsells (whose paternal great-grandfather, randomly enough, was instrumental in setting up the Magic Circle in Spain. It’s amazing the trivia you uncover!). Set over 5000 sq metres, the resort is a sort of one-stop shop for health, and in addition to the gym, sports facilities, pools and AquaSpa (a water zone encompassing cascades, massage benches and water beds), Anyós Park is also home to Carita Paris, exclusive beautician’s treatment rooms to beautify you again after an intense workout. Speaking of workouts, that’s exactly what was in store for Dasha – after posing first on comfy cushions and then amidst the quiet serenity of the private pool, the model was then photographed exercising on a cross-trainer. Don’t think that modeling is in any way an easy life!
Anyos Park
The problem with working out, despite the obvious benefits, is that it leaves you hungry, so our next stop was the Pyrénées Andorra Department Store , specifically La Boheme restaurant, for lunch, not to mention another photoshoot and change of clothes for Dasha (and on that note, I was rather coveting her Burberry tote). A stroll through the mall to get to our next photocall had me eyeing the gorgeous silk dresses and butter-soft leather handbags. Cashmere Shop-owned store Sant Hubertus provided the cosy, “hunter’s lodge” inspired backdrop for the next shoot (not to mention the on-trend hat Dasha had donned for the photos). Incidentally, whilst we’re on the subject of going shopping, if you’re still not inspired to come here, it’s worth pointing out that Andorra is something of a tax-free haven, so everything costs far less than it would do elsewhere (to the tune of around 40% less, in fact).
Dasha at Sant Hubertus
As evening approached, our final port of call was to Gala Perfumeries , the make-up and perfume company who had provided all of Dasha’s make-up. After a quick scout through the shop, testing lip-gloss and perfumes as we went, we took our places for Dasha’s final shoot of the day. It’s not every day you walk into a shop and see your name displayed on a dressing table, but for our girl, that’s exactly what happened. It was a nice touch, and is indicative of the Andorran spirit – nothing is too much trouble, and they’re happy to go the extra mile.
Dasha at Gala Perfumeries
We arrived back at the hotel with barely an hour and a half before meeting for our evening’s activity – snow-mobiling!
Believe me, you don’t need to be an adrenalin junkie to love this! Flying at speed across freshly-deposited powder in the dark is an experience unlike any other, with just the roar of the engines and the beam of the headlights to guide us. Competitive types beware, however – whilst speed is most definitely of the essence, mountain etiquette dictates that you aren’t allowed to overtake, so racing is out of the question! Seriously, though, don’t let that put you off – this is quite possibly the most fun you can have with a helmet on!
Dasha goes snow-mobiling
Our next stop was the Sol i Neu Club Hermitage restaurant, where the entire group (some 20 of us) sat down for dinner together. We sampled such delights as potato and Catalan sausage cake, and Catalan stew with meatballs (very welcome after an evening out in the snow!) and another first for me – grilled artichoke (no, really – I’d never tried artichoke before!).
The following morning brought a big snowstorm, putting paid to the day’s plan of moshing (that’s dog-sledding to you and me), and of visiting GrandValira , one of six sites shortlisted for Best European Resort at the 2012 World Snow Awards in London. A ski centre with 210 kilometres of runs, including two World Cup courses and 4 freestyle parks (one of which is nocturnal), GrandValira is also home to the Igloo Bar and Hotel. Whilst the idea of staying in an igloo has a slight romantic charm, what is marginally concerning is that its website recommends that you should only book to stay here if you dare – perhaps the snowstorm was just as well!
Not to be undone, Dasha’s photoshoots for the day were simply moved to our hotel, which meant cosying up in front of the fire and relaxing on the plush sofas that adorned the reception.
Relaxing at The Sports Hermitage Hotel
Before long, however, my chauffeur had arrived to take me back down the mountains to Barcelona. Leaving the snow and the peaks behind me, I settled back into the leather and let myself be lulled to sleep.
Having never been to this stunning principality before, I arrived in Andorra with an open mind, and was seduced completely by the beauty of the landscape and the spirit of the people. Dasha was adamant that she will be back – but for a holiday, so that she can enjoy herself to the full. I’m inclined to concur. The ski season may well be coming to an end (roll on next winter!), but Andorra is also a fantastic place to discover during the summer, too (for the golfers among you, visit www.tee-times.info ). Andorra may not be the last word in luxury, but this is one hidden gem that’s definitely worth visiting. It’s unlikely to stay a secret for long, so get here quick before the hordes descend!
By Rosalind Milani Gallieni
3rd April 2013
Curious to explore new destinations in Eastern Europe, for winter sports and summer holidays, we head to Bulgaria to get a sense of the history and status quo of this beautiful country, and by creating a mixed itinerary, we get a glimpse of the real life in town and how luxury is “done” up in the hills.
Once out of Sofia airport, we drive through the large sprawling town, which is a mix of buildings dating back to the communist era, creating a dull horizon of concrete apartment blocks, with row upon row of balconies boasting TV satellite discs, laundry lines and fridges, all stored on the outside for lack of space inside. Beside these dilapidated structures stand tall, smart, contemporary glass office buildings and a scattering of modern hotels all in strategic places for the use of foreign business travellers landing nearby, coming to set a plan and a future in motion in this new destination.
All eras of history co-exist in this city, and beyond an eternal flame which burns out of a monumental dark marble bolder, comes the rattle of every-day traffic rushing down the cobbled streets. We join the local cars and beaten-up vans and trucks, and head off out of town.
Half-way to our destination, we stop to visit a religious revelation: an old man sits selling both yellowing lace place-mats and hand-written tickets for the 10th century Boyana Church, which is now part of a UNESCO World Heritage site, boasting 3 layers of delicate frescoes dating back between the 10th and 13th century. Hidden in a small wood of fir trees, this treasure looks rather like a page out of a Hansel And Gretel picture book. A set of large ancient steel keys lie on an old rickety wooden bench outside and we wait for Ilia, who is talking loudly to visitors inside the chapel as we arrive.
An extraordinary treasure awaits us…the heavy steel door opens, and out springs a wiry old man, releasing his previous visitors from their unique experience. Inside, we are all a-gasp as we walk into the tiniest chapel painted entirely – walls, nave and ceilings – in midnight blue, with the most exquisitely peaceful frescoes.
Our journey then continues up beautiful mountain roads, and we pass through pretty ski-resort villages, with snow-clad chalets and chair-lifts whizzing happy skiers up the hills. In total contrast to the town that now lies behind us, we take in all the changing landscapes and holiday possibilities, and the immense heritage of Bulgaria.
The sights of Bhutan come to mind. Maybe it is something about the fir trees growing in the heart of these villages, their silhouettes cast against the white walls? Maybe it is the houses stacked up on the hills with their dark window frames and grey slate roofs dotted with smoking chimneys? Maybe it is the local folk and their colourful carpets which line the street walls? But today we know we are in Bulgaria, as the pagan Kukeri festival of every first Sunday in March is in full swing, expelling the evil spirits of winter, and bringing in the fertility of spring.
Villa Gella stands majestically on the last rocky turn in the road at 1700 mts. This luxurious home, a project which has taken its owners a good part of 3 years to complete to unparalleled standards, is now on the map for those seeking a gorgeously elegant stay. The villa is a massive contrast to what we have seen so far, and we soon learn that the 5* standards are really not what we expected to find up here, including a fire-place in every room and en-suite bathrooms throughout.
The ways to relax are many; either in the private indoor pool looking out onto the highest Perelik snow-capped peaks reaching 2000 mts, or on the underfloor-heated yoga terrace facing the sunset, or even in the hot-tub on the top floor penthouse suite. The white-on-white dining room, with its extensive mountain views, opens out onto large, deep, linen-covered sofas facing the open fire, and if sleep does not get the better of you after all the fresh air, you can check your emails and keep a finger on the distant pulse of work. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are all home-made and freshly prepared, using only local, seasonal produce.
An extensive ski-resort lies 10 minutes down the road covering a considerable range, which is comparable to known resorts in Europe; it’s just that no-one has dared step out of these comfort zones to experience the new lifestyle of the Bulgarian descentes and wholesome mountain cuisine. But if downhill races and snow-boarding are not your thing, there are other activities such as panoramic langlauf itineraries, trout-fishing, horse-riding in the snow in early Spring, or across the green meadows in Summer.
If time is an issue for a business conference, Villa Gella also arranges private flights with Jet Charters into Plovdiv airport and linked helicopter transfers from the airport to the field outside Villa Gella, to avoid the twists and turns of the mountain drive.
We are due back here in the Summer, as we absolutely have to pick up an Icon commissioned by one of the guests during a visit to a chapel in the hills, entirely hand-painted by Nicolai himself, who had a calling to restore this religious treasure: a modern-day version of the Boyana church, possibly. Now, what could be more unexpected?
By Gillian Kitching
7th March 2013
Gillian Kitching, from Inspiration Events , is used to taking luxury beyond the generic five star experience, giving guests the chance to encounter travel as a piece of theatre, not just observing but also interacting with the places they visit and the people they meet in the most authentic and joyful way – cinematic moments to cherish for all time. Gillian shares with us her diary of a visit she arranged in February for the alumni group from Harvard Business School….
Friday and Saturday – Mumbai
Our guests arrive in Mumbai. Fast and frenetic, the city is India’s beating heart and the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel offers a peaceful sanctuary away from the chaos – the perfect place for guests to rest after their journey, while also enjoying some light sightseeing. On Saturday, we lunch at the exclusive Willingdon Club and then spend the afternoon at the races, rubbing shoulders with Mumbai society and Bollywood glitterati.
Sunday – Mihir Garh
In complete contrast, we fly to Jodhpur in Rajasthan and head for Mihir Garh, a private fort set deep in the desert. With just nine luxury suites, it is the creation of Sidarth and Rashmi Singh, whose family have ruled this territory for over 500 years. Here, they have thought of every detail to create the perfect wilderness escape. After lunch on the terrace, Sidarth guides us on a walking safari to nearby villages. Beautiful children race to greet us crying, “hello and bye-bye” – full of fun and joy, they want to be in every photograph.
We return to the fort as the sun sets, to find a full moon reflected in the swimming pool. There is just time to stretch out with some yoga on the lawn before getting ready for dinner.
I tell guests that we will be dining out this evening and that dress is casual. “But how can we be going out, when we are in the middle of nowhere?”, they ask. “Just wait and see!” I reply. After cocktails on the ramparts, Sidarth leads us to the fort’s entrance. The heavy gates open to reveal a caravan of camels in ceremonial regalia, pulling carts and escorted by tribesmen with flaming torches. “Your camels await,” says Sidarth with a grin and everyone climbs aboard. The stars and moon light the way as our desert ships trot out into the night. The mystery destination is a ‘Shikar,’ traditionally, a maharaja’s hunting camp. Here, tribesmen and women sing and dance, their faces and dazzling costumes golden in the light of bonfires on which Mihir Garh’s chefs are busy preparing a delicious barbeque.
Monday
The jeep safari leaves at dawn. We have an invitation to breakfast with a Bishnoi family, whose compound is just a short drive from the fort. Sidarth explains that the Bishnois can be considered to be the forefathers of the environmental movement, their founder having decreed, over 500 years ago, that man should not kill any creature nor cut down any living tree. The first chapatti of the day is offered to the birds and they reward us with song as we sit with the elders and share a simple breakfast.
Driving deeper into the desert, our drivers stop frequently to point out wildlife – black buck, antelope and blue bull, all once rare but now returning, thanks to Sidarth’s stewardship.
Tuesday
Another dramatic contrast. From the simplicity of the desert to the grandeur of the world’s largest palace – the Umaid Bhawan – home to the Maharaja of Jodhpur. This evening, a fleet of vintage cars from the Maharaja’s private collection carry us to Jodhpur’s magnificent Mehrangarh Fort – exclusively ours for the evening. After a tour hosted by the curator, we dine in the courtyard of the Zenana, formerly the women’s quarters – a fantasy of finely carved sandstone, so intricate it could have been made of lace.
Wednesday
Time for shopping, and what better way to get around than in our own fleet of tuk tuks, given a Rolls Royce makeover, and with our chauffeurs dressed as for a Bollywood gangster movie. Spices, textiles and antiques – Jodhpur has it all.
This evening, we celebrate our Indian odyssey with dinner in the Umaid Bhawan’s ‘baradari’ – the Maharaja’s marble dining pavilion, set amid the palace gardens. As beautiful women entertain us with song and dance, liveried waiters serve delicious curries from silver platters and in the distance, endless fireworks celebrate the wedding season. A Brazilian guest sitting next to me leans across and whispers, “I love my life.”
By Fiona Sanderson
7th March 2013
Fiona Sanderson traveled to the Backwaters in Kerala to check out the best hotels the region can offer….
1) Vivanta By Taj – Malabar, Cochin
By Rob Scorah
7th March 2013
A brief visit to Mumbai to attend Cartier’s Travel With Style Classic Car Concours, and some time spent in the city itself, rekindled that deep and often romanticized notion of the intermingling of Western (ostensibly British) and Indian cultures.
Predictably, many of the cars displayed around the grounds of the Taj Land’s End Hotel bore that iconic mascot; the Rolls-Royce Spirit of Ecstasy, while a number of heavy-shouldered (and very long) Buicks and Packards signalled the demise of the Raj and British influence, and India’s turning elsewhere for its more luxurious needs.
Some of the cars wouldn’t have looked at all out of place back in their countries of origin – the Best of Show-winning 1935 Rolls-Royce Phantom II cabriolet (Maharaja of Jodhpur) would sit happily outside Goodwood House, while the Buick Limousines would add dignity to any (Forties) Manhattan hotel. But others displayed an Occidental-Indian cross-fertilising fusion and that distinctly Indian readiness to embrace, shall we say, all the ‘possibilities’ that an automobile might become. That doesn’t necessarily mean pure ostentation – though a nickel-plated wedding car, or a primrose yellow 1911 Rolls with a Barker-build body equipped with a single throne in the rear, are a bit full on. Some were merely ‘thoroughly accoutred’; everything from detachable swivel seats that doubled as picnic stools to a plush-cushioned boudoir for the ‘enjoyment’ of its occupants. Others were decidedly utilitarian, such as the 1940 wartime Fordson WOT2; virtually the staff car it had been built as, but also fitted with gun rack, pulleys and spotlights for boar and tiger hunting. Its weighing scales retained its lists and statistics of past kills. A painstakingly restored 1926 Chrysler Shooting Bake presented a different take on the word shoot; kitted out with everything the photographer of the day might need. The oiled mahogany tripod with period-correct Gralfex Speed Graphic camera was a nice touch.
Strolling among the gleaming headlamps with an ever-freshened cup of Masala Chai and a white china plate of delicately cut sandwiches, you could feel the echoes of those times when these cars waited on their owners at reviews, receptions or regimental polo matches. But glancing beyond the hotel grounds to the graceful arc of the Bandra-Worli suspension bridge connecting North and South Mumbai, you were reminded of what Mumbai has become. Once arguably the most important city of the British Empire after London, it is now India’s financial powerhouse and a cauldron of cross-cultural infusions; a metropolis of almost perpetual motion. As with those distinctly Indian Rolls-Royces, it is a place where any Englishman will feel somehow at ease, while thrilled at something distinctly new and more than a little unpredictable and exotic.
That familiarity begins with the hotels. Kuoni prepared my travel arrangements and offered the Taj Mahal Palace as my first base. With an architectural flavour somewhere between a Barry and Pugin rail terminus, Brighton Pavilion and a Mogul fortress, it has an oddly flamboyant gravitas (as do so many things in India). Its restrained old-world formality nonetheless offers warmth, and its staff are attentive and kind – as sentimental as that sounds. It manifests itself in the smallest ways – a lens cloth next to your reading glasses when you return to your room, or one more cup of tea because you liked the last one so much.
It’s the perfect place from which to explore at least a little of the city. Walk out early to the slightly kitsch but evocative India Gate and see the ferries in the golden early light making ready for their trips to Elephant Island. Take advantage of this quiet time to see the streets before the rush hour begins – note the architecture; more of that noble Victorian Neo-Gothic (with the odd onion dome) in the station and law courts, then something a little more French or Venetian – blinds, lattices, and glimpses of white-fronted Art Deco apartments or new concrete offices with some shantytown pressing in behind. While traders in the tower blocks work the money markets, the dhobi wallahs pound out the city’s washing on hard white stone.
Move around; go further. Take a taxi ride, even if you don’t need to; better still, try to hitch a ride on a scooter – with someone you trust with your life. It’s almost as if that frenetic traffic flow sums up the spirit of the city. From the outside, it seems relentless and intolerant, but jump in, swim with it and you will find it somehow forgiving and all-inclusive, allowing all things from cows to coaches to join, merge and flow – with a few unpredictable stops and starts, of course.
Perhaps the things you’ll notice the most are the brilliant and flamboyant snatches of colour; bangles, a sari, a scarf. They’re like a physical manifestation of the city’s energy, and something you can easily find for yourself.
Ladies, why not visit Bombay Electric, with its eclectic mix of vintage pieces and some very vivid contemporary fashion. Gentlemen, investigate tailors like Michele Boutique or Golden Boutique; have a suit made in some sumptuous or fabulously light fabric. None of these are far from the safe haven of the Taj Mahal palace.
For a more traditional Indian artefact (and bartering experience), the Village Industries Emporiums offer hand-made textiles, scarves and carpets from more remote provinces, like Kashmir. Most of us know the stories of their weaving and embroidering; skills handed down from generation to generation, but the delicacy, intricacy and individuality of these pieces should never be taken for granted. Like the Maharajas’ Rolls-Royces, they have a distinctiveness and uniqueness that would be hard to replicate should they disappear, and we should cherish them.
Kuoni (01306 747008) offer seven nights at the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower Mumbai in a superior city view room with breakfast, including economy flights with Virgin Atlantic from London Heathrow and private transfers in resort.
4th March 2013
ITC Maratha in Mumbai
Mumbai airport offers little amusement between the hours of a flight change, so for those who have a lengthy stop over, respite from the perils of transit doldrums comes in the majestic form of the ITC Maratha . Ten minutes from the International Terminal, the ITC Maratha exudes a unique and authentic Indian charm with a sense of sophistication that exceeds the standard so many of its kind fall short of.
Enter the grand lobby, and you arrive in a world where jet-setting businessmen convene over gin-and-tonics, where you are greeted with a smile of sincerity and grace at every corner you turn. The atmosphere is replete with a sense of energy and exotic elegance that the Far East is so often lauded for – and you feel it.
The ITC Maratha is proud of its luxury cuisine and the flagship Dum Pukht restaurant is the hotel’s top ambassador for its culinary prowess. Whether it’s your final escapade with Indian fare or one of many business dinners, the authentic, slow-cooked, refined dishes will leave a lasting imprint. For starters, we enjoyed Kakori Kebab, a minced lamb delicacy allegedly created for a toothless state leader who was subsequently unable to chew his food. The result is a deliciously soft, melt-in-the-mouth sensation. We also sampled Jinga Dum Nisha – succulent, tandoori-roasted prawns – and we couldn’t leave without trying Dum Pukht’s signature dish, beautifully flavoursome lamb biriyani, and Guccchi Pulav – delicate mushroom rice.
The flagship Dum Pukht restaurant
To add to the atmospheric ambience, the restaurant relinquishes no detail in its décor; with its gold lacquered ceilings exuding the majesty and wonder that only history books speak of.
Suites offer palatial marble bathrooms, electric massage chairs and comfortable beds you can’t resist after a long day travelling. The rooms also have charming statues, paintings and photographs that work despite being slightly kitsch. The ITC Maratha is one of those hotels you never want to leave, and you won’t feel bad about that. The perfect place to reside if you are a globe-trotting entrepreneur or lingering in the purgatory of transferring flights – the ITC Maratha not only offers a luxury haven but the chance to experience a part of India’s vast cultural tapestry.
The ITC Maratha
10th January 2013
One of Sri Lanka’s iconic TukTuks
Sri Lanka’s enduring appeal for visitors stems from a seductive combination of superb beaches, tropical sunshine, a very warm welcome and a quite unique puzzle of cultures epitomised by the extraordinary relics and temples recalling the power and dignity of their ancient, lost empires. Despite the turbulence and tragic recent history of 30 years of civil strife, this bustling island has now dusted itself down and got back on its feet, making it a truly desirable holiday destination.
Sharing both close ties to India’s oldest cultures, and a colonial history of European occupation, it is an island with a legacy of millennia of interactions with Europe, and it has been known as many names during its history: to the ancient Greeks it was Taprobane, to the Arabs, Serendip, to the later European conquerors, Ceilao, Zeylan or Ceylon, and to the locals, Sri Lanka – ‘Lanka the Blessed.’
A first stop to the heart of Ceylon, Galle Fort, is therefore an appropriate beginning to get a sense of all the travel and trade which the town of Galle Fort saw over the centuries. From the immense sea-facing ramparts of this fort, you can capture the sense of flux and history which pervades the senses.
Amangalla – Grandeur And Traditions
Nothing can quite prepare you for the reality and bustle of life in Sri Lanka. As you career through the most incredibly dicey streets which approach Galle Fort, you find yourself clutching the guardrails on the TukTuk as it swerves past policemen, cows on roundabouts, cars, vans and hand-painted lorries…it is a quick introduction to how we are going to get about in the next 10 days, weaving in and out of traffic in the iconic, smartie-coloured TukTuks.
Dizzy from the chaos in town, we reach the top of the hill-rise in Galle Fort and are driven up a newly cobbled road (just finished this year) and dropped off outside an elegant staircase, marked by two huge potted papyrus plants and there is it, very discreetly languishing in the heart of the 17th fort: The Amangalla. Set in the heart of one of the UNESCO World Heritage sites, the hotel exudes an air of grandeur married with the traditions of by-gone days, amidst Dutch heritage, pillared verandahs and Victoriana tiles originally from Wandsworth….
Amangalla
As Olivia Richli, the General Manager of the Amangalla, tells me over breakfast, she took on the Aman project nearly 20 years ago, and the hotel, originally the private home of Nesta Brohier, had all the ingredients Adrian Zecha was after. In his twenties, he was living between Delhi, where he worked for TIME magazine, and Sri Lanka. It was during this era of prohibition in India that he first met Nesta as he became a regular guest at the house as a young man, who saw himself frequently invited to the most lavish parties and dinners, which Nesta threw for Indian and British high society.
The elegance of this private home, the location and the views from the top floor rooms out to the Indian Ocean were never forgotten and when a most exceptional circumstance came up to be able to keep the house and its heritage, there was no stopping Adrian Zecha creating another most exquisite Ãman hotel!
The charm of Amangalla is seen every day through its valued heritage. When you wake, the soft morning sunlight pours through the louvered shutters onto the rich, polished, timber floors, much like it did years and years ago. Outside, you hear the gentle sweeping of the terraces surrounding the green-tiled swimming pool, where fallen frangipani flowers are collected after the night winds. Olivia’s voice can then be overheard as she talks to her immaculately sarong-ed staff for morning briefings around the property, checking the table cloths are laid straight, the floor-polisher’s brushes are well-waxed, and the personal butlers are well-versed on all their guests’ requirements. Next on her list is a call to her silversmith in London, who has an order to complete in time for the New Year. The dining tables need more of the signature blue glass and silver salt & pepper sets; they too are a cast-back to an original salt seller found in the renovation of the home. This is how the house would have been run, and these are the details which make the atmosphere and give the continuity in the Ãman properties.
The blue glass and silver salt & pepper pots at Amangalla – sourced from London, this is true attention to detail
Amanwella – Space and Balance
The town of Tangalla is once again an explosion of traffic, stalls, colours, markets, banana bundles, fresh coconuts and the toots of TukTuks and scooters trying to avoid each other. If you have traveled this far south, take a small dusty track off the main drag, and trust your driver! The end of a fresh, leafy path brings you to the most spectacular out-look you can possibly expect. Once again, nothing can prepare you! A beautiful green grassy glade rolls down towards the golden beachfront, flanked by the Amanwella, which sits proud and majestic overlooking the bay. Unlike the surfing of the rolling waves along this horizon, this hotel and its Ocean Suites are about pure ease and indolence. Trekking up the freshly hosed-down path under the palm tree shade, following the butlers’ breezy sarong, we reach the top of the hill with relief and only wish we could have the key to the Ocean Suite.
The infinity pool and beach view at Amanwella
A handsome wood door slides open onto the Ocean Suite, which boasts a view again second to none. This can naturally also be said for the elegance and simplicity of the interiors. Designed and created to work the clever Aman space and balance code, each suite has a private pool outside, a huge deluxe double bedroom, a wood-fitted bathroom and dressing area, always using indigenous supplies of timber and stone in the paneling, shutters, stone bath and flooring.
The beach resort below the Ocean Suites (if you can refer to this palm tree garden in this way), stretches along the beach front and 10 widely spaced-out wooden loungers, with pristine white toweling covers, await guests to come and breathe in the ozone…nothing could be further removed from what we would call a resort in Rimini!! A large black yoga platform built on the sea front is prepped with yoga mats and water bottles for sun salutations at 6pm. Heaven? Sorted!
The yoga platform at Amanwella
The future for Sri Lanka, despite all the troubled times which now seem safely behind it, looks very dynamic. The new Expressway connects Colombo to the heritage stop of Galle and continues down to Matara, leaving Tangalla just 20 minutes away. Soon enough, the half-built bridges, unmanned motorway exits and mounds of earth you drive past, seemingly abandoned sites in the vast green expanses, will all connect, taking Sri Lanka’s transportation to a new level all the way to Hambantota International Airport, the newly built airbase which saw its first test commercial flight landings just last week! They are really and truly connecting their dots in Sri Lanka.
Colombo
By Hannah Norman
7th December 2012
A holiday should be about creating an experience of a lifetime. With this in mind, The Luxury Channel brings you ten of the best…
1) Lux* Le Morne, Mauritius
Lying off the east coast of Madagascar, basking in the warmth of the African sun, is Mauritius. Protected by a mountain that bears the same name, Lux* Le Morne offers a slice of tropical paradise, with a snow-white beach, four swimming pools – and the chance to swim with dolphins. But if swimming’s not really your thing and you still want to test your sea legs, the resort offers its guests catamaran cruises around the south of the island, and for the more courageous, kite surfing and wind surfing. But if that simply sounds like a bit too much, then guests can slow it right down with tai chi classes, or relax completely with a treatment in the spa.
30th November 2012
The start of the 33rd edition of the Rolex Middle Sea Race. (Image courtesy of Rolex/Kurt Arrigo)
What better way to escape the wind and dark afternoons of London and Northern Europe when you can sit overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, with beautiful sunshine and temperatures of around 60 degrees? Just off the coast of Sicily, Malta is a perfect haven to escape the winter blues, as well as being a sailing enthusiast’s dream.
The Luxury Channel was there to see the start of what many Brits and worldwide sailors say is one of Europe’s most popular and respected offshore races. The racecourse proves both exciting and challenging due to the currents in the Messina Strait and the difficulties posed by navigation and changing weather conditions. The Rolex Middle Sea Race first started in 1968, and 2012 marks the 33rd edition of the race. It is also the last race of the season, and the chance to see over 80 yachts leaving the Grand Harbour at Valletta – it was indeed a spectacular sight. Four classes of yacht compete (the race is open to monohull and multihull yachts between 30 and 100 feet). Covering a distance of some 606-nautical mile racecourse around Sicily, the active volcano of Stromboli serves as a marker, and if the weather if fine, Mount Etna can usually be seen as well.
Eddie De Villiers and his South African team on Hi Fidelity eventually won the race. Co-captain Michael Joubert remarked that the race “was a challenge beyond challenges,” referencing the conditions faced by the team. “We didn’t get a lot of sleep, and each new leg brought something new,” he added. This doesn’t stop the Rolex Middle Sea Race attracting record numbers of entrants each year!
The Hi Fidelity crew with the Rolex Middle Sea Race Trophy and Rolex timepiece. (Image courtesy of Rolex/Kurt Arrigo)
Whether you go in summer or winter, Malta offers a varied, rich history and cultural heritage stretching back over 7,000 years – it is certainly a fascinating melting pot of cultures and civilizations. Home to no less than three UNESCO World Heritage Sites, our favorite place to wander around and soak up the history was in Malta’s ancient capital, Mdina. The atmosphere in Mdina is one of tranquility and understated splendor. Perched on a rocky plateau with a near 360 view of the island, Mdina is a great example of a Medieval fortress. We were very impressed with The Xara Palace Relais & Chateaux Hotel (probably the best on the island) which has been restored with finite detail. Certainly worth a stay and visit.
By The Luxury Channel
27th November 2012
The second edition of the Amarrass Desert Music Festival is back with traditional music from deserts around the world. The festival boasts of an awesome line-up, which includes Bombino (the Hendrix of Niger), BaBa ZuLa (the creators of Istanbul Psychedelia), the redoubtable Sakar Khan, Padma Shri Awardee (who seldom performs in public), and Barmer Boys, among others. The vast openness of desert, be it India’s Thar Desert or Sahel – Sahara in Western Africa will be captured in the venue at Zorba that creates a festival atmosphere with its amphitheatre, green lawns, food and drinks. The two-day music festival promises to be even more engaging and enjoyable than its predecessors, in a venue that complements the magnitude and scope of the festival. Zorba is known to have hosted music festivals in the past, with “Escape to Zorba” in April and “Jus Jazz” very recently being two of the memorable ones!
The festival is spread over two days, where the stage promises to be a great interactive platform for the showcase series that will feature up-and-coming artists, collaborations, experiments and sounds using ancient and modern instruments. An instrument petting zoo, kids’ music lessons and seeing a morchang being made are a few of the activities which will be showcased at the two day festival. Artists include Dischordian, Tritha Electric, Harpreet Singh, The Blue Infinity, Alan Rego, and a special Indo-Welsh collaboration – I Adra – with Tauseef Akhtar (Ghazal singer) and Gwyneth Glyn (singer/songwriter), and Georgia Ruth Williams (harp).
50 artists, 12 bands, 4 continents, 14 hours of music over two days, this year Amarrass brings to you not only an array of renowned international artists and jaw-dropping performances, but an ambience that will showcase the perfect environment created for the event.
About Zorba
Zorba is committed towards providing a growing platform for musicians across the world. Live performances by Folk, Fusion, Jazz, Blues, Rock, Sufi, Reggae and world music artists are encouraged here. Zorba stands for the free spirit. Free of inhibitions, celebrating each day with fresh enthusiasm and appreciating all beautiful aspects of life. We at Zorba have incorporated this philosophy to offer our guests an experience worth remembering. Live music, world cuisine, carefully selected wines and an engaging ambience will make any occasion worth celebrating at Zorba.
About Amarass
Amarrass Records was established in 2009 with the aim to deliver a world music experience that is inclusive, accessible and sustainable. Guided by the principles of fair trade, we strive to create an environment that encourages and nourishes the creative spirit of musicians and music lovers, and reinvigorates traditional forms of expression through music and the arts. The staging of world-class musical events, music production and distribution, and education will be part of this process.
The name Amarrass is significant. A literal translation means “eternal essence”…this is how we feel about music. We often listen to music in flashes and fleeting moments, but its impact is long-lasting. What stays with us are everlasting melodies, the glorious beats, an essence of the moment captured in rhythm. Built on a shared vision, passion and love for music, Amarrass Records is our attempt at finding and creating new solutions to address old issues and find a sustainable way forward to preserve, promote and enhance music that matters.
Festival Information
By Claudio Silva
9th November 2012
Claudio Silva, founder of the leading hospitality blog, Luanda Caipirinha Lounge, shares his top tips for a weekend in Luanda with Angola-Today.com and The Luxury Channel.
You wake up to quiet streets and the absence of the usual clamor; you cannot hear the incessant honking of the ubiquitous candongueiros, and even the colorful and boisterous zungueiras seemed to have receded into the city’s fabric. And the traffic… well, the traffic is completely gone. Welcome to Luanda on the weekend.
Affluent residents of Luanda like to dedicate the weekend to friends, family, and the few leisure activities one can do in the city. Most of these leisure activities invariably revolve around the ocean. Drawn-out lunches with friends and family, as well as days spent on the beach, are the traditional favorites.
If you find yourself in Luanda city centre during a weekend, start off your day with a leisurely stroll around the Cidade Alta (Upper City), the seat of power in Luanda. It is a small agglomeration of pink government buildings, among them the Presidential Palace, several important ministries, and the Igreja de Jesus, one of the city’s most famous churches. Due to its proximity to the Presidential Palace, this smart and quiet area overlooking Luanda Bay is very safe and constantly policed.
As you make your way down the Cidade Alta, keep to the left and you will see the beautiful Fortaleza de São Miguel, commonly known as the Luanda Fort, an imposing white military structure inherited from the Portuguese. Today, it houses some historical artifact, including a few fighter jets and statues of colonizers past, and offers expansive views of the Marginal, Luanda’s bay.
Finally, continue your trek downwards and stroll along the recently renovated Marginal itself, the city’s newest and most frequented public space. You’ll see young lovers, joggers, people skating, old men reading on benches facing the ocean, and one or two people just contemplating the ever-hanging face of their beloved city.
If hungry, one option is to head back up the hill towards Luanda Fort and eat at one of the city’s most charming and unique addresses, the Naquele Lugar Restaurant, located on the cobblestone road leading to the Fort. Your immediate sensation upon entering this courtyard restaurant is that you are having dinner at a friend’s garden somewhere in the Mediterranean. The decades-old building housing the restaurant and it’s kitchen give the place an authentic, charismatic feel. Their specialty is the Pepper Steak and it never disappoints.
Alternatively, you can head to the Ilha, where Luanda’s moneyed elite and emerging middle class flock to on the weekends, filling its numerous seaside bars and restaurants. The Ilha is really a peninsula jutting out from mainland Luanda into the Atlantic Ocean. Among its most frequented establishments are Chillout, which doubles as a sexy and sophisticated sea-side lounge and dance club at night, Cais de Quatro, which sits on the side of the Ilha overlooking Luanda and has some of the best views of the city, and Coconuts, which many Luandans consider to be the best restaurant on the strip. Take your time at one of these establishments. Savor the food and the ocean breeze, nurse your glass of wine or caipirinha and come prepared to spend at least $80 per person.
As night-time approaches, you’ll slowly start to notice the increase in street activity. There are more cars on the road. People walk by you impeccably dressed. Loud music, of many different varieties, starts to fill the air. Luandans love their nightlife and are known as skilled revelers, with parties lasting all-night and spilling into Sunday morning.
You can start your night with a cocktail at one of the city’s several attractive lounges. Doo.Bahr, located on the third floor of Edifício Escom, Luanda’s tallest tower, has some of the best cocktails in town and a rather opulent ambiance. Floresta Lounge, in the Kinaxixi neighborhood, is a much more eclectic establishment, known for its chilled music and excellent sangria which can be sipped in the lounge’s outdoor patio.
As the hour advances and you start to get in the mood for a change of scenery, you are again spoilt for choice. Many of your friends will head to the Ilha, the preferred destination for the city’s night owls. Lookal São Jorge, another seaside venue, features an expansive variety of music and several international acts per month. The more alternative Elinga Teatro, located on a historical building facing the Marginal, is another unique location that is heavy on house, reggae, and sometimes hip-hop. The current darling of Luanda’s nightlife, however, is Kasta Lounge, the city’s premier club destination and located on the road that leads to the Luanda-Sul neighborhood.
When you finally awake on Sunday, and if you are lucky enough to be friends with a Luandan, there is nothing better than the traditional, drawn-out family meals so common in the city’s quintais (backyards). Such occasions are a staple of Angolan culture and offers the extended family a chance to sit down and talk about the past week, current events, politics, family affairs, and the like; the conversation flows and so does the beer and wine, and the food spread is quite extensive. It is here that you are most likely to try many of Angola’s favorite national dishes, including the ubiquitous funji(ground cassava flour), which is eaten with a variety of stews, beans cooked in a palm oil sauce, grilled tilapia fish, and several other local specialties. In the event that you, for whatever reason, aren’t invited to one of these lunches, there is nothing to worry about. Tia Guida on the Ilha has plenty of this type of fare for a very reasonable price, while the more adventurous among you can try the incredibly fresh grilled seafood at one of the roadside shacks in Chicala, on the side of the Ilha facing the Atlantic (ask anyone at the entrance to the Ilha and they will direct you there). Other Sunday favorites include Veneza Restaurant, where you are served heaping portions of Portuguese cuisine or one of the best steaks in the city, or even the aforementioned Lookal, which has among the best variety of seafood in Luanda and is a great place to watch a sunset to the sound of relaxing music and great cuisine.
By Monday, the magic of the Luandan weekend will have disappeared and the city will have returned to its usual state of organized chaos. But you can rest safe in the knowledge that there is always next weekend, and that for 48 hours at least, you got to meet and experience a different facet of Luandan life and culture.
By Rosalind Milani Gallieni
5th November 2012
Even after 20 years visiting this breathtaking region of the Swiss Alps, there is still the same content of apprehension and wonderment from an excursion to the Jungfraujoch, which towers above you at 3454mt above sea level. To top it all, this year also celebrates 100 years since the Jungfrau railway was completed – an engineering feat that took 16 years to complete, and which today takes passengers to the highest station in Europe.
Following the rails of the Jungfraubahn, which take you to this highest point, you come to the final railway station at the end of the line which quite literally takes your breath away, both for the altitude (as the air is extremely thin up here), and for the outrageous position, which opens out to the full-on panorama of the snow decked Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau.
The long train-run through the rock tunnel is broken up in two viewpoint panoramic windows looking out onto the world. Carved out of the rock wall, back in 1890’s, these tireless tunnellers, who were led by the vision of the fearless engineer and entrepreneur Adolf Guyer-Zeller, have today given us all a live wonderland pleasure ride, both in summer and winter.
At the Top of Europe, standing on the Jungfraujoch, we are amazed by the world of snow and ice which stretches below with views spanning over 20 kilometres along the Aletsch Glacier – on a clear day, you can spot the Vosges in France and the Black Forest in Germany. A glacier trek with an expert guide takes us along this eternal sea of ice; each one of us tied to one another by sturdy ropes, and happy husky dogs bounce about us in anticipation of the long runs ahead.
Making such close contact under-foot with this awe-inspiring glacier is a truly unique experience. Considering the mere brute power and depth of this beautifully dangerous landscape puts each one of us into perspective with our surroundings, and it is no surprise that key temperature and weather research is carried out at this exceptional UNESCO World Heritage Site to study our sustainable future: a most important natural reference in our in ever-changing world.
After a stretch on skies, a short run on a ski-do then takes us up to the door of an incredibly small, bright yellow twin-seater Piper Supercup and after a struggle to sit in the smallest of cockpits with ski boots and all, we take off from a white snow runway and climb up towards the Eiger’s North Face. The plane is exactly as wide as the single seats we are tucked into, and the body of the plane is a treated canvas. We watch in further amazement as the pilot keeps climbing for height and points out places on the rock on the North Face where bodies were never recovered. “Weather conditions often don’t allow us to get close enough to help, and we have to abandon the rescue operations,” he says slowly…considering…
One last swoop and he points the nose of the plane towards the opposite side of the valley, steering us to Mürren, which nestles under the PitzGloria, a location synonymous to many with the famous Bond movie, “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.” To reach there, we suddenly fly across an immense drop, with searing rock faces dropping away under us, straight down into the village of Lauterbrunnen below.
To mark the centenary of the Top of Europe, a celebration concert will take place on March 31st, with an international star-studded line up, counting singers Bryan Adams, Kim Wilde and Polo Hofer in concert at the SnowpenAir on the Kleine Scheidegg – an open air concert which reverberates effectively at 2000mt, directly at the foot of the biggest world icon, the Eiger, with its intimidating North face looking down at the valley below. Tread lightly!
By Scott Manson
2nd November 2012
About ten years ago, a well-known travel company ran a tube poster advert which read, ‘Your life is meaningless and you will die having achieved comparatively little. You need a holiday.’ It was accompanied by a photo of a paradise beach.
Leaving aside the questionable marketing tactic of insulting your target audience, it made a solid point. In terms of life-affirming moments, there are few things to beat a really great holiday. And nowhere is this affirmation more apparent than when you’re winging your way to a tropical holiday destination by helicopter.
The pilot, a mustachioed wing commander type who clearly has one of the best jobs in the world, points out a few sights on the 15 minute flight from the main island. In truth, though, it falls on deaf ears as I’m comfortably ensconced in my own private world, the hum and crackle of air traffic control in my headphones combining with the swoop and whoosh of the helicopter to fulfill all my James Bond fantasies.
On touchdown at Fregate Island Private, we’re greeted by Jared, our personal butler for the next few days. Previous places I’ve stayed which claim to have this service usually fall short of the mark. Often the personal butler turns out to be a chap who carries your bags to the room on the first day and turns your bed down at night. Here, though, Jared is with me every step of the way, remembering everything from my cocktail choice at dinner to precisely where I liked to position my sun lounger on one of the island’s seven talcum-soft white sand beaches. They include secluded Marina Beach, protected by cliffs with calm waters, and Anse Victorin, a ‘secret’ beach reachable by a flight of 100 stairs. Better still, two of the beaches can be exclusively yours, simply by turning a sign at the entrance to ‘occupied.’ Even at its peak, though, Fregate can never accommodate more than 40 guests, so you won’t find yourself fighting for beach space.
This idyllic granite island is dotted with 16 villas, all of them commanding incredible views of the Indian Ocean. These mahogany marvels also boast infinity pools, Jacuzzi, and marble floors, plus superbly comfortable four poster beds.
This is no Maldives-style perfectly manicured resort though. You know the sort of place, staffed with sunglass-cleaning technicians and other nannying types, all set in a destination that seems groomed to an inch of its life. Instead, Fregate is an island that has been sensitively developed, with a strong emphasis on the environment, from rainwater collection to the reintroduction of native flora and fauna. Indeed, a morning spent with their full-time ecologist Greg is a true eye-opener, as he takes us on a tour of this 300-acre island.
It’s almost too much to process – total sensory overload – with the dense undergrowth, punctuated by the whoop and whistle of its inhabitants, making me feel like I have a walk-on part in a Jurassic Park remake. A rustle in the bushes reveals itself to be one of the island’s most famous residents, an Aldabra Giant Tortoise. There are an unbelievable 2,000 of these creatures wandering around the island and they’re like a throwback to the days of the dinosaurs. The chap we’ve spotted is one of the oldest – around 110 years old – and is happy to accept a gift of a slightly squashed banana from my pocket. To complete the picture of untouched paradise, Steve points to a tiny Seychelles Magpie Robin perched in a nearby branch. Given the vibrant colours sported by many of the island’s birds, this little fella wouldn’t have grabbed our attention were it not for the fact that Steve reveals that it’s the seventh rarest bird in the world.
“We recently transferred 59 of these birds to the lsland, as part of a worldwide conservation scheme,” he says. “If the population takes off on Frégate as we expect, it will be the first bird species in the world once classified as Critically Endangered to be removed from Birdlife International’s threatened birds of the world list because of conservation action.”
Everything seems to flourish here – the whole place is like an episode of Gardener’s World on steroids – it feels like a seed planted at daybreak would be higher than my head by sunset.
After our expedition, the Rock Spa proves to be the perfect place to unwind. Situated at one of the highest points on the island, and with a suitably tranquil vibe, it’s home to a skillful set of massage therapists who take delight in revealing just how knotted my back muscles are, before proceeding to pound the tension into submission.
Dinner that night is taken alfresco. Jared and the island’s head chef Gabriel prepare a barbecue on the beach, with our table placed on the sand surrounded by flaming torches and the rustle of hundreds of hermit crabs providing the soundtrack. Lobster is served, alongside beautifully moist chicken and fish which, if it was any fresher, would probably leap from the plate to make a bid for the nearby ocean. We also sample the traditional Seychelles Creole salad, spiked with spring onions grown in the island’s vast gardens, as are most of the fruit and vegetables that are served to guests. Indeed, it’s the sort of place that, were you stranded Castaway-style, you could live quite happily on the island’s bountiful produce.
A five day holiday here is way too short. In truth, with 3km of island to explore, and deep-sea fishing, scuba diving, and other active pursuits easily available, a ten day trip would really hit the spot. No more than that though because, frankly, enjoying this level of luxury should only be savoured in small doses. Otherwise, you may never get on that return helicopter.
For more information, visit Scott Dunn ( www.scottdunn.com ; 020 8682 5400).
By Rosalind Milani Gallieni
1st November 2012
Cuba – a Caribbean Island blessed with palm trees, sultry temperatures, hip-swiveling rhythms, pristine beaches, and an excess of rum! Not forgetting the world’s finest hand rolled cigars…and socially apt sharks.
Starting with a 5-hour boat trip from Jucaro to Jardines de la Reina, a speck in the deep blue seas, which can officially be called the middle of nowhere – floats an oil rig platform, beautifully transformed into Italian design and style by its Italian owner from Como. Fish was exquisitely fresh straight from the sea and the lobsters from the mangroves, scattered all around us. Served twice daily by chef Eduardo, every dish came with the all important drizzle of Olive Oil – again, a comfort the owner sends in as priority!
Diving the Caribbean with videos and cameras at hand, catching this exceptionally untouched sea-world on footage, which back at home still makes viewers gasp in horror, as images of huge 3 meter long silky-sharks pass across the screen!
Tortuga Floating Hotel, Jardines De La Reina
Back in Havana, the lumbering American Chevrolet taxis dating back to the 1940s and 1950s, which are patched and propped up, and come in all the colours of the rainbow, work their way through crazy and unpredictable haphazard traffic; day and night they bustle past bikes and side cars, yellow Coco-taxis (a Piaggio Ape chassis with a yellow coconut shell on it which you sit in), yellow buses stuffed to the windows with local commuters, who at times hang off the wing mirrors as the doors close and the bus drives on! It all depicts the spirit of the nation.
This deep immersion into the Cuban lifestyle has left us all vibrantly energized and custodians of a lifetime experience, having lived a lifestyle the West has left behind, and that is close to the brink of change. Despite the scars of the revolution, headed up by Fidel and Che (which by the way means “Dude”), which struck both the buildings, the nation and their communities, Cuba’s people are happy, immensely proud of their country, radiant without resentment or crime.
Go there soon, see the WHOLE of Cuba, drive along the crazy long roads which cross the island, and witness the life outside the city, the lush plantations, the colour of the earth, the oxen working the land, the high mountains. See Havana ALIVE before the changes of UNESCO and long-term investors change the face of a romantic and beautifully real city, which drifts from day to day in the wonderfully addictive Cuban sun, while musicians play at every street corner; rhythms unchanged since the 1930s.
For prices and reservations at Tortuga Floating Hotel, go to www.cuba-diving.de
By Antonia Peck and Eadaoin Kelly
29th March 2012
Transform your body and your sense of self, as The Luxury Channel guides you through four of the world’s top spas….
SHA Wellness Centre
When I returned from SHA Wellness Centre, telling all who would listen about the delights of macro-biotic cooking and my amazing experience at the spa, many skeptics seemed hell-bent on curbing my enthusiasm. Even the man in Waterstones mocked me for enquiring about a book on macrobiotics which was ‘‘trendy over ten years ago,’’ leaving me shuffling around in the vegetarian cookbook aisle.
So I logged on to Amazon, read (admittedly old) articles about macro-biotic queen Gwyneth Paltrow, and bought The Hip Chick’s Guide To Macrobiotics.
It had been about ten days since I had been in Alicante, enjoying the January sunshine and the calm of this beautifully presented and modern spa, and in that time I had become a vegetarian, started every day with a bowl of miso soup (msg free) and given up that occasional social cigarette. However, most importantly of all, I felt grounded and connected to nature for the first time, in a long time. Suffice to say, SHA Wellness Centre is an incredible place and has quite honestly changed my life. Nearly two months later, my new lifestyle is still going strong.
Food
The macrobiotic philosophy is central to the Spa’s healing powers, which is about being exceptionally nourished with the right food. Those staying specifically for weight-loss are given a very low calorie menu. Others, who are suffering from stress or exhaustion, are given larger portions with a focus on alkalising the body. The only time I felt hungry was at night, when I would wake up with a start at around four in the morning. Many guests complained about their poor night’s sleep but this is a common symptom of the body expelling toxins. Siestas were often necessary in the afternoon.
The macrobiotic diet is largely vegetarian with the occasional fish offering. You eat no night-shade vegetables (so no potatoes, sweet potatoes, aubergine), dairy, meat, or tropical fruit. Your meals consist of brown, whole cereal grains, such as buckwheat and quinoa. Then pulses, vegetables, vegetable protein foods, sea vegetables and a variety of seeds, nuts and condiments. Foods I had never heard of, such as azuki beans, burdock and daikon, and seaweeds such as arame, agar-agar and dulse, appeared on my plate. The meals felt balanced and fulfilling – all thanks to SHA’s exceptional chef, Pablo Montoro.
Daniel Mayor, my macrobiotic counsellor during my time at SHA, advises guests to eat slowly and chew their food, take evening meals at the earliest possible time, and to drink water during the day and not with the meal. These methods stop bloating and aid digestion. Guests are also advised on supportive supplements during their stay (and for when they return). For example, I was advised to begin taking digestive enzymes and aloe vera juice with my meals. This has continued to be a revolutionary introduction to my eating habits.
Your efforts will be supported by the restaurant and kitchen staff (who all know your unique programme) and will allow you to request smaller or larger helpings if you feel the need.
There are some wonder foods in the macrobiotic diet and experts speak of the incredible benefits of beginning the day with fresh miso soup and umeboshi pills (pickled plums). Kukicha is another recommended beverage – a twig tea that helps ground you.
Activities
Guests are advised to be active every day and attend the SHA Life Learning Centre classes. The walk to the lighthouse in the morning is particularly enchanting, and the yoga teacher is very good.
Guests can book bespoke fitness classes according to their fitness level and SHA is currently updating their fitness area with new machines. The timetabled classes (pilates, stretching, yoga and aqua aerobics) are at beginners level but the point is to keep moving rather than show off your Pilates prowess.
I particularly enjoyed SHA’s thermal pool, as well as the sauna and steam room areas. It is the perfect place to relax, concentrate and strengthen your body and detox resolve!
Rooms
The beds at SHA are deliciously comfortable and are kitted out with really good, soft linen. Each bed has a silver tree painted lightly above it (like a ‘‘tree of life’’ symbol) and the colour template is neutral and clean. I had a sea and mountain view with a large patio, large television screen (that I never used), a desk, sofa and shower.
Top Tips
Speak to your ‘‘Agenda Co-ordinator’’ at the beginning of your stay to make sure you get the best out of your programme.
Book an appointment with SHA’s reflexologist – he received rave reviews!
Supplement your programme with regular massages (the shiatsu massage was amazing).
You might get the blues at first (a few tears, a headache or two) but wait it out and a lovely driving energy will take hold of you and inspire you once you return home.
By Fiona Sanderson
29th March 2012
How about having your own ski butler in the heart of the Swiss Alps? The quaint and traditional village of Andermatt – with a population of only 1,300 – is being transformed and, as a guest of the Andermatt Swiss Alps Company, I took a trip to the Gotthard region, in the heart of the Swiss Alps, to find out why.
This charming village has been quietly forgotten since its heyday in the 20s and 30s, when its clientele included local aristocrats and European royalty. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert chose it as their alpine hideaway and The Grand Bellevue Hotel was once the only place to be seen.
When World War II broke out, the Swiss Army chose Andermatt as its headquarters, and the picturesque village became the highly secretive base for the High Command of the Swiss Federal Army. Since the Army’s departure in 2000, locals have welcomed hardened skiers who enjoy the mountain passes and glaciers in the winter, and outdoor enthusiasts who climb, bike and explore the unspoilt Alpine landscape in the summer.
However, change is on the way as Orascom Development Holdings and The Andermatt Swiss Alps Company are transforming this small village into a hotspot to suit every visitor’s needs. Andermatt is to become a five star destination with new deluxe hotels, residential properties, sport and leisure facilities, as well as a conference and concert hall.
In order to rejuvenate Andermatt, sustainability is key to ensuring this visionary project is successful. The plans include developing the current infrastructure, as well as to launch six five star hotels and a complex of luxury apartments and villas. The innovative project will modernise an entire mountain area whilst maintaining a natural exterior, to compliment its environment. This will link the neighboring ski areas to create one single ski range of 135 kilometres of piste in the Winter, whilst in the Summer, the new 18-hole golf course, with 1.3 million sq metres, will satisfy the amateur golfers who like to take in the fresh mountain air. It is an impressive project which will place Andermatt on the map as a destination equal to some of the top ski resorts in Europe, such as St. Moritz, Verbier and Zermatt.
Clearly, for ambitious as well as family skiers, this will be a dream. Just a short car journey from Zurich Airport, the resort will provide everything from the tall slopes of the Gemsstock Glacier at 3,000 metres for the advanced winter sport fanatics, to the lower sunny slopes of the Nätschen which will suit all holiday needs. For the city dweller who prefers the après ski life (like myself), I was keen to discover the lifestyle element of the development. Building works on Europe’s first Chedi Hotel and Residence are nearing completion. With 50 bedrooms and a collection of 119 apartments and penthouses, this historical venue promises to be a first class hotel. On a guided tour around the building site of The Chedi Andermatt, it was clear that luxury, space and comfort were in mind, with fine dining gourmet restaurants serving the best of Asian cuisine, wine and cigar libraries and various themed lounges. The extensive spa, indoor and outdoor pools and a uniquely designed ice rink and stylish après ski bars, appealed immediately to me. Based on projected designs, my first impression was very good.
Whether the new Andermatt will retain the quaintness of an “old mountain village” is yet to be determined, but with support from the locals and a carefully planned luxurious expansion, it promises to be a top destination for winter 2013.
Top Tip
Apartments are valued at approximately CHF 1.8m and offer state-of-the-art facilities, including a wellness oasis and a sophisticated fitness centre, and with the option of your very own personal butler, it seems to tick all the boxes.
Andermatt Swiss Alps AG
By Eadaoin Kelly
20th February 2012
Miami really does have it all – the weather, the glittering white beaches, the contrasting art deco and modern architecture brimming full of designer and vintage shops, a wonderful array of restaurants and other cool hangouts. The only negative? Well, the locals also “have it all,” leaving us girls feeling rather pasty and tired in comparison!
Where To Stay
If we were in Miami to compete with the bronzed babes, then we booked the right place. Our hotel, Canyon Ranch Hotel & Spa gets people healthy and glowing fast! With residential options and 150 luxurious guest suites available, this is a truly inspirational and unique setting. Whether you seek indoor rock climbing, professional life management and health analysis, hair and beauty treatments or nutritional guidance, Canyon Ranch effortlessly provides the full package.
Meanwhile, Loews Miami Beach Hotel is again a perfect location, situated on South Beach, but this time a lively venue with couples and families in mind. With magnificent views from your balcony over the Atlantic Ocean and the vast swimming pool below, Loews Hotel has just less than 800 rooms and suites to suit all your vacation needs.
Where To Eat
A typical day at Canyon Ranch includes a tasty and nutritious breakfast. My substantial choice included a cappuccino with a bell pepper, white cheddar and onion omelette with a side of breakfast potatoes and turkey bacon, prepared fresh to order, knocking up only 602 calories (menus provide a calorie, fibre and protein guide to aid your choice).
After sprucing up at Gee Beauty with revitalising facials and glorious Red Carpet makeovers – in only 35 minutes, we were transformed to fit in with the crowd enjoying lunch at Carpaccio at Bal Harbour. Here we polished off delicious quattro formaggi pizzas and Pennette Harry’s Bar pasta (a garlic, spinach, pine nuts and sundried tomato sensation).
At SUSHISAMBA® , we were seated outside to enjoy dinner with a prime view of the passing beauties. We started with a wonderful crunchy and well-seasoned otsumami assortment followed by rock shrimp tempura, a delightful tuna seviche and the finale – a sharing plate of lobster taquitos. We drank a well-balanced Spy Valley Sauvignon Blanc (Marlborough, 2009). The service quality equalled the food: smart and well presented.
We took lunch at the trendy Nikki Beach . We sipped champagne and enjoyed Kobe beef sliders (mini beef burgers with roasted garlic, sundried tomato and tumbleweed onion) served with addictive fries whilst to the right of the DJ, we soaked in the sun surrounded by the local eye candy, who had gathered for social events and even a wedding!
We settled in the Sushi SoBe restaurant situated in the heart of Loews Hotel, attracted by the Raspberry Sake Mojitos bursting with fresh lime and mint, whilst we tucked unashamedly into sumptuous signature dishes, including soft shell crab sushi rolls, chef’s choice sushi and the formidable smoking tuna cocktail in a spicy ponzu dressing, which was as highly entertaining as it was palatable.
On our final night, we were comfortably seated in the presence of Miami’s finest in the sophisticated and luxurious main dining room of Meat Market . On recommendation, I ordered a Cucumber Southside cocktail, packed with gin, cucumber and mint, which was a touch too sour and not as sweet as it was presented. Going straight for mains, we collectively drank a smooth Show Malbec (Mendoza, 2010) selected from the award-winning wine list, and all tucked into plentiful hunks of Creekstone Farm beef, prepared to perfection according to our tastes, with sides of gouda tater-tots and sweet potato fries.
Where To Shop
Our first taste of shopping commenced on Lincoln Road. Reflecting on the previous week’s wintery amble down Regent Street in London, we happily sauntered along taking in the mix of designer and high street stores, popular restaurants and vibrant shopping atmosphere that equals London or New York, but with the benefit of a warm climate.
To satisfy our indulgent desires, we strolled admiringly around Bal Harbour , the most profitable luxury goods shopping destination in the U.S. (of its size). With shops such as Gucci, Marc Jacobs, Tiffany & Co and Jimmy Choo all under one roof, hours were lost in pure retail bliss.
Mentioned in the special edition of Vogue’s Best Dressed Guide, we journeyed to North Miami Beach to the legendary C. Madeleine’s Vintage Clothing Store. With good fortune, the inimitable Madeleine Kirsh was in the store and offered an animated tour of the 10,000 sq ft property providing a taste of 30s Hollywood glamour to 80s material girl and of course, a remarkable Chanel collection. The range is vast but do bear in mind small vintage sizes!
Top Tip
Try something a bit different in Miami with Roam Rides . Led by an experienced guide, we kick-started our vespas and zoomed through the streets of Miami to arrive, within 15 minutes, in the noteworthy Wynwood Art District. Stopping to enjoy the local and international street art and, on one occasion, speak with a local artist at work on his weekend hobby, we were introduced to the precision involved in the evolving and lucrative skill of street artistry.
For further information, visit: www.MiamiandBeaches.com
27th November 2011
Fiona Sanderson explores this perfect Winter escape….
Arriving by water taxi from the airport, I realized why they call the island of Nevis, “Queen of the Caribees.” Green and lush, I was struck by the magnificence of the clear water and its 3,232-foot Nevis Volcano. There’s something about this small, island that immediately puts you at ease – a real sense of tranquility and a “time gone by.” With its old churches, windmills, and architecture, this little island of only seven miles long seduced me on first sight.
Four Seasons
Arriving at the Four Seasons Hotel, I was genuinely surprised by the friendliness of the staff who could not have been more welcoming. This large hotel of 196 deluxe rooms and suites has managed to keep a simple but sophisticated décor with an old charm in line with the Nevis spirit of a stress-free life.
Full of all the activities you could wish for, including an 18-hole championship golf course, tennis courts, swimming pools, outdoor Jacuzzi and spa, I chose to take the more relaxed alternative and walk along their long white beach dipping into the sea in between the pelicans who were diving into the sea beside us.
Over a few days, I tried all their restaurant’s dishes which were delicious – I will happily say that our feast of giant scallops, wagami beef and melon candy floss was truly memorable. A must is the Four Season’s Island Hopper massage given by Beuvita. This really did complete my luxurious stay and truly put me in the Nevis frame of mind! This hotel has all the facilities for a fabulous romantic stay or a treat for all the family. Out of all the Caribbean luxury hotels, this is certainly the one to stay at.
By The Luxury Channel
23rd November 2011
The Maldives, a honeymooners’ haven, are a utopian enigma, a symbol of paradise, no matter what race, creed or class its visitors are. There are few places on earth that conjure up the sentiments of peaceful relaxation, pristine beauty and complete exclusivity. Perhaps the Seychelles or a few Pacific islands could draw comparisons but the archipelago of the Maldives, just south of Sri Lanka, are a unique prospect due to the variety and size of the islands on offer. The exotic appeal is clear, and the visible liberation from urban life is the cornerstone of this unique holiday experience.
Two Luxury Channel contributors chose the Maldives as their dream honeymoon destination and the resorts of Soneva Gili and Baros Maldives certainly delivered.
Soneva Gili
21st November 2011
Antonia Peck reviews a 17th Century boutique Bed & Breakfast with serious style credentials….
Hope House in Woodstock, Oxfordshire is a 17th century boutique Bed & Breakfast with serious style credentials. It has recently been invited to join Condé Nast Johansens – celebrating the best luxury hotels, spas and venues.
Why Stay?
Despite its status as the ancestral home of the Money family (whose job it was to collect monies to build Blenheim Palace circa 1708) – Hope House is a beacon of contemporary hospitality in the pretty town of Woodstock.
The owner, operator and maître d’par excellence is Paul Hageman, a descendant of the Money family, who runs the hotel with his wife in the most accommodating of manners. Paul has years of experience in the hotel industry and as such has the foresight to anticipate your every need.
There is certainly a market for an elegant B&B such as Hope House. It stands as a clever, modern offering that does much to update our interpretation of the local B&B. With Blenheim Palace as the main draw and Bicester Village’s famous fashion outlet nearby, you can see why Hope House is attracting the right sort of crowd.
Who Stays Here?
With so many brides choosing Rousham House & Garden or Blenheim Palace as their wedding venue (a booking every weekend for years at the latter) means that Paul is accustomed to hosting the bridal party. However, he is just as adept at hosting Formula 1 drivers and their entourage (from the nearby training site), loved-up couples looking for a luxurious place to rest their heads or jet-lagged tourists hoping to explore one of Oxfordshire’s finest towns. All guests relish the Hope House experience, enjoying the exquisite pleasure of having both privacy and top-notch service – making it the perfect choice for special occasions.
The Rooms
All the rooms at Hope House have a unique interior character and are of generous size (80-85sqm). Guests can stay in one of four apartments:
The Marlborough Suite on the top floor has large oak beams and gilt finishes. The lower ceiling height makes it a comfortable and elegant bolt-hole.
The Churchill Suite on the first floor has high ceilings (4 meters high) and two beautiful bay windows. Its interior design is the most contemporary but with traditional features, such as meticulously restored oak paneled walls and a beautiful stone fireplace.
The Blenheim Suite is the only one bedroom apartment (making it a favourite for couples), with a large marble fireplace and some original antiques. It is the most traditional and regal of the rooms.
Meanwhile, the hotel’s Six Bells Apartment in the building next door is available for a seven night stay, and has been done up to a very high standard. The apartment has a balcony and a seating area overlooking the garden.
All In The Details
7th November 2011
Antonia Peck escapes to Lake Como and stays at the world-famous Villa d’Este….
Your heart will break when it is time for you to leave the Villa d’Este, Cernobbio – such is the rare beauty and stillness of the place. For some, the source of enchantment is the ornate architecture of the villas and gardens, for others it is the serenity of the lake. For female guests, perhaps it is the knowledge that George Clooney roams nearby. Whatever the inspiration, the villa has had a feel for grandeur since it became a hotel in 1873, and I doubt its patrons have changed all that much. Most are glamorous couples or families, all pearls and furs, and Hermes scarves. It’s a subtle celebration of taste at the Villa d’Este. However, the hotel is full of contradictions that reflect the glory of the ordinary and real (welcoming loyal staff, white plastic deck chairs and glossy tailed ducks) to the sublime and ornate (wreathed statues, grand chandeliers, champagne at breakfast and the somewhat shocking price of a caesar salad).
Only an hour away from Milan Malpensa Airport, the hotel is accessible by car, helicopter or private boat. There are many attractions at the hotel, including an 18-hole golf course, an exceptional spa (note the exquisite Venetian plastered walls – and especially brilliant reflexology treatment) and the lakeside swimming pool (the indoor pool is not quite as glam – women have to wear little blue swimming caps that are not flattering!)
However, for many it is the garden and famed mosaic arch that is the most spectacular attraction. Mythological scenes and cleverly irrigated water features make it both unique and romantic. The hotel’s famed chef, Luciano Parolari, can be seen here in the mornings selecting the fresh herbs and flowers from the villa’s garden. If we get the face we deserve in this life then working at the Villa d’Este can be no bad thing, such is the natural charm and enthusiasm of the chef! His cookbook Tales of Risotto, 50 Recipes, And Culinary Adventures from Villa d’ Este will give you a little insight into the gourmet excellence you can expect when dining here.
The 159 rooms in the hotel are decorated with a nod to the 17th century and all are unique. Antique elements, combined with large televisions and comfy sofas make the rooms accommodating and nice to return to. The big Jacuzzi baths and the generous use of marble throughout makes it feel very indulgent.
The blow of our departure was softened by the fact that we were due to take a train to Florence in order to stay at their sister hotel, Villa La Massa. However, Villa d’Este will be difficult to trump and will be missed.
Contact
7th November 2011
We review the Four Seasons, Hampshire and enjoy the ultimate stay-cation….
Take the risk out of the stay-cation and any fears of Fawlty Towers-style histrionics and check-in at the Four Seasons, Hampshire. If you want perfect service, probably the most comfortable bed in the world, an internationally-renowned spa and a hotel that will welcome your lover and/or your brood of children – then this is the place to stay! The hotel is only 45 minutes from Heathrow Airport and surrounded by the scenic countryside of Dogmersfield Parkland. The long drive leading up to the hotel anticipates the building’s 18th century facade (that would have an institutional air, if not for the pretty portico statues). The heritage listed garden is manicured to perfection and definitely there to be used; guests can enjoy outdoor activities such as horse-riding, archery, pigeon clay shooting, croquet and cycling. However, for those who want a more restful weekend, then commander a sofa and enjoy tea and champagne in the Library, or sneak off to the spa. Guests can do as much or as little as they want here and are sure to return home feeling relaxed and rejuvenated.
The Rooms
Guests can stay in the old house or in the modern wing, both of which have good views of the grounds and are connected by a network of glass walkways. Room interiors are rich in traditional finishes, including parquet flooring and woven carpets that lend a classical and elegant feel. It’s luxurious but not ostentatious. The marbled bathrooms are a treat – with deep soaking baths, separate glass enclosed showers, Asprey toiletries and fluffy dressing gowns.
The Restaurant
Descend the sweeping staircase for dinner and be greeted by the welcoming staff. The restaurant has a traditional menu that will please the palette but not surprise it. Request a table by the window to enjoy the beautiful sunsets and views of the terrace and parkland beyond. The set menu – A Taste of Hampshire – is recommended. This five-course meal is a perfectly proportioned selection of locally sourced produce (such as crab to start, beef brisket and then crêpes for dessert) is around £90.00 a head (including wine and service). The breakfasts have a relatively good selection (be sure to try the blueberry muffins!).
The Spa
The Four Seasons, Hampshire Spa is often mentioned in the media’s Top Ten Spas lists. It is an outpost of the spa chain ESPA and offers treatments using local flower and fauna – for example, a soothing chamomile and sage massage (£90), lavender, rosemary and mint back treatment (£70) or a wonderful Four Seasons Escape package that will leave you relaxed and invigorated (£179.00). A unique touch is the sauna with clear quartz crystal, and a steam room with crystal amethyst. Meanwhile, the gym is extremely well equipped with a good selection of the latest machines, cardio equipment and weights.
7th November 2011
Suzanne Aaronson, founder of whatsworthit.com , reviews the Four Seasons Santa Barbara in California….
“How often do you find a stunning architectural structure, facing the ocean, with a jaw-dropping 50 meter pool/restaurant club, an intimate spa, pretty tennis courts, good food, top service, 5 minute walk to a cute village and biking/boating/vineyards at your doorstep? Tough one! This Santa Barbara institution, located directly in front of a pretty beach cove in Montecito, is one of the best Four Seasons in the US, from the grounds (20 acres of established manicured gardens) to the fabulous views and the special Spanish colonial architecture. They really don’t miss a beat — there is something for everyone of all ages and tastes here. Play it quiet or with family, friends and kids. I’ll return year after year — one of my worldwide favorite resorts.” – Suzanne.
Need To Know
Great For:
A family vacation, as a couple or solo for local sporty activity and calm. Request a bungalow room if solo or with your doggy; an adjoining bungalow with the kids is also a lovely option — step outside to the garden.
Go With:
The kids. The resort is particularly welcoming to families with children as it has a children’s pool, various kid-friendly activities, Kids For All Seasons programmes and babysitting. Make sure to check out the crooked-neck giraffe at the Santa Barbara Zoo. If you go solo or with a lover, there are perfectly fabulous options.
Memorable Moment:
The unbelieveable lap pool on top of the ocean at Tydes before a day of local wineries in the nearby Santa Ynez valley while the kids were entertained and well looked after by the Four Seasons staff.
Best Time To Go:
5th June 2011
Suzanne Aaronson, founder of whatsworthit.com , reviews JK Place in Capri, Italy….
“One of Italy’s best hotels and the only hotel in Capri that actually sits on the sea front. Quiet enough to escape the ‘scene’ (or be at the very epicenter — you choose). Feels like a private home, perched on the cliff and filled with art, antiques and fresh flowers: the perfect mix of style, energy and relaxation. I designed my bedroom after their living room!” – Suzanne
Need To Know
Great For:
A stylish stay that doesn’t forget where it is — a pretty island off the Amalfi coast.
With Whom:
5th June 2011
Suzanne Aaronson, founder of whatsworthit.com , reviews Birkenhead House in Hermanus, South Africa….
“This is one of my favourite lesser-known properties in the world – absolutely love it, and feel so at home here. During whale season is when it must be experienced – you’ll just not believe how many and how close! Atmosphere is one of an extensive private home: nothing is too much trouble for the super friendly and efficient staff, and the setting: wow, wow and wow! The property perches on cliffs overlooking Walker Bay and is so close that you feel as if you practically are in the ocean — the whales smiling at you!” – Suzanne
Need To Know
Great For:
A few days of relaxed activity away from the hustle bustle of Cape Town, getting out and about in the dreamy, beach-side setting for hikes, picnics and whale-watching.
With Whom:
Take a romantic few days as part of a longer trip in the South African region and truly treat yourselves.
Memorable Moment:
Staff set up breakfast for us on the edge of the patio, from where we saw about twenty 15-metre whales frolicking in the ocean. I’ll never forget the feeling.
Best Time To Go:
August-November are best for whale-watching (with August as calving season). Just magical and the weather is perfect: crisp sea breeze, sun shining and these incredible creatures surfacing meters in front of you.
Be Aware:
5th June 2011
The Luxury Channel meets Eva Ziegler, global brand leader at Le Meridien and W Hotels….
From Times Square to Leicester Square, stepping into a W Hotel transports you into a world of “WOW!” Global Brand Leader Eva Ziegler tells us how this flirty, chic atmosphere is perfect for the modern honeymoon.
With their slick design, bright colours and seductive lighting, W Hotels hook in the world’s cool crowds, and that includes honeymooners wanting to begin their life together at the sharp end of chic.
W London opened it’s doors on Valentine’s Day 2011, which, as Eva tells us, rather appropriately coincided with the W Hotel’s aim to provide “insider access to a flirty escape.” She reveals that “as with all W Hotels, the attitude of W London is playful, whimsical and full of intrigue.” There’s certainly a high-energy atmosphere that hits you as soon as you walk through the door – the glittering lights cast by 600 miniature disco balls guide you to the cocktail lounge and make you want to dance before you’ve even had your first sip!
“As in all W cocktail lounges, it embraces a sip, drink and flirt culture,” Eva explains. “It’s cool but it’s not too cool. We stick to an informal, casual approach: pinstripe by day, let loose by night!” Most importantly, W Hotels aim to stand out from the sea of cookie-cutter look-alike luxury hotels, while still being accessible and comfortable – and nothing sums this up better than the sofa on which we sit to chat: a 37-metre, rich, black leather chesterfield sofa, reputed by Eva to be the biggest ever made in the world.
Each W Hotel is a destination within a destination and W London is no different. Eva is quick to point out that it brings together everything under one roof that honeymooners might desire, so they never have to stray too far from the bridal suite. “W London is the ideal pre and post wedding spot,” she confirms. “We would recommend it for hen parties and as a romantic city break.” A private dining area in their Spice Market restaurant, which overlooks London’s busy China Town, a cocktail lounge and Wyld, their guest-list only nightclub, all gear towards this, as does the Away We Stay spa and private cinema room. “The excitement and high energy of this flirty cocktail culture makes it an ideal space for wedding buzz,” she tells us.
Let’s not forget the key ingredient – the bedrooms. Eva recommends the EWOW Suite. “It’s the ultimate in indulgence,” she confides. At £5,000 per night, guests are guaranteed an “Extreme WOW.”
In honour of it’s arrival in the capital’s cinema and theatre heartland, W London commissioned top director Ricardo Ponti to film a short piece of the Away We Stay spa in the hotel, featuring Helena Christiansen, David Gandy, Tom Hollander and of course – W London.
To see the film and find out more about W London, visit www.wlondon.co.uk
By Lauren Steventon
4th May 2011
The Luxury Channel chats to Karolin Troubetzkoy, owner of Jade Mountain in St Lucia, to find out what it takes to create the perfect wedding abroad.
Why do people choose Jade Mountain as a wedding destination?
It was created for the celebration of life and love – there could not be a more scenic location to tie in with these most memorable of occasions!
What are your top tips for organising a destination wedding?
Ask the resort how many weddings a day they arrange, as you don’t want to wait in a queue!
Keep it tropical and work with what is available at your destination location, and don’t try to bring urban design ideas and colour schemes to your beach wedding.
Think practically when you are picking your wedding dress for a tropical wedding. The dress should “breathe” and not make you uncomfortable in hot temperatures. The same goes for the groom and guests.
Take your new wedding rings off when you go snorkelling or scuba diving! Very often, they have not been sized properly and may come off easily before you know it.
How many people would you recommend inviting?
We can host a wedding ceremony on our Celestial Terrace for up to 50 guests. For a wedding dinner celebration at Jade Mountain, we prefer wedding parties to not be larger than 20- 24 guests. The entire concept of Jade Mountain is that of an exclusive oasis. If the wedding party becomes larger, we usually suggest that some of the guests stay at our sister property Anse Chastanet. We would also use one of the restaurants there for the wedding dinner, or one of our 2 beaches there for the actual wedding celebrations.
It is best to hire the entire resort?
Jade Mountain is an ideal (but very pricey) property for resort buy-outs for up to 60 guests. Our minimum stay requirement would be 5 nights.
What should the bride wear? What should she take into consideration when planning a Jade Mountain/Caribbean wedding?
Be creative – Jade Mountain is one of the world’s most unique properties so why not think out of the (bridal) box!
What about guests – how should they pack?
Think light and tropical.
How do weddings in warmer climates differ from traditional English/European weddings?
Aside from the temperatures, brides and grooms usually enjoy the less formal approach with our tropical weddings.
Do you get very different styles of wedding, or do they tend to follow a pattern due to the couple having picked the resort?
We approach every wedding as the unique affair it clearly is. We try not to invoke some pattern but encourage our brides and grooms to share their vision with us, which we then take on board and form our proposal from. We are so fortunate here with a 600 acre estate, two beaches, a plantation with historical ruins from the 18th century, plus of course Jade Mountain with the Celestial Terrace, our yachts, and the nearby waterfalls. You can see the potential for each couple picking their own unique wedding location and celebration.
Do most people inject a little local culture (e.g. food, clothes or music), or do they keep it traditional?
We very much encourage our brides and grooms to have a “local” element, whether it is for the rehearsal or the wedding party itself.
How does the celebration of life and love manifest itself in the essence of Jade Mountain?
You don’t want to come out of your sanctuary…best advice is to send all your guests home after the wedding and enjoy time by yourself!
Is it difficult for the couple, organising a wedding far from their home? How does your team make it as stress-free as possible?
Our wedding team here can make all arrangements and they are very organised. It usually just takes one or two e-mails and a telephone conversation to create a basic outline and we can take it from there. In essence, it is up to the individual couple how much creative control they want to maintain through the process. We always recommend for them to let us do the work, and just focus on the enjoyment of paradise….
Why is St Lucia so associated with romance?
I have always suspected that there must be something special in the air. I am not kidding! Especially as our region, Soufriere, is so blessed with its natural beauty, that this seems to have a mellowing effect on the soul, which in turn perhaps makes you more relaxed and therefore perhaps more receptive to “feelings.” Whatever it is, I am still not immune to it myself!
What other activities could couples do on the island?
I am a great fan of water-based activities, from day sailing, or sunset cruises. Depending on the make-up of the group, some couples take their entire wedding party to go jungle biking in our plantation of Anse Mamin and we also have zip-lining available. There are many possibilities including, of course, snorkelling and swimming right in our Anse Chastanet bay.
Do you have any particularly romantic stories from the resort?
Oh dear, not a day goes by where we don’t have something especially romantic happening! We have baked cakes with hidden proposals, we have arranged underwater wedding proposals, we have created special set-ups in the sanctuaries, on our boats or the Celestial Terrace for such proposals.
What makes the perfect wedding in the Caribbean?
Sunshine helps! And we all want that perfect sunset on your wedding day but some things we simply cannot promise. In the end, it has to be being in a spectacular location with those around you that you love.
Thinking ahead, what would be the perfect Caribbean honeymoon?
To be in a spectacular location with the one you love and have a great service team available whenever you want.
By The Luxury Channel
3rd April 2011
One day you’re glowing, unable to chisel the grin from your face and basking in a deluge of post-engagement congratulations. The next, the stressful reality of actually planning a wedding sets in. Whether you’re dreaming of a classic country wedding or a luxurious beachfront getaway, one key element resonates loudly; a bride wants to look and feel her most beautiful on her wedding day, and get her body back to its former glory.
Yet, it can seem impossible to find the time for self-indulgence, when so many logistical questions and queries relating to the wedding are coming your way. A mere yoga class or facial often gets crossed out of the over-extended diary for a meeting with the florist or an email exchange with the caterers. The only solution is to block out a whole week of pampering and run away into the arms of the experts!
Set against the heavenly backdrop of the Andaman Sea, Arcanum Wellness Retreat nestles in a hidden location on the mountainous Thai island of Phuket. Blending traditional Eastern ideals of cuisine and hospitality with a contemporary Western approach to fitness and nutrition, it’s hidden from the eyes of the world in a private cove of white sand.
There, TJF Personal Trainers are on hand to transform your body and mind. Having worked with super-high profile clients, they understand the toll stress can take on a body so their support begins at home and continues post-retreat. While you’re there, personal training plans, massages, sinfully indulgent treatments and mind-clearing early morning yoga sessions on the beach all come together to un-knit your brow.
The experience is designed to enhance a guest’s physique and posture but also inject an air of tranquillity and positivity into their lives. With the florist badgering you for a final decision on table decorations and your mother and mother-in-law-to-be battling it out in the wedding day style stakes, who wouldn’t jump at the chance for a little inner peace?
To celebrate the retreat’s inception, there will be a series of three exclusive ‘Total Body Transformation’ courses over the summer, ideal for anyone with a summer or autumnal wedding on the horizon, and there are three weight loss courses in June, July and August.
Find out more at www.arcanum-phuket.com
28th February 2011
Antonia Peck enjoys an opulent stay in one of the city’s grandest hotels.
You could stay in trendier parts of New York and a hotel more suited to women in their mid-twenties, but it was my friend’s first time in New York and I wanted her to experience the city at its most elegant. The hotel experience needed to be a treat and not a trend-led hotel that however ‘cool’ could have been anywhere in the world. So we decided to stay near Park Avenue (for her love of shopping) and near Central Park (for a bit of inner-city calm). With this in mind, why not stay in a hotel like The Pierre, with an eighty-year pedigree, in a building originally owned by a Getty?
The doormen at the Pierre wore fur hats with double-breasted coats and opened our taxi door, greeting us warmly as they took our bags into the opulent lobby despite the increasingly heavy snowfall. We checked in and had a quick peek at the cocktail bar before proceeding up to our suite in the art-deco lift (with lift-attendant in white gloves). It was past midnight but the hotel staff welcomed us with cheerful smiles and old-fashioned charm.
Our room was at the back of the hotel and on the eleventh floor; the view was non-descript but unimportant (other rooms have spectacular views of Central Park). The soft cream furnishings, high ceilings, seal grey sofas and red-orange trimmed cushions created a warm and considered atmosphere.
However, our first night at the hotel was all about the beds (having just arrived from JFK airport). These single beds were kitted out with the softest linens imaginable. According to my friend, it was like being ‘kissed by clouds.’ Like a great massage, the sheets at the Pierre melted the muscles and calmed the mind. As the snow continued to fall (19 inches of the stuff by morning) we nested in these beds and stretched out our toes with glee.
Our first breakfast at The Pierre saw us seated at a lovely table in the hotel’s brasserie style restaurant – Le Caprice (part of Richard Caring’s group). A lot has been made of Le Caprice being a London restaurant in New York but it felt perfectly at home in its Upper East Side location. Original prints of Jean Shrimpton in New York, captured by David Bailey, lined the walls in a nod to the ‘NYLON’ connection and the restaurant was filled with important-looking executive diners conducting meetings or showing off their latest accessories. Anna Wintour, Ivanka Trump and Jennifer Lopez have all dined here.
After breakfast, we explored the hotel – looking in amazement at their impressive conference, ballroom and state-of-the-art gym (complete with grand paintings and Persian-inspired interiors). The massage room lay beyond for post-workout treatments and bottles of water, bowls of fruit and a ballet bar were all available for guests to use at leisure.
Before venturing out into the snow for our first official day in New York, we decided to do three very girlie things to welcome ourselves into the hotel. The first was to turn on our room’s Bose-wave iPod system and listen to Alicia Keys’ Empire State of Mind, whilst dancing around our suite in fluffy white Pierre slippers. The second was to crack open some seriously expensive Dylan’s Candy Bar gummy bears (it was 11am in the morning – so a little early for Champagne!). We ended our impromptu slumber party with an episode of Gossip Girl on our flat screen TV until we were finally ready to take on snowy New York – fur coats at the ready!
About The Pierre
The Pierre, on Fifth Avenue overlooking New York’s Central Park, first opened in 1930. The iconic hotel with 189 guestrooms, including 49 suites, was acquired by Taj Hotels Resorts & Palaces as the luxury chain’s U.S. flagship in 2005. The Pierre, a member of Leading Hotels of the World, reopened on June 1st 2009, following a $100 million renovation programme.
Rates begin at $895.
28th February 2011
Expect royal treatment at The New York Palace and their restaurant, GILT.
Can you ask your New York taxi driver to ‘take me to The Palace?’ In short, no, but I had expected him to know this glamorous hotel of choice for so many smart and international travellers. My taxi driver looked at me as if I had lost my mind and had serious illusions of grandeur. I tried correcting my instructions with reference to other nearby New York landmarks: ‘opposite St. Patrick’s Cathedral or near Burberry’s headquarters,’ until we finally arrived on the corner of 50th Street and Madison Avenue.
Upon arrival at The New York Palace, my ego and royal expectations were lavishly justified. This 55-story building that rises above the Villard Mansion provides decadent accommodation with the most luxurious suites on the top 14 floors. The view from the rooms is captivatingly modern and old world at the same time – with St. Patrick’s lying majestic below and panoramic visions of New York alive with activity across the skyline. The bespoke services and interiors, in these suites, are equally impressive. Alas, we did not stay in the rooms, but were instead taken to the spa for a taste of palace pampering. Naturally, and in keeping with my regal mood, I chose the wine-infused deep-tissue massage!
Looks restored, we went downstairs to the Madison Room for a signature cocktail and some truffle-infused French fries (why not!). GILT bar is set in the nineteenth-century grandeur of the Villard Mansion’s historical Gold Room. The beauty and energy of the bar cannot be overstated. From the decorative elements to the seriously modern Zaha Hadid bar – this is an experience destination and is ‘happening’ every night of the week.
The time had come to dine at GILT restaurant. Their Executive Chef, Justin Bogle, has received critical acclaim for his modern American menu, which has received high praise from around the globe (and earned itself two Michelin stars). The restaurant is also loved by New Yorkers seeking to impress their darlings, providing a great and intimate destination for an anniversary or a birthday (with only 55 diners at a time). When dining at GILT, guests select from a three-course prix fixe menu, the five course tasting menu or put themselves completely in the hands of the chef and the sommelier for the Grand Seven Course tasting Menu.
I am glad to say that it was a breathe-taking gastronomic experience, from start to finish. Food was presented with artful expertise. These delectable morsels rolled out of the kitchen like colourful, fragrant ribbons of perfection. For me, this meant ruby red shrimp, nori, toasted sesame and turnip with pear, to start, and Monkfish with charred eggplant, cauliflower and harissa, for the main. Meanwhile, the wines that were served were extensive and our sommelier, knowledgeable. The Wine Director, Patrick Cappiello, who manages the restaurant’s 8,000 bottle cellar, looked slightly baffled (and I only hope pleased) when I declared him a ‘wine genius,’ such is his skill at choosing wines to complement the food you have chosen.
GILT is open for dinner Tuesday – Saturday.
The New York Palace
3 nights in a Superior King Room on a room only basis PLUS a 50 minute restorative massage per person and 3 course Prix Fixe Dinner at GILT (excl drinks) £475 per person. Based on two people sharing a room, for travel in low season.
For more information or to book an unforgettable tailor-made holiday with Quintessentially Travel to New York contact:
Tel: +44 845 224 6915
By Antonia Peck
28th February 2011
In keeping with The Luxury Channel’s exploration of New York’s classic hotels, Antonia Peck checks in at one of its best.
Piers Morgan and his wife, Celia Walden, were photographed at the Four Seasons in Manhattan for Tatler in an article entitled, The Comeback King. They posed in the lift and their suite on the 48th floor (with incredible views including the Empire State building, majestic in the background). The message being – come to New York, stay at the Four Seasons and you’ve made it.
The Four Season’s brand power shows little signs of waning. Stars attract stars and this hotel chain is not only a leading but trusted destination for the rich, famous and international glitterati. From Marilyn Monroe to Henry Kissinger, as well as the above-mentioned new host of CNN’s evening interview slot, the Four Seasons New York has enticed and lavished them all. Need we mention that the suitably monikered ‘Brangenlina’ are also huge fans of the Four Seasons brand.
It’s not hard to see why. The 52-floor, limestone building was designed by I.M. Pei, an uncompromising visionary who also designed the Louvre’s world famous glass pyramids. The average size of a room is 600 square feet (the size of a two bed apartment) and the marble bathrooms have large baths that run hot in 60 seconds. Add to this a walk-in wardrobe, high ceilings and tall curtains you control from the comfort of your bed, and you are clearly on to a winner. Other perks include the infinitely knowledgeable concierge who knows exactly how to get you a table at the latest haunts – which, in New York, changes every week. Additional details such as an exceptional laundry service and good business facilities help keep guests looking and feeling smart, prepared and ready to take on the world.
The Four Seasons is perfectly located in the centre of Manhattan for shopping trips and business meetings, with taxis whizzing by at all times. Meanwhile, the hotel breakfast sets guests up for the day with inventive fruit juices, eggs with asparagus, and delicious pancakes. Arriving back to your hotel room feels like an occasion and a treat. You will be reluctant to leave this most hospitable of hotels. Book now for the ultimate New York experience.
By Eadaoin Kelly
22nd February 2011
White sports, blissful spa tratments, gourmet experiences and Winter wonderlands – what better way to spend a romantic few days than a long weekend in Austria?
We flew directly to Salzburg airport and were swiftly transported, by taxi, through the winding mountain roads. The journey lasted approximately 1.5 hours and cost €140 and reached a cool -17 degrees on route to Hotel Rosengarten in Kirchberg, Tyrol, an a equally chilly -12 degrees.
Hotel Rosengarten
After being warmly greeted by the hotel owner, we were shown to a suite known as ‘Burgundy.’ Each of the 26 rooms and suites in Hotel Rosengarten are named after some of the delights that can be found in the ground floor restaurant. The hotel is situated just 500 meters on foot (1.1km by road) from Maierlbahn (which accesses the Kitzbühel ski area) and is near the 55 lifts and 170km of slopes in the Kitzbühel, Reith and Kirchberg areas.
Hotel Rosengarten opened on the 9th December 2010 and is a development of the gourmet restaurant. We unpacked our weekend bags in our open plan, glassy suite. There could be no better way for young lovers, disembarking the slopes after an arduous day’s skiing, to unwind and prepare themselves for a delectable dinner in the restaurant. The hotel proudly hosts the only restaurant to ever achieve 2 Michelin stars in Tyrol, a fine tribute to the work of Chef Simon Taxacher, who seamlessly incorporates a number of local ingredients into a menu of gourmet French/Mediterranean inspired cuisine.
The menu at Simon Taxacher was inviting and luxurious. The taste sensations, textures and visual displays were simply beyond the realms of our ordinary imaginations. The Goose Liver marinated with Gianduja bitter chocolate and Granny Smith apples was surprisingly and delicately combined to result in a magnificent dish. The Turbot, which effortlessly incorporated the texture of crunchy, curry-infused carrots and fresh cockles was followed by Savarin of Champagne, finger limes and kumquats. Candy floss and petit fours ensured that with each bite, the senses were aroused with an innovative, unique flavour sensation. Everything about this experience was faultless and truly thrilling. The Restaurant Manager, who was extremely knowledgeable, maintained a formal demeanour whilst making guests feel welcomed and relaxed. She really ensured that this culinary experience was truly original and enjoyable. The sommelier recommended Austrian wines as per our request, including Riesling Senftenberger Piri, 2009 (M. Nigel) and Riesling Achleiten Smaragol 2006 (Prager), which complimented the dishes to perfection.
The next morning brought about a severe drop in temperature, creating a postcard-perfect, snow-capped mountain view, and, importantly, the perfect skiing conditions (for my other half!). Wanting to make the most of my time at the hotel, I enjoyed a number of the exquisite spa treatments offered by Hotel Rosengarten. It seems that the Chef even had a hand in creating the spa’s menu, as beauticians utilised products incorporating ingredients from the kitchen.
I began with a zesty fruit peel, vegetable body mask with a tranquillity body massage, finishing with a truly relaxing, vitamin body wrap leaving me refreshed and re-energised. Despite the cool temperatures in the spa area and the seemingly strange choice of music, the treatments were administered to perfection by the spa manager, resulting in one very satisfied customer.
After a day of pampering and treatments, mountain walking and skiing, we joined forces again for a light bite in the bistro. The strong lights and music within the bistro which accompanied this locally inspired and delicious menu, was quite the contrast to our dinner the previous evening. This concept, I was reliably informed, aims to allow each individual guest to dine formally or informally depending on their needs.
The hotel also offers a cookery school, for those whose interests lie within the kitchen rather than out on the slopes. Book now for the Cookery School which can host a party of up to 12 people at €320pp and includes a lunch and dinner experience with the culinary expertise of Simon Taxacher. The school is open on Tuesdays.
Rooms and suites from €190 – €480 per night.
Top tips: Relax at the bar with the charming and informed Bar Manager. Visit for the Cookery school and the summer spa treatments on the terrace.
By Lauren Steventon
6th December 2010
Lauren Steventon explores the new fashion suites at Sofitel Fauborg Saint Honore and takes a peek at two more designer destinations.
Sofitel Paris Le Faubourg, Paris
Hidden just off one of the most fashionable streets in Paris is the terribly chic Sofitel Paris Le Faubourg.
Just a short walk from the Place de la Concorde, the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, and the main department stores, this is the place to stay if you have some serious shopping in mind. Perhaps surprisingly, given its central location, the hotel is a haven of tranquility – just the place to sit back after a serious bout of shopping. The courtyard garden is lovely for a summer lunch, surrounded by greenery and far removed from the Paris crowds.
The hotel isn’t just in a fabulous location for Paris-bound fashionistas: the Prestige suites were recently unveiled. Designed by Didier Gomez, they evoke a chic Parisian style themed around what the city is most famous for – fashion. The hallways are lined with black and white couture images, welcoming visitors into a world of timeless elegance.
In the 21 suites, ivory, grey and black mix with amethyst, bronze and crystal as modern day meets 18th-century, Parisian style. Contemporary furnishings sit side by side with original features, cornicing and classic imagery. Bedrooms and sitting rooms are comfortable, with plenty of room for stowing your purchases, while large bathrooms (complete with Hermes products) are perfect for preparing for a fashionable night out.
Even that doesn’t sound lavish enough? The Couture Apartment boasts a sleek, designer look complemented with the painterly photography of Catherine Naundorf. In the bedroom – huge chestnut satin headboard with hand-painted wall paneling; in the lounge – separate dining and work spaces: a fashion-focused home from home in the heart of Paris.
17th November 2010
The Grand Hotel Kempinski introduces its new Le Spa and celebrates with a spectacular Dior fashion show.
After an effortless early morning flight, a 5 km taxi ride from Geneva airport and a manic afternoon full of meetings – I was finally able to take some time to absorb the breath-taking views overlooking Lake Geneva, from my hotel-room balcony. The Grand Hotel Kempinski hosts over 400 elegant and comfortable rooms (including a number of warm and luscious presidential suites). The hotel is modern, chic and extremely welcoming.
However, I had not flown to Geneva to enjoy the views. The purpose for my stay was to indulge in its latest asset – ‘Le Spa.’ Grand Hotel Kempinski is now proud to offer a truly deluxe spa, offering a plethora of globally-sourced treatments. Le Spa is privileged to play host to the award-winning Cinq Mondes therapies, a range that draws from ancient techniques while respecting strictly natural and ethical principals.
The spa, lovingly designed by Tarek Hegazy, royally appointed architect, wanted to offer something subtly ‘sexy,’ that would encourage all of the guests’ senses. He wanted to create something you can see, something you can absorb and something you can enjoy. With every step, from start to completion, a feeling of blissful relaxation takes over. Warm Swiss woods, with rich, deep colours, have been carefully chosen to compliment the serene atmosphere, while creamy marble tops envelop the long corridors and spacious treatment rooms. The result is an inviting and invigorating spa retreat for the body and soul.
In the evening and in celebration of ‘Le Spa’ opening – Dior goddesses (models) took to the floor with a couture Dior fashion show. The champagne flowed while creations of pure elegance and sophistication swept across the floor to erupting applause. Effortless flair and true beauty overwhelmed spectators.
As the sun set, we continued to sip cool champagne and cocktails on the terrace bar, while enjoying decadent and delicious canapés under the crisp, colourful Geneva sky. The perfect way to complete a wonderful escape from the day-to-day madness of London life. My trip had proven truly blissful and I only wish I could have stayed for longer.
Eadaoin Kelly travelled with the Swiss airline Baboo.
27th September 2010
Eadaoin Kelly books into Chewton Glen in Hampshire to recover after holidaying with the extended family.
With several demanding family events ahead of us, my better half had decided that there was only one way that we were going to get through the week – with the promise of pure indulgence firmly installed as the light at the end of the tunnel. It was with determination that we therefore arose at 6am, after a grueling few days of screaming children (someone else’s) and forced fun on the packed beaches of Penzance, we made a dash for what promised to be a tranquil and luxurious 24hrs on the edge of The New Forest.
Pulling into the 130-acre grounds of Chewton Glen in Hampshire, our stresses of the last few days evaporated. As our car was whisked away, we were given a warm welcome – this warmth and attentiveness was to be a recurring theme of our visit – and shown to our beautifully appointed suite. Every detail had been thought about, from the latest technology all discreetly tucked away behind artful screens to the spacious balcony with views over the croquet lawn. At this privately-owned hotel and spa, you immediately know that a huge amount of attention to detail has been lavished everywhere, a sure sign of an attentive management team.
To ensure that all the tensions of the familial visit were washed away, we booked into the spa for an afternoon session. Looking through the extensive menu of treatments – it says that it would take a week of non-stop treatments to get through them all! – I settled on the full body massage while the other half opted for the back massage….heaven!
Back to our room to chill out and then get ready for dinner – we enjoyed champagne and chocolate on the balcony to the calming knock of mallet on ball from below us on the lawn. At dinner, we selected from the Menu Gourmand in the elegant dining room where the ever-attentive staff catered to our every whim with a great knowledge of the wines, menu and local produce throughout the five courses. The food was clean and delicious, the only sticking point was the Slow Poached Anjou Pigeon with sautéed foie gras, pumpkin and sorrel, not a dish we were used to, and although we were reassured that it was meant to be eaten cold, we didn’t see the appeal! The Champagne and Strawberry Jelly Terrine with Chewton Glen elderflower sorbet was so refreshing – overall, a very delicious experience.
After the most comfortable night we have had in ages, we dragged ourselves to the indoor pool (there is an outside one too), before a scrumptious buffet breakfast that contained the freshest local produce, where we made a number of trips so as to ensure we tasted everything!
After over-indulging at the breakfast table, we sauntered down to the beach, to work off our over-expanded waistlines. A very refreshing 20-minute walk through the woods and then onto the stunning Jurassic Coastline was just what we needed.
A fantastic respite from the hectic family holiday and the perfect battery-recharger before heading back to the bright lights of London. Well done other half on picking such an idyll!
By Effie Kanyua
27th September 2010
The Luxury Channel went to Sardinia – the place to be seen – to experience one of the most glamorous events in the sailing calendar. Nestled on the pristine coastline of the Costa Smeralda, the exclusive resort of Porto Cervo offers some of the best views of the Mediterranean. Rolex hosts two international yacht races here each year, attracting super-yachts and stylish people from across the globe. However, away from the port and glitterati, Effie Kanyua found some hidden treasures.
Where to visit
To discover the best beaches and most authentic Italian hillside restaurants, you’ll need to hire a car. Once you’ve done that, all the islands treasures are open to you, including the famous Orange Beach, which hosts fantastic beach parties during the summer months. Sporty types will love the famous 18-hole course at the Piccolo Pervero, while those who seek total solace can easily find beautiful deserted beaches in order to relax and unwind.
Away from the crowds and only 20 minutes away from Porto Cervo is San Panteleo. Bursting with character, this charming village is set around a picturesque piazza full of lively cafés and several artisan shops. With its stone-built cottages, stunning position and relaxed atmosphere, artists through the ages have been inspired to settle here.
Where to shop
The Old Town boasts all the luxury brands you could ever need: Versace, Louis Vuitton, Prada and every shop imaginable to rival Bond Street or 5th Avenue. For those with a smaller budget, ask the locals for the details of the best markets (normally held on Friday mornings) where local produce and crafts are sold.
Where to eat
Clipper is a great pizza restaurant, owned by the charismatic “Volpi,” (which, as he will proudly tell you, is Italian for ‘fox’). Other highlights include Spinnaker, a great choice for pasta and seafood dishes, and, for those of you who really want to blow the budget, both Cipriani and Boujis have restaurants in the area.
Where to go out
Arrange a visit to the super exclusive Costa Smeralda Yacht Club or the bar at the luxurious Cala di Volpe hotel. Finish your night off with a little dancing at the Phillipe Starck-inspired Sottovento Club or, for a truly unique experience, drive 20 minutes from the centre to Ritual in Baia, Sardinia. This imposing club is cut into the side of a mountain, which houses a labyrinth of cave-rooms for party types to explore at leisure.
Where to stay
One of the best hotels is the Colonna Park Hotel, which boasts a perfect location and reasonably priced, traditional Sardinian-styled rooms. For those on a bigger budget, head to its sister hotel and the newest five-star resort on the island – the Colonna Resort. That said, the Cala Volpe Hotel, along with it’s decadent sister hotels Patrizzia and Romanzino, are still the best in town for ‘star gazers.’ For real understated luxury, we recommend the four-star Hotel Balocco. It was the first hotel to be built in Porto Cervo and is romantic, stylish and friendly.
Take a look at the best of this year’s Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup and Rolex Swan Cup in Tales From the High Seas .
By The Luxury Channel
14th September 2010
Ticked off the big five? There are plenty of other animals around the world to fascinate adventurous travellers.
Polar Bears in Churchill
With his huge size, thick white coat and almost magical appearance, the polar bear is the undisputed king of the snow. Every Autumn, hundreds of the big white bears descend on the Canadian town of Churchill, preparing for their migration north, deep into the ice and snow. Wildlife Adventures have a range of polar bear watching trips, for all levels of enthusiast. Combine your time bear spotting on the ice with cultural tours of the town, or commit to the cold and head out to the Tundra Buggy Lodge at Polar Bear Point, with your days spent out on the Tundra in the eponymous buggy.
Polar Bear itineraries from CAN$7295 per person.
16th August 2010
Antonia Peck experiences both relaxation and exhilaration amidst the mountains and the roses.
There is a charming simplicity as day breaks beyond the mountains and the polo ponies gradually begin to graze on some of Kurland’s 700 green hectares. Established as a boutique hotel in 2000, Kurland Hotel is made up of a series of Cape Dutch style buildings nestled at the southernmost tip of the African continent. Guests are enveloped by the smoky Outeniqua Mountains and Kurland’s famous dusky roses upon arrival.
Dotted throughout the grounds are the twelve individually themed suites, designed by Baroness Dianne Behr. The rooms are furnished with a combination of family heirlooms and contemporary pieces to create a luxurious and homely environment. The decor varies throughout but always maintains a quirky decadence. An electric blue parrot peers out from its oil-painted canvas to view the china rabbits and silk lanterns adorning the hotel.
It is all too easy to enjoy the view from the rosebud-decked veranda with a lazy glass of local wine, Pecan Stream. However, this would be to neglect the fantastic opportunities Kurland offers to indulge in a spot of polo, golf, safari by horseback, sky-diving, bungee-jumping or scuba-diving.
There is also the chance to charter a helicopter or light-winged plane for a truly exhilarating experience of the indigenous Tsitskamma Forest. Foodies enjoy an endearingly comfortable culinary experience which includes hearty, home-made bread as part of a menu formed around seasonal produce from local farmlands. High tea is a particular favourite of The Luxury Channel and definitely not one to be missed!
Kurland Hotel, The Crags, Plettenberg Bay, 6602, South Africa
Tel: 0027 (0)44 534 8082
By The Luxury Channel
16th August 2010
The Amber Spa in Latvia has developed around a tradition of wellness. Originally just an authentic Russian bania, it has grown to incorporate a wellness centre, and, most recently, a boutique spa hotel, a place where visitors can come to either relax or explore the surrounding scenery. Latvia might not seem like your usual spa destination, but Jurmala is no stranger to health tourism.
Situated on the Latvian coast, with almost 33km of wide, fine sandy beaches, Jurmala has been a wellbeing destination for over a century. During the Soviet era, it was a favourite destination of high-ranking Communists such as Brezhnev and Khrushchev, and visitors can experience an old Soviet dacha (summer house) near the town.
It wasn’t just those in charge who sought out the healthy benefits of the sea air, local mud and sulphur waters that Jurmala had to offer, it is also a favourite spa destination for Russians, Latvians and other Baltics and Soviets. Tucked away in the woods is a wellness centre that has existed for much longer than most of the world’s new crop of spa-hotels. It isn’t fancy, the mud comes in buckets rather than decorative jars and the emphasis is on health rather than relaxation, but it still boasts a high year-round occupancy rate, cementing Jurmala’s position as one of the original spa destinations.
It is natural, therefore, that one of Latvia’s first boutique spa hotels has brought a little refinement to the traditional activities, and chosen Jurmala as its home. Amber Spa is for those who enjoy more than a little pampering and privacy with their treatments, in stylish, modern locations a ten-minute drive from the markets, cafes and concerts of Jurmala town, and a ten-minute walk from its wide beaches.
The rooms are well-equipped, decorated in different tones of amber, and pretty, rather than overly spacious or super-luxe, which is fine because most of your relaxing should definitely be done in the spa. Treatments are extensive and range from sleep-inducing hot amber stone massages to wake-you-up cold water treatments designed to tackle cellulite. For guests who really want to re-vamp their lifestyle, there are also holistic medical consultations.
Amber’s roots lie in its Bania, a traditional Russian steam bath. Like its international cousins the hamman and sauna, it’s a hot, sweaty and healthy experience. Either opt just for alternating hot steam and cool pool, or try one of the traditional treatments: soap massages, strawberry scrubs and facials using divine, natural products from Russie Blanche ( www.russieblanche.com ) are all on offer, but to really get into the spirit of things, you have to ask Tania for the traditional balsam massage: get beaten with branches in the bania while the steam takes on a lovely eucalyptus-like aromatherapy smell. There are plenty of local fans, and if their amazing skin is anything to go by, the treatment is pretty effective.
The hotel is perfect for either a seaside retreat or city break – Riga is a 20-minute drive away. In Riga, an old history battles with a new identity, as Latvia sloughs of its former Soviet personality in favour of one that is distinctly ‘Latvian.’ Everyone is open and friendly, eager to impress upon visitors what Latvia has to offer. “From Latvia,” our taxi driver proudly announces as he treats us to strawberries from a local produce stand, and we see Latvian linens in the boutiques, and handicrafts in the markets.
Take a wander around the picturesque old town, with its winding streets and historical houses, find a modern and delicious dinner in one of the stylish restaurants, then drinks at a funky bar that wouldn’t be out of place in Berlin. Everywhere you look, something surprises you, whether it’s the acres of forest, the sunny beaches or the sheer style of the place – or, of course, its first real boutique spa, a modern enterprise grown from an unexpected tradition.
6th August 2010
Dip your toes into the magical Dead Sea for a truly revitalising experience.
For thousands of years, travellers to the shores of the Dead Sea have delighted in the medicinal powers of this magical place. To the early explorer, these turquoise waters must have appeared as an oasis nestled in between the earthy red mountains of Israel and the hazy blue mounds of Jordan, which are visible just across the water. If it were life-giving water these explorers were hoping for, they must have been sorely disappointed: the water here is nine times saltier than the ocean and nothing lives here.
Despite its infertility, the world’s most beautiful women realised early on the life-giving properties these waters held. The Queen of Sheba was the first to reap the benefits, Cleopatra built the world’s first spa on these shores and even the infamous King Herod holidayed here (his desert fortress Masada sits atop a nearby mountain and is worth a visit for the spectacular views alone).
Nowadays, tourists come from all over the world to experience the unearthly floating sensation you experience as you lie back, close your eyes and bob along the surface. The water and mud contain over 21 different minerals, including calcium, magnesium, bromide, potassium and sulfate, which are said to help all manner of skin and joint complains. The water feels strangely, but pleasantly, oily on your skin and salt-crystals crunch underfoot (be sure to wear flip-flops as they can be sharp).
There are public beaches along the shore, but Ein Bokek, one of the nicest stretches of the shorefront, has been dominated by high-end hotel spas. However, whether you’re staying there or not, you can take advantage of hotel beach amenities for a small charge. The Crown Plaza offers a particularly nice covered walkway down into the sea, with a covered area under which you can float in the shade – perfect for the day I was there, when the temperature hit 45 degrees!
When to go:
Not far from Jerusalem, the Dead Sea lies in the middle of the Judean desert, so it gets hot in the summer (although it’s oddly bearable). A more pleasant time to visit is between October and April.
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By Antonia Peck
3rd August 2010
The Luxury Channel speaks to Matthew Robertson from Momentum Adventure and finds out what dramatic experiences they have to offer.
Does a person create the journey or does the journey create the person?
I would say that the way we create any journey is really coming from what excites us about the wilderness and the wild. I am a big believer in if there is a will there is a way. If a client wants to give it a go, then Momentum Adventure are going to make it happen for them. So back to your original question, does the trip make the client – or the client make the trip – we all evolve throughout the trip.
What sets Momentum Adventure apart?
A Momentum Adventure is designed to bring out the best in the individual. We want to challenge and give people the opportunity to get out into these fantastic environments. Many of us are ‘armchair adventurers’ living through guys like Bear Grylls and Ray Mears. There is a reason why they are so popular on television. However, with Momentum Adventure this is not just hanging out with the experts, which can be somewhat contrived – this is learning and adventuring alongside them. Clients are not carried through the trip. They learn how to run the dogs, hang out with the Sami people, cook their food. We teach you about snow packs or how to pack your rucksack in order of importance.
Do clients go through rigorous training before departure?
We do a bit in the UK but most of the training is done on location. Momentum Adventure focuses on getting the best out of a location for its clients. We strive to get the best of our locations and work out the best way to facilitate the ultimate trip from that particular environment.
Your trips look highly physical. How do you guide an amateur through the ‘adventure’ process?
Whatever your individual capacity, whether you are an old boy with a heart murmur or a tri-athlete – it is very humbling being in these environments. There is so much to learn and you are sort of like a bewildered child and need a lot of guidance. The Momentum Adventure guides will help you mature into that environment, be it a desert or a rainforest, and help you learn. Confidence grows and when you leave, you are standing taller, if you like.
You offer a seriously bespoke service. What competition do you have in the increasingly popular market of adventure tourism?
Now, you know because of what we do, it’s very complicated and labour-intensive. So it is not easily replicated and as a result, we do not really have any competition.
Has the recession had any impact on the popularity of the Momentum Adventure trip?
You can’t put a value on experience. This is a way for the high-net worth to see the world.
What is it like travelling to such remote areas of the globe?
It is soul food. A lot of these places are so beautiful – when there is nobody else around and everything is so remote. You soon get into the groove and start to live the adventure. It is quite spiritual in a way. You sleep really well, there is no noise pollution, and there is no light pollution. There is a real sense of sadness when you come back. You are thrust into this extraordinarily real environment and think back on how beautiful it was.
How do your more ‘high-maintenance’ clients cope with the more gritty side of adventure travel?
Travel can be brutal, dusty and tiring. Yet, I don’t think it has to be. I think I don’t like the phrase ‘adventure travel’ because it is so generic. It does suffer from the dirt under the fingernails – wet camping hideousness that I would not want to do or associate with. It does not have to be like that. We are about giving people really unique experiences.
Visit www.momentumadventure.com for further information, or read our article .
By The Luxury Channel
9th July 2010
It is not all that often that one spends the night with a couple of Ogres, which was what happened to me when I checked into my room at Mama Shelter, which is all about presentation with a unique twist. The Ogres in question were Shrek and Princess Fiona; they were the bedside lights in my room. This quirkiness did not stop at masked bedside lights at this hotel in the Saint Blaise Quarter of Paris; with a quotation-filled lift and syringes drawn on the bar ceiling, this was not a conventional hotel. A collaborative design between architect Roland Castro and uber-designer Philippe Stark, this hotel is for the design conscious eclectic. Based in an area of Paris that doesn’t immediately spring to mind (it’s quite far from the city centre), Mama Shelter is aimed at the traveler who is more Shoreditch or Williamsburg than Mayfair or the Upper East Side.
Things that work are the exceptional food, the eloquent and savvy staff, who are styled like trendy young architects in black denim, and the ‘fun chic’ atmosphere that permeates the public areas, both from the decoration and the clientele.
This hotel was on the cusp of pretension with graffiti-ed walls, mismatched furnishings and intentionally dark interiors, but prevented itself from tipping the balance with its quality detailing, such as the satin cotton sheets, in-room iMacs and Wi-Fi capability throughout.
Overall, this hotel has created an intelligent, sometimes clinical, always trendy atmosphere that plays on novelty, but remains seated in the basics of high-quality service and presentation.
By The Luxury Channel
16th June 2010
There are certain places in the world, tucked away on anonymous city streets or in far-flung climes, where the belles and beaus of the silver screen take shelter away from the long lenses of the paparazzi, the adoring eyes of fans and the demands of a life lived in front of the camera.
Hotel Lancaster
Hidden right in the heart of Paris, the Hotel Lancaster once provided refuge for Marlene Dietrich, who lived here during the 1930s. Originally a 19th century mansion, it still has the feeling of an elegant private residence. Guests can slip into the world of the sultry star by staying in the Marlene Dietrich suite, complete with grand piano and 17th century antiques.
By Emily Payne
16th June 2010
The energetic city of Kuala Lumpur has high-end brands and couture, and a heady mix of natural beauty and retail therapy await the international traveller. KL offers one of the most unique shopping experiences in the world: a tropic Eastern backdrop, lined with malls filled with high-end brands and trinkets tailored to your every whim – from tiny boutiques and bazaars touting hand-drawn fabrics to shoes dripping in Swarovski crystals.
As night falls, the glittering lights of the Petronas Twin Towers finally tire. A day of East Asian charm turns to a night of heady expectation: a rooftop bar, cocktails and exquisite hotel rooms.
Where To Shop
The Pavilion
The Pavilion shopping mall is seven floors of spacious walkways with 430 shops, including big-hitters like Louis Vuitton and Gucci. There is a whole floor devoted to women.
Tel: 603 2118 8888
16th June 2010
The Luxury Channel visits some of the world’s most extraordinary film locations.
Lust, betrayal and fear bubble just below the surface in the film adaptation of Grahame Green’s The Quiet American, made all the more potent when set against the stunningly exotic background of Vietnam. You can retrace the steps of Michael Caine, Brendan Fraser and Do Thi Hai Yen by making your way to Hanoi, a hugely colourful city caught in between the ancient and the modern, the rich and the poor. Make your way to Hoan Kiem Lake for a romantic evening stroll, grab a cocktail and watch the sun set from the Huc Bridge. Another place you can’t miss is Hoi An, a UNESCO World Heritage site that has it all: a white sand beach, great restaurants and beautiful hotels – and it’s Vietnam’s Savile Row. Whether you want a Vietnamese silk dress like Phuong’s or a bespoke Italian wool suit, you can get it here in less than 24 hours.
Seville
Despite the title, David Lean’s masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia was actually largely shot in Spain and many of the ‘Middle East’ scenes were filmed in the splendid Moorish city of Seville. You can actually stay in one of the film’s locations – the luxurious Hotel Alphonso XIII, ( www.starwoodhotels.com ) which appears in the film as the Officer’s Club. A little closer to the Arabia T.E. Lawrence would have recognised is Jordan, where the spectacular desert scenes were filmed. You can marvel at the imposing red cliffs of Wadi Rum (where Alec Guinness’ Prince Feisal held court) and spot Bedouin tents from the back on a camel (or, more comfortably, from inside a jeep).
Rome
One film that was shot exactly where you would expect was the 1960s classic Roman Holiday. In Rome, it’s easy to recreate the romance that Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn conjured up in this Oscar winner. Just follow the footsteps of Peck’s American journalist as he delighted Hepburn’s cosseted princess with the most memorable and historic sites of the city. Try a little gelato on the Spanish Steps and dare to slip your fingers into the Bocca della Verita, or Mouth of Truth, which you’ll find in the Piazza of the same name. End your visit where the film ends, at Palazzo Colonna, one of Rome’s largest palaces, but once here be sure to rebel against the script – choose romance over duty and repair to the Hassler Roma Hotel, from where you can gaze down at the Spanish Steps below.
By Matthew Phillips
14th June 2010
Matthew Phillips walks in the footsteps of China’s historical pariahs and discovers that life wasn’t so bad for them after all….
Once upon a time, the island province of Hainan was the barbarous backwater of the Chinese empire. During the Song and Ming dynasties, political exiles and garrulous poets were interred here alongside criminals and undesirables. It must have seemed odd to these outcasts that, as they arrived on the shores of Hainan, banishment turned out to be a tropical paradise.
Hainan’s international reputation has altered somewhat during the last millennia. The forgotten outpost of China’s southern territories has blossomed with age. By the 1980s, a burgeoning economy, in combination with sultry temperatures, ensured a prosperous tourist industry. Hotels sprang up along the beaches like a Monopoly board. Before long, Hainan had earned its sobriquet – ‘‘the Oriental Hawaii’’ – although, mercifully, it lacks the more extreme temperatures of its Pacific twin.
Recently, it was rumoured that Hainan was slowly falling victim to decay. Those unlucky souls who have visited the British seaside will know that there is nothing more depressing than the cracked paint and empty casinos of a once glittering waterfront. It is no small comfort therefore that the Chinese government announced plans to open up the Island to large scale investment. The response to this news has been electrifying. Foreign capital already exceeds $10 billion and enterprises everywhere have pledged vast investment in local infrastructure.
If you plan on taking advantage of Hainan’s innumerable pleasures, then I strongly advise a trip to the city of Sanya, the ‘‘South Gate of China.’’ Herein, visitors will find the perfect blend of palm trees, mountains and magnificent accommodation. In particular, the Ritz Carlton, the Banyan Tree and the Mandarin Oriental all come highly recommended.
One word of warning: avoid the rainy season which floods the area between May to October or don’t even bother packing a hairdryer!
By The Luxury Channel
12th June 2010
Momentum Adventure, the exploratory travel company, help their clients evolve into confident adventurers in the spirit of a bygone age, by offering the latest in bespoke adventure travel.
If experience is the mark of a man and adventure a test of physical prowess and cunning: then we best unfold from our desks and get back to nature. In the days of ‘wily Odysseus,’ the adventurer felt the wrath of the elements and the whims of fate. Today, those wishing to embark on such a quest need look no further than the exploratory travel company, Momentum Adventure.
Tailored, bespoke and high-adrenaline – Momentum Adventure ticks every aspect of the adventurer’s wish-list. Founder Matthew Robertson is a ‘big believer that if there is a will, there is a way. If a client wants to give it a go then we are going to make it happen.’ This means training before departure, expert guidance from personal logistics managers, imaginative destinations and action packed trips.
The adventures are ‘designed to bring out the best in the individual’ – to challenge people and immerse them in fantastic environments. No longer forced to be armchair adventurers living through the exploits of Bear Grylls and Ray Mears, with Momentum you can join the best of them. ‘No one is carried through the trip – you can hang out with the Sami, cook your own food in the wild and become part of an expedition.’
For posterity’s sake, and in honour of your adventure, a beautifully bound book filled with photographs and details can be displayed with pride. Whilst not the epic poem of old; the book will serve to demonstrate your newfangled spirit of adventure.
By Alanna Lynott
12th June 2010
Alanna Lynott goes in search of the world’s most magnificent jewellery, sampling some of the finest hospitality and cuisine along the way.
Jaipur, India
The Gem Palace, Jaipur, Rajasthan is a world-renowned jewellery market. However, those in the know go straight to the Muslim quarter of Pahar Ganj, where the stones are cut and polished.
Stay at: Samode Palace to sample the decadent India of old. www.samode.com
Eat at: Castle Mandawa for a candle lit dinner in the courtyard. www.mandawahotels.com
Beijing, China
You can find strands of freshwater pearls at the Pearl Market for as little as $3. Meanwhile, the serious gems hold court on the 4th floor. The 11th Beijing Jewellery Fair is to be held from the 16th-19th July 2010 at the China World Trade Centre. Don’t be overwhelmed by the 400 exhibitions from China and 25 other countries – you’ll secure some amazing deals.
Stay at: Aman at Summer Palace for an utterly blissful experience. www.amanresorts.com
Eat at: Maison Boulud which serves excellent French fare and was Time Out’s Beijing Restaurant of the Year 2010. www.danielnyc.com/maisonboulud
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Phnom Penh is a vibrant, bustling city of magic and charm. The wonderful food, sights and sounds, its tragic history and a bright new future combine to make this an inspiring city for travelers and jewellery hunters alike. The Russian Market and the Phsar Thom Thmei have high quality gems for low prices – including sapphires from the Pailin area, which are considered amongst the best in the world.
Stay at: Bougainvillier Boutique Hotel for traditional Asian décor or The Quay for a modern refuge. www.bougainvillierhotel.com
Eat at: Locals, expats and tourists head to The Foreign Correspondents Club for a treat and the best spring rolls in the world! www.fcccambodia.com
By Sofia Celeste
12th June 2010
Sofia Celeste visits a new W Hotel that’s set to open near the World Trade Center site in May 2010.
Revival is the theme for the W Hotel New York Downtown, which is just two months away from opening its doors next to one of the most venerated sites in the world: the World Trade Center. The Luxury Channel put on a hard hat and got a VIP tour of the unfinished 58-story metropolitan marvel with panoramic views that stretch from the Statue of Liberty to the Empire State Building.
Inside, snake skin tiles and layered lamella lights make the hotel perhaps on of the wildest venues to hit Wall Street, since the days of Gordon Gecko and Bud Fox. Some 217 guestrooms and 223 private residences boast interior design by Graft, which has also worked on avant-garde projects such as Bird Island in Kuala Lumpur and Vertical Village in Dubai. A hint of Studio 54-style pandemonium mixed with sleek futuristic contours and subtle animal prints adorn rooms fit for hard core jet setters and high-powered financial types. The terrace bar and the living room lounge will certainly prove to be a hotspot after the NYSE closing bell. “We consider the project a part of the revitalization of the area. Especially the World Trade Center,” said Thomas Sturniolo, W New York Downtown’s Director of Sales. “It’s one of the first brand new hotels to open in the area.” Right now, dust still coats the luxurious black marble and pink fluorescent chandelier in the foyer, but the opening is slated for May 4, 2010.
12th June 2010
Alana Lynott helps you beat the London to New York transatlantic blues with the latest recovery treatments.
Whether it’s a few hours in the Big Apple on business or a few days shopping in London, you’ll want to look and feel your best.
The Clearing Factor
The spa at the Mandarin Oriental is generally considered to be the finest luxury hotel spa in New York and you can see why. Located on the 35th floor of the Time Warner centre, you feel as if you’re floating above Central Park. A Zen-like atmosphere pervades and just stepping through the doors will make you feel a little less care-worn. The ‘Clearing Factor’ is great for beating jet lag and uses full body exfoliation, lymph drainage techniques, Swedish massage, cupping, and a black clay body wrap to restore the body and clear the mind, returning you to a naturally revitalised state.
The treatment lasts 2 hours 50 minutes at $675 on a weekday, $695 on a weekend.
12th June 2010
Lauren Steventon caught up with Amanda Ross, the new Fashion Director of W Hotels.
Summer 2010’s Fashion Week might be over, but fashion lives on in every aspect of our lives. No one understands this better than W hotels, who have recently appointed their first Global Fashion Director, Amanda Ross.
With a career spanning fashion magazines, film and television work, consultation for the biggest names in the biz and celebrity styling, Ross is perfectly placed for helping W find what’s ‘latest, newest, hippest and coolest’ in the world of fashion. Lauren Felicity Steventon caught up with her at the new W Barcelona.
So what is a W Global Fashion Director?
Well, I’m going to create a global perspective for them on fashion. I’ll be sourcing designs for The Stores that are in each property, and also for the Global Glam collection that W launched last year. Each individual property has a unique sensibility, personality and style, so it’s my job to pair the right designers with the right Store in the right properties. You have to take into account the climate, the people who travel and visit, what they want, what they’re looking for. You have to be in touch with how people travel today. Everybody wants something unique, nobody wants to travel and see the same shops. People are looking for something that feels unique and individual. I’m very excited to find what I think will be inspiring to the W traveler.
How did the position come about?
W has supported the fashion industry for years with chill out areas at the tentsIf you like a certain environment and aesthetic, it doesn’t stop, there should be a synergy or a thread throughout the property. We have to stay on top of what lotions and potions stay in the rooms… What’s next after the iPod stand? What’s next in fashion?
What do you particularly like about the W brand?
They have an incredible vision, they really embrace what’s next. That’s what we’re used to in the fashion community, predicting what’s next, so it’s very exciting to pair with a brand like W because I think fashion and design are obviously quite integrated, and I think there are endless possibilities for the future.
What sort of things will you be sourcing for The Stores?
Something that the guests haven’t seen before. Today everyone is so educated, so we have to really think ahead about what we offer. It’s about putting a collection together: “ This tells a story for this property.” I will go to a designer and ask them to make something exclusive. I think that’s what’s really exciting. People want to feel that when they buy something, they can’t buy it anywhere else, so you have to create this kind of allure. Fashion is very emotional, it’s not what you need, it’s about what you want, so you have to constantly create that desire by working with the designers on exclusive pieces for The Stores.
Will these pieces be different in the different properties?
Yes, I think that’s what keeps it interesting. When you pack for a trip, you pack differently for the different places that you go. For example in Barcelona we are talking to Ailanto, who come from the Basque country, and Joaquin Trias, who has been showing in New York, but is based in Madrid. I want the travelers to have a unique experience; they don’t want to have to run around the city to find something special. I went to a shop today, Jean-Pierre Bua, and I found this amazing jewelry, created by a Russian designer from vintage pieces, for example a vintage Dior scarf made into a chain.
Does travel inspire you?
Yes. I’m interested, I’m intrigued. I went to Istanbul, and I found necklaces that I ended up putting on ‘Lipstick Jungle’, the show I styled, in a film, I used them in a fashion show, the celebrities I work with went crazy… Everybody since has been saying “I went to Istanbul, I went to the market, I didn’t find that”. I’m a trained editor, I’m very curious, it never stops. So inspiration is walking the street, a book, films, on the catwalks.
What other fashion moments can we expect from W?
That’s one of the things I’ll be addressing when I get back to New York: what is next for W. What’s worked and what’s next. Maybe it’s about supporting a young designer and helping them with their show. I’m in an investigative period, and I need to understand where we are now, what the zeitgeist is, what people are doing, and where is best to take W in the future.
Finally, what is your idea of Luxury?
Good food, comfortable environment and beauty…
By Lauren Steventon
12th June 2010
Lauren Steventon checks in to check out the newly redesigned rooms at Duke’s that are aimed at the solo female traveller.
St James’ is London at its most traditional: suited gents heading to their clubs whilst bespoke dealerships line the streets. However, the new female General Manager at Duke’s wants to make it more welcoming for travelers of both sexes.
Dukes’ hotel, set in a quiet cul-de-sac (St. James’ Place), is an elegant English townhouse, minutes away from Mayfair and Buckingham Palace and located in the centre of London’s old-world and male orientated club-land. The hotel has been a celebrated beacon of luxury for in-the-know travelers for many years but with the appointment of their first female GM, Deborah Duggen, a conscious effort is being made to give the venerated hotel a heightened feminine touch.
Dukes’ has always had a lively history and charm – it was a firm favourite of Oscar Wilde and Byron, two men with a notorious understanding of women’s desires. Now the hotel has had several rooms re-designed with the solo female traveler in mind and known as The Duchess Rooms.
The rooms are decked out in pretty pastels with spacious Italian marble bathrooms. They aren’t the largest rooms in London but they are cosy and welcoming. Each guest in a Duchess Room has a personal welcome card from Deborah with her direct telephone number should they have any questions, concerns or needs. Whilst, lots of little feminine touches have been added to make female guests feel at home: fresh flowers, glossy magazines, ladies slippers and a selection of delicious Dukes’ chocolates. However, men need not despair, not all rooms have been modified to suit the feminine aesthetic and the hotel’s restaurant and bar still offer the surroundings that inspired the libertines of old. Try the martinis – it’s a piece of at-table theatre.
By Alanna Lynott
12th June 2010
Mexico has offered travelers excitement, romance and breathtaking beauty since it became popular in the roaring 1920s. Today, due to Mexico’s popularity, there are numerous hotels and resorts to choose from. The Luxury Channel’s Alanna Lynott recommends five unique hotels to meet your every need.
One & Only Palmilla
The One & Only Palmilla combines distinctive Mexican artistry with glamorous five-star luxury. Nestled in a lush oasis on the tip of the Baja peninsula, where the Pacific Ocean meets the sea of Cortez, Palmilla offers the ultimate escape. Rooms are gorgeous with finely woven fabrics and delicately patterned ironwork giving each suite a unique flavour. There is a spa, yoga facilities, even a fully staffed yacht available for private parties. The hotel was built in 1956 when it was only accessible by yacht or private plane. It was the tropical hideaway of choice for Ernest Hemmingway, Jean Harlow, Bing Crosby and President Eisenhower to name a few.
Best for: Honeymoons and romantic breaks
12th June 2010
Escape to Kauri Cliffs for the perfect retreat.
Enlightened entrepreneurs have long since recognised New Zealand’s potential as a haven for those in search of the perfect getaway.
One such pioneer, Julian Robinson, has arguably founded the most palatial of these establishments at Kauri Cliffs. Situated to the north of Auckland on New Zealand’s Matauri Bay, this majestic hotel has already been showered with awards. The result is a central lodge of colonial design accompanied by a progeny of designer suites. Each of the 22 guest suites incorporates a private porch, walk-in wardrobe and open fire place. Such homely familiarities create an environment that is both seductive and immediately reassuring.
Kauri Cliffs is the ideal destination for isolation seekers and for those who wish to avoid the aridity associated with other secluded corners in the world. There are 6,500 acres of salubrious parkland flanking a coastline ornamented by a series of half-submerged peaks. Built into the architecture of this invigorating landscape is a world class golf course. The 72-par Championship course, which overlooks the Pacific Ocean, is as much a delight to wander through as it is to play.
Although golf is one of the hotel’s key selling features, do not be afraid if, like me, the thought of lush fairways and putting greens does not set your heart on fire. Whilst friends and partners scurry off to compare golf handicaps, there are a multitude of other pleasures which, for us dissenters, are all the more intoxicating. Gourmet picnics, boar hunting and spa treatments – to name but a few – can all be enjoyed on-site at Kauri Cliffs.
Peak season at the lodge is between December and March and it is advisable to book early. Regarding transfers, if the 4 hour drive from Auckland seems unnecessarily strenuous there is a local airport at Kerikeri. Failing that, private helicopters can be arranged on request.
For rates and reservations visit the website:
By Antonia Pearce
12th June 2010
Antonia Pearce booked a stay at the famous hotel and spa in an attempt to find her inner-goddess.
The Regina Isabella, on the island of Ischia, is a beautiful, old world hotel. Wooden antique furniture, marble floors and seaside views make for a glamorous impact.
Ischia is famous for its mineral rich springs and therapeutic thermal waters. In its 1960’s heyday, Elizabeth Taylor and Clark Gable (the former on the island to film Cleopatra) set the tone by sunbathing in white swimsuits and evoking the spirit of la dolce vita. So it came to pass that generations of goddesses, from Greco-Roman to the silver-screen made Ischia their retreat, their passion, their medicine.
Days began with carrot juice and fruit for breakfast, or champagne for those so inclined. Followed by a variety of spa treatments (try the Tui na facial massage) and a splash in the thermal, mineral rich pool (with the only down side being the embarrassing yet compulsory shower caps). Whilst, afternoons were spent by the sea, drinking coconut smoothies and being charmed by waiters who espoused the intricacies of Dante and the Italian language. A little swimming and site seeing in the afternoon made for pleasant sun drenched days.
The Regina Isabella, on the island of Ischia, is a beautiful, old world hotel. Wooden antique furniture, marble floors and seaside views make for a glamorous impact.
Ischia is famous for its mineral rich springs and therapeutic thermal waters. In its 1960’s heyday, Elizabeth Taylor and Clark Gable (the former on the island to film Cleopatra) set the tone by sunbathing in white swimsuits and evoking the spirit of la dolce vita. So it came to pass that generations of goddesses, from Greco-Roman to the silver-screen made Ischia their retreat, their passion, their medicine.
Days began with carrot juice and fruit for breakfast, or champagne for those so inclined. Followed by a variety of spa treatments (try the Tui na facial massage) and a splash in the thermal, mineral rich pool (with the only down side being the embarrassing yet compulsory shower caps). Whilst, afternoons were spent by the sea, drinking coconut smoothies and being charmed by waiters who espoused the intricacies of Dante and the Italian language. A little swimming and site seeing in the afternoon made for pleasant sun drenched days.
The Regina Isabella’s spa is one of the main draws for the hotel. All hotel guests are invited for a medical consultation with Medical Director: Dr. Paolo Magrassi. This charismatic and erudite doctor, who spent his early career as a cardiac surgeon in New York, takes a pragmatic approach to any ills.
He gave prudent medical advice that complimented my rather indulgent approach to my holiday i.e. that if I was here to relax then I best book myself appointments with the spa’s ‘Wellness heroes’ who specialise in massage therapies. And for those with real aliments, it is the thermal waters and muds that are prescribed: mud that has been used to treat infertility, respiratory illnesses and skin complaints for thousands of years. As evidence of this, the doctor took me on an adventurous tour of the Greco-Roman ruins that lie dormant below the hotel’s spa. Here, with torch in hand we saw first hand what the Romans had known all along – that the thermal water and mud of Ischia have long had the power to restore health and vitality. Stone outlines of hot water pools and the presence of Roman columns serve to verify the facts.
The Thermal Spa is open from late March to mid November and for two weeks in December.
Room Rates from 310 Euros.
Tel: +39 081 99 43 22
By Lauren Steventon
12th June 2010
Lauren Steventon picks up cupid’s bow to pinpoint some of the most romantic escapes from around the world.
Whether you love it or hate it, there’s no avoiding it… St. Valentines Day is fast approaching. If you haven’t thought about a romantic getaway yet our choice below will leave you with no excuses.
Hôtel Pavillon de la Reine, Paris, France
You can’t talk about Valentine’s Day without mentioning Paris, City of Love. Fear not, there’s still a way to enjoy that old-fashioned French amor while avoiding cliché. Le Pavillon de la Reine is tucked away in Le Marais, on Place des Vosges, the very square that has played home to Victor Hugo and Madame de Sevigny. Surrounding it are fashion boutiques, excellent restaurants (try L’Alivi on Rue du roi de Sicile for surprisingly delicious Corsican fare in a simple setting) and even some actual French people.
Last September rooms were overhauled by Didier Benderli at a cost of about €120,000. Rustic flagstones and beams sit side by side with elegant greys, lilacs and neutrals. The 54 bedrooms are super private and boast features such as four poster beds, beamed ceilings or beautiful patterned wallpapers. Last year also saw the new Carita spa. There are just two treatment rooms, so book in when you book the room.
Wandering the streets around here feels like Les Liasons Dangereuses meets Fashion Week… Hip young things mix with beret-toting old men, all meandering through street upon street of classic Parisian abodes (the Pavillon itself was built in 1605). The same mix of modern and classic Paris extends into Le Pavillon de la Reine: not too fashiony, not too cool, but not too old-school Paris either. Just elegant, and just right for a cosy trip à deux.
Room rates from €380.
By Antonia Pearce
12th June 2010
Antonia Pearce samples eco-luxury at its most divine, with a percentage of your room fee going towards saving the rainforest.
The Datai Hotel, on the island of Langkawi, has all the hallmarks of an imperial residence. For over fifteen years, the hotel has been a beacon of luxury, a jewel off the Malay coast that counted Baroness Thatcher as a fan. Away from the dynamic yet increasingly western magnetism of Kuala Lumpur, Langkawi is an island with a gentle almost mythical appeal. Few locations in the world can boast such an exotic mix of virgin rain forest and tranquil beach. However, this is exactly the juxtaposition that has made The Datai the place to visit.
It is quite extraordinary that a place as beautiful as Langkawi is not completely overcrowded with tourists. Instead there is a quiet, loyal (albeit, rather glamorous) visitor who returns year after year. Romantics and nature lovers should stay in the villas nestled deep within the rainforest. Standing high upon wooden stilts, with cosy interiors and dark wooden shutters.
To get a feel for the landscape and culture of Langkawi, guests are encouraged to immerse themselves in the islands two great passions; nature and gourmet cuisine. For the natural world, visitors turn to The Datai’s resident naturist: Irshad. He is a man adept at inspiring wonder in even the most cultivated of urban dwellers. With a hypnotic tone he makes the rain forest come alive with colourful birds, numerous creatures and tales of miracle plants.
One of the hotel’s greatest joys is the spa. Located deep within the rainforest and by a freshwater stream, lose yourself in tranquility baths filled with rose petals and enjoy an expert Abhyanga massage. Bliss achieved, set off for a walk on The Datai’s private beach and delight in a paradise found.
In February 2016, Michel Roux will bring a taste of his highly acclaimed three-Michelin-starred restaurant The Waterside Inn to The Datai Langkawi. Accompanied by chef Simone Tricarico, pâtissier Stephanie Aubriot and Jordi Fumado from his front of house team, Roux will host three five-course dinners and a masterclass. These exclusive showcase events will enable guests to meet and learn from one of the world’s most celebrated chefs and indulge in the very best food and wine in one Southeast Asia’s most exotic locations.
To find out more about The Datai, go to www.thedatai.com . To find out more about rainforests across the globe, go to www.worldlandtrust.org .
12th June 2010
The small, but chic, capital of Denmark holds a myriad of stylish surprises.
While politicians gather in the Bella Center for the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, this fairy-tale city is getting ready for what it does best – putting on a magical display of lights and events to welcome in the holiday season.
An often overlooked luxury destination the small, but chic, capital of Denmark hides a myriad of stylish surprises.
Centering your trip around Kongens Nytorv, the largest square in the city, puts you in the perfect location for sugarplum fairies and shopping for Fendis. Max Mara, Prada, Birger Christian and the flagship store of Georg Jensen silver are found on Strøget.
Strøget runs through the heart of central Copenhagen from Kongens Nytorv to Rådhuspladsen, where you’ll find the younger fashion stores like Zara. This is also home to Scandinavia’s largest department store, Magasin du Nord, good for all those last minute stocking fillers. If the weather turns inclement, close by is Det Ny Illumit, with six floors of designer shops, nine restaurants and a spectacular glass dome on the top floor.
Walking under the twinkling white lights and peering into shop windows depicting scenes of old-time Scandanavian life will inspire you to treat yourself to something traditional, and Royal Copenhagen’s showroom at Amagertorv, filled with beautiful porcelain, silver and crystal, is the place to acquire an essential heirloom Christmas plate. Try Bing & Grøndahl (the world’s oldest series of collectibles) or a Royal Copenhagen plate (1908). Another century-old tradition is the specially designed holiday dessert spoon and fork. For other, larger antiques, walk down Bredgade – which runs from Kastellet to Kongens Nytorv and enjoy the view of Queen Margrete’s Amalienborg castle.
The best place to stay for shopping and access to the best of Copenhagen’s dining is the Hotel D’Angleterre, located a stone’s throw from the Kongen Nyvert Metro stop. Four-times selected Denmark’s best luxury hotel at the World Travel Awards, D’Angleterre is located in a landmark 1755 building overlooking the majestic square and its picturesque ice rink. This is simply the best location to experience the pulse of Copenhagen. If you intend on making a lot of purchases, upgrade to one of the hotel’s luxury suites overlooking the square and have even more room to spread out and enjoy your stay. Their personal shoppers know the city inside out and can point you towards the finest local boutiques you might otherwise miss. Even if you are staying elsewhere, the restaurant’s cocktail bar is worth a stop – a tie is not required but you might feel underdressed without one.
Shopping is not the only pleasure to be had – enjoy traditional Danish oxtail and Skagerack lobster in Michelin-starred Kong Hans Kaelder, situated in a romantic wine cellar in the oldest building in Copenhagen, just four minutes away from d’Angleterre. If the crisp weather or your holiday heels make that cobblestoned walk sound a little daunting, venture just outside to Brasserie Ego, an intimate space for dining any time over the festive period.
Stay through New Year and enjoy the traditional New Year’s speech from Queen Margrethe, broadcast at 18:00, and then finish the night by enjoying the fireworks at Kongens Nytorv or City Hall Square. Bring your glogg along for warmth or if you stay at D’Angleterre just throw open the windows and listen to the crowds welcome in 2010 in traditional song.
Glædelig jul and Godt nytår!
Hotel D’Angleterre: www.dangleterre.com
By Sunshine Flint
12th June 2010
Staying at these five spectacular palace hotels in Rajasthan will make you feel like a king or queen.
India is a land of legends, an exotic cornucopia of manmade and natural beauty. The most sweepingly romantic corner of the country is Rajasthan, the Land of Kings. Home to fairy-tale stories of Rajput princes and Mughal emperors, famed cities of pink sandstone and fabulous desert forts and palaces, Rajasthan never stops being a feast for the senses. See The Luxury Channel’s program in Rajasthan on the Gems of India.
Rajvilas
Built in the style of a Rajasthani fort, entering Rajvilas outside of Jaipur is like stepping back to the time of the Rajput princes. From the main building, there is a heavy brass and wood door that leads to a narrow moat–the only way to the 71 rooms and villas set into the 32 lushly-manicured acres. Gravel paths lead to the villas, pairs of rooms that lead off from a central fountain in symmetrical style. The pool (complete with elephant fountains) and two-story Banyan Tree spa are a welcome respite from the heat. Or take a long soak in your room’s step down marble tub that overlooks a private garden.
You may never want to leave the world of make-believe but the city of Jaipur is not to be missed. First stop, the medieval Amber Fort (reached on elephant back) and its bejeweled and painted palaces. Then, head into the old city with its straight roads and intersections laid out by maharaja and his architect in 1727. Jaipur became known as the Pink City in 1876 when the maharajah ordered it painted for the visit of the Prince of Wales; now residents are required by law to keep the buildings that color. Stop into some of the government-approved shops (your guide will be sure to take you to one) and have a sari or tunic made from the finest muslin or silk. They will be sewn up and delivered to your hotel at night. And don’t miss the gem palaces to purchase the incredible jewels made in the same way for the past thousand years.
12th June 2010
Leels’s first palace hotel opens in Udaipur, offering ultimate luxury in a romantic heritage city.
A palace fit for a Maharaja recently had its soft opening in Udaipur, in India’s Rajasthan. Set on the banks of beautiful Lake Pichola, The Leela Palace Kempinski Udaipur has 80 luxurious rooms and suites and captivating views of this romantic heritage city and the surrounding majestic Aravili Mountains.
Renowned architect Bill Bensley and interior designer Jeffrey Wilkes have created a modern palace recalling the grandeur of Udaipur’s historic past. Huge domes crown the roof of The Leela as overhanging wood balconies, or jharokhas, adorn the walls and lofty corbel arches decorate the doors. Guests enter a grand courtyard with flowering trees and fragrant landscaped gardens. Mosaics of peacocks and the Tree of Life embellish the interior walls. A long dramatic pool borders the lake. Inside The Leela, shimmering light reflects off the thikri, the traditional Mewari mosaics of mirrors, enhancing the “palace” ambiance. In this fairy-tale setting, guests will feel like royalty.
The luxury boutique hotel has three restaurants, a lounge and bar and a 10,000-square-foot Spa Guest rooms – all have spectacular views of Lake Pichola. The design is contemporary with traditional elements of Rajasthani artistry. Exquisite fabrics are embroidered with regally-inspired designs and carved wood furniture has mother of pearl inlays and brass tarkashi work. Decorative ornaments include: hand-crafted white marble lotus flowers, carved silver elephants and vibrant paintings of puppets from Rajasthan folk tales. The opulent Maharaja Suite has its own dining room and study, a private pool, a Jacuzzi and its own massage room.
Open 24 hours a day, The Dining Room, under the guidance of Executive Chef Karim Hassene from France, offers an extensive menu of dishes prepared with fresh fruits, herbs and vegetables from The Leela’s organic garden. When Sheesh Mahal, the palace’s rooftop restaurant, opens at the end of the summer, guests will dine under the stars on recipes from the royal kitchens of India. Guests can also opt to lunch at the pool or take a proper afternoon tea on The Verandah.
The Spa at The Leela offers all the traditional treatments as well as Ayurvedic therapies in its 14 treatment rooms, including spa “tents” set amidst the palace’s gardens. Steam rooms, a Jacuzzi and a fitness center with personal trainers form part of the spa, as do daily yoga classes.
For more information go to: www.theleela.com or email: [email protected]
By The Luxury Channel
12th June 2010
Four of New York’s downtown neighborhoods are home to some of the city’s best new places to stay, with stunning views, hot restaurants and plenty of cool to spare. Here’s why when you’re next in town, you’ll probably be checking into one of them.
Thompson Les
Rising above the Lower East Side, this concrete-and-glass, 18-story monolith can be seen from blocks around, but its height does mean that the 141 rooms have fantastic views of the city, from lower Manhattan to midtown and beyond. The concrete grey, black and metal décor of the rooms ensure industrial chic throughout, while the floor-to-ceiling windows let guests be voyeurs, one of New York’s best pleasures. There are a few surprises like the third-floor pool and lounge sunken behind a high wall for a bit of South Beach on the East River, and the private bar and balcony which can only be accessed by guests and members. The main restaurant, Shang, attract locals and out-of-towners alike for glamorous cocktails and chef Susur Lee’s pan-Chinese dishes. Those in the know enter from the Orchard Street entrance, which has a staircase leading directly to the second-floor eatery and bar, to avoid going through the lobby.
By The Luxury Channel
12th June 2010
This month Missoni is to open its second hotel. The location is Edinburgh in Scotland, where the brand has renovated a collection of historic buildings in the Old Town area to create a 136-room boutique hotel.
The hotel has been created in partnership with The Rezidor Hotel Group and has been designed by Rosita Missoni, co-founder of Missoni, who now oversees the Missoni Home division. As well as featuring Missoni’s trademark prints, the hotel will have works by Rosita Missoni’s favourite designers, including Marcel Wanders, Hans J Wegner, Eero Saarinen and Arne Jacobson, some of which have previously been in place in the Missonis’ family home. There are also pieces by Scottish designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
The rooms have a black and white palette with bursts of colour and use Missoni linens and toiletries created for the Hotel Missoni brand using a Missoni fragrance. Additions include an espresso machine in each room, healthy mini-bars and Missoni bathrobes and slippers. There will also be a Missoni Cucina restaurant on the first floor which is the trademark concept of the Hotel Missoni brand and seats 100 people, as well as a Missoni Bar in the lobby. In an interview with Luxury Briefing Rosita Missoni said, “The Missoni Cucina concept was a very natural thing for us as Italy has such a strong history of hospitality. We wanted it to be warm and relaxed and feel like an Italian home, with good Italian cooking using fresh ingredients that are in season.” There are also three private rooms for events.
The Edinburgh property will be followed by a 169-room Kuwait City outpost of the Hotel Missoni concept, due to open in summer 2009. After that a 250- room Oman property is to open in early 2012, located in Jebel Sifah, close to Oman’s capital Muscat.
12th June 2010
The Luxury Channel goes for a gastronomic holiday experience in Catalonia.
Time+Space Cadaques is a unique holiday experience, where a privileged few get the chance to spend a weekend in a stunning modernist villa experiencing the best food, wine and culture that Catalonia has to offer.
The Ses Vistes villa, from which the Time+Space weekends are based, is a stone’s throw from the house near Cadaques where Salvador Dali lived and worked. To reflect his influence on the Cap de Creus area, Time +Space Cadaques take their guests on expertly curated tours to explore the Casa Dali, Dali Theatre-Museum and the local town of Cadaques, which has its own incredibly rich cultural history – Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Picasso all spent their summers in Cadaques.
As well as having the chance to spend quality time in the extraordinary landscape of the Cap de Creus that inspired the great master Salvador Dali, guests experience a myriad of gastronomic delights.
In residence at the Ses Vistes villa is Michelin-starred chef Paco Perez, whose experimental cuisine reflects the essence of the Mediterranean Sea. Paco trained closely under Ferran Adria, the maestro chef of El Bulli, and refers to Adria as the master of his culinary philosophy. Adria also describes Paco as one of his “best and most talented disciples”.
During a stay at Ses Vistes, guests are overwhelmed by the extraordinary tastes, textures and sights of Paco’s cuisine; a Salvador Dali-inspired banquet, Paco’s signature ‘Vanguardia’ creations, an ‘exquisite’ breakfast with unexpected flavours, and more. Paco is able to harness the freshest and finest local ingredients to create astonishingly elaborate meals as well as more simple traditional local dishes.
Paco Perez also has his own restaurant – El Miramar – in the nearby fishing village of Llanca, and is the man behind the Enoteca restaurant at Hotel Arts, Barcelona’s finest five star hotel, also by the sea. At Time+Space Cadaques guests spend an evening enjoying a 25-course meal at the chefs table at the El Miramar restaurant.
The surrounding area of the Cap de Creus national park (Spain’s only national park that covers both land and sea) in which the house is set offers the chance for guests to go on endless walks, swim, hire boats and canoes and even scuba dive.
At Time+Space Cadaques there really is something for everyone – art and culture, delectable gastronomy, natural beauty, and a stunning and luxurious villa from where it all centres.
For full details of the holiday, dates and prices visit www.timeandspacecadaques.com
By Emily Payne
12th June 2010
Not far from the chaos of Marrakech is a world of calm and peace. Emily Payne has some time out in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains.
It’s easy to forget where I am when it’s this silent. Particularly after Marrakech, where I danced through days of screeching hawkers, belly dancers and sizzling, hot tagines. But I left the swirling souks and chaos this morning, in search of coolness and calm in the Atlas Mountains.
Africa’s second-largest peaks separate the Mediterranean and Atlantic coastlines from the Sahara Desert. The rocks are warm terracotta and the higher we go, the closer we are to the snow caps that seem such an anomaly in this hot, sultry place. Dense forest and mist surround us on our drive to La Bergerie, a rural retreat with panoramic views and a tree-lined pool.
We stop for lunch in the mountain town of Arghbalou: traditional cumin-peppered salads, followed by tagines, followed by a honeyed tarte l’orange. The ‘grey’ wine, a local sharp, pale rose which tickles the palette and complements the spices is followed by sweet mint tea. We eat outside in the red, but cold glow of the impressive Atlas heights.
Indulgence is walked off with a mini-trek through Ourika valley in the high Atlas, past waterfalls, canyons, ravines and gorges weathered over millions of years. It is here I get a truer sense of Morocco’s quiet side, so different from those heady Marrakech nights. Life seems reduced to the five basic sense, and it’s so quiet that I can hear each individual bird’s song.
The land is dotted with pungent thyme, rosemary and argan – a rare fruit. The oil is extracted from the pit of the fruit, and is rich in vitamin E and antioxidants with moisturising and anti-aging properties. The oil is also used in traditional Moroccan cuisine. We are taken to a factory where I sample its earthy, olive oil like flavour, surrounded by pots of lotions and potions claiming to turn back the hands of time.
After the argan tasting, we hike further to the tiny Berber village of Imlil – sitting in the sunshine. It’s market day and creased old men shift the produce they haven’t sold, while the women carry firewood under arching backs, with a smile in their eye. We continue on from Imlil along a track lined with apple, cherry, peach and walnut trees. Passing tumbledown houses, a school and the local hammam, we reach Asni. The gypsy-like market has herbs, spices and even hay bales for sale. After the chaos we sit back with more mint tea, a sweet treat for tired walkers.
Back on the trail, higher up the mountainside, sits Sir Richard Branson’s breath-taking property Kasbah Tamodot. The walled complex has 18 uniquely designed rooms and six Berber tented suites. There are 360 degree views of the mourntains, gardens of palms, terraces, gazebos , grand rooms dressed in antique Moroccan fabrics and a large spa.
Unlike the luxurious riads in Marrakech, this place is enveloped in silence, inside the complex and out. And like Branson’s other Virgin Limited Edition properties, such as Necker Island in the British Virgin Islands, The Lodge in Verbier and Ulusaba private game reserve in South Africa, it feels privately remote and inaccessible to the outside world.
Treks in the Atlas can last from a couple of hours to an 18-day mammoth trip incorporating Berber home stays, but ours is over as the sky begins to darken. We head back to La Bergerie under the safe watch of our guide, just as the Muslim call to prayer resounds over the mountains.
The country quiet here is bliss, where the red peaks towering above engulf the senses. Each guest has their own secluded cottage and charming staff top up your wine, water or whatever you desire. The stars are bright and I retire to my cabin where a thick-quilted bed and log fire await.
It may not be forever, but a hideout holiday in the Atlas mountains is a heavenly break.
Travel facts
La Bergerie
£490 per person based on two people sharing for three nights on a half board basis
Price includes flights, accommodation, car hire and a trek through Berber villages with a local bilingual guide.
For more information, visit www.simpsontravel.com or call 020 8392 5861.
By Gavin Bell
12th June 2010
Keep your Tusan sun, it’s Autumn’s mellow mists that produce the gastronomic and bucolic treasures that give the region its spectacular glory. Gavin Bell cycles through it.
With the searing heat of summer faded, Tuscany is quiet. The grape leaves have turned from gold to russet. September is Vendemmia in Tuscany, the month of the grape harvest and a cultural event celebrated with gusto by winegrowers as an excuse to meet, eat and taste wines, and wager whose is best. One gastro treat of this month that is not in liquid form is schiacciata con uva, focaccia with leftover ripe grapes baked into it, a sweet and sour treat.
Cycling along chalk white roads in the sun, between fields of red earth on one side and green crops on the other, it looks as if the landscape had been coloured to match the Italian flag. I pass two old men walking hand in hand along a quiet country road near the hamlet of Villamagna in the hills between Pisa and Florence. A breeze ripples through a field of long grass so rich and lush and uniform that it looks like brushed velvet. The meadows are alive with birdsong and buzzing with curious insects, and there are daisies and poppies and Spanish broom, and cornflowers and marigolds too, shimmering along hedgerows and dry-stone walls.
Amongst the classical composition of hills and fields and slender cypress trees, the scent of flowers and fresh-mown hay linger. I approach Monteriggioni, a 13th century fortified hill town that presides over the northern boundary of a thickly wooded region known as the Montagnola Senese. Its ringed walls with 14 sentry towers sit slightly awry like a tilted crown, a kind of Camelot at a funny angle. It is absurdly romantic, exactly the sort of place that a knight of the Round Table would have popped into for roast wild boar on his way to the Crusades.
One day, during the siesta, I find myself in the village of San Donato in Fronzano. Everything is closed, but the owner of the Rio Bar takes me into his darkened store where the shelves are laden with Florentine prosciutto and pecorino cheese from Siena. He fills fresh bread rolls with them and I sit on his porch, reveling in the savoury, sweet ham and sharp flavour of the cheese, and especially his typical Tuscan generosity.
A few days later at a 16th-century farm near Florence with views over the Arno River and the Pratomagno mountains, I witness the olive harvest. It is now late September, and the farmer, his family, friends and workers are harvesting the olives by hand. It is a slow, laborious process that begins early in the morning when the hills are still wreathed in mist, and continues until a rusty old truck is fully loaded and rattles off to the local frantoio, the communal mill where the olives give up their golden oil.
Autumn in Tuscany is a slow motion affair, clinging to the ripeness of summer but dallying with the winter frost.
Where to stay:
Four Seasons Firenze: Trompe l’oeil elegance in two restored Renaissance palazzos with 117 rooms and suites and walled 11-acre garden. £400; +39 055 2626 1; www.fourseasons.com
Castello del Nero Hotel & Spa: A splendid 12th-century castle and destination ESPA spa with 50 rooms and suites in Chianti. Rooms from £385; +39 055 806 470; www.castello-del-nero.com
Il Borgo: The 14-room boutique hotel at the Castello Banfi winery is a perfect hideaway deep in the green hills of Montalcino. Rooms from £337; +39 0577 877 700; www.castellobanfi.it
Castello di Vicarello: Four secluded suites and a private villa at a 14th-century estate surrounded by gardens, woodland and olive groves. Rooms from £254; +39 0564 990 447; www.castellodivicarello.it
L’Andana: Chef Alain Ducasse’s 33-room sumptuous inn and La Trattoria Toscana restaurant in the heart of the Maremma. Rooms from £340; +39 0564 944 800; www.andana.it
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What is the better known name of the 'ERW' or 'Enhanced Radiation Weapon'? | Red China's Capitalist Bomb · OverDrive: eBooks, audiobooks and videos for libraries
History Military Nonfiction
Professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction, this paper examines why China developed an enhanced radiation weapon (ERW) but did not deploy it. ERWs, better known as "neutron bombs," are specialized nuclear weapons with reduced blast effects and enhanced radiation, making them ideal tactical and antipersonnel weapons. Declassified U.S. intelligence and Chinese press reports indicate the People's Republic of China (PRC) was interested in an ERW in 1977 and successfully tested a device on September 29, 1988. To date, however, these sources provide no evidence of deployment. This study exploits primary source documents to reconstruct the ERW program's history, assesses drivers behind decisions throughout the program, and considers broader implications for PRC decisionmaking on weapons development. This case study suggests a model of a "technology reserve" in which China develops a weapons technology to match the capabilities of another state but defers deployment. This paper presents an analytic framework for examining how the technology reserve model might apply to China's decisionmaking on ballistic missile defense (BMD), antisatellite (ASAT), and hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) systems.China's nuclear force modernization and its lack of transparency have long been of interest to U.S. policymakers and analysts. One of the most opaque and debated aspects of this discussion is China's tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs), or nuclear weapons designed to be used on a battlefield. Enhanced radiation weapons (ERWs), better known as "neutron bombs," are specialized TNWs with reduced blast effects and enhanced radiation, making them ideal tactical and antipersonnel weapons. Current literature on China's ERW is limited, but one author claims Chinese leaders have expressed "an unusual degree of fascination with" ERWs. Declassified U.S. intelligence and Chinese press reports indicate the People's Republic of China (PRC) was interested in an ERW in 1977 and successfully tested a device on September 29, 1988. To date, however, these sources provide no evidence of deployment. This study reconstructs the ERW program's history by exploiting primary source documents, and it considers the implications for analyses of PRC weapons development, including contemporary systems of concern.Analytic Framework and Variables * Case Study: Red China's Capitalist Bomb * Analysis and Implications for Today * Toward a "Technology Reserve" Model: Match Capabilities but Defer Deployment * Conclusions and Areas for Future Analysis
| Neutron bomb |
In which year did Princess Margaret die? | Glossary [Nagasaki to Overpressure] | atomicarchive.com
See; Ballistic Missile Defense .
National Technical Means (NTM)
Intelligence gathering systems under national control, such as photo-reconnaissance satellites and ground based radars, used to monitor compliance with agreed arms limitations
Neutron
A neutral particle of approximately unit mass, present in all atomic nuclei, except those of ordinary hydrogen. Neutrons are required to initiate the fission process, and large numbers of neutrons are produced by both fission and fusion reactions.
See; Nucleus .
Neutron Bomb
The neutron bomb differs from standard nuclear weapons insofar as its primary lethal effects come from the radiation damage caused by the neutrons it emits. It is also known as an enhanced-radiation weapon (ERW). The augmented radiation effects mean that blast and heat effects are reduced so that physical structures, including houses and industrial installations, are less affected. Because neutron radiation effects drop off very rapidly with distance, there is a sharper distinction between areas of high lethality and areas with minimal radiation doses.
See; Neutron .
Neutron Radiation
In fission bombs the neutrons are produced in the fission process. They are emitted from the highly excited fission products. The way that neutrons interact with matter is quite different from the way that gamma rays interact. Neutrons have negligible interaction with atomic electrons. Their only direct interaction is with nuclei. Neutron interaction in the human body can produce ionizing radiation and subsequent doses of radiation.
See; Ionizing Radiation .
Non-nuclear weapon state (NNWS)
Under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, these are states that had not detonated a nuclear device prior to January 1, 1967, (that is, all states other than the United States, the Soviet Union [now Russia], the United Kingdom, France, and China).
Nonproliferation
Prevention of the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT)
Signed in 1968, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) provides that signatory nations without nuclear weapons will not seek to build them and will accept safeguards to prevent diversion of nuclear material and technology from peaceful uses to a weapons program. States possessing nuclear weapons at the signing of the NPT agreed not to help non-nuclear states gain access to nuclear weapons, but to offer them access to peaceful nuclear technology. All states agree to work towards the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was established on April 4, 1949, by representatives from 12 nations (Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States; Greece and Turkey joined in 1952, the Federal Republic of Germany in 1955, and Spain in 1982) who gathered in Washington, D.C., to sign the North Atlantic Treaty, which had as its purpose the deterring of potential Soviet aggression in Europe. The signing of the treaty paved the way for the first peacetime alliance participated in by the United States.
Nuclear Energy
Nuclear energy refers to the energy consumed or produced in modifying the composition of the atomic nucleus. Nuclear energy also powers electricity-generating plants in countries throughout the world. It is seen by many as the source of inexpensive, clean power; but, because of the hazardous radiation emitted in producing that power and the radioactivity of the materials used, others feel that it may not be a viable energy alternative to the use of fossil fuels or solar energy.
Nuclear Freeze Movement
The nuclear freeze movement advocates an agreement between the United States and the USSR to halt (freeze) the production and deployment of nuclear weapons and delivery systems. First formulated in 1980 by Randall Forsberg, director of the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies in Brookline, Mass., the freeze proposal attracted growing support in the United States during the next two years, when the administration of President Reagan was increasing military spending and preparing to deploy more nuclear missiles in Europe. A series of antinuclear protests culminated in a vast demonstration by nearly half a million people from the United States and other countries in New York City on June 12, 1982
Nuclear power plant
An electrical generating facility using a nuclear reactor as its heat source to provide steam to a turbine generator.
Nuclear Radiation
Particulate and electromagnetic radiation emitted from atomic nuclei in various nuclear processes. The important nuclear radiations, from the weapons standpoint, are alpha and beta particles, gamma rays, and neutrons. All nuclear radiations are ionizing radiations, but the reverse is not true; X rays, for example, are included among ionizing radiations, but they are not nuclear radiations since they do not originate from atomic nuclei.
Nuclear Reactor
A device in which nuclear fission may be sustained and controlled in a self-supporting nuclear reaction. The varieties are many, but all incorporate certain features, including fissionable material or fuel, a moderating material (unless the reactor is operated on fast neutrons), a reflector to conserve escaping neutrons, provisions of removal of heat, measuring and controlling instruments, and protective devices. The reactor is the heart of a nuclear power plant.
See; Light-Water Reactor , Pressurized-Water Reactor , Reactor .
Nuclear Regulatory Commission
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is an independent U.S. government agency. The NRC came into existence in 1975 under the provisions of the 1974 Energy Reorganization Act. The major concern of the NRC is the use of nuclear energy to generate electric power. It licenses the construction and operation of nuclear reactors and other nuclear facilities as well as the possession, use, processing, transport, handling, and disposal of nuclear materials. (The U.S. Department of Energy has authority over U.S. nuclear weapons plants).
Nuclear Waste
Nuclear waste refers to the entire array of radioactive materials created by all aspects of nuclear technology. The most widely known wastes are those produced by the civilian nuclear industry and the nuclear weapons program. Other sources of nuclear waste include radioactive materials produced for medical, research, and industrial applications, and the contaminated sections of dismantled nuclear facilities.
Nuclear Weapon (or Bomb)
A general name given to any weapon in which the explosion results from the energy released by reactions involving atomic nuclei, either fission, fusion or both. Thus, the A- (or atomic) bomb and the H- (or hydrogen) bomb are both nuclear weapons.
See; Fission , Fusion , Thermonuclear .
Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone (NWFZ)
A geographical area in which nuclear weapons are not allowed to be built, possessed, transferred, deployed, or tested.
Nuclear weapon states
The five states that detonated a nuclear device prior to January 1, 1967 (China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Nuclear Weapon-cable States
Those states not party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty but which have the ability to build nuclear weapons (India, Israel, and Pakistan).
Nuclear Winter
A potential consequence of nuclear war, where smoke from burning cities would cause a severe worldwide drop in temperatures, lasting for weeks or months with large scale ecological impacts.
Nucleon
See; Nucleus .
Nucleus
The small, central, positively charged region of an atom which carries essentially all the mass. Except for the nucleus of ordinary hydrogen, all atomic nuclei contain both protons and neutrons. The nuclei of isotopes of a given element contain the same number of protons, but differ in the number of neutrons. Thus, they have the same atomic number, and so are the same element, but they have different mass number (and masses). The nuclear properties (e.g. radioactivity, fission, neutron capture, etc.) of a given element are determined by both the number of neutrons and the number of protons.
See; Electron , Neutron , Proton .
Outer Space Treaty
Prohibits the placement of WMD in orbit around the earth, on the moon or any other celestial body, or otherwise in outer space. The treaty also stipulates that the exploration and use of outer space be carried out for the benefit and in the interest of all countries, and that the moon and other celestial bodies are to be used exclusively for peaceful purposes.
Overpressure
The transient pressure, usually expressed in pound per square inch, exceeding the ambient pressure, manifested in the shock wave from an explosion. The peak overpressure is the maximum value of the overpressure at a given location and is generally experienced at the instant the shock wave reaches that location.
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In Netball only two players can score a goal. One is Goal Shooter. Who is the other? | How to Shoot Accurately in Netball: 11 Steps (with Pictures)
How to Shoot Accurately in Netball
Three Parts: Readying the Shot Shooting the Ball Improving your Shot Community Q&A
Do you envy the girl or boy who can always play GS (goal shooter) or GA (goal attack) and score all her or his shots in a netball match? Once you understand the proper form for accurate shooting, you can become a star on the court too. It just takes some practice.
Steps
Readying the Shot
1
Stand inside the shooting semicircle. According to netball rules, you can only shoot when you're inside this portion of the court, which includes the line that marks the circle. Align your body with the netball post, with your feet and hips shoulder distance apart and facing forward. [1]
Proper balance is key to an accurate netball shot, so be sure that your weight is distributed evenly between both feet.
2
Hold the netball with your dominant hand. Position it behind and under the ball, and use your fingertips to cradle it softly. [2] For better control, ensure that the gap between your palm and the ball is minimal. [3]
Make sure that your fingers are relaxed as they hold the ball. If they're grasping too tight or are too straight, your shot may be off.
3
Steady the ball with your other hand. Stabilizing it allows you to give the ball extra spin when you shoot. [4] However, make sure that your second hand doesn't put too much pressure on the ball because it can throw off your shot. [5]
New or young netball players may want to use both hands to hold the ball in order to generate enough power to shoot, but keep in mind that it can actually increase the chance of shooting errors.
While it’s okay to start out shooting with two hands, practice using one hand. Using one hand to shoot and the other only to steady the ball ensures a more accurate shot.
4
Stretch your arms over your head. You want to hold the ball high for the most accurate shot, so your elbows are near your forehead and slightly flexed. Make sure that they're facing the netball post too. [6]
5
Have the goal net in your view. Imagine a cone above the net, like a witch's hat, and focus on the highest, most center point -- that's where you want to aim the ball. The best shots fall through without actually touching the ring, so you want to keep the ball as centered as possible. [7]
All of your focus should be on the hoop, so do your best to ignore distractions.
It may help to line the edge of the ball up with the edge of the hoop before you take your shot.
Part 2
Shooting the Ball
1
Bend your knees and elbows at the same time. While your arms and hands will determine what direction the ball goes in, the real power for your shot comes from the lower body. That means you have to prepare to push up through your ankles and knees. [8]
For the best form, keep your elbows at a right angle, while holding the ball steady. You should also keep your back straight and hold your head up high.
2
Push up and release the ball. To generate the most power for your shot, your arms and knees should straighten at the same time, while your dominant hand flicks the ball upwards. That helps create a backward spin that allows for a high ball trajectory as it soars toward the net, so it drops through without touching the ring. [9]
For the most accurate shot, you must release the ball when your arms are at full extension. Releasing early can throw your shot off.
In game action, put your hand up as soon as the ball is out of your hands. That way, if you don't get it in, you can have another try.
3
Keep practicing. It will take time to develop your skills, but shooting goals will get easier the more you try. Test how far you need to bend to create the most powerful shot, and then try to replicate the form each time that you take a shot.
Part 3
Improving your Shot
1
Take longer shots. While you must be inside the shooting semicircle, it is a fairly large area, which means there are a variety of distances that you can shoot from. If you’re new to netball, you’ll probably begin practicing your shooting closer to the goal. As you become more comfortable, though, start increasing the distance of your shot. That way, you’ll be able to shoot from all over the semicircle with accuracy. [10]
2
Shoot with a feeder in place. During game action, you’ll have the ball passed to you before you take your shot. To become comfortable shooting in that situation, it helps to practice with another player feeding you the ball. You’ll learn to receive the ball and shoot it in one smooth motion. [11]
You should start outside the shooting semicircle, while the other player begins inside the semicircle with the ball.
The other player should feed you the ball from in front of you, so you can run into it to receive it.
Once you’ve received the ball, take the time to set up your shot properly. You don’t want to just rush through the shooting and possibly throw your shot off.
Practice running into the semicircle to receive the ball from various spots outside and at various speeds. You’ll never know exactly what situation will come up in game action.
3
Shoot with a defender in place. In a game, the other team’s defence will try to keep you from scoring a goal, which obviously makes it more difficult to shoot accurately. That’s why it helps to practice shooting with another player trying to defend you. You’ll get used to the distraction, and learn the best way to get around a defender. [12]
Start by standing opposite the hoop. The defending player should stand between you and it, with her arms raised over her head to effectively block your shot.
Try to shoot the ball over the defender’s arms and through the hoop. Remember to practice the right form as you avoid the defender, or your shot may not be as accurate as you’d like.
Community Q&A
How do I know what position I am best at?
wikiHow Contributor
Try playing all the positions first. The one you enjoy the most, find the easiest to perform, and score the best in, will be your best position.
How do I relax myself for the shot?
wikiHow Contributor
The best way to relax yourself for a shot is to tune out all the outside distractions. Instead of paying attention to the other players or the crowd, focus just on the ring and take a quick moment to visualize the ball going through it before you take your shot.
How do you always get the shot in?
wikiHow Contributor
A good way is to stand on the side of the net, be as close to it as you can and bend your knees. Then, using your leg muscles, spring up and shoot.
Which kind of foods and drink should I consume to stay hydrated and energized throughout the game?
wikiHow Contributor
Drink plenty of water, and be sure to have a few bottles handy throughout the game; you can also consider some sport drinks, but stay away from coffee, soft drinks, and other sugary drinks (including juice). An hour or two before the game, eat lots of healthy carbs for energy.
How do I relax before a big match and when I am the shooter?
wikiHow Contributor
Before the game, take time to yourself, try listening to music or going on a walk. Stay calm and don't stress too much. At the game, don't listen to rubbish talk around you and avoid the boasters. Visualize your success over and over in your mind before heading to the court.
How do we identify our mistakes?
wikiHow Contributor
It can be difficult to recognize your own mistakes when you're shooting because you're too busy concentrating on making the shot. The best way to figure out what you're doing wrong is to ask a coach or teammate to observe you. They'll be able to point out areas where you may need to improve, such as having one foot in front of the other, bringing you closer to the defender, or dropping your elbows below your forehead.
How do I shoot in a low net?
wikiHow Contributor
Depends where you are. From the sides: hit it off the backboard with just the right amount of force. From in front of the net: shoot it the same way you would shoot from the two-point line, but with softer force. Do not make the arch too high; that lowers the chances of the ball going in.
If this question (or a similar one) is answered twice in this section, please click here to let us know.
Video
Tips
Take your time when shooting. You'll have a better chance of getting the ball in if you're patient.
When you shoot, flick the ball, so that your fingers are pointing towards the ground after you have taken the shot. This gives a better chance of getting the ball in.
If you're in a shooting slump, don't put too much pressure on yourself. You'll have a better chance of getting the ball in if you stay relaxed and positive.
Chose what's comfortable to your shooting. Whether it's flicking, spinning, or even one-handed shots, it's up to you.
Make sure you don't move your feet when you are shooting in a game as the referee will call you out for footwork and you will have to pass the shot to the opposing team.
Learn to shoot from different points around the 'D' (far and close) because you won't always catch the ball in the exact spot that you like.
If you are trying to shoot and a player is defending you, and there is no way you are going to get the goal, take a step back forward or to the side.
Warnings
The sun may be in your eyes. Don't worry about the sun because when you receive the ball that may be your only chance in that whole quarter. Instead, don't squint, push down on your legs and shoot. It's okay if you don't get it in.
Take your time. You have 3 seconds to shoot, pass, throw in etc. If you rush your pass or shot the other team will get the advantage. Also practice shooting from different angles. You won't always get the ball in the perfect spot you want.
Always jump to catch the ball as it rebounds. This means jumping to catch the ball as it bounces off of the ring so that you have another chance to shoot. However, if the ball didn't hit the ring don't go for it as this is against the rules.
Remember to always warm up before you play netball. Light jogging is an effective way to get the blood pumping before a game, but you should also do some upper and lower body stretches to ensure that you're ready for shooting. Your coach may also recommend warm-up drills that help you work on netball-specific skills to prepare you for game action.
Things You'll Need
Netball (size 5)
Netball ring (not a basketball hoop as they are bigger and have a back board, making it easier to shoot)
Netball court
| goal attack |
Which Cheshire constituency has been represented in Parliament by Neil Hamilton, Martin Bell and George Osbourne? | netball rules
Netball Rules
Netball Rules
Ball and Ring
The ball used in netball is the hybrid of a basketball and a soccer ball. The regulation netball size is a little smaller than the basketball, and is also lighter and somewhat softer. The rings have the same dimension as basketball rings, but they do not have a backboard.
Netball Court, netball court size and dimensions
Netball is played on a hard court (like basketball). The court has scoring rings at both ends, and is divided into three parts by lines that indicate the boundaries of the areas in which members of each time are allowed to move. There are two hemispherical areas at each end called "shooting circles." All scoring shots can only be taken within this designated area.
A netball court size is 30.5 metres (100 feet) long and 15.25 metres (50 feet) wide, which is divided into thirds. There is a center circle with a diameter of 0.9 metres (3 feet) and two goal circles which are semi-circles measuring 4.9 metres (16 feet) in radius. All lines are part of the court and measure 50mm (2 inches) in width.
The netball goal posts are placed mid point of each goal line and measure 3.05 metres (10 feet) in height. The goal rings have an internal diameter of 380mm (15 inches). The goal ring projects horizontally from the post on a single attachment measuring 150mm (6 inches) in length.
Players for netball, netball player positions, positions for international netball
Each team is composed of seven players with the following positions and functions:
GOAL SHOOTER (GS). This player must get past the Goal Keeper of the other team. He or she can move within the "attacking" goal third, including the shooting circle.
GOAL ATTACK (GA). This player acts as the "goal defender," and can move within and across the "attacking" goal third, shooting circle, and center third areas.
WING ATTACK (WA). This player functions as the "wing defense," and can move within and across the "attacking" goal third and center third, but not in the shooting circle.
CENTER (C). This player can move in all areas except the shooting circles.
WING DEFENSE (WD). This player"s function is to "defend" the wing areas, so he or she can move within and across the "defensive" goal third and center third, but never in the shooting circle.
GOAL DEFENSE (GD). This player must protect against the GOAL ATTACK player, and can move within and across the "defensive" goal third and center third, as well as in within the shooting circle.
GOAL KEEPER (GK). This player must stop the GOAL SHOOTER from scoring. He or she can move within and across the defensive goal third and the shooting circle.
Two umpires call the shots and make the decisions.
Duration, regular game, time for netball games, time for international netball games
A game consists of 4 x 15 minute quarters with an interval of 3 minutes between the first and second and third and fourth quarters and a 5 minute half time interval. There is up to 2 minutes of time allowed for each injury.
Important Rules of international netball, rules of netball, most important rules for netball
1. At the start of the game, the ball is in possession of the center player. All other players must be behind the lines.
2. Netball players cannot take more than one step while they are in possession of the ball. To move the ball around, the players must pass it on to a teammate.
3. Netball players cannot hold the ball for more than 3 seconds at any one time.
4. Contact is not permitted. Opposing players must be at least three feet away from each other during defense situations. Once contact is made, the erring team loses the ball.
5. Players are not allowed to move outside of t heir designated areas. Any part of their body should not touch the ground of a "restricted" area.
6. Once they have landed holding the ball, players must keep at least one foot on the ground. Players are not allowed to step, jump up or drag that foot.
7. During a penalty pass or shot, the opposing player must stand away from the thrower according to the umpire's instructions. The GOAL SHOOTER or GOAL ATTACK taking the penalty pass or shot in the goal circle can choose to either pass the ball or shoot for the goal.
8. When the ball goes out of bounds, a throw in is given to the player of the other team closest to where the ball went out of the court. The player must stand up to the line and throw the ball within 3 seconds.
Netball officials are two umpires, two scorers and two timekeepers.
Team Officials are the Coach, Assistant Coach, Manager, Captain and up to two Primary Care Personnel who are qualified to diagnose and treat injury or illness (for example Doctor and/or Physiotherapist).
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In which Dickens novel is 'Mr. Tulkinghorn' the lawyer of the 'Dedlock' family? | A. Bleak House: Literary and Legal Critics
It has become a truism to describe Bleak House as the most "legal" of Dickens' novels 1 and to describe Dickens' attitude toward the law as thoroughly negative. Bleak House is "a crushing indictment of the failure of Law to observe the human need for justice." 2 Although he certainly never created an Atticus Finch, Dickens did not treat all aspects and characters of the law uniformly. Dickens' attack on the courts was limited to the chancery or equity courts. Although that attack is scathing, Dickens takes no advantage of the opportunity to extend the criticism to the law courts. The "victims" in this novel (and there are many) are mainly victimized by chancery, by other characters, or by their own foibles. In Bleak House, Dickens' characters who are involved in law enforcement do not fare particularly badly. Likewise the satire directed toward his law clerks, stationers, and law writers is not especially vitriolic. Dickens saves the really harsh portrayals for the lawyers, but even there, not all the lawyers are equally reprehensible.
Like all of Dickens' novels, Bleak House has generated extensive critical commentary since its publication in 1853, the majority of it dedicated to the metaphorical aspects of the novel. Equity, which should be dedicated to the pursuit of fairness, justice, and truth, instead functions as a metaphor for all the ills of Victorian society. Bleak House is not simply an attack on the law or ...
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| Bleak House |
In 'Coronation Street' which family has, over the years, included 'Valerie', 'Frank', 'Susan' and 'Peter'? | Bleak House by Charles Dickens | PenguinRandomHouse.com
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About Bleak House
One of Charles Dickens’s most critically admired novels, this story of a monumental and life-consuming court case features one of his most vast and varied casts of colorful characters.
In Bleak House, competing claims of love and inheritance—complicated by murder—have given rise to a costly and decades-long legal battle that one litigant refers to as “the family curse.” The insidious London fog that rises from the river Thames and seeps into the very bones of the characters symbolizes the pervasive corruption of the legal system and the society that supports it, targets of Dickens’s satirical wrath. Displaying Dickens’s familiar panoramic sweep and brilliant characters—including the mysterious orphan Esther Summerson, her gentle guardian John Jarndyce, the haughty Lady Dedlock, and the scheming lawyer Mr. Tulkinghorn—the novel is also a bold experimental narrative that unforgettably dramatizes our most basic human conflicts.
About Bleak House
Widely regarded as Dickens’s masterpiece, Bleak House centers on the generations-long lawsuit Jarndyce and Jarndyce, through which “whole families have inherited legendary hatreds.” Focusing on Esther Summerson, a ward of John Jarndyce, the novel traces Esther’s romantic coming-of-age and, in classic Dickensian style, the gradual revelation of long-buried secrets, all set against the foggy backdrop of the Court of Chancery. Mixing romance, mystery, comedy, and satire, Bleak House limns the suffering caused by the intricate inefficiency of the law.
The text of this Modern Library Paperback Classic was set from the first single-volume edition, published by Bradbury & Evans in 1853, and reproduces thirty-nine of H. K. Browne’s original illustrations for the book.
About Bleak House
Widely regarded as Dickens’s masterpiece, Bleak House centers on the generations-long lawsuit Jarndyce and Jarndyce, through which “whole families have inherited legendary hatreds.” Focusing on Esther Summerson, a ward of John Jarndyce, the novel traces Esther’s romantic coming-of-age and, in classic Dickensian style, the gradual revelation of long-buried secrets, all set against the foggy backdrop of the Court of Chancery. Mixing romance, mystery, comedy, and satire, Bleak House limns the suffering caused by the intricate inefficiency of the law.
About Bleak House
The complex story of a notorious law-suit in which love and inheritance are set against the classic urban background of 19th-century London, where fog on the river, seeping into the very bones of the characters, symbolizes the corruption of the legal system and the society which supports it.
“Jarndyce and Jarndyce” is an infamous lawsuit that has been in process for generations. Nobody can remember exactly how the case started but many different individuals have found their fortunes caught up in it. Esther Summerson watches as her friends and neighbours are consumed by their hopes and disappointments with the proceedings. But while the intricate puzzles of the lawsuit are being debated by lawyers, other more dramatic mysteries are unfolding that involve heartbreak, lost children, blackmail and murder.
The fog and cold that permeate Bleak House mirror a Victorian England mired in spiritual insolvency. Dickens brought all his passion, brilliance, and narrative verve to this huge novel of lives entangled in a multi-generational lawsuit—and through it, he achieved, at age 41, a stature almost Shakespearean.
Introduction by Barbara Hardy
About Bleak House
Widely regarded as Dickens’s masterpiece, Bleak House centers on the generations-long lawsuit Jarndyce and Jarndyce, through which “whole families have inherited legendary hatreds.” Focusing on Esther Summerson, a ward of John Jarndyce, the novel traces Esther’s romantic coming-of-age and, in classic Dickensian style, the gradual revelation of long-buried secrets, all set against the foggy backdrop of the Court of Chancery. Mixing romance, mystery, comedy, and satire, Bleak House limns the suffering caused by the intricate inefficiency of the law.
The text of this Modern Library Paperback Classic was set from the first single-volume edition, published by Bradbury & Evans in 1853, and reproduces thirty-nine of H. K. Browne’s original illustrations for the book.
About Bleak House
Widely regarded as Dickens’s masterpiece, Bleak House centers on the generations-long lawsuit Jarndyce and Jarndyce, through which “whole families have inherited legendary hatreds.” Focusing on Esther Summerson, a ward of John Jarndyce, the novel traces Esther’s romantic coming-of-age and, in classic Dickensian style, the gradual revelation of long-buried secrets, all set against the foggy backdrop of the Court of Chancery. Mixing romance, mystery, comedy, and satire, Bleak House limns the suffering caused by the intricate inefficiency of the law.
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Praise
“His best novel. . . . When Dickens wrote Bleak House he had grown up.” —G. K. Chesterton
About Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens was born in a little house in Landport, Portsea, England, on February 7, 1812. The second of eight children, he grew up in a family frequently beset by financial insecurity. At age eleven, Dickens was taken out of… More about Charles Dickens
About Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens was born in a little house in Landport, Portsea, England, on February 7, 1812. The second of eight children, he grew up in a family frequently beset by financial insecurity. At age eleven, Dickens was taken out of… More about Charles Dickens
About Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens was born in a little house in Landport, Portsea, England, on February 7, 1812. The second of eight children, he grew up in a family frequently beset by financial insecurity. At age eleven, Dickens was taken out of… More about Charles Dickens
About Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens was born in a little house in Landport, Portsea, England, on February 7, 1812. The second of eight children, he grew up in a family frequently beset by financial insecurity. At age eleven, Dickens was taken out of… More about Charles Dickens
About Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens was born in a little house in Landport, Portsea, England, on February 7, 1812. The second of eight children, he grew up in a family frequently beset by financial insecurity. At age eleven, Dickens was taken out of… More about Charles Dickens
About Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens was born in a little house in Landport, Portsea, England, on February 7, 1812. The second of eight children, he grew up in a family frequently beset by financial insecurity. At age eleven, Dickens was taken out of… More about Charles Dickens
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If 'Snow White's seven dwarfs' are arranged alphabetically, which is last? | Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) - IMDb
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Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs ( 1937 )
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Stars: Sterling Holloway, Edward Brophy, James Baskett
A mermaid princess makes a Faustian bargain with an unscrupulous sea-witch in order to meet a human prince on land.
Directors: Ron Clements, John Musker
Stars: Jodi Benson, Rene Auberjonois, Christopher Daniel Barnes
Directors: Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton Luske, and 1 more credit »
Stars: Rod Taylor, Betty Lou Gerson, J. Pat O'Malley
Directors: Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, and 1 more credit »
Stars: Kathryn Beaumont, Ed Wynn, Richard Haydn
Directors: Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, and 1 more credit »
Stars: Barbara Luddy, Larry Roberts, Peggy Lee
When a street urchin vies for the love of a beautiful princess, he uses a genie's magic power to make himself off as a prince in order to marry her.
Directors: Ron Clements, John Musker
Stars: Scott Weinger, Robin Williams, Linda Larkin
An English soldier and the daughter of an Algonquin chief share a romance when English colonists invade seventeenth-century Virginia.
Directors: Mike Gabriel, Eric Goldberg
Stars: Mel Gibson, Linda Hunt, Christian Bale
Edit
Storyline
The beautiful and kindhearted princess Snow White charms every creature in the kingdom except one - her jealous stepmother, the Queen. When the Magic Mirror proclaims Snow White the fairest one of all, she must flee into the forest, where she befriends the lovable seven dwarfs - Doc, Sneezy, Grumpy, Happy, Bashful, Sleepy and Dopey. But when the Queen tricks Snow White with an enchanted apple, only the magic of true love's kiss can save her! Written by Lesley (from the back of the Snow White DVD)
Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho, We're Back!! (1958 re-release) See more »
Genres:
4 February 1938 (USA) See more »
Also Known As:
Blancanieves y los siete enanos See more »
Box Office
Mono (RCA Victor High Fidelity Sound System)
Color:
Did You Know?
Trivia
For the scene where the dwarfs are sent off to wash, animator Frank Thomas had Dopey do a hitch step to catch up to the others, as suggested in the storyboard. Walt Disney liked it so much he had the step added to other scenes - much to the chagrin of the other animators, who blamed Thomas for the extra work they had to do. See more »
Goofs
After Snow White's skirt and cape get caught by tree branches her fists are in mid air and her hair is partly loose but in the next shot her hair is back to normal and her hands are below her body. See more »
Quotes
[first lines]
Queen : Slave in the magic mirror, come from the farthest space, through wind and darkness I summon thee. Speak! Let me see thy face.
Magic Mirror : What wouldst thou know, my Queen?
Queen : Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?
Magic Mirror : Famed is thy beauty, Majesty. But hold, a lovely maid I see. Rags cannot hide her gentle grace. Alas, she is more fair than thee.
Queen : Alas for her! Reveal her name.
Magic Mirror : Lips red as the rose. Hair black as ebony. Skin white as snow.
None of the actors in this film were credited. See more »
Connections
(Pocatello, Idaho, USA) – See all my reviews
Where would the animation world be without the humongous success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs? If the movie failed back in 1937, there would be no Disney Company today, no Lion King, and no Disneyland. Disney's Folly, as critics first called it, would probably have scared any other industry from attempting such an ambitious and innovative project. Pixar may not have ever had the chance to put out their groundbreaking features, and even the Disney- and fairy tale-bashing Shrek may never have been made if Snow White didn't set the course for the world of the animated feature.
There must have been tremendous pressure on everyone involved in the making of Snow White, but they did not disappoint. The end result includes a timeless story, classic songs, and beautiful imagery that will live on for future generations to enjoy. In fact, this was only the second movie that captured my nieces' full attention spans (The Lion King being the first).
In my opinion, the story was great but not perfect. It's not as exciting or filled with as much witty remarks as today's animated features, but as soon as the dwarfs are introduced, the movie takes on an endearing lighter side. For the record, my favorite dwarf is Doc, because I can relate to him being a strong leader with some very humanistic follies, such as always getting tongue-tied (I do that myself all too often). All the songs stand out in their own way. `Some Day My Prince Will Come' is a classic, fairy-tale ballad. `Heigh-Ho,' `Dig, Dig, Dig,' and `Whistle While You Work' are great songs to pick up your spirits when you have to go to work, do chores, or do homework. And my favorite, `The Silly Song,' is just a great, catchy, and funny song. As for the imagery, it's just breathtaking, especially considering how early it was introduced. The colors are rich and lively, and the multi-plane camera does add some great depth to the movie.
As you can tell, for an animation and Disney fan like myself, Snow White is a perfect milestone in the movie world. Even compared to the animation and storytelling styles of today, Snow White still stands the test of time. Kudos to everyone involved in this picture as their work will live on forever.
My IMDb Rating: 10/10. My Yahoo! Grade: A+ (Oscar-Worthy)
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| Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film) |
Who was the leader of the Labour Party in Britain from 1980 to 1983? | Disney Vault | Disney Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia
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History
The practice is the modern version of Disney's practice of re-releasing its animated films in theaters every ten years, which began with the reissue of 1937's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs . During the 1980s and 1990s, when the home video market was dominated by VHS systems, Disney films would be reissued every ten years (a time gap equal to that of their theatrical reissues). With the transition to DVD technology, the moratorium period was continued. Television commercials for Disney home video releases will alert customers that certain films will be placed on moratorium soon, urging them to purchase these films before they "go back into the 'Disney Vault'", in the words often spoken by Mark Elliot. Some direct-to-video Disney films, among them Bambi II , have also been released with a pre-established window of availability.
Fantasia is released as a separate "Special Edition" along with its sequel every 10 years as a "momentous" occasion. Keeping with the initial intention to release the original film for ten years as an 'event'. Despite this, like Alice, the film has been announced at one point as a Diamond/Platinum release. It has been "officially" put in the Vault in 2011 but it is currently available on Netflix.
Alice in Wonderland and Dumbo were among the first movies to be released on home video. Keeping the "tradition" of their success on television and therefore its seldom theatrical releases; they were among the first Disney films to be released on TV (chosen because Dumbo's short length made it palatable, and Alice because it was initially a disappointment). Disney has kept a "tradition" of keeping them out of the vault, despite the fact that they are very successful and critically acclaimed, equivocal to that of movie in the Disney Vault. However, at the end of the 2000's they were both announced to be released on Platinum / Diamond edition. Nonetheless, they were only released on a Special Edition. Today they are currently available on digital and occasionally on certain streaming devices but are incredibly hard to find in stores.
Aladdin was put into the vault and unavailable on DVD for a long time before its 2015 Blu-ray release. However it has been aired on television and was available on some "on demand" devices during this time.
Pinocchio was announced to be a part of the Diamond line up but has been canceled for unknown reasons.
Because Disney is notorious for changing their scheduled releases and because the films are as successful as the others, the possibility of them being released in the Vault cycle is very likely; the fact that they were officially announced and changed at the last minute is also proof that this might happen again. Therefore all three are still considered part of the "Vault" for safe assumption.
Controls
The Walt Disney Company itself states that this process is done to both control their market and to allow Disney films to be fresh for new generations of young children. A side effect of the moratorium process is the fact that videos and DVDs of Disney films placed on moratorium become collectables, sold in stores and at auction websites such as eBay for sums in excess of their original suggested retail price. The practice also has made the Disney films a prime target for counterfeit DVD manufacturers.
Producers
Disney's live-action films, Pixar films, DisneyToon Studios flims, and films released by Disney's other film divisions/labels ( Touchstone Pictures , Hollywood Pictures, Miramax Films, Dimension Films) are not held to this rule, generally only being discontinued when a newer edition is released (or in the cases of Doug's 1st Movie or Recess: School's Out , when the show the movie is based on is cancelled).
However, Toy Story and Toy Story 2 (which are from Pixar) were once in the "Disney Vault" until 2005 where newer editions were released for those particular films, a 10th anniversary edition for Toy Story and a special edition for Toy Story 2. Certain Disney animated sequels are part of this rule, though not all the time. Despite this, The Disney Vault does not apply to any of the Pixar movies.
Films
The following films are currently considered as being in the cycle of movies which are subject to the rules of the Disney Vault, all of which have been announced in recent years to be in the Diamond/Platinum line up {even if the titles have been canceled*}.
Main features
Platinum Editions
In October 2001, with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , Disney started releasing these films on DVD in " Platinum Edition " sets. This continued until 2005, when the release rate was increased to two films per year, in 2006, three films per year, in 2007, four films per year, and finally in 2008, twenty films per year. The range, then containing Aladdin instead of Fantasia was completed in March 2009 when Pinocchio was released. This, and the previous release Sleeping Beauty , were also released on Blu-ray.
Diamond Editions
In October 2009, again beginning with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , Disney relaunched the range for Blu-ray under the banner " Diamond Edition ". These releases will be released alongside " Special Edition " DVD sets. The Diamond Edition line was completed in October 2015 when Aladdin was released.
In February 2016, again beginning with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , Disney relaunched the range for Blu-ray, Digital HD and Disney Movies Anywhere under the banner " Signature Collection ".
United Kingdom
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Whose first solo number one single was 'Careless Whisper'? | George Michael - Biography - IMDb
George Michael
Jump to: Overview (5) | Mini Bio (1) | Trade Mark (1) | Trivia (39) | Personal Quotes (34)
Overview (5)
6' (1.83 m)
Mini Bio (1)
George Michael was born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou in Finchley, north London, in the United Kingdom, to Lesley Angold (Harrison), a dancer, and Kyriacos Panayiotou, a restaurateur. His father was a Greek Cypriot, and his mother was of English background. He first discovered fame as a musician when he and school friend, Andrew Ridgeley , formed the pop group Wham! . Success came fast and furious with their first album, 'Fantastic' (1983) hitting the UK number one spot. Wham! survived for five years and during that time the group notched up four number one singles and two number one albums. Most of their other releases made top three. George also contributed to the Band Aid Single 'Do They Know It's Christmas' (1984), and scored two further solo number one hits with 'Careless Whisper' and 'A Different Corner'.
Following the break-up of Wham! , George went on to have a hugely successful career as a solo artist, his debut album 'Faith' (1987) - and the single of the same name - both achieving instant and international success. The album has since been certified Diamond.
Over the last four decades George has notched up 8 number one albums in the and 13 number one singles in the UK (including Wham! , Band Aid , and the 'Five Live' EP). In the U.S. he has achieved 2 number one albums and 10 number one singles, with numerous other number one hits throughout the rest of the world.
He has performed duets with artists including Aretha Franklin , Elton John , Queen , and Lisa Stansfield , and actively participates in charitable causes, Live Aid and the Freddie Mercury concert for AIDS being just two of the more prominent examples. According to a BBC documentary, George donated more than five million pounds towards various charities. Whilst with Wham!, he donated all the proceeds of 'Last Christmas' (1984) to charity. The single reached number two in the UK and George also performed simultaneously on the number one charity record 'Do They Know It's Christmas?'.
George released the single 'December Song' in 2008 as a free download: his hope was that purchasers would donate money to charity.
He remained in contact with his Wham! partner and long-time friend Andrew Ridgeley until his death in 2016.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Anonymous
Trade Mark (1)
Powerful, smooth and soulful voice
Trivia (39)
He was arrested in April 1998 at a public restroom in Beverly Hills for committing a lewd act in front of an undercover police officer. As a result, for the first time he spoke publicly about being gay. BBC talk show host Michael Parkinson dedicated an episode of his Parkinson (1971) series to an interview with him. Michael also wrote and released the song "Outside", which had lyrics and a music video mocking the whole incident. The arresting police officer filed a civil suit against Michael for defamation of character, but it was dismissed.
He enjoyed four UK number one singles with Wham: "Wake Me Up Before You Go Go" (1984), "Freedom" (1984), "I'm Your Man" (1985) and "The Edge of Heaven" (1986).
His song "Father Figure" was sampled for PM Dawn 's hit "Looking Through Patient Eyes".
He collaborated with Queen and Lisa Stansfield on the British chart-topping "Five Live" (EP) of 1993.
The first three singles of George Michael's solo career all went to the number one position on the UK chart: "Careless Whisper" (1984), "A Different Corner" (1986) and "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)" (1987). The latter was a duet with Aretha Franklin .
His song with Wham! , "Last Christmas", is the best selling UK hit never to get to number one, reaching the number two position in December 1984, being re-issued and reaching the number six position the next December and being re-issued again and reaching the number 45 position in December 1986. It spent a total of 24 weeks on the UK chart.
He sang on the number one and number two Christmas singles of 1984, Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?" and Wham! 's "Last Christmas".
He was a big fan of This Morning (1988) and, on the final episode of the series, he phoned the presenters, Richard and Judy, to thank them live on air and to wish them the best.
He has contributed two songs to the "Warchild Hope" album (released 21 April 2003); one is a cover of Don McLean 's "The Grave" and the other is his own classic "Faith" (a duet with Ms Dynamite).
His controversial single "Shoot the Dog" (released 2002) had a video that ridiculed Tony Blair , Cherie Blair and George W. Bush .
His last performance with Wham! was at Wembley Stadium in June 1986.
Played a benefit for striking British miners. [September 1984]
He wrote his smash hit single "Careless Whisper" when he was just 17, on a Thursday afternoon in Bushey. He waited until he was 21 before he released it as his first solo single. The song reached number one in more than 25 countries and sold in excess of six million copies.
His father, Kyriacos Panayiotou, was a Greek Cypriot restaurant owner, who emigrated to the U.K. from Cyprus in the 1950s. His mother, Lesley Angold (Harrison), was of English background, the daughter of George James Harrison and Daisy Angold Young.
He and Andrew Ridgeley wrote "Careless Whisper" on the back of a bus during their school days.
He provided backing vocals on Andrew Ridgeley 's album "Son Of Albert" on tracks "Red Dress" & "Shake". These were the only two songs to do well on the charts.
His 1990 solo hit "Freedom 90" from the CD "Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1" was so titled to avoid confusion with his previous Wham! hit "Freedom".
He wrote many of his songs while working at a movie theater as a teenager.
He was reported to have sold over 100 million albums upon his death in 2016 when his sales with Wham! and as a solo artist were combined.
In the Independent on Sunday 2006 Pink List - a list of the most influential gay men and women - he came no. 25, down from 22.
He had an estimated fortune of £105 million upon his death in 2016.
He won several Brit (British Phonographic Industry) Awards during his career. He was the winner (as part of Wham! ) of the British Phonographic Industry Award for British Group in 1985. Wham! then shared the Outstanding Contribution award with Elton John in 1986. He was the winner of the award for British Male Solo Artist in 1988 following the success of his multi-million selling album "Faith". His album "Listen Without Prejudice Vol.1" won the 1991 Brit Award for British Album. He was also the winner of the 1997 Brit Award for British Male Solo Artist following the success of his album "Older".
He announced his retirement in February 2004, but began a new European tour in September 2006, his first tour in fifteen years.
His debut solo album "Faith" has sold more than 20 million copies since its release in 1987.
He was paid £1.7 million to perform for an hour at Russian billionaire Vladimir Potanin's New Year's party on 31 December 2006.
His partner Anselmo Feleppa, whom he met in 1991, died from an AIDS-related brain haemorrhage in 1993.
He was sentenced to 100 hours community service for driving while unfit. The singer was arrested on 1 October 2006 after being found slumped at the wheel of his Mercedes in the early hours of the morning. He had an antidepressant in his system, as well as cannabis and 16 micro-grams per milliliter of the illegal Class C drug GHB. (9 June 2007).
He was a friend of Spice Girls singer Geri Horner .
He was ranked #73 on VH1's 100 Sexiest Artists.
A fan of The Beatles , he performed with Paul McCartney at Live 8 (2005). He also bought John Lennon 's Steinway Model Z upright piano for £1.67m in the year 2000, then donated it to Liverpool's Beatles Story museum. In September 2010, while serving a prison sentence for driving under the influence of drugs, Michael received a two-page handwritten letter from McCartney to lift his spirits. In the letter, McCartney said that he empathized with Michael as he himself had spent ten days in prison in Japan in 1980 after being caught with cannabis. He told Michael to keep his chin up and that he would see him when he is released. Apparently, Michael was delighted with the letter and read it over and over again.
He wrote, produced and performed the classic song "Last Christmas" when he was just 21 years old. There have been over 395 cover versions of the song by different artists since it was released in 1984.
He had homes in London, in Goring-on-Thames, Oxfordshire (where he died), and Dallas, Texas.
He was a close friend of Shirlie Kemp , one of Wham! 's backing singers, and introduced her to her future husband, Martin Kemp , who was the bass player of the popular 1980s band Spandau Ballet .
The singer's music video "Freedom" (1989) featured supermodels Linda Evangelista , Naomi Campbell , Christy Turlington , Cindy Crawford and Tatjana Patitz . Curiously, GM appeared nowhere in the video himself. Directed by David Fincher and photographed by Jeff Cronenweth .
Many observed the poignancy that he died on Christmas Day, 32 years after he first had a hit with Wham! 's "Last Christmas", a song which has become a Yuletide perennial.
Nearly died from pneumonia in December 2011.
Claimed his maternal grandmother was Jewish. However this was not actually true.
| George Michael |
Which film, for which Carey Mulligan won a Best Actress BAFTA, is based on the memoirs of journalist Lynn Barber? | Careless whisper George Michael - YouTube
Careless whisper George Michael
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Published on Apr 5, 2012
Careless whisper George Michael Pictures: Angel Law En Qi Video edit: Jaime Topaz
"Never Gonna Dance Again" redirects here. For the song by Sugababes, see Never Gonna Dance Again (song).
"Careless Whisper"
from the album Make It Big
B-side "Careless Whisper" (Instrumental version)
Released 24 July 1984 (UK)
1 February 1985 (U.S.)
"Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go"
(1984) "Careless Whisper"
Audio sample
file info · help
"Careless Whisper" is a 1984 single by George Michael (credited to Wham! featuring George Michael in the US), released by Epic Records in the UK, Japan, and other countries; and by Columbia Records in North America. The song was George Michael's first solo single although he was still performing in Wham! at the time (the song is included on Wham!'s album Make It Big). The song features a prominent saxophone riff, and has been covered by a number of artists since its first release. It was released as a single and became a huge commercial success on both sides of the Atlantic. It reached number one in nearly 25 countries, selling about six million copies worldwide.
Category
| i don't know |
www.haroldsaxon.co.uk and www.myspace.com/marthajonesuk are websites which link to which TV series? | Martha Jones | Tardis | Fandom powered by Wikia
Dr Martha Jones, later Martha Smith-Jones, was a British physician. She met the Tenth Doctor while in residency at Royal Hope Hospital in London when the hospital was transported to the Moon by the Judoon troops, after which she began travelling with the Time Lord . ( TV : Smith and Jones )
Unlike other companions , she not only became infatuated with the Doctor but also declared her feelings to him. She decided to stop travelling with him as he could not return her affection, but continued to have a number of adventures, both with and without him, thanks to her work with UNIT and Torchwood . ( TV : Last of the Time Lords , Reset , et al.)
Martha also went onto marry Mickey Smith , and the two broke out on their own to become alien fighters despite having ties to Torchwood from two different Earths. She encountered the Doctor again before he regenerated , saving her life one more time. ( TV : The End of Time )
Biography
Edit
Martha Jones was born in 1986 to Francine and Clive Jones . She had an older sister named Tish , a younger brother, Leo , and a niece, Keisha Jones , who was Leo's daughter. When she was a child, Leo pushed Martha off the swing and broke her arm. Going in the ambulance and having her arm plastered fascinated her, which was when she decided she wanted to become a doctor. ( PROSE : The Story of Martha ) Martha grew up with her mother when her parents divorced, and was often forced to play peacekeeper in continual family arguments. Tish and Leo also lived with them, with Martha sleeping in their home's smallest room. ( PROSE : Wooden Heart ) Martha devoured Annette Billingsley 's The Troubleseekers , a thirty-two book series, around the age of eight; they were the first books that she ever read. She later read Harry Potter and His Dark Instruments . ( PROSE : The Mystery of the Haunted Cottage ) Martha had three trumpet lessons in Year 6 of primary school. ( COMIC : House Pests )
When Francine invited guests to dinner, Martha and her sister were expected to "perform" for the guests by handing out nibbles while Francine bragged that Martha was going to be a leading surgeon. Martha hated the attention and it caused friction between her and Tish, who embraced the attention.
Edit
Martha first met the Tenth Doctor in 2008 , on her way to her job as a student doctor at the Royal Hope Hospital in London , where she was studying under Mr Stoker . Without introducing himself, the Doctor merely took off his tie and said, "Like so, see?", before walking off. Unbeknownst to Martha at the time, he was demonstrating the nature of time travel . She met him again at the hospital , where he was posing as a patient named John Smith , not realising that the man she saw earlier was a future version of him; she also listened to his heartbeat, discovering that he had two hearts , but stayed quiet about it.
Later that same day the hospital was transported to the Moon by the Judoon . Calm while those around her panicked, Martha worked with the Doctor to track down the Plasmavore , " Florence Finnegan ", for whom the Judoon were searching. During this encounter, the Doctor was quickly impressed with Martha's reasoning and intelligence, such as when she deduced that opening the windows wouldn't result in the air being sucked out; it would've happened already anyway if it were going to happen at all as the windows weren't airtight. Despite listening to his heartbeat, however, Martha was sceptical about him being an alien, until the Judoon's scanners confirmed that he wasn't human .
Martha first sees the TARDIS. ( TV : Smith and Jones )
As the oxygen in the hospital ran out, Martha gave her last breaths to resuscitate the clinically-dead Doctor, who had thwarted Florence's plan. The Judoon returned the hospital to Earth. That evening, after another family argument at her brother Leo's party, a recovered Martha was approached by the Doctor, who revealed that he was a Time Lord and invited her to join him on what he initially described as a "single trip" through time and space in the TARDIS . ( TV : Smith and Jones )
Travels with the doctor
Martha in 1599 London. ( TV : The Shakespeare Code )
The Doctor took Martha to 1599 where they met William Shakespeare , who flirted with her and called her his "Dark Lady" . The three of them used a "spell" to defeat a trio of witch-like Carrionites who were using Shakespeare's play Love's Labour's Won as a spell to bring other Carrionites to Earth; Martha's use of the word " Expelliarmus " when Shakespeare was unable to think of the right word to end on proved vital in defeating them. The Carrionites, along with the play, were sealed away. ( TV : The Shakespeare Code )
Martha while kidnapped and taken on the Motorway. ( TV : Gridlock )
Martha's next trip was to New New York , where they landed in the Undercity . Learning the Doctor had also visited New Earth with Rose, Martha worried she was a "rebound" companion. Martha was kidnapped by a couple driving through the Motorway who wanted a third passenger to use an express lane; the three of them were later almost killed by the Macra , but escaped when the Doctor opened up the Motorway. After the two were reunited, Martha witnessed the death of the Face of Boe and heard his final words, "You are not alone". Before they departed New Earth, The Doctor told Martha about his home planet and the Last Great Time War . ( TV : Gridlock )
Martha facing a Dalek. ( TV : Daleks in Manhattan )
The Doctor extended Martha's trip in the TARDIS yet again, going to 1930 New York City , where the two of them became entangled in a mystery and found the population of Hooverville being transformed into pig slaves ( TV : Daleks in Manhattan ) as part of the Cult of Skaro 's plans to build a race of human-Daleks . ( TV : Evolution of the Daleks ) Martha and a group of Hooverville residents were nearly converted into human-Daleks, ( TV : Daleks in Manhattan ) but the Doctor created a loud noise and allowed the humans to escape. After the Doctor was escorted to the Daleks to help them, the Doctor handed Martha his psychic paper and Martha went with Tallulah and Frank to the top floor of the Empire State Building, pretending to be engineers and an architect, and realised the Daleks had taken over the Empire State Building while working with Mr Diagoras and placed Dalekanium on the mast to power their experiment. While the Doctor got in the way of the lightning strike hitting the mast, Martha and Frank connected metal rods from the outside of the building to the lift shaft as the lightning struck the building, killing the pig slaves inside the lift which were chasing after the Doctor. ( TV : Evolution of the Daleks )
Martha and the Doctor trapped inside of Professor Lazarus' machine. ( TV : The Lazarus Experiment )
After the Cult of Skaro's defeat, the Doctor returned Martha home to twelve hours after she had left. He overheard a TV news story about a man promising to "change what it means to be human ", and escorted her to the presentation of Prof. Richard Lazarus ' rejuvenation device. Uncovering the disastrous effects of Lazarus' work, the Doctor, Martha, and her sister Tish helped to kill the monster Lazarus had become. Afterward, the Doctor offered Martha one more trip, but she refused. She no longer wanted to be just a passenger, and so the Doctor invited her on board the TARDIS, as a full-time companion. ( TV : The Lazarus Experiment )
Martha in the escape pod. ( TV : 42 )
They answered a distress signal in the 42nd century Torajii system: a ship falling towards the sun. The sun was a sentient being possessing the crew members and killing them off, but Martha and the Doctor saved the ship and departed safely. During this adventure, Martha had a brief romance with one of the ship's crew, Riley Vashtee . He wanted her to stay but she chose to remain with the Doctor. ( TV : 42 )
Martha and the Doctor before the Chameleon Arch ( TV : Human Nature )
To escape the Family of Blood , who were hunting him, the Doctor used the Chameleon Arch to turn himself into a human with no memory or knowledge of the Doctor, containing his true self inside a fob watch. Before doing so, the Doctor recorded a video of instructions for Martha to follow so she might reference them in the future. He then became John Smith , a teacher at an English public school in 1913 , where Martha took a job as a maid at the school to keep an eye on him, hiding the TARDIS in a shed. Martha watched helplessly as Smith fell in love with the school nurse, Joan Redfern , as he had not mentioned falling in love in his instructions. exclaiming he "had to go and fall in love with a human and it wasn't [her]". When the Family of Blood tracked them down after student Timothy Latimer opened the fob watch, wreaking havoc on the town and school, Martha convinced John Smith to sacrifice his human life and love by reverting to the Doctor. He defeated the Family of Blood, left a heartbroken Joan and rejoined Martha in the TARDIS. ( TV : Human Nature / The Family of Blood )
Martha welcomes Billy to 1969. ( TV : Blink )
At some point, while dealing with "four things and a lizard" in London 2007, the Doctor and Martha met Sally Sparrow , who seemed to know them, however Martha and the Doctor did not know her yet. Sally gave the Doctor and Martha a manuscript and claimed that they would need it in the future. Some time later, Martha and the Doctor then travelled to an old house in Wester Drumlins , where Weeping Angels sent them back to 1960s London, with the TARDIS stuck in the 21st century. When Billy Shipton was sent back to 1969, he was welcomed by Martha and the Doctor. From there, the Doctor, with Billy's aid, helped Sally Sparrow recover the TARDIS in the future while Martha took a job in a shop to support them. She briefly appeared in one of the video messages the Doctor had made for Sally, whinging that the Doctor promised her all of space and time but has to work in a shop to support him, before apologising for bursting in. ( TV : Blink )
Martha, Jack and the Doctor. ( TV : Utopia )
Following a short pit-stop in Cardiff , and unknowingly picking up Captain Jack Harkness , the TARDIS took Martha and the Doctor to the end of the universe, and the planet Malcassairo . Martha was taken back by Jack's immortality before the two discussed the circumstances of Jack's last encounter with the Doctor , Martha becoming increasingly jealous of Rose and concerned that she was going to be abandoned just as he was one day. After fleeing from the Futurekind , they stayed at Silo 16 , where they encountered the last humans in the universe, who were assisted by Professor Yana , and Martha briefly befriended his assistant Chantho . An observant Martha noticed that the Professor had a watch similar to the Doctor's Chameleon Arch, prompting him to open it. The human Yana was transformed back into the Doctor's Time Lord nemesis, the Master , and escaped in the TARDIS. ( TV : Utopia )
Martha hiding from the Master ( TV : The Sound of Drums )
Martha, Jack, and the Doctor used Jack's vortex manipulator to travel back to 21st century Earth, arriving the day after Harold Saxon was voted Prime Minister. Mr Saxon was in fact an alias of the Master, who had been living on Earth for months since his departure from Malcassairo; the Doctor explained that, before the Master fled Utopia, he sabotaged the TARDIS by fusing the coordinates with his sonic screwdriver so that it could only travel between 21st century Earth and the end of the universe, adding that he could've only landed up to 18 months prior to the day they picked Jack up from Cardiff. The Doctor also constructed three perception filters using TARDIS keys in order to avoid detection, the three of them declared Earth's most wanted. The Master, who had been manipulating Martha's family since she became a full-time companion, had Francine, Clive, and Tish arrested, although Leo escaped, Martha calling and warning him before the Master could find him. As her family, Jack, and the Doctor were all taken prisoner aboard the Valiant , Martha teleported back to Earth with a mission to defeat the Master. ( TV : The Sound of Drums )
The Year That Never Was
Edit
Martha knew what she had to do: spread the word of the Doctor. She first travelled from England to rebel camps in Europe, where she met the Brigadier's son Erik Calvin , and was later interned in a concentration camp in Japan. Throughout her travels she also visited the ruins of New York City , and fusion camps in China . ( PROSE : The Story of Martha )
Martha and the Doctor say goodbye to Jack. ( TV : Last of the Time Lords )
After a year travelling around the world, she met fellow resistance member Tom Milligan . She had spent a year on Earth telling everyone to think of the Doctor at a specific time so the Master could be defeated. This plan worked; the Doctor, who had been previously aged several hundred years by the Master using his laser screwdriver combined with the research of Lazarus, returned to his original form and the Master was shot by his wife, Lucy Saxon . As a result of the destruction of the Master's paradox machine , only Martha, her family, and the people on board the Valiant retained their memories of that year under the Master. Although the Doctor wanted her to stay with him, she felt her family needed her more. She also needed to get out of what she saw was an unhealthy relationship of her hoping the Doctor would finally notice her, and she stayed on Earth to complete her training as a doctor. To keep in touch, she gave the Doctor her superphone , saying that she would call him when she needed him. ( TV : Last of the Time Lords )
UNIT career
Martha inside the Torchwood hub. ( TV : Reset )
Martha was later recruited by UNIT , something that she and Captain Jack believed happened because the Tenth Doctor put in a good word for her. She visited Torchwood Three in Cardiff as a UNIT officer, and soon became embroiled in their investigation of a medical organisation called the Pharm , acting as an undercover agent. Mayflies were put into her body when she was discovered and captured, prompting Owen Harper to twice save her life. Once with an alien surgical device to remove the Mayfly, and soon after by taking a bullet meant for her. ( TV : Reset )
Martha is captured by the Pharm. ( TV : Reset )
Martha witnessed Owen's return as an undead being through the resurrection gauntlet and gave him a posthumous physical. " Death ", a force possessing Harper, made the gauntlet attack Martha which aged her considerably, but reverted back again after Owen defeated the Death being. ( TV : Dead Man Walking )
She also mended Harper's injured hand when, in a fit of self-destruction after Jack decided to relieve him of duty at Torchwood, he deliberately wounded it. She left once Owen Harper was returned to duty and resumed her work at UNIT. ( TV : A Day in the Death )
Martha attended both Owen and Tosh's funerals. ( AUDIO : Lost Souls )
Back at UNIT, she became engaged to her boyfriend, Thomas Milligan , though he left Britain for a while to go to Africa . ( TV : The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky )
She phoned Captain Jack when stationed at the CERN Facility in Switzerland when the Large Hadron Collider was scheduled to be activated. Some of the staff had gone missing, including her old friend Julia Swayles. The Torchwood 3 team went to Switzerland to investigate and found the person who was responsible was Dr Harrington . ( AUDIO : Lost Souls )
Reunion with the Doctor
Martha reuniting with the Doctor ( TV : The Sontaran Stratagem )
Martha called the Doctor when UNIT were about to attack the ATMOS factory which secretly formed a key part of a Sontaran invasion plan . She was working under the "by-the-book" Colonel Mace , who was in charge of the operation. Not long after UNIT took control of the factory, Martha was kidnapped by two Sontaran -controlled soldiers and put in a cloning pool to be copied. She was put to sleep but kept alive; her clone needed access to her memories while helping the Sontarans. ( TV : The Sontaran Stratagem )
Martha's clone died soon after the Doctor rescued Martha, but Martha was able to convince the clone to help them. Before the clone died, it said Martha had many things she wanted to do and she should do them. While chatting with the Doctor and Donna after the Sontarans' defeat, Martha turned down the Doctor's offer to travel again with him. As soon as she had made her refusal, the TARDIS dragged them into the Time Vortex . ( TV : The Poison Sky )
Martha mourns Peck. ( TV : The Doctor's Daughter )
Martha walked out of the TARDIS onto the planet Messaline , remarking that even though she did not want to travel with the Doctor any more, she still loved the first step on a new planet. The Doctor was grabbed and his hand put in a Progenation machine, which created his "daughter", Jenny . Soon after, they were attacked by the Hath , which resulted in Martha becoming separated from the Doctor and Donna, and taken by the Hath. After helping the injured Hath Peck , and earning the Hath's trust, they showed her a map of their location. Martha, alongside Hath Peck, went onto the planet's surface in order to meet up with the Doctor and Donna. She slipped into a pit of killer quicksand, but Hath Peck saved her life by sacrificing his own. Martha found the Temple and was reunited with the Doctor, Donna, and Jenny. It was here they discovered what the humans and Hath were fighting over: the Source , a terraforming device which would make the planet's surface habitable. As the Hath and the humans appeared, the Doctor released the Source. General Cobb was enraged and shot at the Doctor, but Jenny leaped in the way of the bullet, and was killed instead. When the Doctor said that there was a possibility she would come back to life, Martha shook her head and confirmed she was dead. The Doctor returned Martha to Earth. She said a fond farewell to Donna and him, and went off to reunite with her fiancé, Thomas Milligan . ( TV : The Doctor's Daughter )
Fighting the Daleks
Edit
Martha moved to New York after promotion to the post of Medical Director on Project Indigo , a teleport device using recovered Sontaran technology. Whilst she was working at UNIT HQ in New York City , Earth was transported to the Medusa Cascade .
General Sanchez gives Martha the Osterhagen key . ( TV : The Stolen Earth )
When Daleks attacked the base, General Sanchez ordered Martha to use Project Indigo to escape and contact the Doctor. Sanchez also gave her an Osterhagen Key and ordered her to use it should the need arise. Project Indigo, which had never been tested, teleported Martha to her home in London, where she was reunited with her mother. Martha later theorised that her emotions controlled it, sending her home.
Harriet Jones had created a low-level signal and contacted Martha, Torchwood and Sarah Jane Smith to assist Earth and defeat the Daleks. Together they contacted the Doctor and summoned him to help them to fight the Daleks. ( TV : The Stolen Earth )
Unsure of whether the Doctor would come, Martha decided to use the Osterhagen Key. Leaving her mother, she teleported to Germany and a secret UNIT base, one of several Osterhagen Project activation points. Martha and two other UNIT operatives in other locations prepared to activate the Osterhagen Project, but first contacted the Crucible , warning the Daleks and Davros that she would use the key to destroy Earth rather than let it fall into their hands, giving them the chance to escape unharmed. They teleported her to the Crucible, however, where she rejoined the Doctor, alongside Rose Tyler , Mickey Smith , Jackie Tyler , Jack, and Sarah Jane. After the arrival of Donna and the Meta-Crisis Tenth Doctor , they defeated the Daleks and their plans, and the Doctor's companions assisted the Doctor in piloting the TARDIS, towing Earth back to its solar system . ( TV : Journey's End )
Return to UNIT and freelance work
Edit
After Earth was returned to its proper place, Martha exited the TARDIS with Jack Harkness, who offered her a job with Torchwood. She did not take Jack's offer to work for Torchwood. ( TV : Journey's End )
However, she stopped working for UNIT as a permanent member of staff. She occasionally went back to UNIT, filling in for her friend Malcolm Taylor as London's scientific advisor. ( COMIC : Don't Step on the Grass )
Martha as a freelancer. ( TV : The End of Time )
She decided to go into "freelance" alien fighting with Mickey Smith , whom she had, at some point, married. One adventure saw Martha and Mickey battle a Sontaran, Jask . Unknown to them, Jask had them cornered and was about to kill them. The Doctor stepped in and knocked out Jask, saving them as his final gift to them prior to his next regeneration . Martha spotted the Doctor. They called out to him, but he walked away without saying a word. As the TARDIS left, Martha embraced her husband sadly. ( TV : The End of Time )
At some point, Sarah Jane Smith and Martha started to occasionally meet up for coffee. They became friends. Sarah Jane told Martha everything about her son Luke Smith . In 2010 , Luke Smith was starting to get nightmares and didn't feel well. Sarah Jane thought that Martha could help and wanted to call her. However Luke told her that he was alright and Sarah Jane didn't call Martha. A short time later Martha and her husband Mickey came to Luke's farewell party after which Luke wanted to go the University of Oxford . ( PROSE : The Nightmare Man )
Martha called in the Eleventh Doctor to assist the Japanese branch of UNIT with investigating a mysterious beverage. This was Martha's first interaction with the eleventh incarnation of the Doctor. ( COMIC : The Golden Ones )
In 2016 she was transformed into a Gargoyle due to the effects of a wormhole passing through San Francisco . Mickey aided the Ninth Doctor to close the wormhole, which returned Martha to her normal state. ( COMIC : The Transformed )
Undated events
Martha's record as a companion of the Doctor was taken by UNIT in the Black Archive . ( TV : The Day of the Doctor )
Donna's World
In an alternate reality that was created by the Time Beetle , one of the Trickster's Brigade , Martha met Sarah Jane and Luke Smith (as well as Maria Jackson and Clyde Langer ) instead of the Doctor when the Royal Hope Hospital was moved to the Moon by the Judoon . When the oxygen ran out, she gave the last oxygen tank to fellow student Oliver Morgenstern before dying, leaving him the only survivor. ( TV : Turn Left )
Legacy
Edit
The Doctor felt some guilt regarding Martha well into his eleventh incarnation. ( TV : Let's Kill Hitler )
Alice O'Donnell, a native of the year 2119, knew of Martha among other companions of the Doctor due to having worked in military intelligence which made her familiar with UNIT as well as being a follower of the Doctor's exploits. When the Twelfth Doctor took her back to 1980 via the TARDIS, O'Donnell voiced her doubt that Martha would have vomited following her first trip as her colleague Mason Bennett had done. ( TV : Before the Flood )
Personality
Edit
Martha was an intelligent, brave and kind-hearted woman with a great sense of humour. When she was a prisoner of the Daleks, one of them confirmed that she possessed high intelligence. ( TV : Daleks in Manhattan ) The Doctor was impressed with her theory about having air on the Moon, and he asked her to join him in the hospital balcony to see if they could breathe. ( TV : Smith and Jones ) She rose to every challenge the Doctor gave her: watching after him while he was human, and walking the world for a year. ( TV : Human Nature , Last of the Time Lords )
Martha was willing to accept and defend non-humans as friends. She greeted unusual looking species with wonder and even treated injuries. ( TV : Utopia , The Doctor's Daughter ) She quickly adapted pattern of speech and gesture to communicate more effectively with other species. ( TV : Daleks in Manhattan , The Doctor's Daughter )
Martha quickly developed a crush on the Doctor and always wondered if he even noticed her. Martha was envious of Joan Redfern when the Doctor made himself a human named John Smith and fell in love with her. ( TV : Human Nature / The Family of Blood )
In the Year That Never Was , Martha admitted that she loved the Doctor, but after the Master's defeat, she decided that holding on to the hope that he would return her feelings was not good for her. Her feelings for him, in addition to the enormous ordeal she had been put through, strained her relationship with the Doctor to the point that she decided to leave the TARDIS. ( TV : Last of the Time Lords ) She was later engaged to Tom, but eventually married Mickey Smith instead. ( TV : The End of Time )
Her time walking the Earth gave rise to a more soldier-like and less naive side of Martha. Nevertheless, she retained her kindness, sense of adventure, and fierce determination to do the right thing. Despite their strained relationship, she remained loyal to the Doctor, and indeed took many of his teachings to heart. For instance, despite her work at UNIT, she very rarely carried a gun. She explicitly stated that by working inside UNIT, she might be able to change it for the better. ( PROSE : The Story of Martha , TV : The Sontaran Stratagem , TV : The Doctor's Daughter )
Although she had cause to be jealous of Rose Tyler, Martha seemed genuinely happy for the Doctor when he and Rose were reunited. She got along very well with Donna Noble. After the Year That Never Was, Martha became a close friend of Captain Jack Harkness and although she did not seem to return his overtures, she did not mind when he flirted with her. ( TV : Utopia ) She even kissed him when she left her temporary assignment to the Torchwood team, claiming that "everyone else has had a go." ( TV : A Day in the Death )
Skills
Martha had a scientific mind. Her knowledge, analytical, and problem solving skill were frequently on display. ( TV : Daleks in Manhattan , Smith and Jones , The Doctor's Daughter , The Sontaran Stratagem , Reset ) Her knowledge and logic allowed her to execute very complicated coordinated plans based on very little information from the Doctor. ( TV : Last of the Time Lords ) She was shown to be a competent speaker of German. ( TV : Journey's End ) She also proved handy with a gun. ( TV : The Family of Blood , The End of Time ) Of course, her medical skills proved handy, especially after the experience she gained with aliens and other unusual medical situations, finding her working with organisations such as UNIT and Torchwood Three . ( TV : The Doctor's Daughter , The Sontaran Stratagem , Reset , A Day in the Death )
Behind the scenes
Edit
Martha's last scene in Journey's End was interpreted as opening the door for a possible return to Torchwood . Although there were unconfirmed rumours that Agyeman was seen at a Torchwood filming location, she did not appear in the Children of Earth miniseries; she was referenced in dialogue as still being with UNIT. Her subsequent appearance at the end of TV : The End of Time again fueled speculation of a possible future Torchwood appearance, which did not come about in the revived Torchwood.
Russell T Davies originally intended for Martha to appear in Torchwood: Children of Earth miniseries and Enemy of the Bane , the series 2 finale of The Sarah Jane Adventures . Freema Agyeman's casting in the ITV series Law & Order: UK resulted initially in her Torchwood appearance (along with an appearance by Mickey Smith) being reduced to a cameo, and then eliminated completely.
Later, her schedule also precluded Agyeman from appearing in Sarah Jane, resulting in Nicholas Courtney returning as the Brigadier instead. ( REF : Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale - The Final Chapter ) Had she appeared in these two productions, she would have been the first major character to play an important role in Doctor Who and both of its direct spin-offs (even including the Doctor, who to date has not appeared in Torchwood).
Other matters
Edit
Freema Agyeman was the first black female companion on televised Doctor Who. The first one in other media was Sharon Davies .
The arm tattoo sported by Martha is Agyeman's own real-life tattoo. Although Agyeman has been described as the first major Doctor Who cast member to be so adorned, in fact Jon Pertwee was seen sporting an arm tattoo in the television stories Spearhead from Space and Doctor Who and the Silurians .
Martha seems to be a popular character for writers to have impersonated by someone else. Aside from the TV story The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky , in which a clone was created, The Forgotten , a comic story arc and two instalments of the BBC Writers' Comics online series all featured plotlines involving fake Marthas.
The commentary for The End of Time revealed that her honeymoon mentioned in Children of Earth: Day One referred to her marriage with Mickey Smith, although this was never referenced on-screen.
"Martha's Theme" is included in the Doctor Who - Series 3 soundtrack . Her name appears in three other tracks on the disc: "Only Martha Knows", "Martha's Quest" and "Martha Triumphant".
Martha was dubbed in Italian by Ilaria Latini in Doctor Who and by Federica De Bortoli in Torchwood, in German by Jana Kilka in Doctor Who and by Solveig Duda in Torchwood, and in French by Mélanie Dermont .
External links
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Up to date as of January 31, 2010
From Coronation Street Wiki
12th January - Tyrone Dobbs and Molly Compton marry.
6th February - During a showdown at Underworld , Tony Gordon confesses to Carla that he had Liam murdered. Carla makes a quick getaway as Tony tries in vain to stop her.
13th March - Steve McDonald and Becky Granger are supposed to get married but Becky arrives at the church too drunk to carry on.
30th March - A huge fire breaks out at the Bookies flat after a drunk Peter Barlow drops a lit cigarette to the floor leaving him and his son Simon Barlow trapped inside. As the fire brigade arrive, Luke Strong and Tony Gordon break into the flat and rescue them, just as the flames explodes through the windows.
27th April - During Colin Grimshaw 's 70th birthday celebrations in the Rovers , Paula Carp reveals to a packed pub that Colin is daughter Julie Carp 's father.
1st July - Maria Connor goes into labour on Southport beach.
3rd July - Maria gives birth to her second son, Liam Connor Jr. Tony Gordon is forced to play midwife and deliver the baby.
14th August - Steve and Becky are finally married but during the reception at the Rovers , Becky is arrested by the police and forced to spend her wedding night in a police cell after drugs are found in her bag which were planted there by her so called friend Slug who was paid by DC Hooch , a bent copper and old enemy of Becky's.
19th October - Luke Strong cons Rosie Webster out of £90000 before fleeing Weatherfield .
30th October - Tony Gordon suffers a heart attack outside Underworld and is found by Roy Cropper .
19th November - After a showdown between Tony Gordon and Roy Cropper at Weatherfield Canal Tony hands himself into the police and finally confesses to having Liam murdered and trying to drown Roy.
25th December - Just as Kevin Webster is about to tell Sally that he is leaving her for Molly Dobbs , Sally drops the bombshell that she has breast cancer.
See also
Up to date as of January 31, 2010
From TARDIS Index File, the free Doctor Who reference.
Wikipedia has a more detailed and comprehensive article on
27 - Dr. Owen Harper is shot and killed during the resolution of the Pharm incident. ( TW : Reset ; date: WEB : torchwood.co.uk )
28 - Before Martha Jones can conduct an autopsy on Owen Harper, Harper is revived by Jack Harkness using the second resurrection gauntlet . As a direct consequence, and for reasons known, Harper continues to live past the standard 2.5 minute revival time, but is briefly possessed by Durac , the embodiment of Death. A number of deaths also occur at a Cardiff hospital as a result of Durac's manifestation. ( TW : Dead Man Walking )
March
02 - Dr. Owen Harper , who continues to have difficulty accepting his new undead existence, is relieved of his duties with Torchwood Three (though he continues to help out as their new tea boy) as Martha Jones agrees to stay on as medical officer. After a fruitless suicide attempt, Harper begins to come to terms with his death and returns to active duty for a mission to retrieve an alien artifact from a dying millionaire, Henry Parker , who reveals intimate knowledge about Torchwood and its personnel before his passes away. With Harper reinstated, Jones departs Torchwood to return to her duties at UNIT . Soon after, Harper successfully talks a young woman out of committing suicide. ( TW : A Day in the Death )
19 - The Torchwood Three team investigates the Night Travellers . Events of TW : From Out of the Rain ; date: WEB : torchwood.co.uk )
By this time conspiracy theorists have begun noting the disappearance of bees from the planet Earth, which is also noted by Donna Noble . ( DW : Partners in Crime , et al) It is later learned that they have left Earth in anticipation of its imminent relocation to the Medusa Cascade . ( DW : The Stolen Earth )
April
Thousands of Adipose are born from people's fat and walk around the streets . During this time, Donna Noble reunites with the Tenth Doctor and begins her travels with him. Before leaving with the Doctor, however, Donna briefly encounters Rose Tyler (although she is unaware of Rose's identity). ( DW : Partners in Crime ; date: NSA : Beautiful Chaos )
The Sontarans invade Earth . During this event, Martha Jones is temporarily reunited with the Doctor and meets Donna Noble for the first time. Donna also narrowly misses witnessing a brief transmission from Rose Tyler in the TARDIS . As part of the Sontaran invasion plan, all ATMOS -equipped vehicles begin emitting a toxic gas intended to transform the world's atmosphere into a more hospitable one for Sontaran offspring; numerous fatalities are reported worldwide before the Doctor disables the devices. Afterwards, the ATMOS devices are removed from the planet's vehicles. ( DW : The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky ; date: NSA : Beautiful Chaos )
15 - 18 - the Mandragora Helix attempts a takeover of Earth through the MorganTech computer systems. ( NSA : Beautiful Chaos )
The Earth is relocated to the Medusa Cascade by the Daleks under the control of the Supreme Dalek and Davros . Despite the relocation, the planet retains a full communications network. An invasion of Earth by the Daleks commences and a number of humans are taken to "the Crucible ", the Dalek mothership, where they are killed in tests of the reality bomb . As part of a counter-insurgency against the Dalek invasion, former Prime Minister Harriet Jones brings together a number of the Doctor's former companions, including Captain Jack Harkness , Sarah Jane Smith , and Martha Jones in order to contact the Doctor, and before she herself is killed by the Daleks. Rose Tyler , meanwhile, contacts Donna Noble 's family and is ultimately reunited with the Doctor. During this incident, The Doctor undergoes a partial regeneration in order to repair damage from a Dalek blast; as a result of this, the Doctor's severed hand later forms a mental link with Donna and grows into a second version of the Doctor , but one that's half-human without Time Lord biological abilities such as regeneration. During this incident, Martha Jones , under orders from UNIT , reveals the existence of the Osterhagen Key , a weapon capable of destroying Earth. Due to her interaction with the second Doctor, Donna briefly gains the knowledge of a Time Lord, and with her help the two Doctors are able to defeat the Daleks. Afterwards, the Doctor and his companions are successful in restoring Earth to its original location using the TARDIS ; this sparks worldwide celebrations around the planet. Afterwards, Mickey Smith chooses to remain on his original Earth instead of returning to Pete's World , Harkness offers Martha Jones a job with Torchwood Three , and the Doctor returns Rose and Jackie Tyler to Pete's World , along with his clone. Donna Noble is returned to her family, but with all memories of the Doctor wiped from her mind due to the danger to her survival posed by her transformation. ( DW : The Stolen Earth / Journey's End ) (Takes place within 6 weeks of NSA : Beautiful Chaos )
At some point during these events, a young girl named Adelaide Brooke loses her family and encounters a Dalek that, for reasons unknown to her, chooses not to exterminate her. This event inspires her to become an astronaut, becoming a trailblazer for human exploration of space - in her case, establishing the first human base on Mars in 2058 and, in turn, inspiring generations of Brookes who further expand human reach into the stars. ( DW : The Waters of Mars )
In the aftermath of the Medusa Cascade incident, the human race on Earth begins coming to terms with the fact it is not alone in the universe. While many accept it, others experience crises of faith and a large number of people commit suicide. ( TW : Children of Earth: Day One)
June
Brian Green becomes British Prime Minister.
September
Newspaper Ianto Jones picks up. Date reads: Wednesday September 2009 ( TW : Children of Earth: Day Two)
Over the course of five days, every child on Earth periodically stops in their tracks and begin reciting the same message (permutations of "We are coming"). Officially, Earth's governments claim it to be caused by a form of virus. Behind the scenes, the truth is this is a message from the 456 , a race that had visited Earth in 1965 and negotiated the payment of 12 orphan children in exchange for the cure for a pandemic-level influenza virus. The 456 return to Earth and demand the payment of a significant percentage of Earth's children (for use in creating a narcotic). As part of a cover-up to divert blame away from the UK government, which brokered the original deal, the Torchwood 3 hub in Cardiff is destroyed and attempts are made to assassinate Jack Harkness , Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones . During the course of events, Thames House becomes the centre of 456-related negotiations, and at one point all occupants of the building are exposed to a deadly gas, killing all except for Mr. Dekker and Jack Harkness . Among those killed is Ianto Jones. Ultimately, through the efforts of Harkness - who was involved in the original 1965 deal - and the sacrifice of Harkness' grandson, the 456 are driven from Earth. ( TW : Children of Earth Date based upon on-screen evidence, specifically a newspaper headline.)
During the course of these events, Gwen Cooper and husband Rhys Williams learn that she is pregnant.
The government of Prime Minister Brian Green is toppled soon afterwards (assumption).
Stricken with guilt over the death of his grandson, Jack Harkness leaves Cardiff and spends the next few months wandering the Earth.
October
20 - The Rakweed infects parts of London including Ealing , Perivale and Chiswick . ( SJA : The Gift )
December
24 - " Harold Saxon " is resurrected by Miss Trefusis and the new governer of Broadfell Prison on Christmas Eve, Lucy Saxon interferes with the resurrection, causing an explosion at the prison and killing everyone inside, except for The Master. ( DW : The End of Time )
25 - The Master is captured by soldiers working for Joshua Naismith so that the Master can help him use the Immortality Gate . However, the Master betrays him and as Barack Obama gives a speech on the Recession, uses the Gate's abilities, intended to heal planets, to turn every single Human on Earth except for Wilfred Mott and Donna Noble into copies of the Master. During this time a diamond harvested on Gallifrey is sent through time and space and crashes to Earth where it is retrieved by the Master, who uses it to open a portal that briefly allows Rassilon and other Time Lords to escape the Last Great Time War before the Doctor and, ultimately, the Master, foil their plans. Before this occurs, however, Rassilon undoes the "cloning" of the Master, returning the human race to normal, though they are soon faced with the spectacle of a giant planet appearing in the sky on a collision course; but this, too, is soon undone. ( DW : The End of Time )
A malfunction with the world's wi-fi systems is later blamed for causing mass hallucinations (a cover story concocted by Mr. Smith ( DW : The End of Time, Part Two ).
Shortly after, Luke Smith is nearly run over by a car on Bannerman Road, but is rescued by the Doctor . ( DW : The End of Time, Part Two )
Unknown
Gareth , head the seismology unit of the UCMA taskforce, develops a system for accurately predicting earthquakes. Gareth's system would be credited for saving the human race several times. ( DW : Doctor Who )
Shreela Govindia dies of an autoimmune disease. ( NA : Cat's Cradle: Warhead)
ATMOS , a combination GPS/emission control system for automobiles, becomes widespread in vehicles around the world.
Rose Tyler temporarily returns from her parallel Earth , initially arriving in the normal universe ( DW : Partners in Crime ) but later ending up in an alternate timeline where she attains a position of authority with UNIT and works with them and Donna Noble to restore the timeline. ( DW : Turn Left )
Captain John Hart places bombs in an abandoned building where the Torchwood team are investigating. While they are unconscious, all except for Gwen experience flashbacks. ( TW : Fragments )
After regaining consciousness the Torchwood team try to stop John Hart . Later that night a series of alien attacks occur in Cardiff, including Weevils killing four senior Cardiff police officers, a Hoix let lose in a hospital where it is captured by Owen Harper , a group of men in cloaks haunt a building only to be shot dead by Toshiko Sato and Ianto Jones , and John Hart captures Jack Harkness and sets off several bombs in buildings across Cardiff. It is then revealed Jack's brother Gray is forcing John Hart to do his bidding. Gray unleashes all of the Weevils in the sewers on Cardiff, shoots Toshiko, who later dies of her wounds, and Owen is disintegrated by nuclear radiation following the actions of Gray and John Hart , who helps Captain Jack stop Gray. ( TW : Exit Wounds )
The last two events took place between March 19th and the 2009 Dalek invasion of Earth , which took place in May. It's possible that these took place around roughly the same date Exit Wounds was originally broadcast.
The exact dates that the events The Sarah Jane Adventures series 2 happens is unknown; however, it is known that they span June, July and August. Post- DW : The Stolen Earth / Journey's End and pre- TW : Children of Earth .
Alternate timelines
The Year That Never Was : The Master rules Earth with an iron fist. During this time, the Doctor , physically aged, is kept captive aboard the UNIT airship the Valiant , along with Jack Harkness and most of Martha Jones ' family. Meanwhile, Martha, following instruction given to her by the Doctor, spends the year travelling the world spreading stories and faith about the Doctor. Ultimately, the collected faith of the people of the world restores the Doctor, leading to the Master's defeat. Captain Jack destroys the Paradox machine , reversing time back to 2008 . Afterwards, the Master is shot by his wife, Lucy Saxon , and, refusing to regenerate, apparently dies. ( DW : Last of the Time Lords )
Donna's World - After the Titanic fell to Earth on 25th December 2008 , annihilating London and rendering most of southern England unlivable with nuclear radiation, Great Britain has become a police state. Londoners lucky enough to have survived are subject to forced relocations; Donna Noble 's family is moved to Leeds . Rose Tyler works with the UNIT of this timeline to help Donna Noble restore the proper chain of events which, at one point, involves sending Donna back to 2007 . ( DW : Turn Left )
Real World
First issue of Doctor Who DVD Files , a fortnightly UK/Ireland-only magazine, is published, incorporating a DVD of the episodes DW : Rose and DW : The End of the World .
16 - The website of the UK newspaper The Guardian publishes a column condemning then-rumored plans to film one of the 2009 specials in Dubai, citing the United Arab Emirates' human rights record.[1]
19 - Filming begins on DW : Planet of the Dead , the first of four one-hour Doctor Who specials to air during 2009 and early 2010 in lieu of a full season. These specials will mark the end of David Tennant 's era as the Tenth Doctor , and also conclude Russell T Davies and Julie Gardner 's tenures as producers. Concurrent with the start of production are rumours that Michelle Ryan and Lee Evans had been cast in the special. The rumours are later confirmed by the BBC, which releases publicity photographs of Ryan with David Tennant . According to Doctor Who Magazine #405, Planet of the Dead is the first Doctor Who episode to be produced in high-definition.
DW : The Next Doctor is released on DVD in the UK. The DVD also includes the 2008 Doctor Who at the Proms concert and the mini-episode DW : Music of the Spheres .
Catherine Tate guest stars on The Sunday Night Project and take part in a skit in which she impersonates David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor .
29 - BBC Books launches the first in a planned series of 10 novellas forming a single story arc, The Darksmith Legacy , with the publication of TDL : The Dust of Ages and TDL : The Graves of Mordane .
John Barrowman 's autobiography, Anything Goes, is published in paperback.
Late January - The weekly magazine Doctor Who Adventures publishes its 100th issue.
31 - BFA : The Key 2 Time - The Judgement of Isskar is first released.
February
To tie in with its broadcasts of Torchwood Series 2, the digital channel Watch publishes an exclusive comic strip, WC : The Return of the Vostok , on its website.
Shooting begins for DW : The Waters of Mars (date per Russell T Davies ' script).
25 - IDW : The Whispering Gallery , a one-shot comic book by IDW Publishing , is first published. This is the first of a series of single-issue standalones that IDW would publish during the year.
26 - NSA : The Sontaran Games , the fourth Quick Reads novella, is first published. Beginning with this book, the BBC New Series Adventures line begins a series of novels featuring returning monsters and races from both the classic and revival series; this is slated to continue throughout 2009.
28 - BFA : The Key 2 Time - The Destroyer of Delights is first released.
An online version of Doctor Who DVD Files is launched, allowing those who already own the DVDs, or who are unable to buy the magazine internationally due to licensing restrictions, access to the printed content of the magazine. The subscription-based site also makes the contents of the Doctor Who: Battles in Time series available to international fans.
March
DW : Attack of the Cybermen is released to DVD in the UK.
Mid-March - For the fourth consecutive year, episodes of Doctor Who written by Steven Moffat are nominated for the annual Hugo Award: DW : Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead . Also nominated: Russell T Davies ' episode DW : Turn Left (resulting in some controversy among fans who expected his DW : Midnight to be nominated. Competition for the award includes episodes of Battlestar Galactica and Lost; this year Doctor Who does not win, however, and the award goes to the made-for-Internet short film Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.
18 - In a speech to members of BAFTA, Russell T Davies reveals that production of Series 3 of The Sarah Jane Adventures had been impacted by BBC budget cuts and had nearly been cancelled on three occasions.[4]
25 - The final cast readthrough of the David Tennant era (for both parts of DW : The End of Time ) takes place
03 - TWA : The Dead Line is first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 .
06 - Torchwood : Children of Earth: Day One is first broadcast, launching Series 3 of Torchwood, which this year consists of a single five-episode arc airing over five consecutive nights. The show moves to BBC One .
UK DVD release of DW : The War Games . This release also includes the first BBC-sanctioned release of Devious , a fan-made Doctor Who story featuring the final performance of Jon Pertwee as the Third Doctor . Although BBC Video has included the occasional fan-made production on DVDs previously (most notably in the The Beginning box set), this is the first time a major fan production has been included on an official BBC release. The DVD, however, includes only a 12-minute excerpt as the film has yet to be completed.[11]
07 - Torchwood : Children of Earth: Day Two is first broadcast.
DW : The Rescue and The Romans are issued as a two-DVD set in Region 1, along with DW : Attack of the Cybermen .
08 - Torchwood : Children of Earth: Day Three is first broadcast.
09 - Torchwood : Children of Earth: Day Four is first broadcast.
10 - Torchwood : Children of Earth: Day Five is first broadcast, concluding Series 3 and the Children of Earth arc.
13 - Only three days after it was broadcast, BBC Video releases the Torchwood mini-series Children of Earth to DVD and Blu-Ray in the UK. This is the quickest Who franchise home video release to date.
mid July - To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the first Apollo moon landing, the BBC's official website, over the course of four days, uploads the exclusive Tenth Doctor short story WC : Blue Moon .
18 - The sixth and final special mini-edition of Doctor Who Adventures appears in the Daily Mirror.
20 - Production begins on Series 5 of Doctor Who, with the BBC formally announcing the Doctor's new companion as Amy Pond and unveiling the first photographs of the Eleventh Doctor 's costume. Media coverage of the first day's filming also reveals that a major guest star from Series 4 will be returning.
DW : The new DVD edition of DW : Remembrance of the Daleks is released on its own in the UK, some 18 months after its original release as part of The Complete Davros Collection .
20 - 24 - Broadcasts of Torchwood : Children of Earth on both BBC America in the US and Space in Canada. As in the UK, the miniseries runs for five consecutive nights.
The broadcasts in Canada and the US are ratings successes. This, combined with the show's success in the UK, is the subject of media coverage and speculation that a fourth season of Torchwood is likely to be commissioned.
26 - Broadcast of DW : Planet of the Dead on BBC America .
Doctor Who is officially named the single most successful science fiction TV series by Guinness World Records. The honour is announced at the 2009 San Diego ComicCon.[13] The same event also unveiled the first trailer for the David Tennant finale specials, confirming the return appearance of a longtime villain and indicating the title DW : The End of Time for the finale. The ComicCon marks Tennant's first appearance at such an event; he is accompanied by John Barrowman and Russell T Davies .
28 - North American DVD and Blu-Ray releases of Torchwood : Children of Earth and DW : Planet of the Dead . Planet of the Dead is the first Doctor Who story to be released in the high-def Blu-Ray format.
31 - BFBS : Absence is first released.
The Internet's largest Doctor Who discussion board, the Doctor Who Forum, along with the original Doctor Who News Page (formerly known as Outpost Gallifrey), closes. A replacement discussion board, Gallifrey Base, is established some weeks earlier (although the archives of the 13-year-old forum are deleted), while other parties have taken over the Doctor Who News Page.
August
29 - New Zealand broadcast of DW : The Waters of Mars on Prime.
Bernard Cribbins receives a special BAFTA award for his six-decade career in film and TV.
30 - BFA : The Nightmare Fair is released, launching a new spin-off series of Big Finish Productions audio dramas entitled The Lost Stories adapting scripts planned for the TV series, but never produced, in this case DW : The Nightmare Fair . This is actually the second audio adaptation of The Nightmare Fair following an earlier, unofficial production mounted for charity.
The UK Royal Mint announces the release of a series of commemorative medals honouring Doctor Who. This is the first time a TV series has been featured on Mint-produced coins. The coins feature David Tennant , the the Doctor's TARDIS , Daleks and other characters.
Late November - Filming for Series 5 of Doctor Who takes place in Croatia.
The December issue of the UK edition of Reader's Digest is published, featuring a cover story on Doctor Who.
December
12 - The Panda Book of Horror , an Iris Wildthyme short story collection, is first published.
Broadcast of the BBC Radio 4 documentary Shelved, which looks at the cancellation of the Tom Baker story DW : Shada , among others. The special includes "a key revelation" about Doctor Who discovered in documentation from the era.
BBC Radio 7 rebroadcasts An Hour with Jon Pertwee , a one-man show recorded by the one-time Doctor actor.
Rebroadcast of DW : Dreamland on CBBC .
Doctor Who Magazine #416 is published, marking the publication's final use of the Doctor Who logo introduced in 2005. One regular feature reaches a milestone as the "Time Team" completes its 10-year project to watch and review every "classic series" story.
15 - Blue Peter airs a feature on Doctor Who.
Steven Moffat is interviewed by Matthew Sweet on BBC Radio 3's Night Waves about his new job on Doctor Who.
16 - A Doctor Who-themed edition of the comedy quiz show Never Mind the Buzzcocks, guest-hosted by David Tennant with Bernard Cribbins and Catherine Tate as panelists, is first broadcast.
An interview with David Tennant is aired on BBC One 's Six O'Clock News.
17 - Part 1 of WC : The Doctor on My Shoulder , an exclusive online short story, is uploaded to the 2009 BBC Doctor Who Advent Calendar.
James Cairncross ( Lemaitre , DW : The Reign of Terror and Beta in DW : The Krotons ), dies at the age of 94.
18 - Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf, Part 2 is rebroadcast on BBC7 Radio.
InnerSPACE, an entertainment news program on the Canadian cable network Space , devotes an entire episode to Doctor Who.
26 - US broadcast of The End of Time, Part I on BBC America .
Broadcast of the film version of Hamlet starring David Tennant on BBC2.
David Tennant and Catherine Tate guest-host the Jonathan Ross programme on BBC Radio 2. Their guests include Bernard Cribbins and Peter Davison . During the broadcast the two begin discussing how to properly pronounce the year "2010", with Tennant claiming the BBC has instituted a rule on the matter. The debate sparks additional discussion and debate in media around the world.[25]
27 - DW : The End of Time, Part One is rebroadcast on BBC3.
David Tennant appears on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs.
29 - Broadcast of Who on Who, a BBC Radio 2 special in which David Tennant interviews Russell T Davies about Doctor Who.[26]
Last week of December: Radio Times lists Matt Smith as a face to watch in 2010 and includes an interview with Steven Moffat discussing Smith.
31 - BFA : Mission to Magnus is released, adapting the unreleased serial DW : Mission to Magnus as part of The Lost Stories line.
Doctor Who at the Proms is rebroadcast on BBC HD.
Promoting the next day's finale, David Tennant appears on BBC One 's Breakfast program, and later takes part in a BBC Radio 5 phone-in programme. An appearance on MTV is also broadcast around this time.
David Tennant and Catherine Tate make a pre-recorded appearance on Channel 4's Alan Carr: Chatty Man.
1999 ... 2007 - 2008 — 2009 — 2010 - 2011
Spoiler Warning: Plot or ending details follow. Please skip this section if you do not want foreknowledge of this plot.
2009 brought to a close Final Crisis , the last of a series of multi-part crossover events, the roots of which, extended as far back as the original " Crisis on Infinite Earths ". Final Crisis was pivotal in that it featured the return of the Silver Age Flash, Barry Allen , who heroically gave his life to save the Multiverse during the first Crisis.
2009 also began with the "Superman: New Krypton" storyline, a multi-part arc that crossed over into all of the Superman Family related titles. "Superman: New Krypton" saw the emergence of more than 200,000 Kryptonians on the planet Earth and resulted in the deaths of two minor Superman supporting characters.
Hot on the heels of Final Crisis was " Faces of Evil " a string of themed one-shot and regular series issues that spotlighted the more infamous super-villains of the DCU.
Following Final Crisis and Faces of Evil, DC introduced a cornerstone event titled, " Origins and Omens ". Origins and Omens was a back-up bonus featured in regular monthly issues that re-examined the origins of major characters in the DC Universe.
Both the "Bat" and "Super"-verses expanded on their previous storylines with multi-part arcs that extended into the summer season. Following " Batman R.I.P. " was the seven-part "Last Rites" storyline which led into the greater " Battle for the Cowl " event – an event which completely restructured the Batman universe as various heroes struggled to fill the role of Batman – a position vacated by the presumed death of Bruce Wayne. In the aftermath of this feud, a new Dynamic Duo emerged. Former sidekick Dick Grayson once again donned the cowl of Batman while reluctantly taking Bruce’s son, Damian Wayne , under his figurative wing as the new Robin. As part of this "Batman: Reborn" event, the previous Robin, Tim Drake, assumed a new identity – Red Robin .
In the Super-verse, Superman decided to keep a closer eye on the affairs of New Krypton and voluntarily journeyed to the planet to become part of the Kryptonian military guild under General Zod . Leaving Earth a " World Without Superman ", several heroes emerged to fill in the void. The Daxamite Lar-Gand protected Metropolis as Mon-El while the Kryptonian vigilantes Flamebird and Nightwing patrolled the planet hunting down Kandorian sleeper agents.
The major summer event of 2009 was the cosmic-spanning storyline " Blackest Night ". Primarily involving characters from the Green Lantern family of titles, "Blackest Night" was the pivotal climax of the larger " War of Light " saga, which had been steadily gaining momentum since 2007 .
Contents
Titles
The following comic titles debuted with a 2009 cover date:
Adventure Comics Vol 2 · Arkham Reborn Vol 1 · Azrael Vol 2 · Azrael: Death's Dark Knight Vol 1 · Bang! Tango Vol 1 · Batgirl Vol 3 · Batman and Robin Vol 1 · Batman: Battle for the Cowl Vol 1 · Batman: Cacophony Vol 1 · Batman: Streets of Gotham Vol 1 · Batman: The Brave and The Bold Vol 1 · Batman: Unseen Vol 1 · Batman: Widening Gyre Vol 1 · Black Lightning: Year One Vol 1 · Blackest Night Vol 1 · Blackest Night: Batman Vol 1 · Blackest Night: Superman Vol 1 · Blackest Night: Tales of the Corps Vol 1 · Blackest Night: Titans Vol 1 · DC Comics Classics Library Vol 1 · DC Kids Mega Sampler Vol 1 · Dead Romeo Vol 1 · Doom Patrol Vol 5 · Final Crisis Aftermath: Dance Vol 1 · Final Crisis Aftermath: Escape Vol 1
The following Comic titles were last published with a 2009 cover date:
Azrael: Death's Dark Knight Vol 1 · Bang! Tango Vol 1 · Batgirl Vol 2 · Batman: Battle for the Cowl Vol 1 · Birds of Prey Vol 1 · Black Lightning: Year One Vol 1 · Blackest Night: Batman Vol 1 · Blackest Night: Superman Vol 1 · Blackest Night: Tales of the Corps Vol 1 · Blackest Night: Titans Vol 1 · Blue Beetle Vol 2 · DC Kids Mega Sampler Vol 1 · Dead Romeo Vol 1 · El Diablo Vol 3 · Final Crisis Aftermath: Dance Vol 1 · Final Crisis Aftermath: Escape Vol 1 · Final Crisis Aftermath: Ink Vol 1 · Final Crisis Aftermath: Run! Vol 1 · Final Crisis Vol 1 · Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds Vol 1 · Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash: The Nightmare Warriors Vol 1 · Greatest Hits Vol 1 · Haunted Tank Vol 1 · Kingdom Come Special Vol 1 · Last Days of Animal Man Vol 1
The following One Shots were published with a 2009 cover date:
Adventure Comics Special Featuring Guardian Vol 1 1 · Batman and the Outsiders Special Vol 2 1 · Battle For the Cowl: The Network Vol 1 1 · Battle for the Cowl: Commissioner Gordon Vol 1 1 · Battle for the Cowl: Man-Bat Vol 1 1 · Battle for the Cowl: The Network Vol 1 1 · Battle for the Cowl: The Underground Vol 1 1 · DC Halloween Special Vol 1 2009 · Faces of Evil: Deathstroke Vol 1 1 · Faces of Evil: Kobra Vol 1 1 · Faces of Evil: Prometheus Vol 1 1 · Faces of Evil: Solomon Grundy Vol 1 1 · Final Crisis: Secret Files Vol 1 1 · Gotham Gazette: Batman Alive? Vol 1 1 · Gotham Gazette: Batman Dead? Vol 1 1 · Green Lantern Corps: Through the Ages Vol 1 1 · Holy Terror, Batman!
Characters
The following characters debuted with a 2009 cover date:
Teams
The following teams debuted with a 2009 cover date:
Circus of Strange · Council of Spiders · Fantastic Four · Gen 14 (Earth-50) · KDRA · Neutralizers · Red Tornado Family · Supermen of the Multiverse · Web Host
Chronology
The following events were published by DC Comics in the year 2009. This does not necessarily indicate that these storylines took place in the year 2009. The passage of time in the DC Universe is nebulous and subject to change and interpretation. Events from historical time periods are indexed under their corresponding years.
January
Atlanta History Center (Atlanta, GA), January 1 - 18
Orange County Regional History Center (Orlando, FL), February 7 - May 3
Experience Music Project|Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame (Seattle, WA), May 23 - August 16
James A. Michener Art Museum (Doylestown, PA), September 5 - November 29
Mississippi Museum of Art (Jackson, MS), December 19 - 31
Jim Henson: Wonders from His Workshop
Puppet Up! - Uncensored (The Avalon Hollywood), January 10
Sesame Street at 40: A Night of Celebration with the Legendary Cast, January 30
Pupet Up! - Uncensored (The Avalon Hollywood), March 21
Miss Piggy at Macy's Glamorama in Chicago, Illinois , August 21
Sesame Street photo exhibit, Union Station, Washington, D.C., November 10-30
Brooklyn Public Library Exhibit, November 14 to February 21
April 19th World Nonstop Championship Wrestling held it biggest Pay-Per-View called WNCW Wrestlereunion
April 20th World Nonstop Championship Wrestling held it Brand Extension Draft and split in Two Brand.
May 31st - In Elite Wrestling Champions (EWC), Simon Sensation defeated Liam Alexander in a stake-filled high profile match to unify the EWC Dominance Championship with the EWC Legendary Championship and earn a spot in the EWC Hall of Fame at the Last Stand pay per view.
October 25 - Tilli Wrestling Federation changes their three-brand system to a two-brand system.
December 20 - Xtreme Wrestling Federation (XWF) was created with a bi-weekly show called Collision.
Notable 2009 Births
2009 Births/Deaths
CWF Hall Of Famer, "The American Icon" Pledge Alligence is presumably dead following his plane crashing in the ocean.
Darius Jermaine was found shot to death on November 29, 2009 following the American Wrestling Federation 's Tournament of Kings PPV
See Also
Pre-purchase advice feature is introduced; which activates whenever items are purchased by players.
Dragon platebody is given a graphics overhaul.
The Equipment Stats screen for Ranged weapons is modified to allow players to see the "Ranged Strength" of weapons such as javelins, arrows and crossbow bolts.
The Prayer icon in the minimap is given an overhaul; prayers can now be activated or deactivated with a click.
For the Culinaromancer's Chest and the gnome cuisine shop in the Grand Tree , the stock prices are returned to their former state, and the option to sell stock back is removed.
26 March : The first future content Development Diary is released, which discusses an upcoming dwarf quest.
30 March : PayPal subscribers experience problems with the billing systems.
The rants section of the RuneScape Forums is reinstated.
Pay by SMS is made available in Australia.
April
The forums are opened to high-levelled free players.
The second part of the "New dwarf quest" Development Diary is released.
17 April : The Fairy Area Improvement development diary is released.
20 April : PayBySMS is made available in Canada.
Tale of the Muspah is released.
The process of picking seeds from bushes and trees is sped up.
Self-injury items can no longer kill a player.
23 April : The Run Energy development diary is released.
Several new hairstyles are released.
Summoning familiars ' timer can be restored to 100% with the corresponding pouch.
The limit for pets owned is doubled.
Exchanging pouches and scrolls with Bogrog is now more straightforward.
Quest journals now provide a link to the corresponding QuestHelp page.
30 April : The third part of the "New dwarf quest" Development Diary is released.
May
The second part of Run Energy development diary is released.
The results of the Name a Pub Guaranteed-Content Poll are announced.
27 May : Dungeon maps and spam filter
The dungeon maps are released.
The less important game messages in the chat interface can now be filtered through the Spam filter .
Graphical improvements are made to the leprechauns , Hitpoints bar, hitsplats, minimap flag, and world globe icon under the minimap .
Any members' content (e.g. shortcuts ) are removed from free-to-play worlds.
Postbag from the Hedge 40 is released.
The fourth part of the "New Dwarf Quest" development diary is released.
29 May : The Jagex Clan Cup 2009 results are announced.
June
Several changes are made to the Mobilising Armies minigame.
Menagerie, Familiar Controls and Butlers
The menagerie , a pet-owned house, is released.
The Summoning status globe in the minimap is improved with one-click options.
Butlers are now more knowledgeable when it comes to fetching items (and payments) from the bank. They will now follow players unless told not to.
20 August : Player Support answers questions posted by RuneScape players. Their answers are posted in the Q&A developers' blog.
21 August : A blog entry by the QA team is released.
25 August : The deadline for the submissions of videos for the RuneScape Machinima Competition is set at midnight.
26 August : The Game Engine: RuneTek 5 developers' blog is released.
27 August : The Display Names: Changing Names developers' blog is released.
Andrew Gower 's live Q&A session is rescheduled to 3 September .
Players in Sweden are given 20% extra credit with Wallie-cards.
September
Advisors and Objectives system are released.
The Q&A session by the Community Management team is released. The answers are released in the Q&A developers' blog.
18 September : Game worlds are moved to a new ISP.
21 September : Some systems are down while servers are moved to a new facility. Friends List and Clan Chat updates since 16 September are lost and the servers are rolled back to a previous state.
The Woodcutting skill is rebalanced. Several logs and trees are released.
Jagex's web billing page is redesigned.
24 September : The Q&A session by the Localisation team is released. The answers are released in the Q&A developers' blog.
30 September : Web systems are brought down for maintenance.
October
1 October : Members are given the ability to change their display names.
2 October : The Jagex Store is given the "Worst Update Ever!". New merchandise are made available, including T-shirts, posters, and packs.
Players' Gallery for this month is released.
5 new wallpapers are released.
13 October : Update:Within the Light
The quest Within the Light is released. Players are now allowed to use "k" (for thousands) and "m" (for millions) in the Bank interface.
Website maintenance is performed on one of the web systems.
Future Q&A sessions are announced, including weekly CM-related Q&A sessions, and up to 3 Q&A sessions in 2010 .
Wallie-cards are made available for players in Norway.
The Updates: Within the Launch developers' blog is released.
The Ardougne Diary is released.
Duel Tournaments, a feature in the Duel Arena minigame, is reworked.
Jagex's shortlisting in the Golden Joystick Awards is announced. Players are encouraged by Mod MMG and Andrew Gower to vote for RuneScape and Jagex.
21 October : Website Maintenance is performed on several web systems. The way players log into the website is changed, and the new form requires players to decipher words from scanned books if the log-in attempt fails.
22 October : The security of the website is improved further using Extended Validation SSL certificates , which will turn the address bar green in most browsers. Some internal addresses within the website is also changed.
Champions' Challenge is given an update.
New hairstyles for both male and female players are released.
Two worlds (world 113 and 114) are designated Total level worlds.
An animation is added for when players are viewing the world map .
A confirmation is added for casting High Level Alchemy on items valued of more than 500,000 coins.
Slayer Masters are given a right-click "Get-task" option.
11 November
RuneScape Classic is temporarily reopened on a two-week period for subscribing members.
Players are asked to send in their specifications to Jagex again after the first request back in May 2008 .
13 November : Machinima Competition – Excl’s Visit
The developers' blog Community Management: Excl's Visit is released.
Runecrafting is tweaked to allow players the chance of getting an extra rune. Visually, "what used to be a step graph has been smoothed out into a curve."
The Summoning cape is upgraded to have a boost option to match other skillcapes .
Dwarf multicannons are updated so that it will no longer waste cannonballs on dying NPCs. In additions, players can now reload the cannon when it is already firing, and there is now an auto-setup feature.
The spells Bones to Peaches and Bones to Bananas is updated so that they may now be used to convert any bones up to and including big bones .
Members are given a reminder to log in into RuneScape Classic before 24 November so that they will be able to continue playing the game.
The Adventurer's Log is officially announced.
19 November : The RuneScape Forums is offline due to some technical issues. The blog Achievement Diary: Elite Tasks is released.
Kuradal's Dungeon is released, along with Kuradal , the highest-level Slayer Master .
The font is changed back to the one prior to 3 December.
11 December : Christmas cards
The 2009 Christmas event is announced. Three Christmas cards are released in conjunction with this announcement.
A developers' blog, Holiday Event: A Christmas Warble, detailing the development of the holiday event is released.
Bouncedown, a FunOrb game is released in iPhones and iPods.
A new Jagex Store is launched.
The quest Blood Runs Deep is released.
Changes are made to the way the Tzhaar shops work.
Improvements are made to Kuradal's Dungeon.
The font of the 0 is adjusted to be slightly different from capital Os.
Hidden update : Quests Cook's Assistant , Ernest the Chicken , Sheep Shearer , The Restless Ghost , and Rune Mysteries are updated to have an overview available in the quest interface, and NPCs involved in these quests are updated have an icon of the respective quest next to their name. These quests, with the exception of Rune Mysteries, now offer additional rewards.
18 December : The developers' blog, Animation Update: Particles, is released.
The 2009 Christmas event and the Dramatic Point emote is released
Particles make their first appearance in the Christmas event
22 December
The developers' blog, Community Management: Clan Submissions Page (December 2009), is released.
The winner of the Christmas Card Competition is announced. Another Players' Gallery is added to showcase the some of the entries of the competition.
24 - Star Wars: The Clone Wars: "A Galaxy Divided" released.
25 – Star Wars Legacy 34: Storms, Part 1 released.
April
1 – Omnibus: Emissaries and Assassins released.
2 – Star Wars Battlefront: Mobile Squadrons released.
10 – Star Wars: A Musical Journey debuts in London, UK.
15 -Star Wars The Clone Wars 5: Slaves of the Republic - Chapter 5: A Slave now, a Slave forever released.
22 – Star Wars Dark Times 13: Blue Harvest, Part 1 released.
22 – Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 40: Dueling Ambitions, Part 2 released.
29 – Star Wars Legacy 35: Storms, Part 2 released.
29 – Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic: Vindication released.
29 – Star Wars Adventures begins with Han Solo and the Hollow Moon of Khorya.
May
01 – Rebel Force: Renegade released.
16 – The Clone Wars: " Senate Spy " aired.
21 – Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic: Dueling Ambitions trade paperback released.
21 – Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 46: Destroyer, Part 2 released.
27 – Imperial Commando: 501st released.
27 – Star Wars: The Complete Vader released in Canada and the United Kingdom.
28 – Star Wars Legacy 41: Rogue's End released.
29 – Star Wars: The Clone Wars: The Official Episode Guide: Season 1 released.
November
03 – Star Wars: The Clone Wars: The Complete Season One released.
03 – Star Wars: The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition released for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.
03 – Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron released.
04 – Star Wars Invasion 5: Refugees, Part 5 released.
| i don't know |
Which musical that debuted in London in March is set in 'Phantasma', an attraction in Coney Island, New York? | Love Never Dies (2012 film sequel to the 2004 film) | Phantom of the Opera | Fandom powered by Wikia
Phantom of the Opera
Love Never Dies (2012 film sequel to the 2004 film)
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Love Never Dies is a romantic musical with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, lyrics by Glenn Slater with additional lyrics by Charles Hart, and book by Lloyd Webber and Ben Elton, with additional material by Slater and Frederick Forsyth. It is a sequel to Lloyd Webber's long-running musical The Phantom of the Opera.[1] The musical is set in 1907,[2] which Lloyd Webber states is, "ten years roughly after the end of the originalPhantom,"[3] although the events of the original actually took place in 1881.[4] Christine Daaé is invited to perform at Phantasma, a new attraction in Coney Island, by an anonymous impresario and, with her husband Raoul and son Gustave in tow, journeys to Brooklyn, unaware that it is the Phantom who has arranged her appearance in the popular beach resort.
Although Lloyd Webber began working on Love Never Dies in 1990, it was not until 2007 that he began writing the music. The musical opened at the Adelphi Theatre in the West End on 9 March 2010 with previews from 22 February 2010. It was originally directed by Jack O'Brien and choreographed by Jerry Mitchell, however the show closed for four days in November 2010 for substantial re-writes, which were overseen by Lloyd Webber, and it opened with new direction from Bill Kenwright. Set and costume designs were by Bob Crowley.[5] The original London production received mostly negative reviews,[6][7] however, the subsequent Australian production featuring an entirely new design team and heavy revisions was generally better received. The planned Broadway production, which was to have opened simultaneously with the West End run, was delayed and then indefinitely postponed.[8]
Contents
Edit
Andrew Lloyd Webber first began plans for a sequel to his 1986 hit musical, The Phantom of the Opera, in 1990.[10] Following a conversation with Maria Björnson, the designer of The Phantom of the Opera, Lloyd Webber decided that, were a sequel to come about, it would be set in New York City at the turn of the 20th century. One of his ideas was to have Phantom live above ground in Manhattan's first penthouse, but he rejected this when he saw a TV documentary about the Coney Island fairground.[10] Lloyd Webber began collaborating with author Frederick Forsyth on the project, but it soon fell apart as Lloyd Webber felt the ideas they were developing would be difficult to adapt for a stage musical. Forsyth went on to publish some of the ideas he had worked on with Lloyd Webber in 1999 as a novel entitled The Phantom of Manhattan.[11]
Lloyd Webber returned to the project in 2006, collaborating with a number of writers and directors. However, he still did not feel the ideas he had were adaptable into a piece of musical theatre.[12] Finally, in early 2007, Lloyd Webber approached Ben Elton (who had served as the librettist for Lloyd Webber's The Beautiful Game) to help shape a synopsis for a sequel, based on Lloyd Webber's initial ideas. Elton's treatment of the story focused more on the original characters of The Phantom of the Opera and omitted new characters that Lloyd Webber and Forsyth had developed.[12] Lloyd Webber was pleased with Elton's treatment and began work on the sequel.[11] In March 2007, he announced he would be moving forward with the project.[13]
The Daily Mail announced in May 2007 that the sequel would be delayed, because Lloyd Webber's six-month-old kitten Otto, a rare-breed Turkish Van, climbed onto Lloyd Webber'sClavinova digital piano and managed to delete the entire score. Lloyd Webber was unable to recover any of it from the instrument, but was eventually able to reconstruct the score.[14][15] In 2008, Lloyd Webber first announced that the sequel would likely be called Phantom: Once Upon Another Time,[16] and the first act was performed at Lloyd Webber's annual Sydmonton Festival. The Phantom was played by Ramin Karimloo and Raoul was played by Alistair Robbins.[17] However, in September 2008, during the BBC's Birthday in the Park concert celebrating his 60th birthday, Lloyd Webber announced that the title would be Love Never Dies.[18] In other workshop readings, Raoul and Christine were played by Aaron Lazar and Elena Shaddow.[19]
On 3 July 2009, Lloyd Webber announced that Karimloo (who had played the Phantom in the West End) and Sierra Boggess (who had originated the role of Christine in Phantom – The Las Vegas Spectacular) had been cast as the Phantom and Christine and that the role of Meg Giry would be played by Summer Strallen, Madame Giry by Liz Robertson and Raoul by Joseph Millson.[20][21] I'd Do Anything finalist Niamh Perry was given the role of Fleck.[22]
Lloyd Webber originally intended for Love Never Dies to open in London, New York and Shanghai simultaneously in the autumn of 2009.[19][20][23] By March 2009, he had decided to open the show at London's Adelphi Theatre, followed by Toronto's Royal Alexandra Theatre (before transferring to Broadway's Neil Simon Theatre in 2010) and Shanghai.[23] The three casts would rehearse simultaneously in London for three months beginning August 2009.[23] Opening dates were soon announced as 26 October 2009 in London, November in Toronto and February 2010 in Shanghai, with a later transfer to Melbourne, Australia.[24] Plans were then announced for a separate Broadway production to run concurrently with the Toronto show if Toronto proved successful.[25] In May, the debut of the London production was delayed until March 2010 due to Lloyd Webber re-orchestrating the score and re-recording the album.[26][27] Technical issues with the special effects, automaton version of Christine and casting multiple simultaneous productions also contributed to the postponement.[20] By October 2009, Shanghai plans had been dropped in favour of an Australian production.[28]
On 8 October 2009, Lloyd Webber held a press conference at Her Majesty's Theatre, where the original Phantom has been running since 1986, confirming the casting of Boggess as Christine and Karimloo as the Phantom. Karimloo sang "Til I Hear You Sing", and "The Coney Island Waltz" was also performed for the journalists, industry insiders and fans who had assembled for the presentation.[29][30] Lloyd Webber announced that Love Never Dies would begin previews in London on 20 February 2010 and anticipated that the Broadway production would open on 11 November 2010 (this was later postponed[31] and then indefinitely[32]). Rehearsals began in January 2010.[33][34]
Score
Edit
As with Phantom, Lloyd Webber's score for Love Never Dies also includes the fictional music of its time as musical fragments to fictional pieces which are taking place within the show itself. Only "Bathing Beauty" survived the post concept album cuts to be performed on stage.
Instead of the operatic passages for fictional "operas," the "stage" music at Phantasma is based on the companion pieces to the Savoy Operas, which were often burlesques and were also sometimes performed at the Opéra Comique. Many of these kinds of burlesques were based on existing French operas. During the Victorian age, nearly every popular opera was turned into a burlesque.[35] The W. S. Gilbert (of Gilbert and Sullivan) operatic burlesque Robert the Devil is a parody of Robert le diable, a romantic grand opera by Meyerbeer which was mentioned in the opening to "Phantom of the Opera".
These pieces were very popular among the lower class, but not commonly seen by more sophisticated opera goers. According to W. J. MacQueen-Pope:
This was a one-act play, seen only by the early comers. It would play to empty boxes, half-empty upper circle, to a gradually filling stalls and dress circle, but to an attentive, grateful and appreciative pit and gallery. Often these plays were little gems. They deserved much better treatment than they got, but those who saw them delighted in them. ... [They] served to give young actors and actresses a chance to win their spurs ... the stalls and the boxes lost much by missing the curtain-raiser, but to them dinner was more important.[36]
Like most burlesques, "Robert the Devil" featured women in scanty costumes and breeches roles. In operas, these were always supporting roles. The pageboy role in Christine's second opera is a breeches role, like the part of Cherubino, the Count's page, in The Marriage of Figaro. However, in burlesques, breeches roles could be main parts.
Very little specific information is available for most of these curtain openers. However, the opener for "Pinafore", which had also been performed at the Opéra Comique in 1878, was called "Beauties on the Beach".[37] Meg Giry's grand opening number in "Love Never Dies" is called "Bathing Beauty (On The Beach)".
Productions
Edit
The first preview of Love Never Dies was delayed from 20 to 22 February 2010 due to a last-minute brief illness of Boggess and technical demands.[38][39] The show had its official opening on 9 March 2010. It was directed by Jack O'Brien, choreographed by Jerry Mitchell, and had set and costume designs by Bob Crowley.[5] The cast included Ramin Karimloo as the Phantom,Sierra Boggess as Christine, Joseph Millson as Raoul, Liz Robertson as Madame Giry, Summer Strallen as Meg Giry and Niamh Perry as Fleck. In April 2010, Lloyd Webber was threatened with a £20,000 fine for illegally painting the Grade II-listed Adelphi Theatre black to promote this musical.[40]
In December 2010, Lloyd Webber closed the London production for a few days to rework the show after a poor critical response. The musical was reviewed again (at Lloyd Webber's invitation[41]), with critic Henry Hitchings noting that "Some of the most obvious alterations stem from the recruitment of lyricist Charles Hart to adjust the cadences of the original clunky lines written by Glenn Slater." He further pointed out that "There are also lots of bracing directorial touches; the show is credited to Jack O’Brien, but it is new choreographer Bill Deamer and producer Bill Kenwright who have added the zest."[42] The London production closed on 27 August 2011 after a disappointing run of fewer than eighteen months.[43] In 2012, Lloyd Webber stated that although he was, "very, very proud" of the London production, it did not completely work and also said, "something just went slightly wrong; I had cancer just before the production, and it was just that crucial 5% off-beam".[9]
The hoped-for Broadway production was announced as delayed to spring 2011.[31] Lloyd Webber also announced that Asian and Canadian productions were planned, although these have been dropped for now.[11] After the mixed reviews and negative reaction from some Phantom fans during previews, an executive producer stated that before its bow on Broadway, the show would likely undergo "some changes".[44] On 1 October 2010 it was announced that the musical would not open on Broadway in Spring 2011.[32]
In March 2013, it was reported that the musical may return to the West End after a UK tour of the successful Australian production.[45][46]
Melbourne (2011)
Edit
In 2010, Lloyd-Webber announced that the Australian production would open on 21 May 2011 at Melbourne's Regent Theatre. This production, the first outside of the UK, featured brand new direction and design by an Australian creative team, including director Simon Phillips.[47] Ben Lewis and Anna O'Byrne were cast as the leads,[48][49] Although Lloyd Webber hopes to bring the Melbourne production to Broadway in the future,[50] he told The New York Times that, even with the positive reception of the reworked Melbourne production, a Broadway transfer was probably not realistic. He also announced that the Melbourne production would be filmed on 15 September 2011 and made available on DVD.[51] The recording was originally to be released on DVD and Blu-ray 1 February 2012,[52] but it was later delayed till 29 May 2012 in the United States.[53] In the UK, the DVD was released on 12 March 2012,[54] and in Australia it was released on 8 February 2012. The recorded performance also played in select theatres on 28 February and 7 March 2012.[55] It was then screened again in US cinemas on 23 May 2012.[56] Lloyd Webber stated that even if a Broadway production does not happen, he feels that he has closed the chapter on the piece, as the filmed version is something that he's, "very, very proud of" and it does not really matter to him, "if it comes tomorrow or five years' time".[57][58] The Melbourne production closed on 18 December 2011.
Sydney (2012)
The Melbourne production transferred to Sydney's Capitol Theatre with previews beginning 8 January 2012 and officially opened on 12 January 2012.[59] The show concluded its limited engagement on 1 April 2012.[60]
Copenhagen (2012–2013)
Edit
Det Ny Teater in Copenhagen, Denmark announced that their production of Love Never Dies would open on 24 October 2012.[61] Starring Tomas Ambt Kofod and Bo Kristian Jensen as the Phantom and Danish coloratura soprano Louise Fribo as Christine. The production features a new production design by Paul Farnsworth, new stagings by Daniel Bohr and new choreography by Hayley Franks Høier. Karen Hoffmann, who translated the score of "The Phantom of the Opera" into Danish, also translated the score into Danish. The production closed 21 April 2013.[citation needed]
Vienna (2013)
A concert rendition, translated entirely in German, was held in Vienna, Austria in the Raimund Theater in October 2013. It starred Drew Sarich as the Phantom.[62]
Japan (2014)
Edit
A Japanese production opened in March 2014[citation needed] at the Nissay Theatre in Tokyo, using directions and designs from the original Australian production.[63] Starring Masachika Ichimura and Takeshi Kaga as the Phantom and Megumi Hamada and Ayaka Hirahara as Christine.
Germany (from 2015)
Edit
German branch of Stage Entertainment has announced a production of Love Never Dies from fall 2015 at the Operettenhaus in Hamburg. The show's title is translated literally as "Liebe stirbt nie". The German production will be based on the original Australian one.[64]
U.S. National Tour (2017)
A touring production is slated to tour North America in the 2017–2018 season.[65]
Synopsis (Original)
Edit
In a brief prelude, Madame Giry walks along an abandoned pier recalling Phantasma, Coney Island's 'City of Wonders' ("Prologue"). She is then confronted by Fleck, a freak who once worked with her there, who reminds her of 'the good old days' and blames her for 'what happened.' The audience is transported back in time through "The Coney Island Waltz." It is now ten years after the events at the Paris Opera House, and the setting is at Phantasma on Coney Island in New York. An excited group of vacationers arrive overwhelmed at everything that Phantasma has to offer, and speculate about its reclusive, masked owner – known only as Mr. Y ("Heaven by the Sea"). Meg Giry, Christine Daae's friend from the Opera, is now a headlining performer at Phantasma with Madame Giry, her mother and the Opera's ballet mistress, at her side. As Meg prepares for her performance, she wonders what the boss will think and states she will be performing "Only for Him." She wins the crowd over with her performance of "Only for You," and learns afterward that Madame Giry has arranged for her to "meet" an important client. In "Dear Old Friends", it is confirmed that the Phantom is Mr. Y, the mysterious creator and owner of Phantasma. In a dark, private lair in a tower high above the park, he interacts with an automaton that resembles Christine. In spite of the ten years that have passed and his many successes, he still longs to be reunited with her ("Til I Hear You Sing"). Meg intrudes and presses the Phantom to give feedback on her performance, but he dismisses her as an annoyance. Madame Giry is irritated that the Phantom is still longing to be with Christine after all the help she has given him over the years ("Giry confronts The Phantom/Til' I Hear You Sing – Reprise"). She reveals that she and Meg helped smuggle him out of Paris and to a ship departing from Calais, where he made his escape to America. Ignoring Giry, the Phantom summons Fleck, who appears with two other freaks, Squelch and Gangle. The Phantom has them send a letter to Christine inviting her to come and perform at Phantasma.
Three months later, Christine, Raoul and their son, Gustave, arrive in New York to crowds of paparazzi ("Christine Disembarks"). It is revealed that Christine is no longer performing and that Raoul has spent much of their fortune on drinking and gambling. They are greeted by the freaks who arrive by a strange carriage without a horse and take them to Coney Island ("Arrival of the Trio/Are You Ready to Begin?"). Raoul is angry at the way they have been greeted by the freaks and upsets Gustave by not playing with him ("What a Dreadful Town!"). In spite of Christine's pleas, Raoul leaves to go drinking as Christine tells Gustave to "Look With Your Heart" to try and help him understand his father’s behavior. After Gustave leaves to go to bed, the Phantom enters and reveals that it was he who summoned her to sing at Phantasma. In "Beneath a Moonless Sky," the Phantom and Christine recall the night of passion they shared the day before her wedding. Early the next morning, Christine awoke prepared to abandon Raoul for the Phantom, but found that the Phantom had left her. He admits that he left because he was too afraid of being rejected by her again. They recall that "Once Upon Another Time," they thought their love had a chance of succeeding, although current situations prevent that from happening. Gustave wakes up screaming from a nightmare and meets the Phantom for the first time as Mr. Y ("Mother Please, I'm Scared!"). The Phantom promises to show Gustave more of Phantasma the next day.
In the rehearsal studio for Phantasma, Meg unexpectedly reunites with Christine, and is surprised and jealous to learn she will be singing there. Raoul runs into Madame Giry and discovers it is the Phantom who has invited Christine to sing there ("Dear Old Friend"). Christine becomes concerned when Gustave goes missing. The freaks bring Gustave to the Aerie where he is greeted by the Phantom. Gustave plays a haunting melody on the piano, which leads the Phantom to have a revelation that he could be Gustave's father ("Beautiful"). The Phantom questions Gustave about his feelings and musical abilities, finding that they are kindred spirits. He unmasks himself, believing Gustave will accept him ("The Beauty Underneath"). Gustave is horrified and screams. Christine enters to comfort a terrified Gustave. When the Phantom presses her about Gustave, Christine confesses to the Phantom that Gustave is his son ("The Phantom Confronts Christine"). The Phantom declares that everything he owns will go to him. A furious Madame Giry overhears this and fears all of her work over the years for the Phantom has been for nothing.
Act II
Edit
Following the ("Entr'acte") we see Raoul sitting alone in a bar contemplating his relationship with Christine ("Why Does She Love Me?"). He is joined by Meg who suggests that he should leave that night with Christine and Gustave. Raoul refuses, saying he is not afraid of the Phantom, who has since appeared behind the bar. The Phantom makes a bet with a drunken Raoul: if Christine sings Raoul must leave alone; if she doesn't then all their debts will be wiped away. He also makes Raoul question his paternity of Gustave ("Devil Take The Hindmost").
At the beach, it is the last day of the season and the holiday makers are enjoying the experience ("Heaven By The Sea – Reprise"). A balloon then lands on the beach and the freaks advertise that night's performance ("Ladies...Gents!/The Coney Island Waltz – Reprise"). That night, they present Meg, who performs a strip-tease routine about her choice of swimming costume ("Bathing Beauty"). Backstage, Madame Giry tells Meg that the Phantom had not been there to watch the performance, and it had all been for nothing ("Mother, Did You Watch?"). Raoul asks Christine to reconsider her decision to sing, and asks her to leave at once if she loves him ("Before the Performance"). As Raoul leaves, the Phantom enters and tells Christine that Raoul knows his love is not enough and that she must sing for him once more. Alone in her dressing room, Christine recalls the Paris Opera House where she had to make the difficult decision between Raoul and the Phantom. Backstage, Madame Giry, Raoul and the Phantom are wondering whether or not Christine will sing and who will win the bet.
As Christine prepares to perform, Meg makes a hurried exit ("Devil Take The Hindmost – Reprise"). Christine then walks on stage and performs an aria for the crowd ("Love Never Dies") while Raoul and the Phantom watch from the wings. The Phantom greets an overwhelmed Christine following her triumphant performance. Christine finds a letter from Raoul stating that he has left for good. Christine realizes that Gustave is missing and becomes worried. Fleck reveals she had discovered Meg's dressing room smashed up and seen her with a small figure. Madame Giry believes she knows where she has taken him.
On a pier, a distraught Meg is preparing to drown Gustave when she is confronted by the others. She holds up a gun to them so that the Phantom will listen as she reveals the truth: the resources that Madame Giry has afforded him all these years have mainly come from Meg being forced to work secretly as a prostitute to supporters of Phantasma. The Phantom tries to get the gun from her but in the confusion Meg accidentally shoots Christine. The Phantom rushes to a mortally wounded Christine as Meg watches, horrified by what she has done. Christine reveals to Gustave that the Phantom is his father. Her final words tell the Phantom that her love for him will never die. They have one final kiss, and she dies in his arms. The Phantom hands the body of Christine to Raoul and he comforts Gustave who unmasks him as the curtain falls.
Synopsis (2012 version)
Edit
Ten years after the events at the Paris Opera, the Phantom is now the mastermind of Phantasma, a Coney Island amusement park. Despite the success of his endeavors, he is tortured by the absence of Christine Daae in his life and he longs to hear her sing again ("Til I Hear You Sing"). At Phantasma, The Phantom's performers Dr. Gangle, Miss Fleck and Mr. Squelch introduce the wonders of Coney Island ("The Coney Island Waltz"). Meg Giry, Christine Daaé's friend from the Paris Opera, has become "The Ooh La La" Girl in The Phantom's vaudeville show, which Madame Giry produces. Meg and the Phantasma cast win the crowd over with their performance of ("Only for You"). Madame Giry has read in the newspaper that Christine is coming to New York to sing for Oscar Hammerstein at the opening of his new Manhattan opera house. Madame Giry is concerned that her daughter has lost the attention of the Phantom and she reminisces about how she and Meg smuggled him from Paris, France to New York City ten years ago.("Ten Long Years") Christine, Raoul and their ten-year-old son Gustave arrive in New York and are met by crowds of paparazzi ("Christine Disembarks"). They are greeted by Gangle, Fleck and Squelch, who arrive by a horseless carriage, to take them to Coney Island (“Are You Ready to Begin?”).
Raoul is angry at the reception ("What a Dreadful Town!") and upsets Gustave by not playing with him. As Raoul leaves to go drinking, Gustave believes that Raoul doesn't love him. Christine tells Gustave to Look With Your Heart to try to help him understand ("Look With Your Heart"). Gustave goes to bed. The Phantom reveals himself by stepping through the balcony door to Christine. She faints, having believed he was dead, and he carries her to her chair. When she awakes, they remember about the last time they were alone together on the night before Christine married Raoul and why The Phantom ran away afterwards (“Beneath a Moonless Sky”). On the balcony they recall that they thought their love had a chance of succeeding ("Once Upon Another Time"). He offers to pay her double what Oscar Hammerstein is paying her to sing for him once more, just one song he wrote, but Christine refuses. Gustave wakes up screaming from a nightmare ("Mother Please, I'm Scared!") and Christine introduces him to the Phantom for the first time. The Phantom promises to show Gustave all of Phantasma. After Gustave returns to bed, The Phantom tells Christine that she must sing for him again or she will return home without the boy. Just before leaving, he hands her the written song he wrote.
In the rehearsal studio for Phantasma, Meg is surprised and jealous to learn that Christine will be singing after her. Raoul encounters Madame Giry and discovers that the Phantom, not Oscar Hammerstein, is the one for whom Christine is singing ("Dear Old Friend"). Gangle, Fleck and Squelch bring Gustave to the Aerie, where he is greeted by the Phantom. Child prodigyGustave sings and plays a melody on the piano ("Beautiful") that leads the Phantom to suspect he is Gustave's father ("He plays like me! He's just 10 years old...ten years old".) The Phantom questions Gustave while showing him the dark wonders, illusions and freaks of Phantasma and finds they are kindred spirits. He unmasks himself, believing Gustave will accept him but Gustave is horrified and screams ("The Beauty Underneath"). Christine comforts Gustave and asks Meg to go with him back to the hotel so that she and the Phantom can have a private conversation. When pressed by the Phantom, Christine confesses that Gustave is his son ("The Phantom Confronts Christine"). The Phantom makes Christine promise to never tell Gustave that Raoul is not his real father. Christine swears she will and also promises that she will sing for him once more, and leaves. The Phantom declares that everything he owns will go to Gustave. Having overheard everything, a furious Madame Giry fears all her work over the years has been for nothing.
Act II
Edit
In a gloomy bar, Raoul contemplates his relationship with Christine. He is joined by Meg, who tells him she swims each day to wash away the stress of working. She tells Raoul that he must leave with Christine and Gustave and runs out of the bar("Why Does She Love Me?"). Raoul says he is not afraid of the Phantom. The Phantom reveals himself to Raoul and they make a bet that if Christine sings, the Phantom wins and if she doesn't, Raoul wins. If Raoul wins the bet, the Phantom will pay his debts and Raoul can leave with Christine and Gustave. However, if The Phantom wins, Christine and Gustave will remain in America with him and Raoul must return to Paris alone. The Phantom also leads Raoul to question Gustave's paternity ("Devil Take the Hindmost"). Fleck, Squelch and Gangle appear to advertise Christine's appearance at Phantasma ("Invitation to the Concert"). That night, Meg performs a strip-tease about her choice of swimming costumes ("Bathing Beauty"). The audience goes crazy for Meg, but Madame Giry tells Meg that the Phantom did not watch the performance and it was for nothing ("Mother, Did You Watch?").
In Christine's dressing room Gustave helps his mother get ready for the show. Raoul arrives and Christine asks Gustave to wait for Raoul backstage. Raoul begs Christine not to sing leave New York with him if she really loves him. Christine asks for some time and Raoul leaves. The Phantom enters and tells Christine that Raoul's love is not enough. That she must sing for him and embrace her destiny ("Before The Performance"). Christine recalls the events at the Opera where she had to decide between Raoul and the Phantom. ("Twisted Every Way") Madame Giry, Raoul and the Phantom wonder whether Christine will sing ("Devil Take The Hindmost" (reprise)). The curtain opens on Christine and Raoul and the Phantom watch from separate wings. As the long musical intro comes to its end Christine decides to sing. Raoul leaves just before Christine finishes to thunderous applause. ("Love Never Dies"). Christine is greeted lovingly by the Phantom and the two share a loving kiss. She then finds a letter from Raoul informing her of his departure ("Ah Christine").
Christine realizes Gustave is missing, remembering She had previously told him to wait for Raoul backstage and does not want to believe that he had taken the boy. Furious, the Phantom vows to kill the "drunken fool,". But Squelch informs him that he saw the Viscount leave alone. Then, the Phantom suspects Madame Giry because of her attitude towards him before Christine's number and threatens her as she is brought to him by Squelch and Dr. Gangle. Madame Giry confesses that she knew about Gustave's true parentage, but denies ever going near him. Fleck reports that she was passing Meg's dressing room when she noticed the mirror had been smashed and Meg is nowhere to be found. Christine fears for her child's life, but Madame Giry assures her that Meg would never hurt Gustave. The Phantom believes he knows where Meg has gone.("Gustave, Gustave").
At the pier, Meg prepares to drown Gustave, who cannot swim, when the others arrive to confront her. She reveals to the Phantom that the resources Madame Giry has afforded him came from Meg's working as a prostitute to influential men. And that the Phantom never took any notice of her or appreciate her singing or dancing. She is about to drown the boy but decides to let him live and releases him. She pulls out a gun and holds to her head to commit suicide and end her misery. The Phantom tries to calm her and apologize, but on mentioning Christine, Meg becomes crazed. The Phantom tries to get the gun, but Meg accidentally shoots Christine. ("Please Miss Giry, I Want To Go Back"). Madame Giry and Meg are sent to find help, Christine reveals to Gustave that the Phantom is his real father and a shocked Gustave runs off ("Look with Your Heart" (Reprise)). Christine tells the Phantom that her love for him will never die. They have one final kiss and she dies in his arms.("Once Upon Another Time"(Reprise)). Gustave returns with Raoul, who looks on silently and sadly, Gustave lays his head on the lap of his deceased mother. The Phantom hands Christine's body over to Raoul, then steps to the edge of the pier and collapses to his knees in sadness. Gustave then goes and joins the weeping Phantom who sings to him, then Gustave embraces his real father for the first time.("Love Never Dies" (reprise)). Gustave takes the Phantom's mask off but does not react as he did before, by gently touching the Phantom's face and accepting him. Gustave and the Phantom look at each other as the curtain falls.
Characters and original cast
The following is a list of the principal roles and original cast of Love Never Dies.
Character
Edit
The first song released to the public was "The Coney Island Waltz", on the musical's official site as part of a Love Never Dies' teaser trailer video in September 2009.[69][70] The teaser trailer combined clips from the 2009 London EPK video of The Phantom of the Opera (featuring Gina Beck, Ramin Karimloo, and Simon Bailey)[71] with black-and-white film footage of immigrants arriving by ship in New York City and shots of Coney Island. The official site later released "The Coney Island Waltz" as a sample track in 2009 and as a complimentary music download for customers pre-ordering the Love Never Dies studio recording album. The music video for "The Coney Island Waltz" is set to archival film footage of Coney Island.
"Til I Hear You Sing", sung by Ramin Karimloo, is the first single from the musical and was previewed on 20 February 2010 through The Mail on Sunday website.[72] and previewed elsewhere on 22 February 2010.[73] It is a love ballad about the male narrator expressing his longing to hear the voice of his beloved after many years. The promotional music video was an excerpt of Ramin Karimloo's live performance at the 8 October 2009 London press launch and made viewable the same day, with Karimloo singing in a blue-lit set while Sierra Boggess sits quietly on a throne. The official music video features Karimloo undisguised in a flat with a backdrop of projector images and floating appearance of Boggess.[72]
On 26 January 2010 the title song "Love Never Dies" was first publicly performed at The South Bank Show Awards, sung by Sierra Boggess and accompanied by Lloyd Webber and Louise Hunt on two grand pianos. The show was broadcast on ITV1 on 31 January 2010.[74] The tune is identical to Lloyd Webber's other musical numbers "Our Kind of Love" from The Beautiful Game in 2000 and "The Heart is Slow to Learn", which was intended for a Phantom sequel, sung by Kiri Te Kanawa in 1998 at the Andrew Lloyd Webber: The Royal Albert Hall Celebration.[75][76] "Love Never Dies" also has a very similar melody to Charles Williams' composition "Jealous Lover" from the 1949 British film The Romantic Age. "Jealous Lover" was later retitled "Theme from the Apartment" for the 1960 Billy Wilder film The Apartment.[77][78][79][80][81]
Welsh singer Katherine Jenkins was approached by Lloyd Webber to record her version of "Love Never Dies" in late 2009.[82][83] The song appears as the first track on the special edition of Jenkins' album Believe, which was released on 29 March 2010 in the UK. Jenkins performed the song with Lloyd Webber on the ITV1 show Dancing on Ice on 28 February 2010. Lloyd Webber has stated that Jenkins would not fit the score of his musical Love Never Dies because her vocal range is a mezzo-soprano, not a soprano like Sierra Boggess.[20][84]
Japanese singer Ayaka Hirahara was chosen to record "Love Never Dies" in Japanese for a bonus track of the soundtrack album's Japanese release.[85][86] "Love Never Dies" was also recorded in Mandarin by Liping Zhang and in Korean by Sumi Jo.[87]
Discography
Edit
The concept album of Love Never Dies was recorded around 2008–2009, using an 80–90 piece orchestra.[23][88][89] Lloyd Webber did not like the orchestrations in the second act, so he had half the album re-recorded.[90] John Barrowman had originally recorded the part of Raoul on the concept album but was replaced by Joseph Millson, who had been cast as Raoul for the stage production at the time the album was re-orchestrated and re-recorded.[91][92]Sally Dexter, who performed Madame Giry on the album, is replaced by Liz Robertson in the musical. The album was completed in September 2009 and scheduled to be released on 10 March 2010, the day after the show's London opening.[93] Preview sound clips from all tracks on the album became available online on 8 February 2010 at Amazon.co.uk.[94]
A cast recording of the original production was released on 8 March 2010 by Polydor Records in the UK and on 9 March 2010 by Decca Records in North America. It debuted at No. 82 on the Billboard 200, No. 1 on the Billboard Cast Album chart, and No. 10 on the UK Albums Chart. It also charted at No. 1 in Greece, No. 14 in Taiwan, No. 8 in New Zealand, and No. 15 inDenmark.[95][96]
Albums
Edit
Love Never Dies Deluxe Edition [Original Cast Recording] Release date: 8 March 2010 (UK), 9 March 2010 (North America) Number of discs: 2 Audio CDs, 1 DVD-Video Extras include: "Bonus DVD with interviews and filmed footage and 40 page booklet with full libretto"
Love Never Dies [Original Cast Recording] Release date: 8 March 2010 (UK), 9 March 2010 (North America) Number of discs: 2 Audio CDs
Both recordings feature the same 19 tracks on Disc 1 and 13 tracks on Disc 2 with each disc matching an act. A digital version of the double CD album was also made available on the Love Never Dies official online shop.
Charts
Edit
After Love Never Dies opened on 9 March 2010 in London, it received mixed critical reviews.[106][107] Perhaps the most positive review was Paul Taylor's in The Independent giving the show five stars, and writing, "What is in no doubt is the technical excellence of Jack O'Brien's seamlessly fluent, sumptuous (and sometimes subtle) production, or the splendour of the orchestra which pours forth Lloyd Webber's dark-hued, yearning melodies as if its life depended on them. Special praise should go to the lyrical lavishness of Bob Crowley and Jon Driscoll's designs, with their gilt interiors where the vegetation-imitating contours and giant peacock-plumage of Art Nouveau run rampant, and their ghostly external locations where a brilliantly deployed combination of flowing projection (timed to perfection with emotional/ rhythmic shifts in the music) and solidly presented stage-effects create a dizzying Coney Island of the mind".[108] In stark contrast, Ben Brantley of The New York Times gave it zero stars, calling the production "a big, gaudy new show. And he might as well have a "kick me" sign pasted to his backside. ... This poor sap of a show feels as eager to be walloped as a clown in a carnival dunking booth. Why bother, when from beginning to end, Love Never Dies is its very own spoiler."[109]
Other positive reviews included Charles Spencer of The Telegraph, who raved, "this is Lloyd Webber's finest show since the original Phantom, with a score blessed with superbly haunting melodies and a yearning romanticism that sent shivers racing down my spine." He gave the show four stars out of five, but cautioned that "The show may ultimately prove too strange, too dark, too tormented to become a massive popular hit, but I suspect its creepy allure will linger potently in the memory when frothier shows have been long forgotten".[110] Paul Callan of theDaily Express also gave the show four stars, writing that Love Never Dies "is an elegant and clever sequel to Phantom and deserves to have the old Adelphi Theatre filled every night with Lloyd Webber's core, usually middle-class, audiences. It is a great night out."[111]
In The Guardian, Michael Billington gave the show three out of five stars, commenting, "There is much to enjoy in Andrew Lloyd Webber's new musical. The score is one of the composer's most seductive." However, Billington said, "The problems lie within the book ... which lacks the weight to support the imaginative superstructure." He continues, "the staging is a constant source of iridescent pleasure. But, as one of the lyrics reminds us, "diamonds never sparkle bright unless they are set just right". ... With a libretto to match the melodies, this might have been a stunner rather than simply a good night out".[112] Tim Walker of The Sunday Telegraph praised the production for "what are undoubtedly the most impressive special effects to be had in the West End" and said the principals sang "with gusto, charisma and sexiness." Still, he found himself, "yearning after a while for the big showstopper ... but it never came."[113]
In The Times, critic Benedict Nightingale gave the show two out of five stars and said, "Where's the menace, the horror, the psychological darkness? For that I recommend a trip to Her Majesty's, not the Adelphi."[114] Another unenthusiastic review appeared in the London Evening Standard, where critic Henry Hitchings wrote that "while Lloyd Webber's music is at times lavishly operatic, the tone is uneven. There are no more than a couple of songs that promise to live in the memory, the duets don’t soar, and the ending is insipid. Admirers of Phantom are likely to be disappointed, and there's not enough here to entice a new generation of fans". Hitchings also commented that the story "is largely predictable – and flimsy. The chief problem is the book. ... It lacks psychological plausibility. Worse, it lacks heart. There's little pathos or emotional tension. There is also scarcely a moment of humour [the] lyrics are prosaic, and the flickers of light relief are merely confusing."[115] Similarly, David Benedict of Variety wrote that the show "wants to be a tragic romance, but it's simply torpid. Only a radical rewrite will give it even the remotest chance of emulating its predecessor."[116]
Quentin Letts of The Daily Mail gave the show a negative review, stating that it "is as slow to motor as a lawnmower at spring's first cut". He also criticised the show for lacking in storytelling and romance, stating that it "assumes that we understand the attraction these two dullards [Phantom and Raoul] have for the beautiful Christine. Could she do no better? ... In the end you conclude that she simply seeks out suffering to improve her art." Letts praised the performances and the orchestration but concluded that the show was not a hit: "But if it is a miss, it is ... a noble miss, noble because Lloyd Webber’s increasingly operatic music tries to lift us to a higher plane."[117] Susannah Clapp of The Observer was also critical of the book and called the show "drab" and "about as tension-filled as winding wool." Even the musical numbers, she wrote, "never meld with the visual splendours, never give the effect, which is Lloyd Webber's gift, of the music delivering the scenery."[118] Sam Marlowe of Time Out London gave the show one out of five stars, calling it "ghastly" and "an interminable musical monstrosity". He observes: "With its sickening swirls of video imagery, pointless plot, and protracted, repetitive songs, Love Never Dies ... is punishingly wearisome."[119]
Other negative reviews appeared in the Financial Times,[120] Entertainment Weekly,[121] The Arts Desk,[122] and numerous others.[7]
Audience and other assessments[edit]
Edit
Dave Itzkoff of The New York Times reported on fan reaction: "How is the new Phantom faring with theatergoers who have seen it in previews? Not so well. ... Elsewhere online, 'Love Never Dies' has even spawned a Facebook protest group called 'Love Should Die', which declares in its mission statement: 'We feel strongly that Andrew Lloyd Webber’s latest musical ... is a completely misguided venture that is a detriment to the story of the original Phantom of the Opera novel and musical of the same name'. … Virtually everything about the show strikes us as illogical, irrational, offensive and – frankly – stupid."[123][124] A barbed reworking of the show's title from Love Never Dies to Paint Never Dries was originated by the London-based theatre bloggers, The West End Whingers.[125][126] It has subsequently been picked up and repeated by a multitude of journalists, both in print and on screen.[114][127][128][129][130]
Columnist Barbara Ellen of The Observer ridiculed the pomposity of some of the unfavourable reviews in her column on Sunday 28 March 2010, in a jokey "Open letter to London's famous Adelphi theatre": "Dear Mr Adelphi, Regarding the performance I viewed last week of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom sequel, Love Never Dies, ridiculed as Paint Never Dries. With regret, I must demand my money back; it simply wasn't bad or boring enough. My companions and I paid our money and went along in good faith, expecting a right old disaster. Imagine our disappointment when it was good. The phantom bore an eerie resemblance to Martin Amis sulking after his tiff with Anna Ford, but, sir, this was not enough. A catastrophe we were promised and a catastrophe we expected to see. One concedes that it is not all the production's fault. Negative reviews, the dark art of anti-hype, are a dangerous business. However, do fine feelings pay my babysitter? I feel that I, and several innocent coach parties, were tricked into going to Paint Never Dries, and, against our will, forced to endure an enjoyable evening. I'm sure I speak for many when I say I left your theatre wholly dissatisfied with how incredibly satisfied I felt".[131]
Australia
Edit
The reworked production received mostly positive reviews during its engagements in Melbourne and Sydney.[132][133][134]
Chris Boyd, of The Australian called the musical, "The best thing Lloyd Webber has written in the quarter century since Phantom of the Opera, Love Never Dies is still a missed opportunity. It toys half-heartedly with domestic melancholia. Christine's wealthy suitor Raoul, 10 years on, is an insecure and possessive husband who uses his wife's talents to pay off his gambling debts. He frets that he cannot deliver to Christine "the rush that music brings", leaving her vulnerable, once more, to her angel of music. Love Never Dies provides several of those rush moments, but doesn't quite connect the starry dots. Musically, there are some riches – a fluttering duet between Meg and Christine for example – but few surprises." As for Gabriela Tylesova's sets such as, "Coney Island carnival, deco interiors, a shabby bar," he found them, "endlessly fascinating; they're spectacular without being ostentatious. The main feature is an upright metal circle, part Luna Park mouth, part Stargate. Her costumes, too, are gorgeous."[135]
Jason Blake of the Sydney Morning Herald said, "Phillips's production steers clear of "chandelier moments", favouring sustained invention, seamless flow and an engulfing sense of nightmare. There's wow factor, of course (a galloping carousel is an early highlight) though quieter scenes are realised with the same attention to detail, particularly the recreation of a Coney Island bar to frame Raoul's saloon song feature (Why Does She Love Me) and his face-off with Mr Y (Devil Take the Hindmost) An inspired, often ravishing production for sure, though of a sequel that doesn't make a strong enough musical or narrative argument for its own existence."[136]
In the Daily Express, Mark Shenton commented, "Now under the new leadership of director Simon Phillips, and with a fresh creative team, there is a new vision to the show in Australia and here, at last, is the masterpiece that was always crying to be let out...The new production has a spectacular Gothic theatricality that heightens, deepens and darkens those emotions."[137]
Kate Herbert of the Herald Sun gave the show four out of five stars and wrote, "With its vivid design, eccentric characters and mystical imagery, this is a ravishing spectacle that captures the dark mystery of a perilous fairground (circa 1907) and should convert even a die-hard Phantom fan." She also said, "Lloyd Webber's score (conducted skilfully by Guy Simpson) intermittently and elegantly reprises the original Phantom, connecting the two stories" but she did feel that, "several songs, with trite lyrics, lack punch. A bigger problem is the unsatisfying story. There are unnecessary Red Herrings and too many villains."[138]
William Yeoman of The West Australian wrote, "With book by Ben Elton and lyrics by Glenn Slater and Charles Hart, Love Never Dies is a curious mixture of gothic romance, vaudeville and verismo, with Lloyd Webber's lush, romantic score spinning like a fairground ride from Puccini to Pulcinella to driving rock to delicate aria as the tragedy unfolds. Under Simon Phillips' unfailingly cogent direction, the cast too manage to transform the most unpromising material, if not into gold then at least into silver."[139]
Cameron Woodhead of The Age gave the show three and a half out of five stars and said, "Between Gabriela Tylesova's set and costumes, Nick Schlieper's lighting, and Graeme Murphy's choreography, you’re in for some spectacular stagecraft. After the Phantom pines for Christine and ascends to the gods (’Til I Hear You Sing), the scene breaks into an elaborate circus (Coney Island Waltz). Introduced by a trio of freaks, the amusement swells into a crowd of acrobats and stilt-walkers, fire-twirlers and magicians, with Luna Park-like plastic heads, a portable big-top, and rows of carnies singing from rollercoaster tracks suspended mid-air. It's breathtaking stuff, and not the best of Love Never Dies ' dark illusionism. That honor belongs to a scene, deeper into Coney, where transparent obelisks caging eldritch wonders – including a gilded mermaid – rotate across the stage."[140]
See also
| Love Never Dies |
In which European city can you visit Tiergarten Schonbrunn (Schonbrunn Zoo)? | Andrew Lloyd Webber | Amusing the Zillion
Posted in film , video , tagged Andrew Lloyd Webber , Coney Island , Love Never Dies , musical , Phantom of the Opera , review , theater on March 7, 2012 | 3 Comments »
The Beauty Underneath from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Love Never Dies, Australian Production. Photo via Facebook.com/LoveNeverDiesAU
In 2010, when Love Never Dies premiered in London and was expected to open in New York, our first thought was the sequel to Phantom of the Opera would bring tourists to Coney Island, where the musical is set. Imagine people coming out of a Broadway theater humming “The Coney Island Waltz” and being lured out to the real, live Coney to trace the Phantom’s footsteps. It could still happen, thanks to a new film version of the successful Australian production of the musical. According to the recently debuted Facebook page Love Never Dies: Broadway , “It is destined for Broadway, so stay tuned for news!”
ATZ went to see the first-ever U.S. showing of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Love Never Dies on the big screen last week. The film of the critically acclaimed Melbourne production will be shown again in theaters across the U.S. on Wednesday, March 7th at 7:30 pm and a DVD will be released on May 29.
The musical is set in 1907, ten years after the fire at the Paris Opera. As the impresario of “Mr Y’s Phantasma,” a vaudeville extravaganza in the heart of Coney’s Electric Eden, the Phantom commands a phalanx of gorgeously costumed–okay, we’ll say it–phreaks! A trio of them are sent to greet Christine, who has traveled from Paris with her husband Raoul to sing an aria for Phantasma’s closing show of the season. What she doesn’t know is that it is the lovesick Phantom who has paid a fortune for the command performance.
Bathing Beauties from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Love Never Dies, Australian Production. Photo via Facebook.com/LoveNeverDiesAU
The Phantom fled here with the help of Madame Giry and her daughter Meg, the ballerina turned “Sweetheart of the Midway.” Meg is delicious in “Bathing Beauties,” a saucy stereoview card brought to life. She also has one of the best Coney lines ever: “Well, here’s the way it works on Coney Island: They make you pay for every little crumb.” But we can’t tell you why without giving away the ending. The twists and turns of the story are over the top, but the haunting melodies, high-caliber performances and lavish costumes and sets kept us entranced.
The set design is a marvel of catwalks that resemble roller coaster tracks and a tent that reveals a whirling carousel. One of our favorite scenes is “The Beauty Underneath,” in which the Phantom takes Christine’s 10-year-old son on a tour of his phantasmagorical world. Set to the throb of electronic rock, the song asks “Have You Ever Yearned To Go, Past The World You Think You Know? Been In Thrall To The Call Of The Beauty Underneath?” Human curiosities writhe inside glass prisms as the lights of Luna Park-like towers and rides glimmer in the background.
Related posts on ATZ…
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Who was the author of the 'Alan Quatermain' series and the 'Ayesha' series of novels, who was born on June 22nd. 1856? | Read Books and Biography of Classics Author H. Rider Haggard.
[edit] Biography
[edit] Early years
Henry Rider Haggard, generally known as H. Rider Haggard or Rider Haggard, was born at Bradenham, Norfolk, the eighth of ten children, to Sir William Meybohm Rider Haggard, a barrister, and Ella Doveton, an author and poet. He was initially sent to Garsington Rectory in Oxfordshire to study under Reverend H. J. Graham, but unlike his older brothers who graduated from various public schools, he attended Ipswich Grammar School. [1] This was because [2] his father, who perhaps regarded him as somebody who was not going to amount to much [3] , could no longer afford to maintain his expensive private education. After failing his army entrance exam, he was sent to a private crammer in London to prepare for the entrance exam for the British Foreign Office, [1] which he never sat. During his two years in London he came into contact with people interested in the study of psychical phenomena. [4]
[edit] South Africa, 1875â1882
In 1875, Haggard's father sent him [5] to what is now South Africa, to take up an unpaid position as assistant to the secretary to Sir Henry Bulwer, Lieutenant-Governor of the Colony of Natal. In 1876 he was transferred to the staff of Sir Theophilus Shepstone, Special Commissioner for the Transvaal. It was in this role that Haggard was present in Pretoria in April 1877 for the official announcement of the British annexation of the Boer Republic of the Transvaal. Indeed, Haggard raised the Union flag and read out much of the proclamation following the loss of voice of the official originally entrusted with the duty. [6]
At about that time, Haggard fell in love with Mary Elizabeth "Lilly" Jackson, whom he intended to marry once he obtained paid employment in Africa. In 1878 he became Registrar of the High Court in the Transvaal, and wrote to his father informing him that he intended to return to England and marry her. His father forbade it until Haggard had made a career for himself, and by 1879 Jackson had married Frank Archer, a well-to-do banker. When Haggard eventually returned to England, he married a friend of his sister, (Mariana) Louisa Margitson in 1880, and the couple travelled to Africa together. They had a son named Jock (who died of measles at age 10) and three daughters, Angela, Dorothy and Lilias. Lilias became an author, edited The Rabbit Skin Cap, and wrote a biography of her father entitled The Cloak That I Left (published in 1951).
[edit] Haggard in England, 1882â1925
Moving back to England in 1882 (according to H.d.R. the return was in autumn 1881 and they had been living in Newcastle, Natal), the couple settled in Ditchingham, Norfolk, Louisa's ancestral home. Later they lived in Kessingland and had connections with the church in Bungay, Suffolk. Haggard turned to the study of law and was called to the bar in 1884. His practice of law was desultory, and much of his time was taken up by the writing of novels, which he saw as being more profitable. Rider Haggard lived at 69 Gunterstone Road in Hammersmith, London, from mid 1885 to circa April 1888. It was at this Hammersmith address that he completed King Solomon's Mines (published September 1885). [7] Heavily influenced by the larger-than-life adventurers he met in Colonial Africa (most notably Frederick Selous and Frederick Russell Burnham), the great mineral wealth discovered in Africa, and the ruins of ancient lost civilizations of the continent, such as Great Zimbabwe, Haggard created his Allan Quatermain adventures. [8] [9] Three of his books, The Wizard (1896), Elissa; the Doom of Zimbabwe (1899), and Black Heart and White Heart; a Zulu Idyll (1900), are dedicated to Burnham's daughter, Nada, the first white child born in Bulawayo; she had been named after Haggard's 1892 book Nada the Lily. [10]
[edit] Aid for Lilly Archer
Years later, when Haggard was a successful novelist, he was contacted by his former love, Lilly Archer, née Jackson. She had been deserted by her husband, who had embezzled funds entrusted to him and fled, bankrupt, to Africa. Lilly was penniless, and so Haggard installed her and her sons in a house and saw to the children's education. Lilly eventually followed her husband to Africa, where he infected her with syphilis before dying of it himself. Lilly returned to England in late 1907, where Haggard again supported her until her death on 22 April 1909. These details were not generally known until the publication of Haggard's 1981 biography by Sydney Higgins. [11]
[edit] Public affairs and honours
Haggard was heavily involved in reforming agriculture and was a member of many commissions on land use and related affairs, work that involved several trips to the Colonies and Dominions. He was made a Knight Bachelor in 1912 and a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1919. He stood unsuccessfully for Parliament as a Conservative in the 1895 summer election, losing by only 198 votes.
[edit] Writing career
Haggard is most famous as the author of the novels King Solomon's Mines and its sequel Allan Quatermain, and She and its sequel Ayesha, swashbuckling adventure novels set in the context of the Scramble for Africa (the action of Ayesha however happens in Tibet). The hugely popular King Solomon's Mines is sometimes considered the first of the Lost World genre. [12] She is generally considered to be one of the classics of imaginative literature [13] and with 83 million copies sold by 1965, it is one of the best-selling books of all time. [14] He is also remembered for Nada the Lily (a tale of adventure among the Zulus) and the epic Viking romance, Eric Brighteyes.
While his novels portray many of the stereotypes associated with colonialism, they are unusual for the degree of sympathy with which the native populations are portrayed. Africans often play heroic roles in the novels, although the protagonists are typically, though not invariably, European. Notable examples are the heroic Zulu warrior Umslopagas and Ignosi, the rightful king of Kukuanaland, in King Solomon's Mines. Having developed an intense mutual friendship with the three Englishmen who help him regain his throne, he accepts their advice and abolishes witch-hunts and arbitrary capital punishment. Three of Haggard's novels were written in collaboration with his friend Andrew Lang who shared his interest in the spiritual realm and paranormal phenomena.
Haggard also wrote about agricultural and social reform, in part inspired by his experiences in Africa, but also based on what he saw in Europe. At the end of his life he was a staunch opponent of Bolshevism, a position he shared with his friend Rudyard Kipling. The two had bonded upon Kipling's arrival at London in 1889 largely on the strength of their shared opinions, and the two remained lifelong friends.
[edit] Reputation and legacy
Haggard's stories are still widely read today. Ayesha, the female protagonist of She, has been cited as a prototype by psychoanalysts as different as Sigmund Freud (in The Interpretation of Dreams) and Carl Jung. Her epithet "She Who Must Be Obeyed" is used by British author John Mortimer in his Rumpole of the Bailey series as the private name the lead character, a barrister with some skill in court, uses for his wife, Hilda, before whom he trembles at home. Haggard's Lost World genre, influenced popular American writer Robert E. Howard, and other American pulp writers such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Talbot Mundy and Abraham Merritt [15] . Allan Quatermain, the adventure hero of King Solomon's Mines and its sequel Allan Quatermain, was a template for the American character Indiana Jones, featuring in the films Raiders of the Lost Ark, Temple of Doom, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. [16] [17] [18] Quatermain has gained recent popularity thanks to being a main character in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
Haggard was praised in 1965 by Roger Lancelyn Green, one of the Oxford Inklings, as a writer of a consistently high level of "literary skill and sheer imaginative power" and a co-originator with Robert Louis Stevenson of the Age of the Story Tellers [19] .
Published works
[edit] Chronology of works
Cetywayo and his White Neighbours; Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal (1882); online version at Project Gutenberg
Dawn (1884); online version at Project Gutenberg
The Witch's Head (1884); online version at Wikisource
King Solomon's Mines (1885); online version at Project Gutenberg ; Public domain Audiobook at LibriVox.org , and also at Audiobooksforfree.com
Hunter Quatermain's Story (1885); online version at Project Gutenberg
Long Odds (1886); online version at Project Gutenberg
She (1887); online version at Project Gutenberg
Jess (1887); online version at Project Gutenberg
Allan Quatermain (1887); online version at Project Gutenberg ; Public domain Audiobook at LibriVox.org
A Tale of Three Lions (1887); online version at Project Gutenberg
Mr. Meeson's Will (1888); online version at Project Gutenberg
Maiwa's Revenge (1888); online version at Project Gutenberg
My Fellow Laborer and the Wreck of the Copeland (1888)
Colonel Quaritch, V.C. (1888); online version at Project Gutenberg
Cleopatra (1889); online version at Project Gutenberg
Allan's Wife (1889); online version at Project Gutenberg ; Public domain Audiobook at LibriVox.org
Beatrice (1890); online version at Project Gutenberg
The World's Desire (1890); co-written with Andrew Lang; online version at Project Gutenberg
Eric Brighteyes (1891); online version at Project Gutenberg
Nada the Lily (1892); online version) at Project Gutenberg
Montezuma's Daughter (1893); co-written with Andrew Lang; online version at Project Gutenberg
The People of the Mist (1894); online version at Project Gutenberg
Joan Haste (1895); online version at Project Gutenberg Australia
Heart of the World (1895); online version at Project Gutenberg Australia; Public domain Audiobook at LibriVox.org
Church and State (1895)
| H. Rider Haggard |
Which of the Halogens, with the atomic number 17, is missing from - Flourine, Bromine, Iodine and Astatine? | Edgar Rice Burroughs Meets H. Rider Haggard | I, Dynamo
Cosmic Clouds Flung Across The Horizon
Edgar Rice Burroughs Meets H. Rider Haggard
October 25, 2009
Edgar Rice Burroughs Meets Rider Haggard
by
R.E. Prindle
Among the very many important influences on Edgar Rice Burroughs, contending for the top spot was the English novelist of Africa, Henry Rider Haggard, frequently named as just Rider Haggard.
Haggard was born on June 22, 1856 in Norfolkshire. He died on May 14, 1925. When Burroughs was born in 1875 his future idol was beginning his stay in South Africa of seven years duration. It was there that Haggard learned the history of the Zulu chiefs from Chaka to Cetywayo that figures so prominently in his African novels.
In Africa at twenty, he was back in England at 27. Even though Science was surging through England and Europe curiously Haggard was untouched by it all his life. There is not even an acknowledgement that he had ever heard of Evolution in his novels. Nor was he religious in the Christian sense. Instead he became well versed in the esoteric tradition leaning even toward a pagan pre-Christian sensibility. Perhaps very close to African animism.
One supposes that on his return to England he might have immersed himself in Madame Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled published in 1877. He certainly seems to be a theosophical adept in his first two African novels, King Solomon’s Mines and She but he must have been pursuing his esoteric studies in Africa to have known so much. If so, he is certainly knowledgeable of Zulu and African lore having a deep sympathy for it. Indeed, he frequently comes across as half African intellectually.
Once he began writing he apparently never put down his pen. I am unclear as to how many novels he wrote. For convenience sake I have used the fantasticfiction.com bibliography which lists 50, but as I have sixty so there are obviously some missing. In addition Haggard wrote a dozen non-fiction titles.
While writing dozens of African novels Haggard also wrote a dozen or so esoteric novels placed throughout the eastern Mediterranean, Mexico and Nicaragua. These are all terrifically impressive displays of esoteric understanding, breathtaking as a whole. Usually disparaged by those without an esoteric background and education these volumes are almost essential reading for anyone so inclined. For those who would deny ERB’s esoteric training and background I refer them to Haggard’s novels.
The key to understanding Haggard’s thinking and works are a batch of novels exploring the relationship of the Anima and Animus. Haggard’s quest in which he failed was to find union with his Anima.
His fictional seeker and alter ego was Allan Quatermain. Thus the first of his esoteric novels is King Solomon’s Mines, in which he introduces Quatermain establishes his Ego or Animus. With his next novel, She, he introduces his Anima figure Ayesha otherwise known as She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed. Early Sheena, Queen Of The Jungle.
She was much acclaimed as the epitome of the Theosophical doctrine by Madame Blavatsky while C.G. Jung asserted that She was a perfect representation of the Anima figure. Haggard followed She (1886) with Ayesha, The Return Of She (1905) and the final volume of the trilogy, Wisdom’s Daughter: The Life And Love Story Of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed (1923). Terrific stuff, well worth a couple reads each. She, of course, became the model for Burroughs’ La of Opar.
Haggard died in 1925 so it can be seen that he was obsessed by his quest for union with his Anima. Two additional volumes deal with his problem. The trilogy does not include Allan Quatermain so Haggard had to write his alter-ego into Ayesha’s story. This was begun in She And Allen of 1920. You can see that he closer he got to his death the problem became more urgent. The end of the story was told in his postumously published Treasure Of The Lake (1926).
Treasure is the most hauntingly beautiful title Haggard wrote. Just astonishing. In the novel Quatermain is ‘called’ to travel to a hidden land. He has no idea why but fate is visibly arranging things so that he must obey. Terrific stuff. The Treasure Of The Lake is none other than Allan’s Anima although no longer called Ayesha. She lives on an island in the middle of a lake in an extinct volcano, She being the Treasure. Heartbreakingly she is not for Allan. He is only to get a glimpse of the grail while a character is rescued by Allan who bears a striking resemblance to Leo Vincey, the hero of She who is winner of the Treasure. The Treasure is reserved for him. Thus Allan and Haggard journey back from the mountain’s top having seen the promised land but not allowed to enter. By the time the first readers, which included Edgar Rice Burroughs, turned the pages H. Rider Haggard had crossed the bar, his bark being far out on the sea.
Burroughs was impressed. His 1931 novel, Tarzan Triumphant, is a direct imitation in certain episodes. Largely on that basis I have to speculate that Burroughs read the entire Haggard corpus at least once.
The Anima novels of Haggard then are:
1. King Solomon’s Mines
2. She
3. Ayesha, The Return Of She
4.Wisdom’s Daughter: The Life And Love Story Of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed
5. She And Allan
6. The Treasure Of The Lake
The writing of the titles span Haggard’s writing career.
His first esoteric novels which I heartily recommend are Cleopatra, The World’s Desire (top notch), The Pearl Maiden, Montezuma’s Daughter, Heart Of The World, Morning Star and Queen Sheba’s Ring.
What most people think of and when anyone thinks of Haggard is his character Allan Quatermain. The makes and remakes of Quatermain and She movies are numerous. You could entertain yourself for many an hour.
Fourteen novels were published during Haggard’s lifetime, the best known being King Soloman’s Mines and Allan Quatermain. Many people have no idea he wrote anything else. She, of the first African trilogy, doesn’t include Quatermain.
Both of the first Quatermains were highly influential on Burroughs. Tarzan was fashioned to some extent on the character Sir Henry Curtis, the original white giant. While most people look for the origins of Tarzan in the Romulus and Remus myth of Rome that is only a small part of it that reflects Burroughs’ understanding of ancient mythology. The models for Tarzan are more diverse including not only Curtis but The Great Sandow who Burroughs saw and possibly met at the great Columbian Exposition of 1893. The list of titles in the Quatermain series: (N.B. It is Quatermain not Quartermain.)
1. King Solomon’s Mines
2. Allan Quatermain
12. Heu-Heu or The Monster
13. Treasure Of The Lake
14. Allan And The Ice Gods
As I look over the list I find that they were all pretty good. The trilogy of Marie, Child Of The Storm and Finished, concerning Chaka’s wars is excellent. The Holy Flower and The Ivory Child are also outstanding. The Ivory Child introduces the notion of the Elephant’s Graveyard that captivated Hollywood while taking a central place in MGM’s Tarzan series of movies.
Other noteworthy African titles are Nada, The Lily, The People Of The Mist and Benita.
In addition to the Esoteric and African novels Haggard wrote various contemporary and historical novels. All of them are high quality but mainly for the Haggard enthusiast. Burroughs may have been influenced to write the diverse range of his stories by Haggard’s example.
In the current print on demand (POD) publishing situation nearly the entire catalog is available. The Wildside Press publishes attractive editons of forty-some titles. Kessinger Publishing publishes most of what Wildside doesn’t and most of what they do but in relatively unattractive editions. You can search other POD publishers and probably come up with what you want.
Haggard is wonderful stuff. You can choose at random and come up with something that truly entertains you.
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"In which Shakespeare comedy does 'Theseus' speak the opening line: ""Now fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour draws apace""?" | No Fear Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act 1, Scene 1
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, and PHILOSTRATE, with others
THESEUS and HIPPOLYTA enter with PHILOSTRATE and others.
5
Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour
Draws on apace. Four happy days bring in
Another moon. But oh, methinks how slow
This old moon wanes! She lingers my desires,
Like to a stepdame or a dowager
Long withering out a young man’s revenue.
THESEUS
Our wedding day is almost here, my beautiful Hippolyta. We’ll be getting married in four days, on the day of the new moon. But it seems to me that the days are passing too slowly—the old moon is taking too long to fade away! That old, slow moon is keeping me from getting what I want, just like an old widow makes her stepson wait to get his inheritance.
10
Four days will quickly steep themselves in night.
Four nights will quickly dream away the time.
And then the moon, like to a silver bow
New bent in heaven, shall behold the night
Of our solemnities.
HIPPOLYTA
No, you’ll see, four days will quickly turn into four nights. And since we dream at night, time passes quickly then. Finally the new moon, curved like a silver bow in the sky, will look down on our wedding celebration.
15
Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments.
Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth.
Turn melancholy forth to funerals.
The pale companion is not for our pomp.
THESEUS
Go, Philostrate, get the young people of Athens ready to celebrate and have a good time. Sadness is only appropriate for funerals. We don’t want it at our festivities.
Exit PHILOSTRATE
Hippolyta, I wooed thee with my sword
And won thy love doing thee injuries.
But I will wed thee in another key,
With pomp, with triumph, and with reveling.
Hippolyta, I wooed you with violence, using my sword, and got you to fall in love with me by injuring you. But I’ll marry you under different circumstances—with extravagant festivals, public festivities, and celebration.
Enter EGEUS and his daughter HERMIA, and LYSANDER and DEMETRIUS
EGEUS enters with his daughter HERMIA, and LYSANDER and DEMETRIUS.
20
Happy be Theseus, our renownèd duke.
EGEUS
| A Midsummer Night's Dream |
In which English city can you catch a tram at stops called Leppings Lane, Fitzalan Square/Ponds Forge and Attercliffe? | A Midsummer Night's Dream: Metaphor Analysis | Novelguide
A Midsummer Night's Dream: Metaphor Analysis
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There are four distinct groups of characters in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and they all use language in a distinctive way. Theseus and Hippolyta speak in a dignified blank verse, which is unrhymed verse based on the iambic pentameter line. An iambic pentameter is a line of five feet (a foot is two syllables), in which the emphasis falls on the first syllable of the foot.
For example, see the opening lines of the play:
Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour
Draws on apace; four happy days bring in
Another moon: but O, methinks, how slow
This old moon wanes! She lingers my desires,
Like to a step-dame or a dowager
Long withering-out a young man's revenue.
Note how the heavy punctuation in line 3 slows the line down, in keeping with the sense. Shakespeare often makes changes in the basic iambic rhythm of the line too, to gain a variety in effect and to match the sense. For example, the second foot of line 4 ("moon wanes") is a spondee, in which both syllables are stressed, rather than an iamb.
Unlike Theseus and Hippolyta, The four lovers often, although not always, speak in rhyming couplets, as when Hermia speaks in Act 1 scene 1, lines 202-07:
Take comfort: he no more shall see my face;
Lysander and myself will fly this place.
Before the time I did Lysander see,
Seem'd Athens as a paradise to me.
O then what graces in my love do dwell,
That he hath turn'd a heaven unto a hell!
In the wood, under pressure of the emotions generated by the confusing situation, the lovers drop their rhyming couplets and speak in blank verse.
The artisans, appropriately enough, speak in prose, except when they try their hand at the rhymed verse of "Pyramus and Thisbe."
Puck and the fairies, and occasionally Oberon too, often use shorter rhyming couplets. Typically these are trochaic tetrameters. The tetrameter is a shorter line than the pentameter, consisting of four feet rather than five. In a trochaic foot, unlike the iambic, the stress falls on the first syllable rather than on the second. For example, see Oberon's speech, Act 2, scene 2, lines 26-32, and Puck's speech later in the same scene (lines 65-82), from which these lines are taken:
Through the forest have I gone;
But Athenian found I none
On whose eyes I might approve
This flower's force in stirring love.
Like Theseus and Hippolyta, Oberon and Titania often, although not always, speak in blank verse, although their speech is more highly poetic than that of Theseus or Hippolyta. It is full of imagery. If one had to pick out the finest, most delicately expressive poetry in the play, for example, one might choose the speeches of the fairy couple on their first appearance, in Act 2 scene 1. Interestingly, when Titania is in love with Bottom, she speaks mainly, although not exclusively, in rhymed verse rather than blank verse.
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What colour is the live wire in an electrical plug? | BBC - GCSE Bitesize: Wiring a plug
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The UK mains electricity supply is about 230V and can kill if not used safely. Electrical circuits, cables, plugs and appliances are designed to reduce the chances of receiving an electric shock. The more electrical energy used, the greater the cost. Electrical supplies can be direct current (d.c.) or alternating current (a.c.).
Wiring a plug
You should know the features of a correctly wired three-pin mains electricity plug and be able to recognise errors in the wiring of a plug.
The cable
A mains electricity cable contains two or three inner wires. Each has a core of copper, because copper is a good conductor of electricity. The outer layers are flexible plastic, because plastic is a good electrical insulatorinsulator: Material that is a poor conductor of electricity or heat.. The inner wires are colour coded:
Colours of inner wires within a cable
colour
The plug
The features of a plug are:
The case is made from tough plastic or rubber, because these materials are good electrical insulators.
The three pins are made from brass, which is a good conductor of electricity.
There is a fusefuse: An electrical component that protects circuits and electrical devices from overload by melting when the current becomes too high. between the live terminal and the live pin.
The fuse breaks the circuit if too much current flows.
The cable is secured in the plug by a cable grip. This should grip the cable itself, and not the individual wires inside it.
The inside of a plug
The diagram shows the key features of a correctly wired three-pin mains plug.
Where does each wire go?
There is an easy way to remember where to connect each wire. Take the second letters of the words blue, brown and striped. This reminds you that when you look into a plug from above:
blue goes left, brown goes right and striped goes to the top.
Page:
| Brown |
Which Yorkshireman is the longest serving male 'Blue Peter' presenter with over 12 years? | How to wire a plug correctly
Although you can strip almost any wire or cable with nothing more than a craft knife, for safety reasons it is better to use a wire stripper. If you plan to do home improvements or your own home repairs, a wire stripper is affordable and easy to use, and they produce results that are reliable and safe.
Stripping electrical cords
To remove the outer plastic sheath it takes a sharp blade, a steady hand and concentration to control the depth of the cut precisely. The one thing that you want to avoid is cutting into the cables inside the cord
The live wire (brown) has been nicked and is no longer safe.
1. Use a craft knife to score a circle around the outer cable, but don’t cut all the way through the plastic. This technique may look dangerous, but it’s safe as long as you apply very light pressure with the knife and keep your thumb on the opposite side of the cord.
TOP RIGHT: Carefully guide the knife around the cable until you reach your starting point. Bend the cable backwards and forwards at the scored line to break the plastic covering. NOTE: Always inspect the insulation on the wires underneath to make sure the blade didn’t nick them. If you see a cut in the wires, start again.
Note: The Yellow/Green wire (Earth) needs to be slightly longer than the blue (Neutral) and Brown (Live) wires, in order to reach the top terminal. It is better to have the cables slightly longer than necessary and cut them to the correct length than try to stretch cables to make them reach the terminals.
2. Use wire strippers to remove the outer plastic coating on the wires. Insert each wire into the stripper to an approximate depth of 20mm. Then hold the wire with one hand while you squeeze the stripper to remove the insulation.
Wiring a plug
While most appliances are supplied with a fitted plug, on older appliances, or where plugs are damaged, you may need to know how to wire a plug.
Inside the plug are three terminals:
Earth : This is where the green and yellow wire goes - however, double insulated appliances do not have an earth wire
Live : The brown wire goes to the live terminal, which is on the right of the plug
Neutral : The blue wire connects to the neutral terminal on the left of the plug.
1. Once you have cut the cables to the right length, and removed the insulation, twist the end of each cable. This ensures that there are no loose copper wires.
2. Thread the cable through the wire grip, and then thread each individual wire to the correct terminal. Tighten the terminal screws and the cord grip screw. Don't over tighten as you may strip the screw thread, but it needs to be tight enough that by pulling on the cable it will not come out of the terminal.
3. Position the cables within the plug so that they are not over - or too close - to where the screws or clip will go to hold the two parts of the plug together.
Article courtesy of: www.home-dzine.co.za
Readers' Comments Have a comment about this article? Email us now.
Although your note indicates that the earth wire needs to be longer than the live / neutral wires, your diagram shows it is shorter. The correct reason for making the earth wire longer is not to reach the earth terminal but to keep the circuit safe when there is an accident involving tension on the outer insulation. The earth wire should be long enough so that should the outer insulation be pulled from the cable clamp, the earth wire is the last of the wires to be pulled from the terminals. In other words, the electrical apparatus remains earthed until it is accidentally disconnected from the supply. In your example above, the earth wire would be the first to become disconnected, creating the conditions for a potential fire / electrocution. I suspect millions of home wired plugs have this potentially dangerous defect because consumers think a correctly wired plug is one where the correct wires go to the correct terminals. They are unaware of the other factors. The root cause of the problem is the standardised plug design used in South Africa which allow consumers to make this error. Additionally, wiring instructions, such as those you have published, describe the incorrect wiring technique. - Barry
About the Author
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How are 'Jean de Dinteville' and 'Georges de Selve' referred to in the title of a 1553 Holbein painting? | Hans Holbein the Younger | The Ambassadors | NG1314 | National Gallery, London
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Professor Philip Steadman and Louise Govier discuss 'The Ambassadors'
3 mins 5 secs
Transcription
Voiceover: The National Gallery Podcast.
Miranda Hinkley (in the studio): Anamorphic art is a term unfamiliar to many, a type of optical illusion, such images tend to be hidden and unique by their very nature. Unless you look at a piece of anamorphic art from exactly the right angle, you won’t see the intended image which is often only visible to one person at a time. I spoke to Professor Philip Steadman, an expert in perspective, and podcast regular, Louise Govier, to find out more, and began by asking Louise to point out the most famous anamorphic illusion in the Gallery, the mysterious white smudge at the bottom of [Hans] Holbein’s masterpiece, 'The Ambassadors'.
Louise Govier: Yes, it’s in the skull in the foreground of the painting. I’ve sat in front of this painting with all sorts of groups of people, school children, and asked them what this weird object is, stretched out, white object in the front. And often they say, oh it’s a feather, it’s a baguette, I’m not sure, and you have to wait for one person to be sitting at the right-hand side of the painting who suddenly says, oh, it’s a skull. It’s a distortion that allows you to work out what it is when you just stand in the right place, it seems to pop into position.
Miranda Hinkley: And in fact there’s a clue as to where you have to stand, because if you look at the floor in front of the painting, there’s a very worn patch over to the right, and if we now go and stand in exactly that spot, then it all begins to make sense.
Louise Govier: Yes, absolutely. Now I’m standing right in the place where you should be, it looks recognisably like a skull, sometimes a bit more three-dimensional than others, but you can really see that it is meant to be a reminder of death. Of course this is an amazing, very lavish portrait, and if you follow the line up from the skull towards the top left-hand corner of the painting, you realise the tiny thing peeking out is a crucifix. It’s a reminder that these two men are aware of their mortality and of the fact that salvation lies through God, Christ and the afterlife.
Miranda Hinkley: Well, we’re also joined by Philip Steadman, who’s an expert on perspective in art and architecture. Philip, is it significant that we’re stood off to the right, would this effect also work if we were on the other side?
Philip Steadman: No, there’s got to be a particular viewpoint from which you look at it, like all perspectives, but with anamorphic perspectives it’s particularly important that you go to the viewpoint. In most pictures in perspective, they’re quite forgiving, you can look at them from many points of view, but anamorphic perspective is a very distorted kind, and it only looks correct when you get round to wherever the viewpoint is.
Miranda Hinkley: You’ve been listening to an extract from the National Gallery podcast. You can subscribe to the monthly show by visiting www.nationalgallery.org.uk /podcasts.
| The Ambassadors |
"Which Shakespeare tragedy opens with a Prologue beginning: ""Two households, both alike in dignity. In fair Verona, where we lay our scene""?" | Holbein's way
Holbein's way
Town & Country;Jul93, Vol. 147 Issue 5158, p94
SOURCE TYPE
Article
ABSTRACT
Announces the exhibition of Hans Holbein's portrait works at the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh. 28 portraits of Henry VIII and his entourage; Holbein's images; Trascendency of the subject from moment to present in the full majesty of humanity.
ACCESSION #
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Who was the President of A.C. Milan Football Club from 1986 to 2004? | History
History
History
The first headquarters were established at the 'Fiaschetteria Toscana' on Via Berchet in Milan, back in 1899
The first headquarters were established at the 'Fiaschetteria Toscana' on Via Berchet in Milan, back in 1899. From that moment on the glorious history of Milan was born as the club went on to write its name in football's record books to become, especially over the last 15 years, one of the most famous and successful teams in the world.
The Rossoneri history is studded with legendary names of men who have made a major contribution to the club's development, be they presidents, coaches or players. The first president was a British expatriate, Alfred Edwards, who oversaw the club's first title - a mere two years after its foundation. The president with the most victories is Silvio Berlusconi who has taken Milan to the pinnacle of the world game since taking control in 1986.
A great team needs a great coach and Milan have certainly had their fair share of the richest talent around. The likes of Gipo Viani, Nereo Rocco and Nils Liedholm were the early masters and they were followed by Arrigo Sacchi and Fabio Capello who took tactics and team strategy to a new level, which heralded much of what we can term as the modern approach to the game. Along the way, each and everyone of them also made sure their teams played spectacular football.
The ushering in of the Berlusconi era first saw Sacchi and then Capello win numerous trophies. Sacchi won back to back European Cups with a team considered to have been one of the greatest teams in history, also claiming a Serie A title, two Intercontinental and European Super Cups. Capello followed that with four league titles, one European Cup and one European Super Cup. Alberto Zaccheroni kept the rich tradition going as he led the team to a league title in his first year before Fatih Terim took over for a short time and then passed the reins on to Carlo Ancelotti whose management skills have brought Milan back to top spot in Italy and throughout Europe.
1899/1929
On December 16, 1899 Milan Foot-Ball and Cricket Club was officially formed, but the first time Milan's name appeared publicly was on Monday, December 18 in an article by the Gazzetta dello Sport newspaper. The original headquarters were initially in the Fiaschetteria Toscana in Via Berchet in Milan and President Alfred Ormonde Edwards enrolled the team in the Italian Football Federation the following January.
The team played just one game during their first season, against Torino, and despite a defeat Milan lifted their first Trophy, the 'King's Medal', presented by King Umberto I.
In 1900/01, Milan won their first national title and their second King's Medal, which they went on to win again the following season. Over the years, Kiplin's team had widespread success and Milan became the most popular team in the Lombardy region, winning the prestigious 'Palla Dapples' for three successive seasons (1904/05 - 1905/06 - 1906/07), even though they failed to make in-roads in the Championship: the second title failed to arrive until the 1905/06 season and the third was won the following year.
The leading player was Louis Van Hege, a great goalscorer with an extraordinary average of 1.1 goals per game. In the 1914/15 season, the Championship was halted before the end of the year due to the outbreak of World War I, and it only started again in 1919. After several changes in the management structure, Pietro Pirelli was appointed as the new President. He held this role for almost twenty years, during which time the San Siro Stadium was inaugurated.
1929/1949
The 1920s are a period of consolidation for the Rossoneri with the team not making a major breakthrough on the pitch.
The club changes its name from Milan F.C. to Milan Associazione Sportiva, and following a number of changes in the top management, Umberto Trabattoni becomes president in 1940. It is a position he will hold until 1954. The team goes through a period of highs and lows but usually finishes the season in mid-table and rarely ends up in one of the top four places..
World War II puts an end to football until the 1946-47 season when the championship returns with each side playing each other just once. Milan manage to finish fourth behind the great Torino, Juventus and Modena. Over the next two seasons there is something of a rebirth as the team finishes in second and third place, with Torino crowned champions on both occasions.
1949/1955
The arrival of Gunnar Nordhal marked the beginning of a new era for a Rossoneri side that had for too many years been considered also-rans when it came to the league title. Apart from Nordhal, who was the league's top-scorer with 35 goals in the 1949/50 campaign, two other Swedes joined the team: Nils Liedholm and Gunnar Gren. All three, along with goalkeeper Buffon, were the reinforcements the side needed.
Milan won its fourth title in the 1950/51 season and crowned a historical year by adding the Latin Cup.
Success kept coming and Nordahl was the league's leading goalscorer for three consecutive seasons, 1952/53, 1953/54 and 1954/55. In his last season, the captain fittingly led the Rossoneri to another title.
In 1954, Juan Alberto Schiaffino, nicknamed "Pepe", was bought from Penarol and became one of the leading players in the team for years to come.
1955/1960
The 1955/56 season saw Milan take part in the first edition of the Champions Cup where they were defeated by eventual winners Real Madrid in the semi-finals, but did lift the Latin Cup for the second time when they came out 3-1 winners against Athletic Bilbao in the final.
With the arrival of new coach Gipo Viani to take charge of the team, Milan won the league title in the 1956/57 season, but the real surprise of the campaign was striker Gastone Bean, who scored 17 goals. A year later, the side became even more competitive when Josè Altafini joined the team: the Brazilian won over the fans with his skills and speed, and together with the "old" captain Liedholm, Cesare Maldini and "Pepe" Schiaffino, the unforgettable playmaker in midfield, Milan won the title at the end of an exciting head-to-head with Fiorentina.
Schiaffino, one of the few players who deserves the title of true champion, played out his final season in a Milan side that failed to set the campaign alight, but at least the Rossoneri overcame city rivals Inter 5-3 in the spring derby, with Altafini scoring four goals.
1960/1970
While the previous years had been marked by foreign players (Gre-No-Li, Schiaffino-Altafini) leading the way, between 1960 and 1970, Italian players would not only take over as protagonists in the club's history but come to prominence in the world game and gain fame at an international level. From the Rome 1960 Olympic side arrived players such as Trapattoni, Trebbi, Alfieri and Noletti along with a young boy named Gianni Rivera who played his first game for the club when he was only 17 against Alessandria, his previous team, in a 5-3 win for Milan. The Rossoneri were in the title race right down to the wire but two defeats in the last two games, against Bari and Fiorentina, gave them only a runners-up spot.
When Nils Liedholm left, 'Paròn' Nereo Rocco arrived as the new coach to herald a new era, marked by success both at home and abroad. The first trophy was the league title in the 1961-62 season, but the most exciting and memorable success was the first European Cup. The final against Benfica, played at Wembley Stadium on May 22, 1963, was a fascinating match: Milan raised the cup after defeating the Portuguese side 2-1 (Altafini scored twice for Milan and Eusebio scored for Benfica). The iconic image of captain Cesare Maldini raising the cup together with Nereo Rocco is still imprinted in the memory of all Rossoneri supporters.
Milan were unable to repeat their success in the Intercontinental Cup, where Milan lost the decisive match 1-0 at the Maracanà Stadium against Santos. At the end of the season, president Andrea Rizzoli left the club after nine years of great successes including four league titles, one Latin Cup and the prestigious European Cup. He is remembered not only for his sporting achievements, but also for establishing the training centre of Milanello which would become an important asset down through the years.
After a number of disappointing seasons where the team played well below their potential, Milan returned to the top of the table in the 1967-68 season, winning their ninth league title and the prestige of the club grew further with the victory of the European Cup Winners' Cup, the first in Milan's history. Having been crowned champions meant a return to the European Cup the following season and the Rivera-Prati partnership turned on the style in the final at the Bernabeu stadium where they defeated Dutch side Ajax, which included a young Johan Cruijff, 4-1. Milan goalkeeper Fabio Cudicini had already earned the nickname 'The Black Spider' following his exploits in keeping Manchester United at bay in the semi-final. Milan were also finally crowned World Champions after a 3-0 win at the San Siro was followed by a 2-0 defeat at the Bombonera Stadium in Buenos Aires against Estudiantes. The class and style of Gianni Rivera earned the midfield playmaker the Golden Ball for the European Footballer of the Year in 1969, earning this wonderful tribute: 'in a barren world of football, Rivera is the only one to possess a sense of poetry.'
1970/1985
One of the darkest periods of Milan's history that left the club with little to celebrate. The only bright spot came when the team were bestowed the honour of wearing 'the Star' on their jerseys after winning a 10th league title, in 1979. The team also lifted the Italian Cup on three occasions along with one European Cup Winners’ Cup.
The Italian champions were coached by Nils Liedholm, who gave a debut to a young player who would go on to captain the side and become one of the best defenders in the world: Franco Baresi. The great Franco played his first competitive game for Milan on April 23, 1978 in a 2-1 victory at Verona.
These years also saw numerous coaches come and go and the retirement of the legendary midfield general Gianni Rivera who moved on to take a position as club vice-president.
The first eight years of the 1980s saw a decline in the previous high standards, with the team playing two seasons in Serie B. However, it was not all bad news as Paolo Maldini stepped onto the football stage when he made his debut on January 20, 1985 in a 1-1 draw at Udinese. Paolo, of course, would go on to follow in Baresi's footsteps and captain the side to success both at home and abroad.
1985/2007
After achieving success in previous seasons, Nils Liedholm was reinstated as coach. However, results did not improve in either the league or in cup competitions. The club had arrived at a point where a major overhaul was required and on March 24, 1986, Silvio Berlusconi was named Milan's 21st president.
The new president decided to radically reinforce the team and made the decision to move into the transfer market. In the 1986/78 season, the likes of Roberto Donadoni, Dario Bonetti, Giuseppe Galderisi, Daniele Massaro and Giovanni Galli were signed to join English stars Mark Hateley and Ray Wilkins. It would take the new arrivals time to gel but Milan managed to qualify for the UEFA Cup thanks to a play-off win over Sampdoria, with Massaro scoring the only goal of the game in extra-time.
The 1978/89 season saw the arrival of Arrigo Sacchi. The new coach was an exponent of zonal marking, total football, along with pressure and speed on opponents when they had possession. Along with the arrival of Dutch stars Marco Van Basten and Ruud Gullit, the team would enter a new and exciting era that would transform the game not only in Italy but throughout the world. Youth team player Alessandro Costacurta was also promoted to the first-team squad and Milan got down to turning the season into one of those incredible moments. Despite some adverse off-field penalties, including losing a match 2-0 against Roma due to a sporting arbitration decision, the team fought-back and went head-to-head with Diego Maradona's Napoli at the top of the table. A 3-2 win at Napoli's San Paolo stadium on May 18, 1988 gave Milan its 11th league title and the first of the Berlusconi era.
The Dutch pair of Gullit and Van Basten were joined by fellow-countryman, Frank Rijkaard to form another new trio from the same country much as Gunnar Nordhal, Nils Liedholm and Gunnar Gren - the 'Gre-No-Li' - had done back in the 1950s. From that point on, it was success after success. In the 1988/89 season, Milan ruled Europe, lifting the Champions Cup after knocking out Vitocha, Red Star Belgrade, Werder Brema and then Real Madrid in the semi-finals to reach the final against Steaua Bucarest. Over 100,000 spectators filled Barcelona's Nou Camp stadium to watch Milan run out 4-0 winners. With Sacchi in charge, the team won a league title, two Champions Cups, two Intercontinental Cups, two European Super Cups and one Italian League Super Cup.
Former Milan midfielder Fabio Capello replaced Sacchi at the start of the 1992/93 season but the team continued to dominate both at home and abroad, winning four league titles (three consecutively), three Italian League Super Cups, one Champions Cup (won in the unforgettable final against favourites Barcelona) and one European Super Cup.
The period between 1986 and 1996 was without a doubt the most prolific period, not only in terms of the number of trophies won, but in the excellent performances and exciting style of play. "The Immortals" and "The Invincibles", as they were known, took the game to new heights but the late '90s were not as positive as the beginning of the decade had been. The club alternated between a succession of coaches (Tabarez, then Sacchi and Capello again) but with the arrival of Alberto Zaccheroni in 1999, Milan won its 16th league title in the same season as the club's centenary celebrations.
The period between 1986 and 1996 was without a doubt the most prolific period, not only in terms of the number of trophies won, but in the excellent performances and exciting style of play. "The Immortals" and "The Invincibles", as they were known, took the game to new heights but the late '90s were not as positive as the beginning of the decade had been. The club alternated between a succession of coaches (Tabarez, then Sacchi and Capello again) but with the arrival of Alberto Zaccheroni in 1999, Milan won its 16th league title in the same season as the club's centenary celebrations.
The rest of Milan's history takes us up until the present period, with Carlo Ancelotti taking over from Fatih Terim, and coincides with the team winning the Champions League in 2003 when they defeated Italian rivals Juventus in the final. Milan also lifted the Italian Cup and the European Super Cup that same year.
The league title returned to the club's Via Turati headquarters at the end of the 2003/04 season for what was the 17th time and the team started the following season by winning the Italian League Super Cup on August 21. However, the 2004/05 season was to leave a bitter taste in the mouth, and despite some excellent performances, the team was unable to attain the heights of the previous campaign. The 2006/2007 season instead was one of excellent work in terms of effort, courage and success on the pitch. Milan were given little chance following the penalisation handed out by the sporting judges at the start of the season but the players and coaching staff 'pulled up their sleeves' to turn events around in an amazing way. The players were called back early from their summer holidays, with some of them having just won the World Cup. The squad gathered at Milanello, united and determined, and they qualified for the group phase of the Champions League thanks to a two-legged win over Red Star Belgrade in the preliminary round. Milan also started well in the league but paid for their lack of pre-season preparation as the year wore on. However, some warm-weather training in Malta during the winter break revitalised the team. Carlo Ancelotti's players were in excellent form going into the final stages of the season, as they centred their objectives on fourth place in the league and the Champions League. With fourth place secured, the final in Athens confirmed the strength of character of the team as it overcame the injustice, envy and misfortune it was forced to endure.
One of the last conquered trophies is the European Supercup won on 31st August 2007 in Montecarlo in the final played against Seville, the Uefa Cup title holder: a match played without enthusiasm due to the premature death of the Andalusian player Antonio Puerta. However, another important appointment is scheduled for the Rossoneri in the 2007/2008 season: the difficult trip to Japan to win the FIFA Club World Cup, the most prestigious intercontinental trophy a Club can long for. Milan left Italy to Yokohama ready to face this nth challenge with one more motivation: winning the trophy would mean becoming the most successful Club in the world with the highest number of international trophies conquered and therefore beating Argentine Boca Juniors. After winning the semi-final against Urawa Red Diamonds Ancelotti’s men started concentrated and determined the final tie against Boca. The “world derby” was staged: the Rossoneri’s performance was practically perfect, decisively spectacular and the final result, 4-2 for them, crowned Milan as the most successful Club in the world. The city of Milan and all Milan’s fans celebrated together with the players this prestigious goal achieved thanks to the strength of a fantastic group capable of offering very special moments.
Over the last few seasons the Rossoneri, four-times semi-finalists of the top European competition in five years, have certainly reaffirmed themselves as key players in the national and international scenarios, and are prepared for new achievements supported by the enthusiasm of their numerous fans In Italy and abroad, and by over one hundred year tradition of emotions and successes.
Following the departure of Leonardo, the Rossoneri were taken over by coach Massimiliano Allegri, who for the 2010/2011 season had an all-star team to rely on thanks to new signings Ibrahimovic and Robinho in August 2010 and Cassano, Van Bommel and Emanuelson in January 2011. With these new faces reinforcing the squad, the coach took Milan to the club's 18th Italian League title and 6th Italian Super Cup.
After two and a half seasons which included a Serie A runners-up spot and a third-place finish, Massimiliano Allegri was replaced by Clarence Seedorf as Milan coach in January 2014, with the former Rossoneri midfielder guiding the team to sixth place by the end of the 2013/14 campaign.
Filippo Inzaghi, who had already written his name into Rossoneri history as a player and then coach of the youth team, is preparing to take charge of the first team for the 2014/15 season.
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| Silvio Berlusconi |
Which of the alkali metals, with the atomic number 19 is missing from - Lithium, Sodium, Rubidium, Caesium and Francium? | The greatest teams of all time: AC Milan 1988-90 - UEFA Champions League - News - UEFA.com
The greatest teams of all time: AC Milan 1988-90
Saturday 4 July 2015 by Paolo Menicucci
The Greatest: "We defended by attacking and pressing," says Carlo Ancelotti as he recalls the AC Milan side that crushed all comers in the late 1980s under Arrigo Sacchi.
©Getty Images
UEFA.com analyses the teams that changed football; this time, the AC Milan side that won back-to-back European Champion Clubs' Cups at the turn of the 1990s.
The golden age
Without a trophy since winning a tenth Scudetto in 1979, Milan were in the doldrums until Silvio Berlusconi took over as president in 1986. The relatively-unknown Arrigo Sacchi joined as coach in summer 1987, along with Dutchmen Marco van Basten and Ruud Gullit. Sacchi's squad won the Italian title in their first season, then the European Cup – and indeed the corresponding UEFA Super Cups and European/South American Cups – in the following two campaigns.
Though Fabio Capello and later Carlo Ancelotti would maintain Milan's position as a major force in European football, Sacchi's side was the most memorable of the age. "Our president had a dream," Sacchi recalled. "He wanted to build the best team in the world. When I arrived, I found a group of great professionals who were eager to win, but only by playing the most spectacular football."
Barcelona 2008-12: Guardiola's greatest
The baton handover
Beating Real Madrid CF in the semi-final of the 1988/89 European Cup was a watershed moment for Milan, who had signed a third Dutch star, Frank Rijkaard, the previous summer. Madrid were considered effectively unbeatable at home, with Milan expected to sit back and accept punishment in the first leg at the Santiago Bernabéu. Sacchi, however, had other plans.
His side took the initiative and were unlucky to be held to a 1-1 draw. No matter. They won the return leg 5-0 in Milan, with Ancelotti scoring a brilliant opener. "Ancelotti's goal was emblematic of our approach," midfielder Roberto Donadoni said. "We were incredibly determined and hungry."
"Fantastique Milan AC!" read the headline in French sports paper L'Equipe the following day, with their 4-0 final victory against FC Steaua București in Barcelona – with two goals each from Gullit and Van Basten – almost an afterthought.
Arrigo Sacchi in 1990©Getty Images
The game-changing philosophy
Committed to concepts like "collective intelligence", Sacchi demanded "11 active players in every moment of the game, both in defence and attack". Remarkably, he used to stage full matches in training without a ball, telling players where the imaginary ball was so they could respond – and position themselves – accordingly.
"The only way you can build a side is by getting players who can play a team game," Sacchi said. "You can't achieve anything on your own, and if you do, it doesn't last long. I often quote what Michelangelo said: 'The spirit guides the hand.'"
The tactical genius
"I never realised that to be a jockey you had to be a horse first," snapped Sacchi after critics questioned the unremarkable defender's ability to lead a top club like Milan. He had worked his way up the ranks as a coach, joining Milan after a successful spell at Parma FC, and was determined to change the traditional Italian style. "Most Italian teams focus on defence," he explained. "Every team played with a libero and man-markers. In attack, everything hinged on the individual skills and creativity of the No10."
Sacchi's sides played in a 4-4-2 system with zonal marking, the distance between the defence and midfield lines never greater than 25 to 30 metres. That high defensive line – and an efficient offside trap – maintained pressure on opponents not used to being hurried.
The star players
Franco Baresi: 'Kaiser Franz' was coach Nils Liedholm's libero when Milan won the 1978/79 Scudetto, and captained Milan through hard times before embracing zonal marking to lead Sacchi's defensive line, marshalling the equally daunting Mauro Tassotti, Alessandro Costacurta and Paolo Maldini.
Ruud Gullit in 1989©Getty Images
Ruud Gullit: The epitome of Sacchi's total football style, Gullit could threaten in any position. "He is a great player by any standards," George Best said of him in 1990. "He's not afraid to do things with the ball. And he looks as if he's enjoying every second of it. By my reckoning that's what makes him an even better player than Maradona."
Marco van Basten: "He remains the best striker of all time in my opinion," Sacchi once said of the Dutchman. "No other forward has worked as hard for the team as Marco did at Milan. Above all, however, I remember him for his elegance, his grace and his incredible ability."
What they said
Roberto Donadoni: "Sacchi started a revolution in Italian football, at mental and tactical level. We had our style of playing and we were trying to impose it on all opponents, from amateurs in a mid-week training game to Real Madrid at the Bernabéu."
Carlo Ancelotti: "Arrigo completely changed Italian football – the philosophy, the training methods, the intensity, the tactics. Italian teams used to focus on defending – we defended by attacking and pressing."
Xavi Hernández, FC Barcelona midfielder in 2012: "We are incredibly proud when they compare us with Sacchi's Milan. That was a side which made history in football."
© 1998-2017 UEFA. All rights reserved. Last updated: 1/13/2017 12:00:54 PM
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Who painted the early sixteenth century triptych 'The Garden of Earthly Delights'? | Art Through Time: A Global View - Garden of Earthly Delights
Garden of Earthly Delights
» Hieronymus Bosch (Netherlandish, ca. 1450–1516)
Hieronymus Bosch, famous for his fantastical, often monstrous, hybrid creatures, might in some ways be seen as a forerunner of the Surrealists.
However, while the Surrealists played in the realms of dreams and the unconscious, Bosch was steeped in the religiosity of his age and the worlds he conjured up demonstrated what were believed to be the very real, and sobering, consequences of earthly behavior.
Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights is a triptych, meaning that it consists of three parts—a central panel with one hinged wing on either side. Closed, the triptych depicts a translucent sphere encompassing earth, sky, and sea. The scene, rendered in monochromatic shades of grey (a style known as grisaille), is thought by some to represent creation. Others have linked it to the great flood by which God cleanses the world at the time of Noah. The interior of the triptych is the subject of even greater contention.
The wings of Bosch’s triptych open to reveal a colorful interior filled to the point of bursting with strange architecture, unnatural landforms, and all types of hybrid creatures. In the foreground of the left hand panel, God the Father stands between the naked figures of Adam and Eve, surrounded by various flora and fauna. This is, no doubt, the Garden of Eden, though the scene is not without a dark side. In the distance, an animal tears at the flesh of his prey while black birds circle around.
The central panel of the triptych is the one from which the piece takes its current title. This “Garden of Earthly Delights” features hordes of nude men and women cavorting in a landscape that is home to enormous birds, oversized fruit, and bizarre vegetation. The scene is lively, chaotic, and orgiastic in tone. Although the uninhibited behavior of the figures seems at first glance to be lascivious, in fact, it is ambiguous. Despite the many naked congregations and couples Bosch places in the image, there are no sexual acts explicitly portrayed. Scholars have debated the meaning of this central image, arguing that it represents a vision of innocent pleasure, a cauldron of sinful excess, and everything in between.
The leftmost panel of the work is, paradoxically, the most disturbing and the least enigmatic. Here are depicted the horrors of Hell, a place where sinners are skewered by giant hares, tortured on oversized instruments, and ingested by a grotesque insect-like being, only to be excreted moments later. Whatever the meaning of the triptych as a whole, Bosch reminds the viewer that damnation is a very possible (perhaps the only possible) outcome in this corrupt world.
Although The Garden of Earthly Delights takes a form frequently used for altarpieces in the sixteenth century, documentation suggests that it was housed in a secular context, probably commissioned by a wealthy patron. Henry III of Nassau, a governor of the Habsburgs in the Netherlands, has been suggested as one potential owner.
| Hieronymus Bosch |
On which TV show was Judith Hann the longest serving presenter, with over 20 years? | Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com
Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights
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Instructor: Christopher Muscato
Chris has a master's degree in history and teaches at the University of Northern Colorado.
In this lesson, you will explore a complex and intricate painting by Hieronymus Bosch and examine the world of 16th-century religious painting. Then, test your understanding with a brief quiz.
Hieronymus Bosch's Triptych
Say hello to Hieronymus Bosch. Hello, Hieronymus. He's a Netherlandish painter who lived and worked in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Bosch was known for painting triptychs, altarpieces with three panels. Simple enough so far, right? Okay, now here's his most famous triptych. Whoa. This is the Garden of Earthly Delights, a modern title given to Bosch's masterpiece triptych painted between 1490 and 1510. This is amongst the most intricate and enigmatic paintings of Western history, filled with images and symbols that have sparked debate for centuries.
Description
Bosch's triptych is made of oak panel and oil paint and like most triptychs, the outer two wings fold in. Most triptychs were only opened on special occasions, so they had a closed view as well as an open view. This is the closed view. It's an image of the world during the Creation. God can be seen in the upper left and the world appears in a sphere, based on a traditional depiction for the time of the newly created world as a crystal orb. The entire thing is painted in grisaille, meaning it's entirely in various shades of a single color. Many scholars think that this represents the stage of creation. There's no color because the sun and moon have not yet been created. There is simply an ephemeral light and seas, putting this at the third day of Creation.
The outside is dark and dreary, a strong contrast to this - the inside view. When the outside wings were opened, this is what we see - a massive and intricate scene of people in a vast landscape. Most triptychs were read from left to right, like a book, so we'll do the same.
The left panel shows a scene from the Garden of Eden, after Eve has just been created from Adam's rib. Real and mythological creatures fill the scene, many of which were symbolic of fertility or eternal life. The center panel, the largest scene, shows dozens of nude figures, surrounded by animals, enormous fruits, and other plants. It is a paradise, but not a divine one. The figures are all engaged in simple, joyful pursuits, with the exception of a single clothed figure, who many assume was the patron of the piece.
Finally, we have the right panel, which is dramatically different. It's dark, it's scary. It's Hell. I mean literally, this is Hell, where the souls of the damned spend eternity. Fire, torture, and demons have replaced the friendly animals, large fruits, and simple joys of the center panel. The main figure is an enormous, hollow torso of a man. If that's not enough to give you nightmares… well, let's just go back to that center panel. It's much nicer.
Interpretations
The inside of Bosch's triptych has been the source of a considerable amount of debate. What exactly does it all mean? Like I said, most triptychs of the time were narrative, telling a story when read from left to right. If we do that, we see a scene of heavenly paradise, followed by a scene of earthly, and therefore sinful, paradise, and finally a scene of damnation. From that reading, this is a story of the price of sin. Bosch lived in a part of Europe that was still very much under the moral authority of the Church, and the nakedness of the people in the center panel could be a sign of their lust, greed, impiety, and vanity. So, it's not out of the question to assume that this triptych is showing how a life of pleasure leads to eternal damnation.
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| i don't know |
Which instrument measures the electrical current in a circuit? | Current Measurements: How-To Guide - National Instruments
Current Measurements: How-To Guide
Publish Date: Nov 11, 2014 | 20 Ratings | 4.20 out of 5 | Print | Submit your review
Overview
This document is part of the How-To Guide for Most Common Measurements centralized resource portal.
Table of Contents
Current Webcasts, Tutorials, and Other How-To Resources
1. Current Overview
Electric current is the flow of electric charge. The SI unit of electric current is the ampere (A), which is equal to a flow of one coulomb of charge per second.
While there are several methods of measuring current, the most common method is to perform an indirect measurement by measuring the voltage across a precision resistor and using Ohm’s law to measure the current across the resistor.
Current Fundamentals
In solid conductive metal, a large population of electrons is either mobile or free. When a metal wire is connected across the two terminals of a DC voltage source such as a battery, the source places an electric field across the conductor. The moment contact is made, the free electrons of the conductor are forced to drift toward the positive terminal under the influence of this field.
The free electron is therefore the current carrier in a typical solid conductor. For an electric current of 1 ampere rate, 1 coulomb of electric charge (which consists of about 6.242 × 1018 electrons) drifts every second through the imaginary plane through which the conductor passes.
Figure 1. Illustration of Current Flow
Conventional current was defined early in the history of electrical science as a flow of positive charge. In solid metals, like wires, the positive charge carriers are immobile, and only the negatively charged electrons flow. Because the electron carries a negative charge, the electron current flows in the opposite direction of the conventional (or electric) current.
When solving electrical circuits, the actual direction of current through a specific circuit element is usually unknown. Consequently, each circuit element is assigned a current variable with an arbitrarily chosen reference direction. When the circuit is solved, the circuit element currents may have positive or negative values. A negative value means that the actual direction of current through that circuit element is opposite that of the chosen reference direction.
2. How to Make a Current Measurement
Current Measurement Methods
There are two main ways to measure current – one is based on electromagnetics and is associated with the early moving coil (d’Arsonval) meter, and the other is based on the main theory of electricity, Ohm’s law.
D’Arsonval Meter/Galvanometer
A d’Arsonval meter is a type of ammeter, which is an instrument for detecting and measuring electric current. It is an analog electromechanical transducer that produces a rotary deflection, through a limited arc, in response to electric current flowing through its coil.
The d’Arsonval form used today is constructed with a small pivoting coil of wire in the field of a permanent magnet. The coil is attached to a thin pointer that traverses a calibrated scale. A tiny torsion spring pulls the coil and pointer to the zero position.
When a direct current (DC) flows through the coil, the coil generates a magnetic field. This field acts against the permanent magnet. The coil twists, pushing against the spring, and moves the pointer. The hand points at a scale indicating the electric current. Careful design of the pole pieces ensures that the magnetic field is uniform, so that the angular deflection of the pointer is proportional to the current.
Other Ammeters
Essentially, most of today’s ammeters are based on the fundamental theory of electricity, Ohm’s law. Modern ammeters are essentially voltmeters with a precision resistor, and using Ohm’s law, an accurate yet cost-effective measurement can be made.
Ohm’s Law – Ohm’s law states that, in an electrical circuit, the current passing through a conductor between two points is directly proportional to the potential difference (in other words, voltage drop or voltage) across the two points, and inversely proportional to the resistance between them.
The mathematical equation that describes this relationship is:
I = V/R
where I is the current in amperes, V is the potential difference between two points of interest in volts, and R is a circuit parameter, measured in ohms (which is equivalent to volts per ampere), called the resistance.
Ammeter Operation – Today’s ammeters have an internal resistance to measure the current across the particular signal. However, when the internal resistance is not enough to measure larger currents, an external configuration is needed.
To measure larger currents, you can place a precision resistor called a shunt in parallel with the meter. Most of the current flows through the shunt, and only a small fraction flows through the meter. This allows the meter to measure larger currents.
Any resistor is acceptable, as long as the maximum expected current multiplied by the resistance does not exceed the input range of the ammeter or data acquisition device.
When measuring current in this fashion, you should use the smallest value resistor possible because this creates the smallest interference with the existing circuit. However, smaller resistances create smaller voltage drops, so you must make a compromise between resolution and circuit interference.
Figure 2 shows a common schematic of current measurement across a shunt resistor.
Figure 2. Connecting a Shunt Resistor to a Measurement
Using this approach, the current is not actually directed into the ammeter/data acquisition board but instead through an external shunt resistor. The largest current you can measure is theoretically limitless, provided the voltage drop across the shunt resistor does not exceed the working voltage range of the ammeter/data acquisition board.
Current Conventions
Conventional Currents
Conventional currents are the current measurements common in today’s electronics, electrical circuitry, transmission lines, and so on. They do not conform to a transmission standard, and they can range from zero to large values of amperage.
Current Loops/4-20 mA Convention
Analog current loops are used for any purpose where a device needs to be either monitored or controlled remotely over a pair of conductors. Only one current level can be present at any time.
“Four to 20 milliamp current loop,” or 4-20 mA, is an analog electrical transmission standard for industrial instrumentation and communication. The signal is a current loop where 4 mA represents the zero percent signal and 20 mA represents the 100 percent signal.[1] The “mA” stands for milliampere, or 1/1000 of an ampere.
The “live zero” at 4 mA allows the receiving instrumentation to distinguish between a zero signal and a broken wire or a dead instrument.[1] Developed in the 1950s, this standard is still widely used in industry today. Benefits of the 4-20 mA convention include wide use by manufacturers, relatively low implementation costs, and its ability to reject many forms of electrical noise. Also, with the live zero, you can directly power low-power instruments from the loop, saving the cost of extra wires.
Accuracy Considerations
Placement of the shunt resistor in the circuit is important. If the external circuit shares a common ground with the computer containing the ammeter/data acquisition board, then you should place the shunt resistor as close to the ground leg of the circuit as possible. If not, the common-mode voltage produced by the shunt resistor might be outside the specification for the ammeter/data acquisition board, which could lead to inaccurate readings or even damage the board. Figure 3 shows the correct and incorrect placements of the shunt resistor.
Figure 3. Shunt Resistor Placement
Data Acquisition Device Measurements
There are three different methods of measuring analog inputs. Please refer to the “How to Make a Voltage Measurement” article for additional information on each configuration.
As an example, consider the NI CompactDAQ USB data acquisition system. Figure 4 shows the NI cDAQ-9178 chassis and an NI 9203 analog current input module. The NI 9203 does not require an external shunt resistor due to the presence of an internal precision resistor.
Figure 4. NI cDAQ-9178 Chassis and NI 9203 Analog Current Input Module
Figure 5 shows the connection diagram for Reference Single-Ended (RSE) current measurements using an NI cDAQ-9178 chassis with an NI 9203 as well as the pin-outs for the module. In the figure, Pin 0 corresponds to the “Analog Input 0” channel and Pin 9 corresponds to the common ground.
Figure 5. Current Measurement in RSE Configuration
In addition to the NI 9203, general-purpose analog input modules, such as the NI 9205 , can provide current input functionality using an external shunt resistor.
Getting to See Your Measurement: NI LabVIEW
Once you have connected the sensor to the measurement instrument, you can use LabVIEW graphical programming software to visualize and analyze data as needed.
Figure 6. LabVIEW Current Measurement
References
| Ammeter |
On which sport did 'Whispering Ted Lowe' commentate on TV? | Lessons In Electric Circuits -- Volume VI (Experiments) - Chapter 2
Lessons In Electric Circuits -- Volume VI
Chapter 2
One light-emitting diode (Radio Shack catalog # 276-026 or equivalent)
Small "hobby" motor, permanent-magnet type (Radio Shack catalog # 273-223 or equivalent)
Two jumper wires with "alligator clip" ends (Radio Shack catalog # 278-1156, 278-1157, or equivalent)
A multimeter is an electrical instrument capable of measuring voltage, current, and resistance. Digital multimeters have numerical displays, like digital clocks, for indicating the quantity of voltage, current, or resistance. Analog multimeters indicate these quantities by means of a moving pointer over a printed scale.
Analog multimeters tend to be less expensive than digital multimeters, and more beneficial as learning tools for the first-time student of electricity. I strongly recommend purchasing an analog multimeter before purchasing a digital multimeter, but to eventually have both in your tool kit for these experiments.
CROSS-REFERENCES
Lessons In Electric Circuits, Volume 1, chapter 1: "Basic Concepts of Electricity"
Lessons In Electric Circuits, Volume 1, chapter 8: "DC Metering Circuits"
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Characteristics of voltage: existing between two points
Selection of proper meter range
ILLUSTRATION
INSTRUCTIONS
In all the experiments in this book, you will be using some sort of test equipment to measure aspects of electricity you cannot directly see, feel, hear, taste, or smell. Electricity -- at least in small, safe quantities -- is insensible by our human bodies. Your most fundamental "eyes" in the world of electricity and electronics will be a device called a multimeter. Multimeters indicate the presence of, and measure the quantity of, electrical properties such as voltage, current, and resistance. In this experiment, you will familiarize yourself with the measurement of voltage.
Voltage is the measure of electrical "push" ready to motivate electrons to move through a conductor. In scientific terms, it is the specific energy per unit charge, mathematically defined as joules per coulomb. It is analogous to pressure in a fluid system: the force that moves fluid through a pipe, and is measured in the unit of the Volt (V).
Your multimeter should come with some basic instructions. Read them well! If your multimeter is digital, it will require a small battery to operate. If it is analog, it does not need a battery to measure voltage.
Some digital multimeters are autoranging. An autoranging meter has only a few selector switch (dial) positions. Manual-ranging meters have several different selector positions for each basic quantity: several for voltage, several for current, and several for resistance. Autoranging is usually found on only the more expensive digital meters, and is to manual ranging as an automatic transmission is to a manual transmission in a car. An autoranging meter "shifts gears" automatically to find the best measurement range to display the particular quantity being measured.
Set your multimeter's selector switch to the highest-value "DC volt" position available. Autoranging multimeters may only have a single position for DC voltage, in which case you need to set the switch to that one position. Touch the red test probe to the positive (+) side of a battery, and the black test probe to the negative (-) side of the same battery. The meter should now provide you with some sort of indication. Reverse the test probe connections to the battery if the meter's indication is negative (on an analog meter, a negative value is indicated by the pointer deflecting left instead of right).
If your meter is a manual-range type, and the selector switch has been set to a high-range position, the indication will be small. Move the selector switch to the next lower DC voltage range setting and reconnect to the battery. The indication should be stronger now, as indicated by a greater deflection of the analog meter pointer (needle), or more active digits on the digital meter display. For the best results, move the selector switch to the lowest-range setting that does not "over-range" the meter. An over-ranged analog meter is said to be "pegged," as the needle will be forced all the way to the right-hand side of the scale, past the full-range scale value. An over-ranged digital meter sometimes displays the letters "OL", or a series of dashed lines. This indication is manufacturer-specific.
What happens if you only touch one meter test probe to one end of a battery? How does the meter have to connect to the battery in order to provide an indication? What does this tell us about voltmeter use and the nature of voltage? Is there such a thing as voltage "at" a single point?
Be sure to measure more than one size of battery, and learn how to select the best voltage range on the multimeter to give you maximum indication without over-ranging.
Now switch your multimeter to the lowest DC voltage range available, and touch the meter's test probes to the terminals (wire leads) of the light-emitting diode (LED). An LED is designed to produce light when powered by a small amount of electricity, but LEDs also happen to generate DC voltage when exposed to light, somewhat like a solar cell. Point the LED toward a bright source of light with your multimeter connected to it, and note the meter's indication:
Batteries develop electrical voltage through chemical reactions. When a battery "dies," it has exhausted its original store of chemical "fuel." The LED, however, does not rely on an internal "fuel" to generate voltage; rather, it converts optical energy into electrical energy. So long as there is light to illuminate the LED, it will produce voltage.
Another source of voltage through energy conversion a generator. The small electric motor specified in the "Parts and Materials" list functions as an electrical generator if its shaft is turned by a mechanical force. Connect your voltmeter (your multimeter, set to the "volt" function) to the motor's terminals just as you connected it to the LED's terminals, and spin the shaft with your fingers. The meter should indicate voltage by means of needle deflection (analog) or numerical readout (digital).
If you find it difficult to maintain both meter test probes in connection with the motor's terminals while simultaneously spinning the shaft with your fingers, you may use alligator clip "jumper" wires like this:
Determine the relationship between voltage and generator shaft speed? Reverse the generator's direction of rotation and note the change in meter indication. When you reverse shaft rotation, you change the polarity of the voltage created by the generator. The voltmeter indicates polarity by direction of needle direction (analog) or sign of numerical indication (digital). When the red test lead is positive (+) and the black test lead negative (-), the meter will register voltage in the normal direction. If the applied voltage is of the reverse polarity (negative on red and positive on black), the meter will indicate "backwards."
Glass of water
Table salt
This experiment describes how to measure the electrical resistance of several objects. You need not possess all items listed above in order to effectively learn about resistance. Conversely, you need not limit your experiments to these items. However, be sure to never measure the resistance of any electrically "live" object or circuit. In other words, do not attempt to measure the resistance of a battery or any other source of substantial voltage using a multimeter set to the resistance ("ohms") function. Failing to heed this warning will likely result in meter damage and even personal injury.
CROSS-REFERENCES
Lessons In Electric Circuits, Volume 1, chapter 1: "Basic Concepts of Electricity"
Lessons In Electric Circuits, Volume 1, chapter 8: "DC Metering Circuits"
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Characteristics of resistance: existing between two points
Selection of proper meter range
Relative conductivity of various components and materials
ILLUSTRATION
INSTRUCTIONS
Resistance is the measure of electrical "friction" as electrons move through a conductor. It is measured in the unit of the "Ohm," that unit symbolized by the capital Greek letter omega (Ω).
Set your multimeter to the highest resistance range available. The resistance function is usually denoted by the unit symbol for resistance: the Greek letter omega (Ω), or sometimes by the word "ohms." Touch the two test probes of your meter together. When you do, the meter should register 0 ohms of resistance. If you are using an analog meter, you will notice the needle deflect full-scale when the probes are touched together, and return to its resting position when the probes are pulled apart. The resistance scale on an analog multimeter is reverse-printed from the other scales: zero resistance in indicated at the far right-hand side of the scale, and infinite resistance is indicated at the far left-hand side. There should also be a small adjustment knob or "wheel" on the analog multimeter to calibrate it for "zero" ohms of resistance. Touch the test probes together and move this adjustment until the needle exactly points to zero at the right-hand end of the scale.
Although your multimeter is capable of providing quantitative values of measured resistance, it is also useful for qualitative tests of continuity: whether or not there is a continuous electrical connection from one point to another. You can, for instance, test the continuity of a piece of wire by connecting the meter probes to opposite ends of the wire and checking to see the the needle moves full-scale. What would we say about a piece of wire if the ohmmeter needle didn't move at all when the probes were connected to opposite ends?
Digital multimeters set to the "resistance" mode indicate non-continuity by displaying some non-numerical indication on the display. Some models say "OL" (Open-Loop), while others display dashed lines.
Use your meter to determine continuity between the holes on a breadboard: a device used for temporary construction of circuits, where component terminals are inserted into holes on a plastic grid, metal spring clips underneath each hole connecting certain holes to others. Use small pieces of 22-gauge solid copper wire, inserted into the holes of the breadboard, to connect the meter to these spring clips so that you can test for continuity:
An important concept in electricity, closely related to electrical continuity, is that of points being electrically common to each other. Electrically common points are points of contact on a device or in a circuit that have negligible (extremely small) resistance between them. We could say, then, that points within a breadboard column (vertical in the illustrations) are electrically common to each other, because there is electrical continuity between them. Conversely, breadboard points within a row (horizontal in the illustrations) are not electrically common, because there is no continuity between them. Continuity describes what is between points of contact, while commonality describes how the points themselves relate to each other.
Like continuity, commonality is a qualitative assessment, based on a relative comparison of resistance between other points in a circuit. It is an important concept to grasp, because there are certain facts regarding voltage in relation to electrically common points that are valuable in circuit analysis and troubleshooting, the first one being that there will never be substantial voltage dropped between points that are electrically common to each other.
Select a 10,000 ohm (10 kΩ) resistor from your parts assortment. This resistance value is indicated by a series of color bands: Brown, Black, Orange, and then another color representing the precision of the resistor, Gold (+/- 5%) or Silver (+/- 10%). Some resistors have no color for precision, which marks them as +/- 20%. Other resistors use five color bands to denote their value and precision, in which case the colors for a 10 kΩ resistor will be Brown, Black, Black, Red, and a fifth color for precision.
Connect the meter's test probes across the resistor as such, and note its indication on the resistance scale:
If the needle points very close to zero, you need to select a lower resistance range on the meter, just as you needed to select an appropriate voltage range when reading the voltage of a battery.
If you are using a digital multimeter, you should see a numerical figure close to 10 shown on the display, with a small "k" symbol on the right-hand side denoting the metric prefix for "kilo" (thousand). Some digital meters are manually-ranged, and require appropriate range selection just as the analog meter. If yours is like this, experiment with different range switch positions and see which one gives you the best indication.
Try reversing the test probe connections on the resistor. Does this change the meter's indication at all? What does this tell us about the resistance of a resistor? What happens when you only touch one probe to the resistor? What does this tell us about the nature of resistance, and how it is measured? How does this compare with voltage measurement, and what happened when we tried to measure battery voltage by touching only one probe to the battery?
When you touch the meter probes to the resistor terminals, try not to touch both probe tips to your fingers. If you do, you will be measuring the parallel combination of the resistor and your own body, which will tend to make the meter indication lower than it should be! When measuring a 10 kΩ resistor, this error will be minimal, but it may be more severe when measuring other values of resistor.
You may safely measure the resistance of your own body by holding one probe tip with the fingers of one hand, and the other probe tip with the fingers of the other hand. Note: be very careful with the probes, as they are often sharpened to a needle-point. Hold the probe tips along their length, not at the very points! You may need to adjust the meter range again after measuring the 10 kΩ resistor, as your body resistance tends to be greater than 10,000 ohms hand-to-hand. Try wetting your fingers with water and re-measuring resistance with the meter. What impact does this have on the indication? Try wetting your fingers with saltwater prepared using the glass of water and table salt, and re-measuring resistance. What impact does this have on your body's resistance as measured by the meter?
Resistance is the measure of friction to electron flow through an object. The less resistance there is between two points, the harder it is for electrons to move (flow) between those two points. Given that electric shock is caused by a large flow of electrons through a person's body, and increased body resistance acts as a safeguard by making it more difficult for electrons to flow through us, what can we ascertain about electrical safety from the resistance readings obtained with wet fingers? Does water increase or decrease shock hazard to people?
Measure the resistance of a rectifying diode with an analog meter. Try reversing the test probe connections to the diode and re-measure resistance. What strikes you as being remarkable about the diode, especially in contrast to the resistor?
Take a piece of paper and draw a very heavy black mark on it with a pencil (not a pen!). Measure resistance on the black strip with your meter, placing the probe tips at each end of the mark like this:
Move the probe tips closer together on the black mark and note the change in resistance value. Does it increase or decrease with decreased probe spacing? If the results are inconsistent, you need to redraw the mark with more and heavier pencil strokes, so that it is consistent in its density. What does this teach you about resistance versus length of a conductive material?
Connect your meter to the terminals of a cadmium-sulphide (CdS) photocell and measure the change in resistance created by differences in light exposure. Just as with the light-emitting diode (LED) of the voltmeter experiment, you may want to use alligator-clip jumper wires to make connection with the component, leaving your hands free to hold the photocell to a light source and/or change meter ranges:
Experiment with measuring the resistance of several different types of materials, just be sure not to try measure anything that produces substantial voltage, like a battery. Suggestions for materials to measure are: fabric, plastic, wood, metal, clean water, dirty water, salt water, glass, diamond (on a diamond ring or other piece of jewelry), paper, rubber, and oil.
ILLUSTRATION
INSTRUCTIONS
This is the simplest complete circuit in this collection of experiments: a battery and an incandescent lamp. Connect the lamp to the battery as shown in the illustration, and the lamp should light, assuming the battery and lamp are both in good condition and they are matched to one another in terms of voltage.
If there is a "break" (discontinuity) anywhere in the circuit, the lamp will fail to light. It does not matter where such a break occurs! Many students assume that because electrons leave the negative (-) side of the battery and continue through the circuit to the positive (+) side, that the wire connecting the negative terminal of the battery to the lamp is more important to circuit operation than the other wire providing a return path for electrons back to the battery. This is not true!
Using your multimeter set to the appropriate "DC volt" range, measure voltage across the battery, across the lamp, and across each jumper wire. Familiarize yourself with the normal voltages in a functioning circuit.
Now, "break" the circuit at one point and re-measure voltage between the same sets of points, additionally measuring voltage across the break like this:
What voltages measure the same as before? What voltages are different since introducing the break? How much voltage is manifest, or dropped across the break? What is the polarity of the voltage drop across the break, as indicated by the meter?
Re-connect the jumper wire to the lamp, and break the circuit in another place. Measure all voltage "drops" again, familiarizing yourself with the voltages of an "open" circuit.
Construct the same circuit on a breadboard, taking care to place the lamp and wires into the breadboard in such a way that continuity will be maintained. The example shown here is only that: an example, not the only way to build a circuit on a breadboard:
Experiment with different configurations on the breadboard, plugging the lamp into different holes. If you encounter a situation where the lamp refuses to light up and the connecting wires are getting warm, you probably have a situation known as a short circuit, where a lower-resistance path than the lamp bypasses current around the lamp, preventing enough voltage from being dropped across the lamp to light it up. Here is an example of a short circuit made on a breadboard:
Here is an example of an accidental short circuit of the type typically made by students unfamiliar with breadboard usage:
Here there is no "shorting" wire present on the breadboard, yet there is a short circuit, and the lamp refuses to light. Based on your understanding of breadboard hole connections, can you determine where the "short" is in this circuit?
Short circuits are generally to be avoided, as they result in very high rates of electron flow, causing wires to heat up and battery power sources to deplete. If the power source is substantial enough, a short circuit may cause heat of explosive proportions to manifest, causing equipment damage and hazard to nearby personnel. This is what happens when a tree limb "shorts" across wires on a power line: the limb -- being composed of wet wood -- acts as a low-resistance path to electric current, resulting in heat and sparks.
You may also build the battery/lamp circuit on a terminal strip: a length of insulating material with metal bars and screws to attach wires and component terminals to. Here is an example of how this circuit might be constructed on a terminal strip:
6-volt battery
6-volt incandescent lamp
Basic circuit construction components such as breadboard, terminal strip, and jumper wires are also assumed to be available from now on, leaving only components and materials unique to the project listed under "Parts and Materials."
CROSS-REFERENCES
Lessons In Electric Circuits, Volume 1, chapter 1: "Basic Concepts of Electricity"
Lessons In Electric Circuits, Volume 1, chapter 8: "DC Metering Circuits"
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
How to measure current with a multimeter
How to check a multimeter's internal fuse
Selection of proper meter range
SCHEMATIC DIAGRAM
ILLUSTRATION
INSTRUCTIONS
Current is the measure of the rate of electron "flow" in a circuit. It is measured in the unit of the Ampere, simply called "Amp," (A).
The most common way to measure current in a circuit is to break the circuit open and insert an "ammeter" in series (in-line) with the circuit so that all electrons flowing through the circuit also have to go through the meter. Because measuring current in this manner requires the meter be made part of the circuit, it is a more difficult type of measurement to make than either voltage or resistance.
Some digital meters, like the unit shown in the illustration, have a separate jack to insert the red test lead plug when measuring current. Other meters, like most inexpensive analog meters, use the same jacks for measuring voltage, resistance, and current. Consult your owner's manual on the particular model of meter you own for details on measuring current.
When an ammeter is placed in series with a circuit, it ideally drops no voltage as current goes through it. In other words, it acts very much like a piece of wire, with very little resistance from one test probe to the other. Consequently, an ammeter will act as a short circuit if placed in parallel (across the terminals of) a substantial source of voltage. If this is done, a surge in current will result, potentially damaging the meter:
Ammeters are generally protected from excessive current by means of a small fuse located inside the meter housing. If the ammeter is accidently connected across a substantial voltage source, the resultant surge in current will "blow" the fuse and render the meter incapable of measuring current until the fuse is replaced. Be very careful to avoid this scenario!
You may test the condition of a multimeter's fuse by switching it to the resistance mode and measuring continuity through the test leads (and through the fuse). On a meter where the same test lead jacks are used for both resistance and current measurement, simply leave the test lead plugs where they are and touch the two probes together. On a meter where different jacks are used, this is how you insert the test lead plugs to check the fuse:
Build the one-battery, one-lamp circuit using jumper wires to connect the battery to the lamp, and verify that the lamp lights up before connecting the meter in series with it. Then, break the circuit open at any point and connect the meter's test probes to the two points of the break to measure current. As usual, if your meter is manually-ranged, begin by selecting the highest range for current, then move the selector switch to lower range positions until the strongest indication is obtained on the meter display without over-ranging it. If the meter indication is "backwards," (left motion on analog needle, or negative reading on a digital display), then reverse the test probe connections and try again. When the ammeter indicates a normal reading (not "backwards"), electrons are entering the black test lead and exiting the red. This is how you determine direction of current using a meter.
For a 6-volt battery and a small lamp, the circuit current will be in the range of thousandths of an amp, or milliamps. Digital meters often show a small letter "m" in the right-hand side of the display to indicate this metric prefix.
Try breaking the circuit at some other point and inserting the meter there instead. What do you notice about the amount of current measured? Why do you think this is?
Re-construct the circuit on a breadboard like this:
Students often get confused when connecting an ammeter to a breadboard circuit. How can the meter be connected so as to intercept all the circuit's current and not create a short circuit? One easy method that guarantees success is this:
Identify what wire or component terminal you wish to measure current through.
Pull that wire or terminal out of the breadboard hole. Leave it hanging in mid-air.
Insert a spare piece of wire into the hole you just pulled the other wire or terminal out of. Leave the other end of this wire hanging in mid-air.
Connect the ammeter between the two unconnected wire ends (the two that were hanging in mid-air). You are now assured of measuring current through the wire or terminal initially identified.
Again, measure current through different wires in this circuit, following the same connection procedure outlined above. What do you notice about these current measurements? The results in the breadboard circuit should be the same as the results in the free-form (no breadboard) circuit.
Building the same circuit on a terminal strip should also yield similar results:
The current figure of 24.70 milliamps (24.70 mA) shown in the illustrations is an arbitrary quantity, reasonable for a small incandescent lamp. If the current for your circuit is a different value, that is okay, so long as the lamp is functioning when the meter is connected. If the lamp refuses to light when the meter is connected to the circuit, and the meter registers a much greater reading, you probably have a short-circuit condition through the meter. If your lamp refuses to light when the meter is connected in the circuit, and the meter registers zero current, you've probably blown the fuse inside the meter. Check the condition of your meter's fuse as described previously in this section and replace the fuse if necessary.
Calculator (or pencil and paper for doing arithmetic)
6-volt battery
Assortment of resistors between 1 KΩ and 100 kΩ in value
I'm purposely restricting the resistance values between 1 kΩ and 100 kΩ for the sake of obtaining accurate voltage and current readings with your meter. With very low resistance values, the internal resistance of the ammeter has a significant impact on measurement accuracy. Very high resistance values can cause problems for voltage measurement, the internal resistance of the voltmeter substantially changing circuit resistance when it is connected in parallel with a high-value resistor.
At the recommended resistance values, there will still be a small amount of measurement error due to the "impact" of the meter, but not enough to cause serious disagreement with calculated values.
CROSS-REFERENCES
Lessons In Electric Circuits, Volume 1, chapter 2: "Ohm's Law"
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
ILLUSTRATION
INSTRUCTIONS
Select a resistor from the assortment, and measure its resistance with your multimeter set to the appropriate resistance range. Be sure not to hold the resistor terminals when measuring resistance, or else your hand-to-hand body resistance will influence the measurement! Record this resistance value for future use.
Build a one-battery, one-resistor circuit. A terminal strip is shown in the illustration, but any form of circuit construction is okay. Set your multimeter to the appropriate voltage range and measure voltage across the resistor as it is being powered by the battery. Record this voltage value along with the resistance value previously measured.
Set your multimeter to the highest current range available. Break the circuit and connect the ammeter within that break, so it becomes a part of the circuit, in series with the battery and resistor. Select the best current range: whichever one gives the strongest meter indication without over-ranging the meter. If your multimeter is autoranging, of course, you need not bother with setting ranges. Record this current value along with the resistance and voltage values previously recorded.
Taking the measured figures for voltage and resistance, use the Ohm's Law equation to calculate circuit current. Compare this calculated figure with the measured figure for circuit current:
Taking the measured figures for voltage and current, use the Ohm's Law equation to calculate circuit resistance. Compare this calculated figure with the measured figure for circuit resistance:
Finally, taking the measured figures for resistance and current, use the Ohm's Law equation to calculate circuit voltage. Compare this calculated figure with the measured figure for circuit voltage:
There should be close agreement between all measured and all calculated figures. Any differences in respective quantities of voltage, current, or resistance are most likely due to meter inaccuracies. These differences should be rather small, no more than several percent. Some meters, of course, are more accurate than others!
Substitute different resistors in the circuit and re-take all resistance, voltage, and current measurements. Re-calculate these figures and check for agreement with the experimental data (measured quantities). Also note the simple mathematical relationship between changes in resistor value and changes in circuit current. Voltage should remain approximately the same for any resistor size inserted into the circuit, because it is the nature of a battery to maintain voltage at a constant level.
ILLUSTRATION
INSTRUCTIONS
Measure the resistance of the lamp with your multimeter. This resistance figure is due to the thin metal "filament" inside the lamp. It has substantially more resistance than a jumper wire, but less than any of the resistors from the last experiment. Record this resistance value for future use.
Build a one-battery, one-lamp circuit. Set your multimeter to the appropriate voltage range and measure voltage across the lamp as it is energized (lit). Record this voltage value along with the resistance value previously measured.
Set your multimeter to the highest current range available. Break the circuit and connect the ammeter within that break, so it becomes a part of the circuit, in series with the battery and lamp. Select the best current range: whichever one gives the strongest meter indication without over-ranging the meter. If your multimeter is autoranging, of course, you need not bother with setting ranges. Record this current value along with the resistance and voltage values previously recorded.
Taking the measured figures for voltage and resistance, use the Ohm's Law equation to calculate circuit current. Compare this calculated figure with the measured figure for circuit current:
What you should find is a marked difference between measured current and calculated current: the calculated figure is much greater. Why is this?
To make things more interesting, try measuring the lamp's resistance again, this time using a different model of meter. You will need to disconnect the lamp from the battery circuit in order to obtain a resistance reading, because voltages outside of the meter interfere with resistance measurement. This is a general rule that should be remembered: measure resistance only on an unpowered component!
Using a different ohmmeter, the lamp will probably register as a different value of resistance. Usually, analog meters give higher lamp resistance readings than digital meters.
This behavior is very different from that of the resistors in the last experiment. Why? What factor(s) might influence the resistance of the lamp filament, and how might those factors be different between conditions of lit and unlit, or between resistance measurements taken with different types of meters?
This problem is a good test case for the application of scientific method. Once you've thought of a possible reason for the lamp's resistance changing between lit and unlit conditions, try to duplicate that cause by some other means. For example, if you think the lamp resistance might change as it is exposed to light (its own light, when lit), and that this accounts for the difference between the measured and calculated circuit currents, try exposing the lamp to an external source of light while measuring its resistance. If you measure substantial resistance change as a result of light exposure, then your hypothesis has some evidential support. If not, then your hypothesis has been falsified, and another cause must be responsible for the change in circuit current.
Two 1/4 watt resistors: 10 Ω and 330 Ω.
Small thermometer
The resistor values need not be exact, but within five percent of the figures specified (+/- 0.5 Ω for the 10 Ω resistor; +/- 16.5 Ω for the 330 Ω resistor). Color codes for 5% tolerance 10 Ω and 330 Ω resistors are as follows: Brown, Black, Black, Gold (10, +/- 5%), and Orange, Orange, Brown, Gold (330, +/- 5%).
Do not use any battery size other than 6 volts for this experiment.
The thermometer should be as small as possible, to facilitate rapid detection of heat produced by the resistor. I recommend a medical thermometer, the type used to take body temperature.
CROSS-REFERENCES
Lessons In Electric Circuits, Volume 1, chapter 2: "Ohm's Law"
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Importance of component power ratings
Significance of electrically common points
SCHEMATIC DIAGRAM
ILLUSTRATION
INSTRUCTIONS
Measure each resistor's resistance with your ohmmeter, noting the exact values on a piece of paper for later reference.
Connect the 330 Ω resistor to the 6 volt battery using a pair of jumper wires as shown in the illustration. Connect the jumper wires to the resistor terminals before connecting the other ends to the battery. This will ensure your fingers are not touching the resistor when battery power is applied.
You might be wondering why I advise no bodily contact with the powered resistor. This is because it will become hot when powered by the battery. You will use the thermometer to measure the temperature of each resistor when powered.
With the 330 Ω resistor connected to the battery, measure voltage with a voltmeter. In measuring voltage, there is more than one way to obtain a proper reading. Voltage may be measured directly across the battery, or directly across the resistor. Battery voltage is the same as resistor voltage in this circuit, since those two components share the same set of electrically common points: one side of the resistor is directly connected to one side of the battery, and the other side of the resistor is directly connected to the other side of the battery.
All points of contact along the upper wire in the illustration (colored red) are electrically common to each other. All points of contact along the lower wire (colored black) are likewise electrically common to each other. Voltage measured between any point on the upper wire and any point on the lower wire should be the same. Voltage measured between any two common points, however, should be zero.
Using an ammeter, measure current through the circuit. Again, there is no one "correct" way to measure current, so long as the ammeter is placed within the flow-path of electrons through the resistor and not across a source of voltage. To do this, make a break in the circuit, and place the ammeter within that break: connect the two test probes to the two wire or terminal ends left open from the break. One viable option is shown in the following illustration:
Now that you've measured and recorded resistor resistance, circuit voltage, and circuit current, you are ready to calculate power dissipation. Whereas voltage is the measure of electrical "push" motivating electrons to move through a circuit, and current is the measure of electron flow rate, power is the measure of work-rate: how fast work is being done in the circuit. It takes a certain amount of work to push electrons through a resistance, and power is a description of how rapidly that work is taking place. In mathematical equations, power is symbolized by the letter "P" and measured in the unit of the Watt (W).
Power may be calculated by any one of three equations -- collectively referred to as Joule's Law -- given any two out of three quantities of voltage, current, and resistance:
Try calculating power in this circuit, using the three measured values of voltage, current, and resistance. Any way you calculate it, the power dissipation figure should be roughly the same. Assuming a battery with 6.000 volts and a resistor of exactly 330 Ω, the power dissipation will be 0.1090909 watts, or 109.0909 milli-watts (mW), to use a metric prefix. Since the resistor has a power rating of 1/4 watt (0.25 watts, or 250 mW), it is more than capable of sustaining this level of power dissipation. Because the actual power level is almost half the rated power, the resistor should become noticeably warm but it should not overheat. Touch the thermometer end to the middle of the resistor and see how warm it gets.
The power rating of any electrical component does not tell us how much power it will dissipate, but simply how much power it may dissipate without sustaining damage. If the actual amount of dissipated power exceeds a component's power rating, that component will increase temperature to the point of damage.
To illustrate, disconnect the 330 Ω resistor and replace it with the 10 Ω resistor. Again, avoid touching the resistor once the circuit is complete, as it will heat up rapidly. The safest way to do this is to disconnect one jumper wire from a battery terminal, then disconnect the 330 Ω resistor from the two alligator clips, then connect the 10 Ω resistor between the two clips, and finally reconnect the jumper wire back to the battery terminal.
Caution: keep the 10 Ω resistor away from any flammable materials when it is powered by the battery!
You may not have enough time to take voltage and current measurements before the resistor begins to smoke. At the first sign of distress, disconnect one of the jumper wires from a battery terminal to interrupt circuit current, and give the resistor a few moments to cool down. With power still disconnected, measure the resistor's resistance with an ohmmeter and note any substantial deviation from its original value. If the resistor still measures within +/- 5% of its advertised value (between 9.5 and 10.5 Ω), re-connect the jumper wire and let it smoke a bit more.
What trend do you notice with the resistor's value as it is damaged more and more by overpowering? It is typical of resistors to fail with a greater-than-normal resistance when overheated. This is often a self-protective mode of failure, as an increased resistance results in less current and (generally) less power dissipation, cooling it down again. However, the resistor's normal resistance value will not return if sufficiently damaged.
Performing some Joule's Law calculations for resistor power again, we find that a 10 Ω resistor connected to a 6 volt battery dissipates about 3.6 watts of power, about 14.4 times its rated power dissipation. Little wonder it smokes so quickly after connection to the battery!
Low-voltage incandescent lamp (Radio Shack catalog # 272-1130 or equivalent)
Long lengths of wire, 22-gauge or larger
Household light switch (these are readily available at any hardware store)
Household light switches are a bargain for students of basic electricity. They are readily available, very inexpensive, and almost impossible to damage with battery power. Do not get "dimmer" switches, just the simple on-off "toggle" variety used for ordinary household wall-mounted light controls.
CROSS-REFERENCES
Lessons In Electric Circuits, Volume 1, chapter 1: "Basic Concepts of Electricity"
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Using an ohmmeter to check switch action
SCHEMATIC DIAGRAM
ILLUSTRATION
INSTRUCTIONS
Build a one-battery, one-switch, one-lamp circuit as shown in the schematic diagram and in the illustration. This circuit is most impressive when the wires are long, as it shows how the switch is able to control circuit current no matter how physically large the circuit may be.
Measure voltage across the battery, across the switch (measure from one screw terminal to another with the voltmeter), and across the lamp with the switch in both positions. When the switch is turned off, it is said to be open, and the lamp will go out just the same as if a wire were pulled loose from a terminal. As before, any break in the circuit at any location causes the lamp to immediately de-energize (darken).
Spool of 28-gauge magnet wire
Large bolt, nail, or steel rod
Electrical tape
Magnet wire is a term for thin-gauge copper wire with enamel insulation instead of rubber or plastic insulation. Its small size and very thin insulation allow for many "turns" to be wound in a compact coil. You will need enough magnet wire to wrap hundreds of turns around the bolt, nail, or other rod-shaped steel form.
Be sure to select a bolt, nail, or rod that is magnetic. Stainless steel, for example, is non-magnetic and will not function for the purpose of an electromagnet coil! The ideal material for this experiment is soft iron, but any commonly available steel will suffice.
CROSS-REFERENCES
Lessons In Electric Circuits, Volume 1, chapter 14: "Magnetism and Electromagnetism"
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
ILLUSTRATION
INSTRUCTIONS
Wrap a single layer of electrical tape around the steel bar (or bolt, or mail) to protect the wire from abrasion. Proceed to wrap several hundred turns of wire around the steel bar, making the coil as even as possible. It is okay to overlap wire, and it is okay to wrap in the same style that a fishing reel wraps line around the spool. The only rule you must follow is that all turns must be wrapped around the bar in the same direction (no reversing from clockwise to counter-clockwise!). I find that a drill press works as a great tool for coil winding: clamp the rod in the drill's chuck as if it were a drill bit, then turn the drill motor on at a slow speed and let it do the wrapping! This allows you to feed wire onto the rod in a very steady, even manner.
After you've wrapped several hundred turns of wire around the rod, wrap a layer or two of electrical tape over the wire coil to secure the wire in place. Scrape the enamel insulation off the ends of the coil wires for connection to jumper leads, then connect the coil to a battery.
When electric current goes through the coil, it will produce a strong magnetic field: one "pole" at each end of the rod. This phenomenon is known as electromagnetism. The magnetic compass is used to identify the "North" and "South" poles of the electromagnet.
With the electromagnet energized (connected to the battery), place a permanent magnet near one pole and note whether there is an attractive or repulsive force. Reverse the orientation of the permanent magnet and note the difference in force.
Electromagnetism has many applications, including relays, electric motors, solenoids, doorbells, buzzers, computer printer mechanisms, and magnetic media "write" heads (tape recorders, disk drives).
You might notice a significant spark whenever the battery is disconnected from the electromagnet coil: much greater than the spark produced if the battery is simply short-circuited. This spark is the result of a high-voltage surge created whenever current is suddenly interrupted through the coil. The effect is known as inductive "kickback" and is capable of delivering a small but harmless electric shock! To avoid receiving this shock, do not place your body across the break in the circuit when de-energizing! Use one hand at a time when un-powering the coil and you'll be perfectly safe. This phenomenon will be explored in greater detail in the next chapter (DC Circuits).
See previous experiment for instructions on electromagnet construction.
CROSS-REFERENCES
Lessons In Electric Circuits, Volume 1, chapter 14: "Magnetism and Electromagnetism"
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Relationship between magnetic field strength and induced voltage
SCHEMATIC DIAGRAM
ILLUSTRATION
INSTRUCTIONS
Electromagnetic induction is the complementary phenomenon to electromagnetism. Instead of producing a magnetic field from electricity, we produce electricity from a magnetic field. There is one important difference, though: whereas electromagnetism produces a steady magnetic field from a steady electric current, electromagnetic induction requires motion between the magnet and the coil to produce a voltage.
Connect the multimeter to the coil, and set it to the most sensitive DC voltage range available. Move the magnet slowly to and from one end of the electromagnet, noting the polarity and magnitude of the induced voltage. Experiment with moving the magnet, and discover for yourself what factor(s) determine the amount of voltage induced. Try the other end of the coil and compare results. Try the other end of the permanent magnet and compare.
If using an analog multimeter, be sure to use long jumper wires and locate the meter far away from the coil, as the magnetic field from the permanent magnet may affect the meter's operation and produce false readings. Digital meters are unaffected by magnetic fields.
Lessons In Electric Circuits copyright (C) 2002-2015 Tony R. Kuphaldt, under the terms and conditions of the Design Science License .
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In which religious denomination does 'Aldersgate Day' celebrate the day (24/05/1738) when John Wesley experienced his conversion in a meeting room in Aldersgate Street, London? | HISTORICAL FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY
HISTORICAL FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY
HISTORICAL FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY
The following is a capsule summary of the top 25 events in the History of Christianity, events which shaped the Church itself, Western Christian civilization, and the modern world. The Church transcends the contingent facts of this world, yet at the same time is deeply connected to historical events, for its very foundation is rooted in the centrality of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. The Christian view of history is a vision and interpretation of time in terms of eternity and of human events in the light of divine revelation. Christianity is the dynamic element in the history of our Western culture. The life of Jesus Christ, the birth of Christianity, and the Apostolic Age (the first 100 years) speak for themselves, for great historical movements do not spring from non-events. 1-10
This capsule summary is offered as a study guide of Church History. The links and references provide a more in-depth discussion of each topic.
THE LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS CHRIST
The point of origin and central figure of the Christian faith is our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Son of God. Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem (Matthew 1:18f), in fulfillment of the prophecies of the Scriptures, such as Isaiah 7:14 and Micah 5:2. To avoid Herod and the Slaughter of the Innocents, Joseph took flight to Egypt with Mary and the infant Jesus. Upon their return, they settled in Nazareth, where Jesus grew and spent his childhood and early years as an adult. Hardly anything is known of his life at that time except that he was called a Nazarene (Matthew 2:23) and that at age 12 he was found teaching in the Temple in Jerusalem (Luke 2:41).
The life of Jesus is best described in the Four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, while his teachings are presented by all the writers of the New Testament of the Bible.
Jesus of Nazareth began his public ministry when he was about thirty years old. In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), Jesus gave us the Eight Beatitudes , affirmed the Ten Commandments of God, and taught us the Lord's Prayer and the Golden Rule. He spent much of his ministry by the Sea of Galilee, preaching in such towns as Capernaum (John 6:59), Bethsaida (Mark 8:22), and Magdala (Matthew 15:39). He traveled to surrounding areas, such as Caesarea Philippi (Matthew 16:13), Cana (John 2:1-11), and Tyre (Mark 7:24-30). When his hour came near, he headed toward Jerusalem (Luke 9:51).
Jesus often taught in parables, an ancient Eastern literary genre. A parable is a narrative that presents comparisons to teach an important moral lesson. The Parables are recorded in the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Some parables are common to all three Synoptic Gospels, such as the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:3-23, Mark 4:2-20, and Luke 8:4-15). Examples of parables unique to each Gospel are the Weeds Among the Wheat (Matthew 13:24-30) and the Laborers in the Vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16); the Growing Seed (Mark 4:26-29); the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37); the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32); Lazarus and the Rich Man (Luke 16:19-31); and the Pharisee and the Publican (Luke 18:9-14).
Jesus performs many miracles, demonstrating his power over nature and spirits, and thus confirming that the Kingdom of God is at hand (Mark 1:15). In a physical miracle, such as making the blind see, or walking on water, or calming a storm, the laws of the universe are suspended through divine intervention. In a moral miracle, such as forgiveness of sins or driving out demons, the blessing of Jesus purifies the spirit. In Mark 2:1-12, Jesus performed a physical miracle, healing the paralytic, to demonstrate a moral miracle, the forgiveness of sins. Only three miracles appear in all four Gospels - his own Resurrection, the greatest miracle of them all, the healing of the blind, and the feeding of the 5000 through the multiplication of the loaves.
His public ministry lasted about three years, prior to his Passion, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension. His mission was one of love, mercy, and peace (John 15:12-13).
Christ Jesus is the fulfillment of salvation history and the mediator and fullness of all revelation. Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Word made flesh. See our home page Jesus Christ for further discussion. 1, 3, 5-7, 9-14
THE APOSTOLIC AGE
Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle,
set apart for the gospel of God
which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures,
the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh
and designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness
by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord,
through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith
for the sake of his name among all the nations
St. Paul to the Romans 1:1-5
Jesus named the Apostles, often called the Twelve (John 6:67), to be with him and carry on his ministry: Simon Peter and his brother Andrew; James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Philip and Nathaniel Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew, James the son of Alpheus, Jude Thaddeus, Simon the Zealot; and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him (Mark 3:14-19). Following the Resurrection, Matthias was chosen to replace Judas Iscariot.
Prior to his Ascension, Jesus commissioned his disciples to be his witnesses to the ends of the earth, as noted in the Acts of the Apostles 1:8. The Holy Spirit descended at Pentecost on about 120 Apostles, Mary the mother of Jesus, and disciples in the Upper Room (Acts 1:15, 2:1-4). This strengthened the Apostles to spread the word of Christ Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles describes the infancy period of the Church, a time following the Pentecost when Christianity spread like wildfire. The Apostles all gathered in Jerusalem (Acts 15) to discuss whether Gentiles who had been converted to Christianity had to observe all the ceremonial precepts of the Mosaic Law. This gathering of the Apostles became known as the Council of Jerusalem, and set the pattern of future Councils to resolve issues that arose within the Church.
To the question of Jesus, "Who do you say that I am?", it was Peter the fisherman that answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matthew 16:15-16). Whereupon Jesus responded, "You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (Matthew 16:18-19).
The Conversion of Paul occurred on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:1-9). Saul persecuted the Church and consented to the death of the first martyr Stephen. He had men and women who lived the Way thrown into prison. But while going to Damascus, Saul was struck from his horse by a great light and a voice asked "Why do you persecute me?" Saul asked who spoke. Christ identified himself with his Church: "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting." Saul experienced the grace of conversion, and Paul, as Apostle to the Gentiles, became just as passionate spreading Christianity as he was in persecuting Christians before his conversion.
Saints Peter and Paul were both martyred in Rome during the persecution of Christians by Nero, Emperor of the Roman Empire. St. Peter was crucified upside down and St. Paul was beheaded, both probably in 64-68 AD. In fact, all of the Apostles were martyred for having preached the Gospel, except for St. John the Evangelist.
Heeding the message of Jesus Christ to Go therefore and make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19-20), the Apostles traveled to all parts of the known world to spread Christianity. Andrew, Peter's brother, was the first to be called to follow Jesus, and is called by the Byzantine Church the Protoclete, meaning the first called. Andrew evangelized Byzantium, appointed Stachys (Romans 16:9) the first Bishop there, and was crucified in Patras, Greece. James, the son of Zebedee and brother of John, is believed to have preached in Spain; he is the only Apostle to have his martyrdom recorded in the Bible (Acts 12:2). John, the son of Zebedee and the brother of James, was the "one Jesus loved." He is called the Theologian for his mystical writings - the Gospel of John and three Letters. Christ on the Cross entrusted his mother Mary to John (19:26-27), who took her with him to Ephesus; he was later exiled to the island of Patmos, where he wrote the Book of Revelation in his elderly years. The other James, son of Alphaeus, is sometimes called James the Less, to distinguish him from James the Son of Zebedee. He played an important role as head of the Church of Jerusalem, and writer of the Letter of James in the Bible. According to the historian Flavius Josephus, he was stoned to death in 62 AD. Tradition has it that Matthew went to Antioch and wrote his Gospel there in Hebrew or Aramaic. Philip preached the Gospel in Phrygia, Asia Minor and was martyred in Hierapolis. Nathaniel, Son of Talmay, or in Aramaic Nathaniel Bartholomew, and Jude Thaddeus, the author of the Letter of Jude, brought the faith to Armenia. Thomas Didymus, or Thomas the Twin, is known as Doubting Thomas, for questioning the Lord's Resurrection. But when he put his hand in the Lord's side, he reacted with a beautiful profession of faith: "My Lord and My God" (John 20:28). Thomas traveled through Chaldea all the way to India! Little is known about Simon the Zealot or Matthias. 1, 3, 5, 7, 12-14
THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CHURCH
The early Christian Church was faced with spreading the teachings of Jesus Christ and the Apostles throughout the Roman Empire, often during a time of martyrdom and intense persecution.
Traditions in the Early Christian Church included the Memorial of the Last Supper - the Mass or Divine Liturgy with the celebration of the Eucharist, on Sunday the Lord's Day (Revelation 1:10), and Prayer, such as the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed, a profession of faith during Baptism.
The Apostolic Fathers were a group of early Christian writers who knew one of the Apostles and lived about 75-150 AD, and sought to define, organize, and defend the faith, such as Ignatius of Antioch, Clement of Rome, Polycarp of Smyrna, and the author(s) of the Didache. St. Ignatius of Antioch was designated Bishop of Syria by St. Peter on his trip to Antioch to meet St. Paul. St. Ignatius was the first to use the term Catholic Church in his Letter to the Smyrnaeans.
The word catholic means universal and refers to the universal Church of Jesus Christ.
Ignatius of Antioch would not worship the Emperor Trajan, and thus was placed in chains and martyred in Rome when thrown to the lions in the Coliseum. He wrote seven letters on his trip to Rome, which proved to be a unifying event for all of the early Churches. He established the Church hierarchy of bishop, priest, and deacon for the early Churches, the pattern which still exists today.
St. Justin Martyr (100-165) was the first Apologist or Defender of the Faith. In his First Apology written in 155 AD, he describes the Tradition of the Eucharistic Liturgy in the Sunday community gathering, a Memorial of the Last Supper, an event which has remained essentially the same for 2000 years. "And this food is called among us eucharistia...For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these, but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God...is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh." St. Justin was martyred in Rome for preaching Christianity to the Romans in 165 AD. 1, 5, 7, 14-19
CONSTANTINE AND THE EDICT OF MILAN (313 AD)
Christians were severely persecuted through three centuries of the Roman Empire, especially at the hands of Nero (64 AD), Trajan (98-117), right up to Diocletian (284-305). But their powerful witness through martyrdom only served to spread Christianity!
The Middle East and the Mediterranean world served as the cradle of Christianity. The Way flourished primarily in five centers: Jerusalem , its birthplace, Antioch, Alexandria, Byzantium, and Rome. The five centers became Patriarchates with the formal recognition of Christianity. The Eastern Catholic and Orthodox Churches originate from Antioch, Alexandria, and Byzantium, while the Western Latin rite originates from Rome.
Constantine became Emperor of the West in 306. As he was in Gaul at the time, he still had to capture Rome where Maxentius held sway. Prior to battle, he had a dream or vision of Christ on the Cross, a cross of light, and was instructed to ornament the shields of his soldiers with the Savior's monogram - the Greek letters Χ (chi) and Ρ (rho). He defeated Maxentius at the Battle at Milvian Bridge over the River Tiber and became the sole Roman Emperor in 312, attributing his victory to the Christian God.
Welcome relief from Christian martyrdom came with the Edict of Milan in 313, through which Constantine and Licinius, the Emperor of the East, granted Christianity complete religious tolerance. His defeat of Licinius in 324 made him sole Emperor of the entire Roman Empire, and he moved the seat of the Empire to Byzantium in 330 and renamed it Constantinople.
Constantine considered himself Christian and did much to protect and support Christianity. Sunday as the Lord's Day was made a day of rest, and December 25 was celebrated as the birthday of Jesus. He restored property that once belonged to Christians. Often at the request of his mother Helena, he built exquisitely beautiful churches, particularly the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and the Church of St. Peter in Rome.
A dispute concerning the relation of the Father and the Son arose in the East, known as the Arian controversy. Constantine called the First Ecumenical Council of all five Patriarchates in 325, known as the Council of Nicaea. The Council declared that the Son was of the same substance - ὁμοούσιος - homoousios - with the Father, and formed the initial Nicene Creed. The Nicene Creed was expanded and finalized at the Council of Constantinople in 381 to include homoousios for the Holy Spirit as well, by quoting John 15:26, "the Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father," to form the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (still called the Nicene Creed). The Apostles' and Nicene Creeds are important to the Tradition of the Church.
In keeping with the custom of the time, Constantine was baptized just prior to his death in 337. He considered himself both head of state and father of the Christian Churches. The alliance of Church and State first seen under Constantine was the beginning of Christendom. 1, 4, 7, 8, 19
THE CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT (397 AD)
There were three stages in the formation of the Gospels: the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, the oral tradition of the Apostles, and the written word. There were eight named writers of the New Testament: Saints Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, James, and Jude. An important observation is that not one of the New Testament writers mentions the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Since no original manuscript by the author of a biblical book has yet been discovered, one cannot truly say when the books of the New Testament were actually written.
The Canon of the New Testament was formed within the early Christian community, the Church. The Tradition of the Fathers of the Church was important to early Christianity, for they were the ones who chose those inspired books which best reflected the life and teachings of Jesus Christ in the formation of the canon of the New Testament, and were also involved in the interpretation of Scripture. Irenaeus, the Bishop of Lyons, first proposed a canon of the New Testament in 180 AD. Three Fathers of the Church - Athanasius of Alexandria in his Letter of 367, Jerome in Bethlehem with the completion of his Latin New Testament in 384, and Augustine at the Council of Hippo in 393 - agreed that 27 Books were the inspired Word of God. The Canon of the New Testament of the Bible was confirmed at the Third Council of Carthage in 397 AD. 1, 3, 7, 16, 19
ST. JEROME PUBLISHES THE LATIN VULGATE IN 405
St. Jerome (345-420) was born in Dalmatia and became a highly educated linguist in Greek and Latin. He experienced a dramatic conversion following a dream and began leading an ascetic life in Antioch. It was during his time in the Syrian desert that he became an avid student of Hebrew. On return to Rome, he was commissioned by Pope Damasus in 382 to produce a new Latin translation of the Bible . Jerome settled in Bethlehem, and completed the translation of both Old and New Testaments from the original languages into Latin. Jerome completed the translation of the Greek New Testament into Latin in 384, and the Old Testament in 405. His translation has become known as the Latin Vulgate or the "common" translation.
St. Jerome translated from both Greek and Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament and noted the difference between the larger canon of the Greek Septuagint and the shorter Hebrew canon, and called those books comprising the difference the "hidden or secret books," or the Apocrypha.
As the Greek Septuagint was the accepted version of the Old Testament for Christianity at that time, Jerome translated 46 books that were affirmed as Old Testament canon at the Councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397). In view of his work, St. Jerome was named the Father of Biblical scholars. The Latin Vulgate Bible published by St. Jerome served as the standard Bible for Western civilization for over 1000 years. 1, 3, 4, 7, 16
THE WRITINGS OF ST. AUGUSTINE
St. Augustine (354-430 AD) was the greatest of the Latin Fathers of the Church and a foundational figure to Western Christian civilization. He was born in Tagaste, near Hippo, in north Africa. His mother St. Monica was a devout Christian and taught him the faith. However, when he studied rhetoric in Carthage, he began living a worldly life.
He obtained a post as master of rhetoric in Milan, accompanied by an unnamed woman and child Adeodatus, born out of wedlock in 372. The woman soon left him and their son, and Monica joined them in Milan. Under the incessant prayers of his mother, and the influence of St. Ambrose of Milan, he eventually converted at age 32 in 386 AD. Perhaps the most eloquent examination of conscience is found in The Confessions of St. Augustine, where he describes his moment of conversion in the garden reading St. Paul to the Romans 13:14, But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provisions for the desires of the flesh.
Both his mother and son died soon afterwards and he returned in 388 to his home in Tagaste. He was ordained a priest in 391, and became Bishop of Hippo in 395. Augustine was people-oriented and preached every day. Many of his followers lived an ascetic life. He had a great love for Christ, and believed that our goal on earth was God through Christ himself, "to see his face evermore." Our goal in life should be to please God, not man.
Augustine was one of the most prolific writers in history, and his writings show an evolution of thought and at times a reversal of ideas, as seen in his Retractations. His Scriptural essays on Genesis and Psalms remain starting points for modern Biblical scholars. His commentary on the Sermon on the Mount is still read today. Perhaps most debated are his views on predestination.
In his book Grace and Free Will, he explains simply why he believes in free will. If there was no free will, then why did God give us the Ten Commandments, and why did he tell us to love our neighbor?
St. Augustine is the doctor of grace. Augustine's arguments against the Pelagian heresy set the doctrine of grace for the Catholic Church to the present day. Pelagius thought that man could achieve virtue and salvation on his own without the gift of grace, that Jesus was simply a model of virtue. This of course attacks the Redemption of man by Christ! If man could make it on his own, then the Cross of Christ becomes meaningless! But Augustine saw man's utter sinfulness, and the wonderful blessing and efficacy of grace, disposing man to accept his moment of grace, and hopefully ultimate salvation. Grace raises us to a life of virtue, and is the ground of human freedom. "When I choose rightly I am free." The Council of Orange enshrined Augustine's teaching on grace and free will in 529 AD.
Perhaps one of his greatest works was The City of God, which took 13 years to complete, from 413 to 426. History can only be understood as a continued struggle between two cities, the City of God, comprised of those men who pursue God, and the City of Man, composed of those who pursue earthly goods and pleasures. He refers to the two sons of Adam, Cain and Abel, as the earliest examples of the two types of man. The Roman empire was an example of the city of man (which had just been sacked by Alaric in 410 and was the occasion of the book).
St. Augustine was a living example of God's grace that transformed nature. He died August 28, 430, during the sack of Hippo by the Vandals. August 28 is celebrated as his Feast Day in the liturgical calendar. 4, 16, 20-22
POPE LEO THE GREAT (440-461) AND PAPAL PRIMACY
And I say to you, thou art Peter,
and upon this rock I will build my church,
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
Gospel of Matthew 16:18
Pope Leo entered the Papacy at a difficult time. Alaric had sacked Rome in 410, and the Huns and the Visigoths were gaining strength. However the Pope proved to be a master statesman and history has deservedly accorded him the title of Pope Leo the Great.
One of his first actions in 441 was to bless the missionary efforts of St. Patrick and to ordain him as Bishop of Ireland.
A tension in Church leadership between Papal primacy and Collegiality of the Bishops was developing over theological questions. Rome was the place of martyrdom for Saints Peter and Paul, two great Apostles of the Church. The Bishop of Rome as successor to St. Peter was generally given a leadership role, as seen with Clement of Rome in his First Letter to the Corinthians in 96 AD. Rome's position as the capital of the Roman Empire was also supportive of a leadership role for the Bishop of Rome.
The Council of Ephesus, the Third Ecumenical Council, in 431 recognized Mary as Theotokos or Mother of God, which was intrinsic to the human nature of Christ. However, controversy between the Schools of Antioch and Alexandria raged on concerning the relation of Christ's human and divine natures. Pope Leo synthesized the two schools in a letter known as the Tome, a masterpiece of dogmatic theology. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 was the Fourth Ecumenical Council, which ultimately supported Leo's stance that Christ had two natures, Divine and human in perfect harmony, in hypostatic union in one Person. This set the theology for Western and Byzantine theology and was important to European unity and the primacy of the Pope. Eastern Christians in Armenia, Syria, Egypt, Ethiopia, and India who still believed that Christ was one incarnate nature of the Word of God rejected Chalcedon and formed the Oriental Orthodox Churches.
Just one year later (452), Attila and the Huns were threatening outside the walls of Rome. The legends surrounding this event are innumerable, but Pope Leo met Attila, who decided to call off the invasion! 1, 4, 5, 7, 16
THE MONKS SAVE EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
The Monastic Orders have been a premium influence on the formation of Christian culture. For not only have they been islands of asceticism and holiness that have served as ideals to a secular world, but also they have provided many if not most of the religious leaders within each historic age, especially during times of renewal and reform. The word monos is the Greek word for alone. Monasticism began in the East and spread throughout Europe and saved European civilization.
The practice of leaving the ambitions of daily life and retreating to the solitude of the desert was seen throughout Palestine, Syria, and Egypt, St. John the Baptist (Mark 1:4) an early example.
The father of Christian monasticism was St. Antony of the Desert (251-356), the first of the Desert Fathers. Antony of Egypt took to heart the words of Christ to the rich young man, " Go sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven" (Matthew 19:21). He headed across the Nile to a mountain near Pispir to live a life of solitude, prayer, and poverty . Soon many gathered around him to imitate his life, living as hermits in nearby caves in the mountain, and in 305 he emerged from solitude to teach his followers the way of the ascetic. He then moved further into the desert by Mount Kolzim near the Red Sea, where a second group of hermits gathered and later formed a monastery. He lived there for 45 years until his death in 356.
St. Maron (350-410), a contemporary of St. John Chrysostom, was a monk in the fourth century who left Antioch for the Orontes River to lead a life of holiness and prayer. As he was given the gift of healing, his life of solitude was short-lived, and soon he had many followers that adopted his monastic way. Following the death of St. Maron in 410, his disciples built a monastery in his memory, which would form the nucleus of the Eastern Catholic Maronite Church of Lebanon.
The fall of the Roman Empire to the barbarian invasions left European civilization in disarray, for the social structure under one ruler in Rome was destroyed. The preservation of culture and the conversion of the barbarians to Christianity was left to an unlikely group: the monastics of Europe. Their missionary efforts converted one tribe after another, so that eventually all of Europe was united in the worship of the one Christian God.
St. Patrick as Apostle to Ireland founded the monastery of Armagh in 444 and other monasteries throughout Ireland. As the social unit in Ireland and much of Europe at the time was the tribe in the countryside, the monastery was the center of Church life and learning. The Irish monks that followed him converted much of northern Europe. The lasting legacy of the Irish monks has been the present-day form of confession. In early times, penance was in public and severe, often lasting for years, such that Baptism was generally postponed until one's deathbed. The Irish monks began private confession and allowed one to repeat confession as necessary.
The monk St. Benedict (480-547) was born in Nursia of nobility but chose a life of solitude in Subiaco outside of Rome. Soon he moved nearby to build a monastery at Monte Cassino in 529 and there wrote the Rule of Benedict. Monte Cassino placed all of the monks in one monastery under an abbot. The guiding principle for the monastery was ora et labora, or pray and work. The monastery provided adequate food and a place to sleep and served as a center of conversion and learning. Known for its moderation, Monte Cassino and Benedict's rule became the standard for monasteries throughout Europe and the pattern for Western civilization.
The first monk to become Pope was St. Gregory the Great (540-604). Born to Roman nobility, Gregory at first pursued a political career and became Prefect of Rome. However he gave up position and wealth and retreated to his home to lead a monastic life. He was recalled to Rome and soon was elected Pope in 590 and served until his death in 604. A man of great energy, he is known for four historic achievements. His theological and spiritual writings shaped the thought of the Middle Ages; he made the Pope the de facto ruler of central Italy; his charisma strengthened the Papacy in the West; and he was dedicated to the conversion of England to Christianity. Gregory sent the monk Augustine to England in 597. The conversion of King Aethelbert of Kent led St. Augustine to be named the first Archbishop of Canterbury. Soon English Benedictine monks were being sent to convert the rest of Europe, such as the English monk Winfrid, better known as St. Boniface, who evangelized Germany from 723-739 AD and is known as the Apostle to Germany. 1, 2-4, 7, 8, 16, 23, 24
CHRISTIANITY THRIVES UNDER THE CAROLINGIAN EMPIRE (732-814)
The Carolingian Empire effectively began with Charles Martel, the Mayor of the Palace under the Merovingian Franks. He stopped the Muslim invasion of Europe at the Battle of Tours near Poitiers in 732, and supported St. Boniface in his conversion of Germany.
His son Pepin and the Papacy formed an historic alliance. Pepin needed the blessing of the Pope in his seizure of leadership of Gaul from the Merovingians. Pope Stephen II, besieged by the Lombards in Italy, was the first Pope to leave Italy and cross the Alps in 754. He named King Pepin Patrician of the Romans, and in turn Pepin swept into Italy and conquered the Lombards, securing the Papal states. Pepin died in 768 and divided his realm between his two sons, Carloman and Charles.
Charles, known as Charlemagne (742-814), took over all of Gaul upon the death of his brother in 771, and soon conquered most of mainland Europe. He was a vigorous leader and ruled until 814. Charlemagne was a strong supporter of Christianity. During his reign, Christianity became the guiding principle of the Carolingian Empire, as the Church established a powerful presence throughout Europe. He instituted a school of learning in his palace at Aachen. In the Middle Ages there was in theory a division between temporal power and spiritual authority, but in practice one saw a strong Emperor take control of some spiritual affairs and a strong Pope take control of some affairs of state. Charlemagne, as Constantine, considered himself the leader of Christendom as political head of state and protector of the Church. Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Emperor of the Romans on Christmas Day 800, and this marked the formal alliance of the Carolingian Empire and the Papacy. The historian Christopher Dawson called this the beginning of medieval Christendom. 4, 5, 7, 8, 23, 24
THE CONVERSION OF RUSSIA TO BYZANTINE CHRISTIANITY (988)
The Byzantine Empire of the East, with its capital in Constantinople, flourished for a thousand years. The Emperor Theodosius the Great proclaimed Christianity as the official state religion of the Roman Empire in 380. The Empire reached its zenith under Emperor Justinian, the author of the Justinian Code of Law, who ruled from 527 to 565. Justinian built the beautiful Church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople in 539, which became a center of religious thought.
The writings of the Greek Fathers of the Church such as Saints Basil, John Chrysostom, and Maximus the Confessor influenced the spiritual formation of early Christianity. The Byzantine or Greek liturgy is based on the tradition of St. Basil and the subsequent reform of St. John Chrysostom. The Byzantine missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius brought Christianity to Moravia and Cyril created the Cyrillic alphabet for their liturgy, which became the basis of the Slavic languages, including Russian.
Kiev was once the capital of the country of Kievan Rus, which comprised the modern nations of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Influenced by his grandmother Olga, Prince Vladimir of Kiev adopted Byzantine Christianity in 988, converting Russia to the Byzantine Orthodox faith. In the sixteenth century, a Russian mystic Philotheus of Pskof noted that Rome and Constantinople, the second Rome, had fallen, but "Moscow, the third Rome," stands. The Russian Orthodox Church today is the largest Eastern Orthodox faith with over 110 million members. 1, 5, 8, 14, 23
THE SCHISM OF 1054
One of the most tragic events in Church history has been the Schism of 1054 between what is now the Catholic Church in Rome and the Byzantine Orthodox Church in Constantinople.
What began as a diplomatic effort between Pope Leo IX of Rome and the Byzantine Patriarch Michael Cerularius of Constantinople ended in disaster. The actual event occurred on July 16, 1054 when Cardinal Humbert, an abrasive emissary of Pope Leo IX, laid a papal bull of excommunication on the altar right during the liturgy, which led the Eastern Church to excommunicate the envoy. While the event obviously did not end the relationship between the Eastern and Western Churches, it has become symbolic for the distrust and strain between the East and the West that developed through the centuries. The break was sealed in 1204 with the sacking of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade.
The language of Rome was Latin, but that of Constantinople Greek.
The five Patriarchates held seven ecumenical Councils that defined theological beliefs on the Trinity and Jesus Christ, all of which were accepted by Rome and Constantinople. The Fifth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople II in 553 was called by the Emperor Justinian and reaffirmed that there is one hypostatic union in our Lord Jesus Christ. In response to the Monothelite heresy, that Christ had only one will, the Sixth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople III in 681 followed the teachings of St. Maximus the Confessor and confessed that Christ had two wills and two natural operations, divine and human in harmony. The Seventh Ecumenical Council at Nicaea II in 787 resolved the iconoclast controversy thanks to the writings of St. John of Damascus: since Jesus had a true humanity and his body was finite, it was only proper to venerate holy images of the human face of Jesus.
There was a difference in perception of Church authority between the East and West. Latin Rome believed the Pontiff, as the representative of Peter, had supreme authority over all of Christianity, whereas the Greek East saw the Pope, the Bishop of Rome and representative of Peter, as presiding with love in the sense of collegiality, as a first among equals.
This difference in perception of Church authority produced the conflict over the addition of the word filioque - and the Son - to the Nicene Creed by the Roman Catholic Church. Theological thought on the Trinity had progressed with time, particularly with St. Augustine, who saw the Holy Spirit as an expression of love between the Father and the Son. King Recared and his Visigothic bishops converted from Arianism to Catholicism at the The Third Council of Toledo, Spain in 587 and were required to add the word filioque to the Creed. Charlemagne in 794 insisted on the addition of filioque to the Creed, so that the phrase read "the Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son". Pope Leo III at the time refused to allow the change and supported the original Creed; however the Papacy finally accepted the addition of filioque at the coronation of King Henry II of the Holy Roman Empire in 1014. The Eastern Orthodox Churches claim that the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed is the common possession of the whole church and that any change must be done by an ecumenical Council.
Many of the Christian Churches of Eastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean, except the Maronites and the Italo-Albanians, joined the Byzantine or Greek Orthodox Church of Constantinople. 4, 5, 7, 8, 14, 25, 26
SPAIN IN 1065 AD
THE RECONQUEST OF SPAIN
Catholic Spain was the first European territory to suffer Islamic invasion in 711 when the Berber general Ibn Tariq conquered nearly all of Spain except the northern rim. The Visigoth Pelayo held off the Muslims at Covadonga at Asturias in the Cantabrian mountains in 722. Spain, named Al-Andalus by Muslim leaders, prospered under the Umayyad Abd al-Rahman family of Córdoba, where Muslims, Jews, and Christians for a while lived side by side in a spirit of religious toleration.
The discovery of the relics of St. James in a Field of Light in Galicia supported the Catholic heritage of Spain, and a church was built at the pilgrimage site of Santiago de Compostela by Asturian King Alfonso II (791-842). As recorded in the late ninth-century Chronicle of Alfonso III, Pelayo became the inspiration for the rightful recovery of Spanish territory lost to Muslim invasion.
Spain was troubled in 997 when the Moor Almanzor usurped the power of the Caliphate and sacked the city and Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in the northwest tip of Spain, but spared the tomb of St. James (Santiago in Spanish). He took the cathedral bells of the church as a memento of his victory and placed them in the great mosque of Córdoba. With the loss of respect for the Caliphate, Al-Andalus fractured into multiple petty states, known as Taifas.
King Alfonso VI (1065-1109) of León-Castile recaptured Toledo in 1085. El Cid held off the Muslims in Valencia until his death in 1099. King Alfonso I of Navarre and Aragon recaptured Zaragoza in 1118. King Alfonso VIII won a major battle against the Almohad Muslims at Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212. King Fernando III recaptured Córdoba in 1236 and returned the cathedral bells to the Church of Santiago de Compostela. The Reconquista of Spain, or the unification of Spain under Christian rule, was not formally completed until the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, when Granada was captured from the Moors on January 2, 1492. 27
POPE URBAN II AND THE FIRST CRUSADE (1095)
Undertake this journey for the remission of your sins,
with the assurance of the imperishable glory of the Kingdom of Heaven!
Pope Urban II, in one of history's most powerful speeches, launched 200 years of the Crusades at the Council of Clermont, France on November 27, 1095 with this impassioned plea. In a rare public session in an open field, he urged the knights and noblemen to win back the Holy Land, to face their sins, and called upon those present to save their souls and become Soldiers of Christ. Those who took the vow for the pilgrimage were to wear the sign of the cross (croix in French): and so evolved the word croisade or Crusade. By the time his speech ended, the captivated audience began shouting Deus le volt! - God wills it! The expression became the battle-cry of the crusades.
Why did Pope Urban II call for the recapture of the Holy Land? Three reasons are primarily given for the beginning of the Crusades: (1) to free Jerusalem and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; (2) to defend the Christian East, hopefully healing the rift between Roman and Orthodox Christianity; and (3) to marshal the energy of the constantly warring feudal lords and knights into the one cause of penitential warfare.
Led by the papal legate Bishop Adhemar of Le Puy, the First Crusade (of eight major efforts) freed Jerusalem on July 15, 1099. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was once again in Christian hands and restored. The four Crusader states of Jerusalem, Tripoli, Antioch, and Edessa were established. The Kingdom of Jerusalem lasted 88 years, until Saladin recaptured the city October 2, 1187. King Richard the Lionheart of England negotiated the Peace Treaty of Jaffa with Saladin during the Third Crusade whereby Christian pilgrims were given free access to Jerusalem.
The four Crusader states eventually collapsed; the surrender of Acre in 1291 ended 192 years of formal Christian rule in the Holy Land. 1, 5, 28
THE MENDICANT ORDERS TO THE RENAISSANCE
The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were the peak of the Medieval Age. It was the flowering of Christendom, a time of extraordinary intellectual activity, with the rise of the University and the introduction of Arabian, Hebrew, and Greek works into Christian schools. A new form of order arose whose aim was to pursue the monastic ideals of poverty, renunciation, and self-sacrifice, but also to maintain a presence and convert the world by example and preaching. They were known as friars and called the Mendicant Orders (Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites, Augustinians, and the Servites), because of begging alms to support themselves.
St. Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) was born to wealth. He loved adventure, but experienced conversion after joining the military. He returned home, and heard a voice saying to him, "Francis, go and rebuild my house; it is falling down." He adopted a life of poverty, and began to preach the Kingdom of Heaven. Francis loved creation and considered it good, for Christ himself took on flesh in the Incarnation. He loved all living creatures. St. Francis originated the Christmas manger scene. He founded the Franciscan order, and received approval from Rome in 1209. The Poor Clare Nuns began when St. Clare joined the Franciscans in 1212 in Assisi. In 1219 St. Francis risked his life in the Fifth Crusade by calling directly upon the Sultan of Egypt in an effort to convert him and bring peace. He received the stigmata of Christ in 1224, 2 years before his death in 1226.
St. Dominic de Guzman (1170-1221) was born in Calaruega, Spain. On a journey through France he was confronted by the Albigensian heresy (like Manichaeism and the Cathari). As he came with a Bishop in richly dressed clothes on horses, he realized the people would not be impressed with his message. This led him to a life of poverty. He spent several years preaching in France in an attempt to convert the Albigensians. In 1208 in Prouille, France, he received a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary and began to spread devotion to the Rosary. Dominic was a man of peace and converted many through prayer, preaching, and his example of poverty. He founded the Order of Preachers in 1216 known as the Dominican Friars.
The universities in Europe began as guilds of scholars, which first attracted members of the clergy and were supported financially by the Church. The first universities in Europe were founded in Bologna and Paris; Oxford and Cambridge soon followed. Theology, law, and medicine were fields of advanced study. The University of Paris was especially noted for studies in Theology. The age was the time of Scholasticism - of the schools, a method of learning that placed emphasis on reasoning. Important writers at the time were Bonaventure, Duns Scotus, Albertus Magnus, and his student Thomas Aquinas, who became the greatest theologian and philosopher of the age.
St. Thomas Aquinas was a Dominican priest who lived from 1225 to 1274. Born in Roccasecca, Italy to the Aquino family, he joined the Dominicans at the age of 18. He received his doctorate in theology and taught at the University of Paris during the height of Christendom.
One of the greatest contributions by Thomas was his incorporation of the philosophy of Aristotle into the theology of the Catholic Church. Thomas saw reason and faith as one and mutually supportive, and combined the Bible and Church Fathers and the reasoning of Aristotle into one unified system of understanding Christian revelation through faith enlightened by reason.
His most noted work was the Summa Theologica, a five-volume masterpiece. St. Thomas Aquinas presented the classical approach to Biblical Exegesis. Recalling the words of Gregory that Scripture transcends every science, " for in one and the same sentence, while it describes a fact, it reveals a mystery." In addition to the literal sense, Thomas described the three spiritual senses of Scripture, the allegorical, the truth revealed, the moral, the life commended, and the anagogical, the final goal to be achieved. His exposition on the Seven Sacraments remains a standard to our present day.
The Renaissance, which means rebirth, was the period of phenomenal growth in Western culture in art, architecture, literature, and sculpture. Christian humanism, a rejoicing in man's achievements and capabilities reflecting the greater glory of God, had its beginning with the Divine Comedy , published in 1320 by Dante Alighieri in Italy. The Renaissance continued through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries until William Shakespeare . Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, and Botticelli led the way in art. Brunelleschi revived the ancient Roman style of architecture and introduced linear perspective. The great sculptors were Donatello and Michelangelo. St. Thomas More and Erasmus were leading Christian humanists in literature. 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 16, 19, 29-30
THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION
The Protestant Reformation resulted from the failure of the Catholic Church to reform itself in time.
The dark side of the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries witnessed the errant Fourth Crusade to Constantinople in 1204, the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathari in 1209, and the beginning of the Inquisition which became severely punitive. The Papacy suffered a great loss of respect during the Avignon Papacy (1305-1378) and especially during the Papal Schism (1378-1417), when two and at one point three men declared themselves Pope and opposed each other. The Papal Schism had to be resolved by Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg and the Council of Constance 1414-1417, which finally deposed all three Popes and chose Martin V to continue the Papacy. However, the Council also condemned John Hus, the Prague reformer who believed in the priesthood of all believers and the reception of Communion through bread and wine; he was burned at the stake on July 6, 1415. Another victim of the Inquisition was St. Joan of Arc, who saved France during the Hundred Years War with England. She was burned at the stake on May 30, 1431 in Rouen, France. The Spanish Inquisition in the fifteenth century was particularly ruthless.
The lack of Church funds led to even further corruption, including simony and the selling of indulgences. For example, Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz had to pay Rome ten thousand ducats for the right to hold three dioceses at once, and agreed to a three-way split with the Roman Curia and the Fugger Banking firm from the proceeds of the selling of indulgences.
These events led many to question the compassion and integrity of the Church.
The unity of Tradition and Scripture went unchallenged through the Patristic Age and thirteenth century scholasticists such as St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas Aquinas. But the unity of Scripture and Tradition began to be questioned with the decline of the Church. The Belgian Henry of Ghent believed that one should first have the duty to follow Scripture rather than a Church that became one in name only. The English Franciscan William of Ockham (or Occam) was known for the principle of Occam's Razor, that one needs to reduce everything to its simplest cause. Ockham (1288-1348) theorized on three possibilities of the relation of Scripture and the Church. First there was Sola Scriptura, that one could obtain salvation by following Scripture alone; second, that God does reveal truths to the universal Church, an ecclesiastical revelation supplemental to apostolic revelation; and third, the concept of orally transmitted apostolic revelation parallel to written Scripture. Ockham believed that one could reach God only through faith and not by reason. He wrote that universals, such as truth, beauty, and goodness, were concepts of the mind and did not exist, a philosophy known as Nominalism. Thus began the division of the realm of faith from the secular world of reason.
The rise of Nationalism led to the end of Christendom, for countries resented any effort to support Rome, especially in its dismal state. Dissemination of new ideas followed the invention of the movable type printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz, Germany; his very first printing was the Latin Vulgate Bible in 1456.
The stage was set for the reform-minded Martin Luther (1483-1546), the Augustinian monk of Wittenberg, Germany. He received his doctorate in theology in 1512, and then taught biblical studies at the University of Wittenberg. His study of Scripture, particularly St. Paul in his Letter to the Romans, led him to believe that salvation was obtained through justification by faith alone. At first, his only interest was one of reform when he posted his 95 theses on the door of the Wittenberg Church October 31, 1517.
But the intransigence of the Church and poor handling of the situation by the Pope and Curia only worsened matters, such that a break was inevitable. In a July 1519 debate with the Catholic theologian Johann Eck, Luther stated that Sola Scriptura - Scripture alone - was the supreme authority in religion. He could no longer accept the authority of the Pope or the Councils, such as Constance. In 1520 Luther published three documents which laid down the fundamental principles of the Reformation. In Address To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, Luther attacked the corruptions of the Church and the abuses of its authority, and asserted the right of the layman to spiritual independence. In the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, he defended the sacraments of Baptism, Eucharist, and Penance, but criticized the sacramental system of Rome, and set up the Scriptures as the supreme authority in religion. In The Freedom of the Christian Man, he expounded the doctrine of salvation through justification by faith alone. The Augsburg Confession of 1530, written by Philip Melanchthon and approved by Martin Luther, was the most widely accepted Lutheran confession of faith.
Once Sola Scriptura became the norm, it became a matter of personal interpretation.
Huldrich Zwingli of Zurich, Switzerland was next, and he broke with Luther over the Eucharist, but his sect died out. The Anabaptists separated from Zwingli as they denied the validity of infant baptism; they survived as the Mennonites. Jean Calvin published his Institutes of the Christian Religion in 1536, and influenced John Knox and the Presbyterians of Scotland; the Huguenots of France; the Dutch Reformed; and the Pilgrims and Puritans. While he agreed with Luther on the basic Protestant tenets of sola scriptura, salvation by faith alone, and the priesthood of all believers, he went even further on such issues as predestination and the sacraments. George Fox, the son of Puritan parents, founded the Quakers in England in 1647.
King Henry VIII wrote a defense of the seven sacraments, but when refused an annulment from Catherine of Aragon, he had himself declared Supreme Head of the Church of England in 1533. The new Archbishop Thomas Cranmer married Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn that same year. St. Thomas More refused to attend the wedding, and was imprisoned in the Tower of London and later beheaded in 1535. Henry VIII began the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536, and then destroyed the Shrine of the martyr St. Thomas Becket (1118-1170) at Canterbury Cathedral in 1538. The Book of Common Prayer was published in 1549 and the Anglican Church of England was established. Two major sects that split off from the Anglicans were the Baptists, founded by John Smyth in 1607, and later the Methodists, founded by John Wesley and his brother Charles. 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 23, 31
OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE
Then God's temple in heaven was opened,
and the ark of his covenant could be seen in the temple.
There were flashes of lightning, rumblings, and peals of thunder,
an earthquake, and a violent hailstorm.
A great sign appeared in the sky,
a woman clothed with the sun,
with the moon under her feet,
and on her head a crown of twelve stars.
Revelation 11:19-12:1
The four appearances of Our Lady of Guadalupe to the Aztec Indian Juan Diego December 9-12 of 1531 generated the conversion of Mexico and Latin America to Catholicism.
On December 12, 1531, Juan Diego was obedient to the Blessed Virgin Mary's instruction to gather beautiful roses in his tilma and take them to the Franciscan Bishop Don Fray Juan de Zumarraga on his third visit to appeal for the building of a Church as requested by Our Lady. Juan Diego explained to the Bishop all that had passed. Then he put up both hands and untied the corners of crude cloth behind his neck. The looped-up fold of the tilma fell; the flowers he thought were the precious sign tumbled out on the floor.
The Bishop fell on his knees in adoration before the tilma, as well as everyone else in the room. For on the tilma was the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary, just as described by Juan Diego, and is still preserved today in original condition in Tepeyac on the outskirts of Mexico City.
Spanish conquistadors may have conquered the Aztecs in 1521, but their ruthless behavior antagonized the people and conversions were few.
Our Lady of Guadalupe conveyed the beautiful message of Christianity: the true God sacrificed himself for mankind, instead of the horrendous life they had endured sacrificing thousands of humans to appease the frightful gods! It is no wonder that over the next seven years, from 1531 to 1538, eight million natives of Mexico converted to Catholicism!
Indeed, the Blessed Virgin Mary entered the very soul of Central America and became an inextricable part of Mexican life and a central figure to the history of Mexico itself. To this date a major religious celebration in Mexico and Central America is December 12, the feast-day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. A harbinger of things to come, Christianity would thrive in the Americas. Her appearance in the center of the American continents has contributed to the Virgin of Guadalupe being given the title "Mother of America." 1, 7, 32-34
THE CATHOLIC REFORMATION AND MISSIONARY MOVEMENT
"You should know how to behave in the household of God,
which is the church of the living God,
the pillar and foundation of truth."
I Timothy 3:15
The Catholic Church reformed itself both through the positive work of renewal and through the impetus of the Protestant Reformation. Efforts at reform had already begun with the Oratory of Divine Love in Genoa in 1497. The strict order of the Theatines was founded in 1524 and made significant efforts at the reform of the parish clergy. The Capuchins were founded in Italy in 1528 to restore the Franciscan Order to its original ideals. St. Ignatius of Loyola began the Jesuit Order in 1534. Spiritual enrichment was kindled through the Spanish mystics St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross.
The major thrust at reform was the Council of Trent, begun by Pope Paul III in December 1545. The Council of Trent marked an important turning point for the Catholic Church, for it provided clarity on the beliefs of the Church, and ecclesiastical discipline was restored. Pope Pius IV, co-founder of the Theatines, confirmed the Decrees of the Council of Trent in January 1564. The doctrines established at Trent persist to this day.
The Council addressed three areas: doctrine, discipline, and devotion. Seven major areas were included in doctrine: that our justification was not just by faith alone, but also by hope and charity expressed in good works in cooperation with God's grace. Both Tradition and Scripture were essential to the faith. The Latin Vulgate Bible was promoted as the only canonical Scripture. There was a clear definition of the seven sacraments. The Mass as a Memorial of the one Sacrifice of Christ was confirmed, and the Council reaffirmed Transubstantiation. The Mass, known as the Tridentine Mass, was given strict form and was celebrated only in Latin. The Latin Tridentine Mass provided unity for the universal Church, for it was the same Mass in every place and time.
What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but has not works?
Can his faith save him?
If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food,
and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, be warmed and filled,"
without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit?
So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.
James 2:14-17
Discipline involved strict reform and the establishment of the seminary system for the proper and uniform training of priests. The office of indulgence seller was abolished, and doctrine on indulgences was clarified. A Bishop was allowed only one diocese and residence was required, begun by the reformer St. Charles Borromeo of Milan.
The Catholic Reformation coincided with the wave of exploration to the New World and the Far East. Catholic Missionaries accompanied the explorers on their journeys, such as Christopher Columbus in 1492, the Portuguese Vasco da Gama to Goa, India in 1498, and Ferdinand Magellan to the Philippines in 1521.
St. Francis Xavier (1506-1552) exemplified the missionary movement, and has been recognized as second only to the Apostle Paul in his evangelical efforts. The patron saint of missionaries, Francis Xavier sailed from Lisbon, Portugal and landed in Goa in 1542. His humble way had great impact on the local people, and he trained the young in the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer. He was soon reported to have baptized 10,000 a month. He then headed to Cape Comorin, the southern tip of India, where he made many conversions of the fishermen there. Further travels took Francis Xavier to Malacca in Malaysia in 1545 and then to Japan in 1549.
Fr. Andres de Urdaneta and the Augustinian monks sailed to Cebu, Philippines in 1565. Upon discovery of Santo Nino (the Image of the Infant Jesus left by Magellan), they began the conversion of the Philippines to Catholicism.
The Missionary Franciscan Toribio de Benavente arrived in Mexico in 1524. He was a self-sacrificing man dedicated to protecting the natives, and received the name Motolinia for his life of poverty. He recorded in his book History of the Indians of New Spain the dramatic conversions following the appearances of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The Dominican Bartholomew de Las Casas first went to the West Indies in 1502 as a soldier, but on viewing the horrendous enslavement of the native Indians through the Spanish encomienda system, was ordained as a Dominican priest in 1523, the first ordination in America. In his role as human rights advocate for the Indians, he is considered an early pioneer of social justice.
The Jesuits were also noted for early missionary efforts to North America, such as Father Andrew White, who accompanied the Calverts to Maryland in 1634, Isaac Jogues to Quebec in 1636, and Jacques Marquette to Michigan in 1668. Missionary efforts would continue to the New World for years to come. 1, 4, 7, 16, 35
THE KING JAMES BIBLE OF 1611
The history of the English Bible is intimately intertwined with the history of the Reformation. Following the death of the Tudor Queen Elizabeth, James VI of Scotland became the Stuart King James I of England in 1603. He served until his death in 1625, when he was succeeded by his son, Charles I. It was a time when the English language reached its greatest expression in the works of William Shakespeare (1558-1616) and the King James Bible.
King James as head of the Church of England commissioned a group of bishops and scholars to establish an authoritative translation of the Bible from the original languages into English in 1604. There were several English versions available, either as translations of the Latin Vulgate or from the 1516 Greek-Latin parallel New Testament of Erasmus; the ones that follow influenced the King James scholars. John Wycliffe produced a hand-written English translation of the Latin Vulgate in 1384. William Tyndale, an English Lutheran, brought the first printed version of the New Testament into England in 1526. His colleague, Miles Coverdale, completed Tyndale's work, which formed the basis for the Great Bible (1539), the first authorized Bible in English, which was placed in every church in England. When the Catholic Queen Mary came to the throne in 1553, further work had to be done on the European continent, and the Geneva Bible, the first to have numbered verses, was published in 1557. Beginning with the Protestant Elizabethan era in 1558, the English Catholic Douay-Rheims Bible, a translation of the Vulgate, had to be produced on the European continent as well, the Old Testament completed at Rheims, France in 1582, and the New Testament completed at Douay, France in 1609.
The Authorized King James Version of the Holy Bible was published in 1611. The King James Bible originally included the Apocrypha but in a separate section. A literary masterpiece of the English language, the King James Bible is still in use today. 5, 23, 36
CHRISTIANITY TO NORTH AMERICA
Christopher Columbus reached America in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492. Following the discovery of Florida by Ponce de Leon in 1513, St. Augustine, Florida became the first permanent European settlement in North America in 1565, from which missionaries spread Catholicism to the native American Indians. The first Mass of Thanksgiving on North American soil was actually celebrated by the Spanish with the Timucuan Indians from Seloy village in attendance on September 8, 1565 in St. Augustine, Florida. Spanish explorations extended as far as Santa Fe, New Mexico, established in 1609.
A wave of explorations to the New World continued. Jamestown was founded by the British in May of 1607, and the Anglican Church of England was established in Virginia. Samuel de Champlain explored the St. Lawrence River and founded Quebec, Canada for Catholic France in July of 1608. Henry Hudson sailed for the Dutch East India Company and explored the river that bears his name in September of 1609; the Dutch Reformed Church was established in New Amsterdam after the Netherlands purchased Manhattan in 1626.
Christianity continued to thrive in the New World as our young Nation developed. Four of the original 13 English colonies were specifically chartered for religious freedom, as a refuge from religious persecution in England at the time - William Bradford and the Pilgrim Congregationalists at Cape Cod in 1620 and the Calvinist John Winthrop and the Puritan Protestants in 1629 in Massachusetts; Lord Baltimore George Calvert and his son Cecil Calvert for the Catholics in Maryland in 1632; Roger Williams and the Baptists to Providence, Rhode Island in 1644; and William Penn and the Quakers in 1682 to Pennsylvania. The Mennonites also moved to Pennsylvania in 1683 at the invitation of William Penn. The universal toleration offered in Pennsylvania continued to attract groups such as the Amish, Moravian Pietists, and Presbyterians. Early American writings reflect the Christian Heritage of our nation, the United States of America. 1, 5, 7, 36-44
SPIRITUAL REVIVAL DURING THE ENLIGHTENMENT ERA
The period from 1650 through the eighteenth century was known as the Age of Enlightenment in Europe. The time had come when men would set aside religious views and look to reason and social experience to guide society.
It was the loss of Christian unity that led to the secularization of Western culture.
Whereas Christendom provided one message to European society, the pluralism of religions provided different answers to questions about life and led to skepticism and conflict rather than unanimous thought.
Discoveries in science had much to do with the Age of Enlightenment. Copernicus (1473-1543) proposed the sun is the center of the solar system and the earth revolved around the sun. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), the first to use a telescope, confirmed that Copernicus was right and was condemned by the Catholic Church. Scientists such as Isaac Newton (1642-1727) in physics and Robert Boyle (1642-1727) in chemistry were pioneers and gave birth to technology, the application of science to practical problems, which led to the Industrial Revolution. Progress based on science and technology became a major goal of Western Society.
Mankind was left without its mooring, and philosophers set out in different directions to provide meaning for humanity. The critical Rationalism of Rene Descartes (1596-1650) applied to philosophy the mathematical method so effective in science, that everything was questionable until it could be proved beyond all doubt. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) took a different stance and presented Pascal's Wager: it is better to live a good life, for if there is a God, you will end up with Him in Heaven; but if you have lived a bad life and there is a God, you are doomed! John Locke (1632-1704) applied reason to confirm revelation. The political philosopher Baron de Montesquieu of France (1689-1755) proposed that the best form of government would incorporate a separation of powers into executive, legislative, and judicial branches and would be based on the natural law. David Hume (1711- 1776) proposed a science of man, and is considered a pioneer in the social sciences. But Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), considered the father of Romanticism, took an opposite approach and spoke of the noble savage, that man was happy only in his original native state, before government, laws, and politics chained mankind. It was the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) that defined the era: "Have courage to use your own reason - that is the motto of Enlightenment."
The Age of Enlightenment proposed that reason and science would bring an "enlightened" world. Unfortunately, the Age of Enlightenment ignored love, emotion, spirituality and concern for one's fellow man. It forgot that man is wounded by original and personal sin, and his reason is colored by desire and selfishness. In fact, the Age of Enlightenment brought the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror (1789), Naziism, Communism, and the twentieth century, with its two World Wars, the bloodiest century in history.
Intellectual dryness and doctrinal religions prevalent during the Enlightenment Era led to a spiritual revival throughout Western Christian civilization, as seen with Pietism in Germany, Methodism in England and America, and the Great Awakening in the United States.
Philipp Jakob Spener of Germany wrote Pia Desideria in 1675 and spoke of a theology of the heart, placing emphasis on inner devotion and Christian living, and inspired the Pietist movement. Pietism especially influenced Nikolaus von Zinzendorf and the Moravian Church.
John Wesley (1703-1791) and his brother Charles (1707-1788) provided light for Christianity during the Enlightenment. John Wesley, noted for his moving sermons, and his brother Charles, a poetic genius and hymn writer, began the Methodist movement in England, and set forth an evangelical revival throughout the British Isles, North America, and the world.
The two brothers were raised in the Anglican Church. While at Oxford they formed a group, joined by George Whitefield and others, called the Holy Club in November 1729 and read the Greek New Testament. Because of their strict method of living, they were soon called the Methodists. John Wesley experienced a heartwarming conversion experience at Aldersgate Street in London in 1738. He preached in the English countryside to the poor, and sparked a religious revival throughout England. He assured the people that all could be saved by experiencing God and opening their hearts to his grace.
George Whitefield made seven trips to America beginning in 1738 and was one of the most powerful evangelists ever. He, along with others, kindled a spiritual revival throughout the thirteen colonies known as the Great Awakening. The Great Awakening was the first national experience in America and did much to unite the American colonies.
Revival during the Enlightenment Era fulfilled the human need for spiritual experience through Jesus Christ. 4, 5, 7, 23, 37-38
IN GOD WE TRUST
The independence movement in the American colonies sparked an outcry for freedom of religion, such that Christianity flourished in the newly-formed United States of America.
Every taxable resident was required to support the state established Church, no matter what their faith! This caused dissension in the Colonies such as in Maryland and Virginia, where Catholics in Maryland and Presbyterians and Baptists in Virginia objected to the unfair Anglican clergy tax. Of those states with established Churches, Maryland became the first state to disestablish church and state following the Declaration of Independence . The Bill of Rights allowed the free exercise of religion and proliferation of Christian denominations during rapid westward expansion in America.
In 1789, John Carroll, brother of Daniel Carroll who signed the U. S. Constitution and cousin of Charles Carroll, the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence, became the first Catholic Bishop of Baltimore, a diocese which served the entire United States.
Two days after Thomas Jefferson wrote his highly quoted but out-of-context expression "wall of separation between Church and State" to the Danbury Baptists, he appeared on January 3, 1802 in the House of Representatives to hear the Baptist preacher John Leland lead an evangelical service on public property. Separation of Church and State did not preclude a vibrant public square. Recognizing the need to instill morals and values in our children, Bible reading and prayer continued in our public schools for 300 years!
Conversions by Evangelical Protestants and other Christian faiths provided the moral fabric for the new American nation after the Revolutionary War. The Methodist movement proved most successful in North America. In 1784 John Wesley appointed one hundred preachers through the Deed of Declaration, and appointed Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke as superintendents of the Methodist Church in America. Methodist circuit-riders were effective missionaries in spreading the Christian faith from the South to settlers in the mid-West. Evangelism became part of the Christian experience in the USA, as seen in camp meetings, such as Cane Ridge, Kentucky in 1801, and subsequent revivals with Charles Finney in the pre-Civil War era. By the beginning of the American Civil War, Methodism was the largest Christian denomination in North America.
It was left to the unlikely figure of President Abraham Lincoln to recognize the Christian culture of our Nation. In his Second Inaugural Address on March 4, 1865, he remarked near the close of the Civil War: "Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other." He saw the Civil War as a Divine judgement upon our Nation for slavery, for "every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword … 'for the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether'" (Psalm 19:9). He appealed for "malice toward none, with charity for all … to bind the nation's wounds." The phrase In God We Trust was first engraved on the two-cent coin in 1864 during his administration.
An 1892 conservative Supreme Court that respected the free exercise of religion and our Christian heritage declared in Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States that "This is a Christian Nation."
Charismatic renewal in the Holy Spirit was emphasized in the Holiness revival among the Methodists and led to the Pentecostal movement of Charles Fox Parham at Bethel Bible College in Topeka, Kansas in 1901 and William Seymour and the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles in 1906. 1, 37-44
THE RELIGIOUS CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
We must obey God rather than men.
Acts 5:29
The American Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776 read all men are created equal, but slavery persisted. How could the Revolutionary War be fought for freedom without granting freedom to all? The 1861-1865 American Civil War reflected the Christian heritage of our Nation, for the moral issue of slavery troubled the hearts of Americans from our very beginning. The Civil War ended slavery, but left the USA with segregation.
The non-violent religious movement of the 1950s and 1960s emerged as the civil rights movement in the USA, which finally afforded racial equality for African-Americans, one hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation! The crusade arose within Negro Churches, the center of their life. African-Americans had begun to receive recognition in the fields of art, music, and sports. The arrest in Montgomery, Alabama of Rosa Parks, who was detained on December 1, 1955 for refusing to move to the back of the bus for a white person, sparked the drive for civil rights. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., the young and eloquent pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, was elected President of the Montgomery Improvement Association, which had begun the Montgomery Bus boycott. The boycott lasted 381 days until a Supreme Court decision ended segregation on city buses. Reverend King then organized 60 pastors into the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which fostered the civil rights movement.
St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas distinguished between just and unjust laws. Non-violent civil disobedience, advocated by John Locke, Henry David Thoreau, and Mahatma Gandhi, was employed by civil rights leaders against oppressive and unjust civil laws. In general, one is obligated to obey civil laws that are just (Matthew 22:21, Romans 13:1-7), but first one must obey God rather than man (Acts 5:29) in the event of unjust laws, such as Pharaoh's daughter v. the Pharaoh (Exodus 1:15-2:10); Rahab v. the King of Jericho (Joshua 2:1-21); Shadrach, Meshach, and Abegnego v. King Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 3:19-30); the Maji v. King Herod (Matthew 2:1-23); and Peter and the Apostles v. the Sanhedrin (Acts 4:5-22 and 5:17-42). Law itself is not meant for the righteous (I Timothy 1:9). The early Christians refused to obey the Romans and suffered martyrdom rather than worship the Emperor.
President John F. Kennedy announced on nationwide television on June 11, 1963 that he would submit Civil Rights legislation the following week. In his powerful Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Reverend King quoted Scripture and emphasized the words of St. Augustine that an unjust law is no law at all. He urged non-violent protest to turn the tide in favor of racial equality, a movement that crystallized in his famous I Have A Dream speech on the Washington, D. C. National Mall on August 28, 1963. 43-47
THE SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL (1962-1965)
"Holy Father,
keep them in your name that you have given me,
so that they may be one, just as we are."
Gospel of John 17:11
The surprise announcement of a Second Vatican Council by Pope St. John XXIII was welcomed with open arms by all of Christianity, for the Pope called not only for an intense spiritual cultivation of the modern world, but also sought Christian unity . Twentieth-century writers during the World Wars such as T. S. Eliot, Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Merton, and Dorothy Day catalogued the spiritual bankruptcy of the twentieth century and called for spiritual renewal.
His opening speech convening the Second Vatican Council on October 11, 1962 referred to Jesus in the Gospel of John (17:11): "The Catholic Church, therefore, considers it her duty to work actively so that there may be fulfilled the great mystery of that unity, which Jesus Christ invoked with fervent prayer from His heavenly Father on the eve of His sacrifice." The Pope then stressed the need for unity in three areas: namely, the unity of Catholics among themselves; the unity with those Christians separated from our Church, and unity in dignity for those who follow non-Christian religions.
This effort towards unity accelerated the original call for Christian unity by the Protestant World Missionary Conference of Edinburgh in 1910, which recognized the lack of Christian unity proved to be a grave impediment to bringing non-Christians into the Church.
The Second Vatican Council literally "reset the course" for the Catholic Church, a Church which had been described by some as a fortress Church embattled during the Enlightenment and the Modernist era. To coin the expression of Hans Urs von Balthazar in 1952, the time had come to raze the bastions of the Church. It was time for the aggiornamento of Pope John XXIII, the "opening of the window" of the Church to the outside world, "a translation of the Christian message into an intellectual language understandable by the modern world." The four Constitutions, nine Decrees, and three Declarations of Vatican II produced seven major contributions:
1) The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, authorized the Mass to be said in the native language, allowing the liturgy to be intelligible to the layman and helping secure their participation to the fullest.
2) The Dogmatic Constitution of the Church, Lumen Gentium, shifted the emphasis of the Church away from its pyramidal structure to the vision of the whole People of God. The spirit of ecumenism and the change of heart towards all Christian brethren was truly a gift of the Holy Spirit. Lumen Gentium declared "the one Church of Jesus Christ subsists in the Catholic Church, although many elements of sanctification and truth exist outside its visible structure, elements which impel toward catholic unity." The vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience are ever more important for the religious orders to serve as examples for the modern world. The role of the laity to order temporal affairs to the plan of God was emphasized.
3) The Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, reaffirmed the historicity of the Gospels and that Scripture and Tradition form one deposit of faith.
4) The Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, called for dialogue with the modern secular world. Dr. Alan Schreck of Franciscan University offers 3 keys to Gaudium et Spes: (a) the root of the world's problems is found in the human heart. (b) God has created each person in his image and likeness and therefore each person has his own value and dignity. (c) The need for the Church to be a prophetic witness of the truth and to proclaim Jesus Christ. Vatican II led to the creation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, first published in 1992. Pope John Paul II called Gaudium et Spes the "magna carta of human activity, to be safeguarded and promoted."
5) The Decree on Eastern Catholic Churches had a dramatic impact on the growth and viability of the Eastern Catholic Churches.
6) The Declaration on Religious Liberty recognized that the human person has a right to religious freedom.
7) The greatest fruit of the Second Vatican Council was the exceptional Papacy of John Paul II, who integrated the vision of Vatican II into the life of his Papacy. In fact, the Pope, in his 1994 book Crossing The Threshold of Hope, called the Second Vatican Council "the Seminary of the Holy Spirit." 1, 4, 7, 48-53
THE PAPACY OF ST. JOHN PAUL II (1978-2005)
Karol Wojtyla (1920-2005) will be remembered as Pope John Paul II of the Catholic Church. A playwright, actor, and poet, he was born May 18, 1920 in Wadowice, Poland. In 1938 he enrolled in the school of drama at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, where he played goalie on the college soccer team. He entered an underground seminary in 1942 during the Nazi Regime, and was ordained a priest in 1946 after Poland fell under Communism. Oppression by the Nazis and Communists forged his dedication to freedom and human rights. He earned a doctorate in theology in 1948 and a doctorate in philosopy in 1954. His first book was Love and Responsibility, on love and sexual morality, published in 1960. His highly successful play on love, The Jeweler's Shop, was published in 1960 and subsequently translated into 22 languages, and was made into a movie in 1988.
Karol Wojtyla became Bishop of Krakow, Poland in 1958. He attended the Second Vatican Council and helped to draft the documents on Religious Liberty and the Church in the Modern World. He then became Archbishop of Krakow in 1964 and Cardinal in 1967. Following the 33-day papacy of John Paul I, the Conclave of Cardinals elected the bright, personable, and vigorous Wojtyla the 264th Pope on October 16, 1978.
Pope John Paul II was one of the most dynamic Popes in the history of the Catholic Church. The man lived his philosophy, that man is a relational being. The world was his parish, as the loving and outgoing Pope made an unprecedented 104 papal trips abroad. During his three pilgrimages to Poland, his repeated call for freedom and spiritual renewal was the turning-point that ultimately led to the non-violent collapse of Communism, symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989.
The world was moved when he forgave and visited the man who seriously wounded him in St. Peter's Square on May 13, 1981. In a spirit of Christian unity, he prayed with the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie at the site of the martyrdom of St. Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral on May 29, 1982. He became a symbol of hope to the young with his inauguration of International World Youth Day in 1987. As expressed in his 1994 book Crossing the Threshold of Hope, his belief in Jesus Christ as the hope for man in the Third Millennium was an inspiration for all. He urged all of us to hear the words (Matthew 28:10) of the Risen Christ - "Be Not Afraid!" In his 2000 visit to Jerusalem, the Pope asked God forgiveness for the sins of the Catholic Church. On January 13, 2003, he opposed the imminent pre-emptive strike against Iraq, stating war "is always a defeat for humanity."
A persistent theme in his fourteen encyclicals was the dignity of the human person in the light of Christ, and the goal for humanity to become a civilization of love. His first encyclical, The Redeemer of Man (1979), called the Church a "community of disciples" who follow Jesus Christ, "the center of the universe and of history." He completed his Trinitarian encyclicals with The Mercy of God the Father (1980), and On the Holy Spirit (1986). His respect for the Blessed Virgin Mary was reflected in Mother of the Redeemer (1987). He commemorated Saints Cyril and Methodius in The Apostles to the Slavs in 1985 to encourage his fellow countryman during communist oppression. The Pope called for social justice in three encyclicals, On Human Work (1981), On Social Concerns (1987), and On the One Hundredth Year of Rerum Novarum (1991), in which he emphasized the dignity of the individual, in the face of man being unjustly treated as a unit of production in a socialistic utilitarian world. He renewed commitment to the missionary role of the Church in Mission of the Redeemer in 1990. He appreciated man's thirst for truth, as noted in his encyclical The Splendor of Truth, published in 1993. One of his favorite Scriptural quotes was John 8:32: You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. Perhaps his most important was the widely read encyclical The Gospel of Life, published in 1995, in which he defended the sanctity of life and described the culture of death - the evil of abortion and euthanasia. He pursued Vatican II's goal in turning the Church's direction towards Christian unity, as addressed in his 1995 encyclical That All May Be One. In addition to pointing out those areas of study necessary for a true consensus of faith, he addressed the common bonds of unity in faith among all Christians: Jesus Christ our Savior, Son of God the Father, who sent the Holy Spirit; Baptism; the New Testament of the Bible; and prayer, especially the Lord's Prayer. He emphasized the relation of Faith and Reason in an encyclical of the same name in 1998. His fourteenth and final encyclical on The Church of the Eucharist was released in 2003.
His weekly general audiences in St. Peter's Square led to his book on the Theology of the Body in 1997. Pope John Paul II led a profound life of prayer, and in 2002 added the Mysteries of Light, also called the Luminous Mysteries, to the Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary. He established Divine Mercy Sunday, which recognized the devotion of St. Faustina and the Chaplet of Divine Mercy to our Merciful Saviour.
Pope John Paul II was truly the moral and spiritual leader of the entire world, as one can appreciate by the worldwide outpouring of love on his death April 2, 2005. John Paul II will be remembered for his emphasis on Christ and man, that the Gospel provides direction and supports the dignity of the human person. For "the truth is that only in the mystery of Christ the Incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light." He is only the third Pope to be called the Great, a title that is already being used for this holy and loving man. 1, 4, 7, 54-60
- LMH
REFERENCES
1 Alan Schreck. Historical Foundations and The Second Vatican Council. Course Lectures, Franciscan University, Steubenville, Ohio, 2004.
2 Christopher Dawson. The Christian View of History, in The Dynamics of World History. JJ Mulloy, Editor, Sheed & Ward, London and New York, 233-250, 1957. Reprinted by Catholic University of America Press, Washington, D. C. (Editor) G Russello, 213-231, 1998; and by Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Wilmington, Delaware, Introduction by D Quinn, 245-262, 2002.
3 The Navarre Revised Standard Version of The Holy Bible. Four Courts Press, Dublin, Ireland, 1999-2005.
4 Thomas Bokenkotter. Concise History of the Catholic Church. Image Books, Doubleday, New York, 2004.
5 Jackson J. Spielvogel. Western Civilization, Sixth Combined Edition. Thomson Wadsworth, Belmont, California, 2006.
6 Frances M. Young. Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture. Cambridge University Press, London and New York, 1997.
7 Alan Schreck. Compact History of the Catholic Church. Revised Edition, St. Anthony Messenger Press, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2009.
8 Christopher Dawson. The Making of Europe. Sheed and Ward, London, 1932; Catholic University of America, Washington, D. C., 2003.
9 Eusebius of Caesarea. History of the Church, circa 325; Translation by GA Williamson, New York University Press, 1966.
10 Christopher Dawson. The Historic Reality of Christian Culture. Routledge & Keegan Paul Ltd, London, 1960; Harper and Row, New York, 1965.
11 Luke Timothy Johnson. The Writings of the New Testament. Third Edition, SCM Canterbury Press, London, 2003.
12 Brown RE, Fitzmeyer JA, Murphy RE (eds): The New Jerome Biblical Commentary. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1990.
13 Pope Benedict XVI. The Apostles. Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Our Sunday Visitor, Huntingdon, Indiana, 2007.
14 Ronald Roberson. The Eastern Christian Churches, Seventh Edition. Pontifical Oriental Institute, Rome, 2008.
15 The Letters of St. Ignatius of Antioch and St. Clement of Rome. Ancient Christian Writers Series, Paulist Press, Mahwah, New Jersey.
16 Michael Walsh, Editor. Butler's Lives of the Saints. HarperCollins, San Francisco, 1991.
17 St. Justin Martyr. The First and Second Apologies. Ancient Christian Writer Series, Paulist Press, New York, 1997.
18 New Catholic Encyclopedia, Second Edition. The Catholic University of America, Washington, D. C., 2003.
19 The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2000.
20 Confessions of St. Augustine. Harvard Classics, PF Collier and Sons, New York, 1909.
21 St. Augustine. The Lord's Sermon on the Mount. Written 393-396. Ancient Christian Writer Series, Paulist Press, Mahwah, New Jersey.
22 St. Augustine. City of God, 413-426. Image Doubleday, New York, 1958.
23 Placher WC, Nelson DR. A History of Christian Theology, Second Edition. John Knox Press, Louisville, Kentucky, 2013.
24 Peter Brown. The Rise of Western Christendom, Second Edition. Blackwell, Oxford, 2003.
25 Avery Cardinal Dulles. "Filioque," Concordia Theological Quarterly 59:1-2 (January-April 1995): 31-48.
26 Bishop Timothy Kallistos Ware. The Orthodox Church. Penguin, London, England, 1997.
27 Joseph O'Callaghan. A History of Medieval Spain. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, 1975.
28 Thomas F. Madden, Editor: Crusades, the Illustrated History. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2005.
29 St. Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica. Translation by the English Dominican Province, 1920. Reprinted by Christian Classics of Allen, Texas, 1981.
30 Dante Alighieri. The Divine Comedy, original publication, Ravenna, Italy, 1320. Translation by John Ciardi, Modern Library, Random House, New York, 1996.
31 Aidan Nichols. The Shape of Catholic Theology. Order of St. Benedict, Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota, pages 165-180, 1991.
32 Manuela Testoni. Our Lady of Guadalupe. St. Paul - Alba House, Staten Island, New York, 2001.
33 Monsignor Eduardo Chavez. Our Lady of Guadalupe and St. Juan Diego - The Historical Evidence. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, Maryland, 2006.
34 Francis Johnston. The Wonders of Guadalupe. Tan Books and Publishers, Rockford, Illinois, 1981.
35 William P. Treacy. Old Catholic Maryland and Early Jesuit Missionaries. 1889. Reprint: Bibliolife, Charleston, South Carolina, 2009.
36 William Shakespeare. The Norton Shakespeare, Oxford Edition. WW Norton and Company, London, 2008.
37 James H. Hutson. Church and State in America. Cambridge University Press, New York, 2008.
38 Berkin C, Miller CL, Cherny RW, Gormly JL. Making America, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 2006.
39 William J. Bennett. America - The Last Best Hope, 2 Volumes. Thomas Nelson, Nashville, 2006 and 2007.
40 Samuel Eliot Morison. Oxford History of the American People. Oxford University Press, New York, 1965.
41 Matthew Spalding. We Still Hold These Truths. Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Wilmington, Delaware, 2009.
42 Mark A. Noll. America's God. Oxford University Press, 2002.
43 Shelby Foote. The Civil War, A Narrative: Volume IX - Five Forks to Appomattox. Random House, New York, 1974.
44 Christopher Curtis. Church and State in Early America. Class Lectures, Armstrong University, Savannah, Georgia, 2014.
45 John F. Kennedy. Profiles in Courage. Harper and Brothers, New York, 1955.
46 Martin Luther King, Jr. A Testament of Hope. Harper, San Francisco, 1986.
47 John T. Noonan. The Lustre of Our Country: The American Experience of Religious Freedom. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1998.
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55 Karol Wojtyla. The Jeweler's Shop, 1960. Play and Movie, 1988. Ignatius Press, San Francisco.
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57 Pope John Paul II. The Encyclicals of John Paul II. Our Sunday Visitor, Huntingdon, Indiana, 1996.
58 Pope John Paul II. Theology of the Body. Pauline Books and Media, Boston, 1997.
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In which Irish province are the counties of Cork, Waterford and Kerry? | Bread Broken & Shared May/June 2014 by Blessed Sacrament - issuu
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A Newsletter for friends of the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament of the Province of Saint Ann
See the Invisible, Do the Impossible by Robert Stark SSS Director, Office for Social Ministry Father Robert Stark SSS of the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament has worked in community and social justice causes in the continental USA, Latin America and now in Hawaii. He began his ministry for the Social Ministry Office in 2010 as its resource developer/community organizer and now serves as its director. He has been involved in recruiting, organizing and training Hawaii Catholics to support and sustain the diocese’s housing and homeless ministries. Ordained a priest in 1977, he obtained a doctorate in social ethics from the University of Chicago Divinity School and has also been engaged in parish ministry, and ministered in Central America and the Caribbean. Presently ministering in Hawaii, Father Stark spent 15 years in New Mexico with the New Mexico Community Foundation where he served as its executive director for nine years. Under his leadership, the foundation’s aid to mostly immigrants and Native Americans grew from $70,000 to $7 million a year. We share with you excerpts of Father Stark’s homily at the Red Mass in Honolulu recently. The Red Mass is an annual celebration at the start of the legislative and judicial year and attended by State and Federal officials.
Aloha kakou! Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedules to come here today to celebrate this Red Mass together! To all our public servants, mahalo nui loa for your generous service. When Bishop Larry Silva (Bishop of the Diocese of Honolulu) asked me to speak here today about how faith is related to the formidable challenge of affordable housing in Hawaii, frankly, I felt overwhelmed. But then I remembered what a medicine man told me when I was working as a missionary in Latin America. That wise man said, “Those who can see the invisible, can do the impossible, and we learn to see by listening.” That simple, profound truth continues to help MAY/JUNE 2014
Father Robert Stark SSS sharing the homily at the Red Mass in Honolulu, Hawaii
Inside This Issue 4 The Associates Corner 6 Mary and the Eucharist 7 From Our Provincial 8 The Blessed Sacrament Mission
10 Ecumenical Corner 12 Vocation Views 14 Saint Ann’s Shrine
Province of St. Ann Newsletter
See the Invisible...Continued from previous page me in my current work at the diocesan Office for Social Ministry, where daily I try to listen more and strive to see what is invisible to the human eye in order to attempt to do what appears impossible for the human hand. When I came to these beautiful islands, I was immediately struck by how folks here love to “talk story.” What a way to connect! For example, by talking story, listening. Connecting with Makia Malo, an amazing blind storyteller from Kalaupapa, I have learned to see plenty of what he says I “never care for look.” Through “talking story” here, I have come to see some of the often invisible examples of collaboration around the seemingly impossible challenges of providing affordable housing in Hawaii. Today I simply come to connect, to share some of these stories in the framework of our faith and the scriptures we just heard. The lyrics of our entrance song this morning are very fitting. “We come to share our story.” Those words were first connected to a traditional Hawaiian melody at Malia Puka O Kalani Parish in the historic Hawaiian homestead of Keaukaha where I am blessed to serve on weekends. It was there that I received a blessing from a kupuna Auntie Ulu who taught me the Sign of the Cross in Hawaiian — a combination of prayer and gesture that helps us connect, communicate and be in communion, collaborate with our God and our neighbor. In this Sign of the Cross, we reverently invoke the image of Makua – Father, Keiki – Son and ‘Uhane Hemolele — Holy Spirit: Three Persons in one divine collaboration connecting God and humankind through creative love, compassionate sacrifice and merciful healing. This image of collaboration is especially appropriate as we come together to ask for our invisible God to help us work together, to connect, communicate, collaborate, to govern well — a task that can often seem impossible. The blessing of a collaborative God challenges us this morning to go beyond the mere visible appearance of cooperation — among faiths, between church and state — to deepen our genuine desire to join together, to be nourished by what we share, to be sent forth to labor together on what may seem like impossible tasks for the good of all. Our Scripture readings today challenge us to recognize our connectedness and God’s call to compassionately collaborate on building a better world for all, especially the vulnerable. The prophet Micah calls us to “do justice, love Bishop Larry Silva invoking God’s blessings on Hawaii’s public servants
compassionately, walk humbly with our God.” The Acts of the Apostles describes early Christians “dividing resources among all according to each one’s needs.” Luke’s Gospel recalls Jesus beginning his public ministry by quoting the great prophet Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor, liberty to prisoners, sight to the blind.” Then in conclusion, Jesus says, “Today this Scripture is being fulfilled in your hearing.” These scriptural challenges may seem like impossible tasks, but Scripture also tells us, “With God, all is possible.” These Scripture passages were chosen to help us connect, communicate, collaborate so we can see the invisible, and do the impossible — to overcome the hopelessness of homelessness and lack of affordable housing. How? By recognizing that when we collaborate together, seemingly unattainable or unfeasible tasks can be fulfilled in our midst. The proof is right here! Saints Damien and Marianne of Molokai prayed in this cathedral more than a century ago, as we do today. They shared these same scriptural challenges. We know their stories. How they dedicated their lives with those considered even more outcast than the souls who sleep on our sidewalks today. Damien and Marianne’s compassion inspired collaboration between government, hospitals, businesses and faith communities – to do the impossible for those, whom some of society wished were invisible. We are invited to follow in their footsteps in a mission of mercy today; to put our faith in action, in service with the most vulnerable, in a way that is healing for all of us – as sinners struggling to become connected. Continued on next page...
MAY/JUNE 2014
See the Invisible...Continued from previous page
Who We Are “Following in the footsteps of St. Peter Julian Eymard, our mission is to respond to the hungers of the human family with the riches of God’s love manifested in the Eucharist.” Rule of Life 3 Conscious of our call to bear prophetic witness to the Eucharist, we commit ourselves to the renewal of Church and society through this sacrament, especially by:
♦gathering
Now in our day, Pope Francis, the once invisible Argentine bishop, has been working on the impossible task of transforming the church today into a hospital of healing for all right before our eyes and TV cameras. He was recently on the cover of TIME magazine as Person of the Year. Why are people paying attention to him, even those not Catholic? Perhaps because, like his namesake Saint Francis of Assisi, he lives by a phrase: “Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.”
Father Robert Stark SSS with a mural of the two saints of Hawaii Father Damien and Mother Marianne
communities characterized by hospitality, reconciliation, and service;
This pope’s recent writings call us to “keep our ear to the people,” to “be positive,” to seek “unity prevailing over conflict.” He warns that if we remain trapped by what divides us, we will lose a sense of the profound reality of what connects us. By focusing on what we share in common, we can achieve far more together than by going separate ways.
♦celebrating the
Yes, Pope Francis’ words are inspiring. But his actions speak even louder. You probably recall recent images of him washing the tattooed feet of female Muslim prisoners, embracing persons with distressing deformities or disabilities, celebrating his birthday with the homeless – These are the pictures of our scripture readings being fulfilled today.
Eucharist as the source and summit of the life of the Church;
♦associating others with our prayer;
♦giving personal
witness to the presence of Christ in the Eucharist;
♦sharing our
Eucharistic mission with others in full collaboration.
Pope Francis reminds us we are all connected. And he calls us all to reconnect, be about forgiving, healing! That is why TIME MAGAZINE called him A People’s Pope. This People’s Pope recently urged priests to prepare better homilies by focusing on real questions in people’s lives. Well the need for affordable housing is certainly a real issue for people in Hawaii. We’ve all heard the statistics about Hawaii having the highest rate of homelessness and the highest housing costs in the nation. Hawaii’s working and middle class families often pay 50% or more of their income on housing. But the real issue is about so much more than statistics. It’s about real people like Christy, a 34 year old from the Big Island a veteran diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and like Lynne, a 61 yr old disabled UH Manoa security guard with sciatica who both live in fear of losing their affordable one room or studio units in nearby Chinatown. Because it is a real issue in so many people’s lives, six years ago the diocese’s new strategic plan, “Witness to Jesus,” listed homelessness and affordable housing as a priority action. In 2011, the U.S. bishops called for renewed commitment to increase affordable housing. That same year, Bishop Silva’s appointed Homeless and Affordable Housing Task Continued on next page...
Province of St. Ann Newsletter
See the Invisible...Continued from previous page
Force launched a Plan whose goal is to increase affordable housing in Hawaii by partnering with public and private sectors, non-profits and faith-based communities. This collaborative effort contributes to the governor’s overall plan for ending homelessness and it underscores that partnerships with many others, including government, help make it all possible. There are plenty reasons and opportunities for collaborating including the critical concern about the current sale of 12 city-managed affordable rental housing complexes where Christy and Lynn live; or the multiple needs of migrant populations such as workplace housing, driver licenses and living wages. All are part of the challenge to fulfill in our midst the Scripture we heard today. If we care to look, and can tap our invisible capacity for collaboration, maybe someday the Time Magazine Person of the Year Cover will have not just one person, but one image of one people of Hawaii – hand in hand, unified in a rainbow of efforts to create affordable housing for all. Impossible? Not if we remember those who can see the invisible, can do the impossible. And if we are connected and collaborating with God, all is possible. Let us leave here more connected with one another, like a flower lei artfully joined, woven together and the stronger for it, with differences but of ONE loving heart — a pu’uwai aloha – in our collaborative service to be Good News with the vulnerable, so that together, with Jesus, we can say, “Today these texts are being fulfilled in our midst.” Ma ka Inoa, O ka Makua, A o ke Keiki, A me ka ‘Uhane Hemolole. ‘Amene.
The Associates CornerAssociates of the Future by Jim Brown
The Blessed S a c r a m e n t Congregation first came to Corpus Christi parish in Houston, Texas in 1987. Parishioners were quickly attracted to the spirit of hospitality and the love for celebrating the Mass that the religious exuded. And in addition to hearing the homilists consistently proclaim God’s love manifested in a special way in Christ’s gift in the Eucharist, they also were introduced to the founder of the congregation, Saint Peter Julian Eymard, who was canonized in 1962 at the conclusion of the first session of the Second Vatican Council. In 1991, a group of parishioners were introduced to a program called Life in the Eucharist. Some of them were so touched by this adult spiritual formation experience that they stepped forward to participate on a LITE team and began training and formation for presenting this five evening program to other parishioners and parishes in the Houston area. In 1992, a group from this team went to Cleveland, Ohio, and put on the program for the pastors and superiors of the province of Saint Ann. One of the superiors, the late Father Timothy Mangan, SSS, said in the evaluation at the end of the program: “We are concerned about the lack of vocations in the American church. During these days we have experienced vocations for the future, committed lay people witnessing to their love of the Eucharist and their faith. I am very hopeful.” Increasingly, women and men involved in the Life in the Eucharist ministry in Houston and Cleveland in particular welcomed an invitation by the religious of the congregation to see themselves as “associates” of the Blessed Sacrament Congregation. Many of these early associates began to join the religious for the Liturgy of the Hours, Adoration, province retreats and meetings. It was with great joy that they along with staff members and ministers in the various Blessed Sacrament parishes responded to the formal invitation in 2010 to become associates and to join the Eymardian family. Continued on next page...
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The Associates Corner...Continued from previous page Fast forward to 2012 when a young couple, Vangie and Jim Ziegler, relatively new to experiencing the charism of the Blessed Sacrament Congregation, stepped forward in curiosity to go through the initial formation program to become associates of the congregation. In 1994, they moved to Houston as a young family and settled at Corpus Christi parish in 1996. From the very first Mass they attended and without realizing it, they experienced a genuine example of the charism of the Congregation. Jim remembers, “It was as if a heavy burden had been lifted from our shoulders. We found a home where our family could become part of a larger welcoming family.” Vangie said in a conversation at the end of the formation experience that “Corpus Christi parish has become a ‘family’ for us. We are the only ones in Houston.” As their two children were now older they felt that they could become even
A Word of Thanks to our Partners in Ministry Many of you returned the enclosed response card in with a generous donation to the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament. We are most grateful to you for making it possible for our priests and brothers to continue their ministry. Your gift, whether large or small, helps you to actually share in the ministry of the Congregation in the USA. You are remembered daily in the prayer intentions of the priests and brothers of the Congregation.
more active in the life of the parish and especially as associates. For Jim, “it was most moving to be invited to join the associates program. It was very heartening that others noticed how we live our faith life.” Vangie and Jim now take time out of their very busy family and work lives to attend – when they can – the monthly meetings and activities of the associates that take place at Corpus. Vangie and Jim represent the kind of Vangie and Jim Ziegler at a gathering to parishioners that the Congregation evaluate the initial formation program for hopes it can attract more of as Associates, January 2013. associates: a young couple with a young family (somewhat more recently connected to the Congregation), active in their parish, a curiosity to know more about the congregation and its charism. Jim speaks for quite a few who might aspire to being an associate: “I had to get comfortable talking about my faith. I tend to approach my faith from a more intellectual basis. I look forward to a more in depth study of Saint Eymard and the theology of the eucharist espoused by the congregation.”
“it was most moving to be invited to join the associates program. It was very heartening that others noticed how we live our faith life.”
Jim also spoke eloquently to the question: what is expected of an associate? One answer is simply to witness to the Eucharist with a quiet presence and Jim’s version of the teaching of Saint Francis of Assisi: “Pray and live the Gospel often and use words only when necessary.” Vangie and Jim made their covenant commitment as Associates of the Blessed Sacrament Congregation on December 12, 2012, along with 18 other parishioners from Corpus Christi Parish. By March 2012, 34 parishioners from Corpus were enrolled as Associates, including Noreen Hoard, Nancy MacRoberts, David Ford, and Patty and Bubba Pizzitola, who were members of the Life in the Eucharist team who presented the program to the pastors and superiors back in 1992.
Province of St. Ann Newsletter
Mary and the Eucharist During the 2005 Synod of Bishops, which was devoted to the Holy Eucharist, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now our Holy Father Pope Francis, reflected on the Blessed Sacrament and the Blessed Virgin Mary. Cardinal Bergoglio, citing an apostolic exhortation and two encyclicals by Pope John Paul II, added: Our faithful people believe in the Eucharist as a priestly people (cf. Christifideles laici 1, 14). It is a qualitatively constant participation (cf. Christifideles laici 1, 17). Our faithful people believe as a Eucharistic people in Mary. They tie together their affection for the Eucharist and their affection for the Virgin, our Lady and Mother (cf. Redemptoris Mater III, 44). In the “school of Mary,” Eucharistic woman, we can reread contemplatively the passages in which John Paul II sees our Lady as a Eucharistic woman, and see her not alone but “in the company of” (Acts 1:14) the People of God. We follow here that rule of tradition by which, with different nuances, “what is said of Mary is said of the soul of every Christian and of the whole Church.” (Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 57). Our faithful people have the true “Eucharistic attitude” of giving thanks and of praise. Remembering Mary, they are grateful for being remembered by her, and this memorial of love is truly Eucharistic. In this respect I repeat what John Paul II affirmed in Ecclesia de Eucharistia, number 58: “The Eucharist has been given to us so that our life, like that of Mary, can become completely a Magnificat.”
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From Our Provincial Superior... by Norman Pelletier SSS
During the week of March 11-15 our priests and brothers met for a meeting, called a Province Assembly. During this Assembly the 30 or so religious (priests and brothers) spent time in prayer and planning. The reason we get together at this time is to prepare for an important gathering to be held in November, called a Province Chapter, during which we determine tasks and programs for the next four years and elect our leadership accordingly for that period of time. On the agenda for this meeting are the critical areas of our religious/community life, our ministries, and our resources. Consequently, we take a hard look at our personnel situation relative to our ministries and our finances. This picture can be sobering as we come to realize that the number of our priests and brothers is diminishing while our financial picture is also shrinking. In this mix is also the great need for new vocations which, sorry to say, are not storming the gates of our seminaries and religious communities these days. In addition to all of this, we are evaluating our elder care programs and the best future use of our older buildings in constant need of repairs. This is indeed a sobering but necessary exercise and one that we are facing head on with courage, determination and good planning. Reality teaches us to be responsible in our stewardship and often invites us to be bold in our solutions. We realize, however, that although we often employ the best practices of the
Bread Broken & Shared Newsletter is published five times a year by the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament, Province of Saint Ann, for family, friends and benefactors. Contact information: Phone: (440) 442-6311 Fax: (440) 442-4752 Editor: Thomas A. Wiese, SSS Design: Kay Vincent Email: [email protected] Website: www.blessedsacrament.com Photographs in this issue courtesy of: Diocese of Hawaii, File Photos Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament 5384 Wilson Mills Road Cleveland, Ohio 44143
Religious Communities in Illinois, Florida, New York, Ohio, Texas
Prayer in Honor of Saint Peter Julian Eymard Gracious God of our ancestors, you led Peter Julian Eymard, like Jacob in times past, on a journey of faith. Under the guidance of your gentle Spirit, Peter Julian discovered the gift of love in the Eucharist which your son Jesus offered for the hungers of humanity. Grant that we may celebrate this mystery worthily, adore it profoundly, and proclaim it prophetically for your greater glory. Amen.
business world, we are not operating a commercial business but rather we are working as disciples of Jesus who are witnessing to a Kingdom where gospel values are supreme. This is not always an easy task, but one that is not unlike every Christian family which struggles to live a life of faith in this world. It is still Lent as I write these words and I can easily associate the Assembly agenda, which I have explained above, to our common “desert journey” experience. And just as Lent leads through the desert to a glorious Easter experience of resurrection, so too, we believe will our common journey be filled with the hope of a bright future. In fact, I am writing this on the first day of spring. After a long record breaking winter, spring brings hope for a warmer, sunnier, more colorful season. By the time you read these lines you already will, most probably, be enjoying the passage of winter. Saint Peter Julian Eymard often spoke of the Eucharist as the Divine Sun who illumines and warms the hearts of Christians just as this world’s sun does for our earth. It is the light and heat of this Sun that gives us hope for a new springtime in our religious communities and in our families.
Province of St. Ann Newsletter
The Blessed Sacrament Mission A Perspective from Rome
by Jim Brown
I was again privileged to attend another International Commission of the “SSS Mission” meeting representing the Province of Saint Ann (USA). The meeting was held March 3 – 6, 2014 in Rome, Italy. The Commission (CIM) was formed at the XXXIV General Chapter (2011) to guide and support the religious of the Congregation in their ministries and to encourage eucharistic initiatives so that all members in the Eymardian family may truly become “apostles and disciples of the Eucharist.”
[L-R] Father Sebastian “Bong” Luistro, Father Joseph Binh Vu Quoc (general consultor - from Vietnam), (Father General – Eugenio Barbosa Martins), Ms. Maria Novani (from Scotland), Father Vittore Boccardi (from Italy), Father Olivier Ndondo (from Congo-Kinshasa), Father Marcelo Da Silva (from Brazil), Father Peter Antonysamy (from India) and Mr. James Brown (from USA).
The CIM is made up of members representing a global perspective for the congregation: Brazil, the Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Ireland/Great Britain, Italy, the Philippines, Viet Nam and the United States. As the meeting got underway, those on the General Council talked about the impact and “inspiration of Pope Francis” and the climate he has created in Rome. Father Eugenio Barbosa Martins SSS, Superior General, had attended a meeting of superiors general in November with Pope Francis which turned into a “conversation.” At that meeting, Pope Francis said, “. . . reality is understood only if it is looked at from the periphery, and not when our viewpoint is equidistant from everything. Truly to understand reality we need to move away from the central position of calmness and peacefulness and direct ourselves to the peripheral areas.” Fr. Eugenio said, “I believe that as we look at our Blessed Sacrament mission, we need to get out of our comfort zones.” On that note the meeting began. (The following week, I was present for a Province Assembly held in Tampa, Florida. Fathers William Fickel SSS, and Anthony Schueller SSS, led the group in a day of reflection to kick off the Assembly. They focused the day on texts from that ”conversation” and the challenging words uttered by Pope Francis, including the call to take the mission to the “periphery.”) And so we began our meeting, one focused on two major priorities: 1. Maximizing resources for mission throughout the Congregation. 2. Assessing the status and development of the Aggregation (Associations) throughout the Congregation, including discussion of the status of the Life in the Eucharist ministry.
The first day was spent discussing reports from the provinces concerning mission and ministry. Across the Congregation, with some exceptions, the main ministries are: a) parish shrines and parishes; b) the formation of associates; and, c) Eucharistic centers, e.g., The Center for Eucharistic Evangelizing (CEE), dedicated to providing resources and materials “especially for the formation of laity in a Eucharistic spirituality.” The second and third days were spent sharing stories of all that is taking place in the various sectors of the Congregation and in particular efforts to initiate and develop Associates programs. We began on the third day to brainstorm ways the CIM might help in animating and supporting efforts to build a greater partnership with the laity. During this time, the Superior General offered a clarification on how lay women and men partner with the Blessed Sacrament religious in different parts Continued on next page...
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The Blessed Sacrament Mission...Continued from previous page of the world, where cultural differences shape how laity see themselves in partnership with the Congregation. “There are thousands of people around the globe who have joined us in our mission, e.g., parish and other staffs and volunteers, members of Eucharistic leagues, participants in LITE programs, etc. And now we have a growing number of Associates who have stepped forward to make a deeper commitment and follow a lifestyle laid out in the Rule of Life for Associates. The latter are not better than but different. We must continue to form all in an Eymardian/ Eucharistic spirituality,” said Father Eugenio. In the last part of the meeting we came up with a number of recommendations that will be presented to a meeting of all the provincials of the congregation to be held in January, 2015. There were four:
1. Continue clarifying the elements of a Eucharistic spirituality, what should be at the center of all the Blessed Sacrament ministries as well as the various formation programs for religious and associates. 2. Establish a way to connect the CIM and all the Associations throughout the Congregation (e.g., identify a Director for each Association, perhaps have an international meeting of directors or representatives). 3. Serve as a clearing house for an exchange of information about formation programs: syllabi, schedules of events for Associates, etc. 4. Continue to clarify what the congregation expects of Associates while respecting local cultures.
A final note: The sharing about the various Associates programs was really a rich conversation. I was amazed to hear about the mission activities Associates in India, Brazil and the Congo engage in: working with the dying and destitute, visiting the sick and those affected by natural calamities, assisting with monetary and material assistance for struggling families, ministering to the homeless, a ministry of presence in war torn Africa, to name a few. Going back to earlier comments offered by Father Eugenio, he reiterated something very important to the general leadership: “We must form those who choose to go deeper in their commitment to the Eymardian family so that the Eucharistic spirituality they learn results in apostolic works for mission.”
Visit our New Websites! The Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament now has four new websites: 1. www.blessedsacrament.com The Congregation’s main website shares the life and ministry of the Blessed Sacrament priests, deacons, and brothers and the history and spirituality of the Congregation; it also includes Father Ernest’s Ecumenical Blog and the Vocation site. 2. www.eucharisticevangelizing.com The website of the Center for Eucharistic Evangelization (CEE) which highlights the Congregation’s various educational programs and the Blessed Sacrament Associates. 3. www.emmanuelpublishing.org This is the official website of Emmanuel Magazine which introduces the reader to this magazine of Eucharistic Spirituality and will also be available online. 4. www.st-ann-shrine.org The Saint Ann Shrine website invites people to partner with the Congregation through prayer.
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Father Ernest’s Ecumenical Corner The Grace Given You in Christ Catholics and Methodists in Dialogue by Ernest Falardeau SSS Father Ernest Falardeau SSS, a regular contributor to Bread Broken & Shared, has been championing the cause of unity among Christian churches for many years in his ministry and in this column. We thank him for keeping this important cause before our eyes.
John Wesley and his brother Charles are the founders of Methodism which began as a movement and eventually became a Protestant denomination after their death. The brothers are well-known for their very inspiring hymns which, since Vatican II, have found their way into Catholic hymnals after years of use in many Christian denominations. John Wesley attributes his inspiration for Methodist spirituality to a “warming of his John Wesley (1703-1791) heart” at a meeting in Aldersgate Street, London for prayer. The meeting was led by members of the Moravian Church. Wesley was deeply interested in their spirituality and he was very committed to the Church of England and to the Arminian theology which characterized it in the eighteenth century. This theology he preferred to the Calvinist theology which prevailed in the Protestant churches. Over the years, fifty or more, of my acquaintance with Methodists, I have had the pleasure and privilege of knowing some, especially the Reverend Rodney Roberts and his wife of Albuquerque, NM and the Reverend Phil Hardt, United Methodist minister of New York. Rodney was dedicated to ecumenism and to the Asbury United Methodist Parish in Albuquerque. We shared conferences together across the country and served as ecumenical officers of the Archdiocese and the Methodist judicatory. Each year Phil Hardt, Methodist minister, joins members of the staff of Saint Jean Baptiste Catholic Church in New York, NY presenting reflections on the Seven Last Words of Jesus on Good Friday. His wife Veneeta is Roman Catholic, and was a member of Saint Jean Baptiste while Phil taught at Fordham University before becoming pastor of the United Methodist Church in Glendale, New York. We 10
continue to enjoy their company many times during the year as we celebrate holidays at dinner with friends. The Latest Agreed Statement As I indicated in my last article, it is very helpful to “get a handle” on the ecumenical movement and progress being made in bi-lateral dialogues to examine the agreed statements that dialogue commissions have sent to their churches for study and reception. The last agreed statement of the joint commission appointed by the Vatican’s Pontifical Commission for Promoting Christian Unity (PCPCU) and the World Methodist Council (WMC) is entitled: The Grace Given You in Christ: Catholics and Methodists Reflect Further on the Church (Seoul Report, 2006). It is the second report centered on the Church. The first was Towards a Statement on the Church (Nairobi Report, 1986). Twenty years after the first report and thirty years after the close of Vatican II, “a new context” has developed for a better appreciation of the real but imperfect communion which exists between the Continued on next page...
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Father Ernest’s Ecumenical Corner...Continued from previous page Catholic Church and the World Methodist Communion. The full text of the document can easily be found on the internet at vatican/va/pontifical councils/ pcpcu/English. The Church, its nature and mission is a central issue in the dialogue between the Catholic Church and other Christian churches and ecclesial communions. It is one of the major hurdles that need to be overcome on the journey to full communion among all Christians. This issue is one that has gained more and more attention in recent years. The Catholic/World Methodist Council agreed statement reviews the history of their relationship. Although Methodism began a hundred years after the Reformation, there is a strategical difference for the reconciliation of our churches. Highlights of the Agreed Statement The agreed statement is a long document and covers many issues. There is an acknowledgment of the rhetoric and the history of antagonism between Catholics and Methodists even from the beginning. The modern ecumenical movement since the twentieth century, in particular since Vatican II with the participation of Methodists and other Christian Churches as observers, has had a lasting impact on Catholic/Methodist relations.
There are far more essentials which unite the churches than non-essentials that divide them. There are far more essentials which unite the churches than non-essentials that divide them. These differences are discussed by the dialogue and clarified. They are reconciled in the context of a shared communion. Recognition of a common baptism joining all Christians in the body of Christ which is the Church exists among many Christian churches. The people of God already share in the kingdom of God which will reach its completion in the glorious return of the Risen Lord and the final resurrection of those who share God’s holiness and grace in Christ. A long narrative covering the exchange of gifts, especially those developed by each of the dialogue partners during the years and centuries of separation is found in chapter 3 (#107 ff). Differences are understood as complementary rather than church dividing. The journey toward full communion is seen as guided by the light of the gospel and the gift of the Holy Spirit. A new context exists as a result of the Second Vatican Council and the fifty years of dialogue. Many obstacles to full communion have been eliminated. Many of those that remain are seen as matters for further study, dialogue and reconciliation, not as insurmountable. The dialogue partners agree that full communion will come by God’s grace, in God’s time and according to his will. The churches are encouraged to continue in prayer for the healing of memories and the reconciliation that Jesus
prayed for and is clearly God’s will for the Church. The church is an invisible grace, sacrament and communion. But it is also a visible reality. It must reflect the kingdom of God already present in time and history. Signs of that reality need to be seen and appreciated. In a final section of the document a series of principles and proposals are set forth for developing the relationship between Catholics and Methodists. The practical proposals suggested stem from the degree of shared belief already existing between Catholics and Methodists, and from the degree of existing mutual recognition and from a desire for a mutual sharing of gifts leading toward a full communion in faith, sacramental life and towards full communion in mission. Under these headings, there are many particular suggestions that can already be implemented with due regard to the norms and principles established in the Directory of Norms and Principles (1993) published by the PCPCU at the Vatican. It is understood that the directives of the Conference of Catholic Bishops and World Methodist Council determine what is appropriate for geographic regions. Conclusion Reading through The Grace Given You in Christ was a great pleasure for me. It reminded me of my experience of United Methodist pastors and lay persons that I have known and whom I consider close friends. We share a great desire to see the unity of the Church made visible where it is possible and for progress for an ever deeper communion in Christ and with each other. As friends we share our gifts, Continued on next page... 11
Province of St. Ann Newsletter
Father Ernest’s Ecumenical Corner... Continued from previous page
our faith and our fellowship. I have come to appreciate Methodist emphasis on sanctification, spirituality and relationships (Connectedness). The Catholic emphasis on the tradition of the East and the West, on apostolic teaching and succession and sacraments are something I try to share with my Methodist friends. This document emphasizes that there already exists a wealth of areas with a substantial degree of agreement in faith, sacraments and mission which can be given visible application and approval at the local level. The implementation of these suggestions and recommendations will make visible more clearly that the movement towards full communion is happening. This progress is both encouraging and challenging for all of us.
Father Ernie’s Blog Father Ernest Falardeau SSS and Father Anthony Marshall SSS have collaborated in establishing a blog called Fr. Ernie’s Blog, an extension of Fr. Ernie’s ministry for Christian unity and interreligious collaboration. Focused on the Eucharist, the blog contains articles, bibliographies, videos and a biography.Updatedregularly, the blog discusses current issues and developments. Fr. Ernie’s Blog can be reached easily through the link at blessedsacrament.com. Questions and comments are welcome.
Vocation Views: Get to Know Father Ernest Falardeau SSS Father Anthony Marshall, our vocation director, has asked various priests and brothers of the Congregation to reflect on their own religious vocations so that he could share those vocation stories with the readers of Bread Broken & Shared. A couple of issues back, Father Marshall introduced our readers to Brother Michael Perez SSS. Blessed Sacrament Father Ernest Falardeau has been a religious for many years, and is presently serving in our New York City community. He shares with us his vocation Father Anthony Marshall SSS story which is an inspiring example of a Vocation Director Eucharistic Life of service to the Church. Father Ernest is well-known to the readers of Bread Broken & Shared since he writes the Ecumenical Corner column in each of its issues.
No one likes to be alone. We have an instinctive need to be with others, with family and friends. There were ten children in my family, six boys and four girls. The oldest was twenty years older than the youngest. And so there was a lot of variety in my family. The special moment in our daily life was when we gathered at the dinner table together. There we shared our life, the stories of our day, our adventures and misadventures. We shared our lives and loved one another. Leaving the family nest to go to the minor seminary was not easy. But it was easier for me because my older brother, Normand, preceded me there four years earlier. I knew many of his friends who visited him during the summer. I was encouraged to bring my trumpet along to help to form the Eymard Seminary Orchestra. It was like extending my family. In fact that was what attracted me to the Blessed Sacrament Fathers and Brothers. It was my extended spiritual family. As a youngster I had been attracted to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. I asked to be an altar server when I was nine and was allowed to do so. In this way I met diocesan priests and was able to develop my love for the Jesus in the Eucharist. Continued on next page...
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Vocation Views...Continued from previous page At the seminary we attended Mass every day and spent some time in Eucharistic Adoration. The studies were challenging but it was an opportunity to learn and prepare me for the future. Each year we were asked to write a letter asking for permission to move to the next year of studies at the seminary. We were free to do so or not. The choice was ours. Decisive Moments There were similar “decisive” moments during the time of formation, for example, entering the Novitiate at Barre, Massachusetts, making first vows, and preparing for ordination leading to the priesthood. These decisions were formative and helped me all my life. Another choice was to study in Rome at the Pontifical Gregorian University. I welcomed the chance to do so and earned a doctorate in theology at that university. My dissertation on Eucharistic Service in the Writings of Saint Peter Julian Eymard: A Theological Analysis (Rome, PUG, 1959).
As a youngster I had been attracted to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. Religious Life After ordination, I was sustained as a priest by the life of prayer and the different communities in which I served and found fellowship. After serving as a teacher in the minor and major seminaries for twenty-five years, I was asked to serve at Saint Charles Borromeo Parish in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I had followed the sessions of the Second Vatican Council and was impressed by its ecumenical thrust. Work and prayer to “reintegrate” Christian churches and ecclesial communities seemed like a great cause and a vocation within my vocation. And so when the Archbishop of Santa Fe, NM asked me to serve as ecumenical officer of the Archdiocese, I accepted with the consent of my superiors and support of my community. I served in that capacity for twenty-four years. An added blessing in that assignment was Father Normand’s assignment to the same parish a year after I had arrived. He served there until his death twenty-five years later.
New York and the Future Eleven years ago I came to New York City and served my community as the local superior. I enjoy my assignment here where I continue to contribute to the ecumenical mission of the Church and our Congregation. In spite of some health problems, I am still able to celebrate Mass in the beautiful church of Saint Jean Baptiste (I was ordained here with my classmates in September 1956) and to continue my ministry, prayer and religious life. It has been a joyful and beautiful life. It has prepared me to see God face to face and to join the great family of God in heaven. I look forward to seeing my family, friends and members of my Congregation there.
For more on vocations to the priesthood and consecrated life, please contact Father Anthony Marshall, SSS – Vocation Director: (440) 442-7243 www.blessedsacrament.com/ vocation Like us on Facebook! facebook.com/sssvocations @sssvocations
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In Loving Memory
May 07 07 09 13 15 18 23 23 25 25 26 29
1986 2004 1944 1985 1996 2008 1975 2005 1912 1975 1974 1994
June 02 03 07 07 13 23 24 25
2004 1999 1933 1984 1968 1991 1979 2010
July 01 03 04 09 11 13 13 13 16 18 19 20 22 23 25 26 28
1980 1922 1988 2013 1940 1967 1981 2006 1983 1984 1914 1964 1993 2000 1983 1978 1914
August 06 10 10 12 20 22 23 23 23 23 24 26 28 31 31
2007 1938 1938 1996 1994 1994 1965 1971 1992 1993 1921 1961 1934 1958 2009
Rev. Henry Foley Bro. Ignatius Montgomery Bro. Claude-Hudon Beaulieu Rev. Ralph Lavigne Rev. Jose Barandiaran Rev. Thomas McKeon Rev. Peter Goulet Rev. John Dowling Bro. Leonardus Routhier Bro. Anthony Nolan Rev. Normand Audette Bro. James Lent Rev. Normand Falardeau Bro. Thomas Morrissey Rev. Calixtus LeBlanc Rev. Joseph Nearon Rev. Omer Goulet Rev. Rosario Morin Bro. Ovid Poirier Rev. Edmund Slattery Rev. Joseph Lamontagne Bro. Armandus Mathieu Rev. Alfred Trudeau Bro. Thomas Flanagan Bro. Henricus Gatien Rev. Omer Hebert Bro. Richard Leclerc Rev. Roger Pageot Rev. Jules Simoneau Rev. Lionel Dorais Bro. Theodorus Bellavance Rev. Daniel Sullivan Bro. Paul Omer Gaudreau Rev. Donald Brouillard Rev. John O’Brien Bro. Maxime Béliveau Rev. Patricius Murphy Rev. René Bélanger Rev. Roland Amyot Bro. Normand Richard Rev. Maurice Prefontaine Rev. Joseph Bernier Rev. Francis Costa Rev. Leo Rousseau Bro. Andre Bernard Rev. Eugene Laroche Rev. Jean-Marie Bauchet Rev. Arthur Letellier Rev. Alfred Vey Rev. Ludger Lachance Bro. Nazaire Bergeron Rev. Donald Jette
Saint Ann’s Shrine:
Novena and Triduum 2014 by Linda Hensley
I loved my grandmother. She was a warm person and hugged me and baked cookies. I doubt that I thanked her often enough for making my life better. Like a lot of little kids, I grabbed the cookie off the cooling rack and ran back outside to play without thinking about whether or not she got enough thanks for everything she did for me. When I got a little older, I started to understand that she was a complex person, with more history than I could understand. She was already elderly when I was born and it was hard to imagine that she skinned her knees as a kid, or ever held hands with someone besides my grandfather. It’s funny how getting older myself changes my perspective on these things, and this is a universal thing about grandchildren and grandparents and the process of getting older. We all start out as kids who just want a cookie and to be hugged, and it takes years of living before we can really appreciate our grandparents more fully. Many of the people who come to the daily Masses at Saint Ann’s Shrine are grandparents. Many of the people who send in their prayer intentions and gifts to the Shrine are grandparents too. Often those prayer intentions are for their children and grandchildren, and the love behind those prayers makes me feel those hugs and cookies that I received many years ago from my own grandmother. Traditionally, Saint Ann is the patron saint for pregnant women, mothers, and grandmothers and Saint Joachim is the patron saint of fathers and grandfathers. They offer all of us the warm hug and a kind ear for our concerns. The Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament celebrates Saints Ann and Joachim’s Feast Day on July 26th each year. Saint Ann’s Shrine hosts a Triduum (3 days of prayer, July 24 – 26 at 7 p.m.) in Cleveland, Ohio, and a 9-day Novena is held at St. Jean Baptiste Church in New York City (July 18 – 26, check website www.stjeanbaptisteny.org for service times). Please join us if you are able to attend these preparatory days of prayer for the feast of Saints Ann and Joachim at either the Cleveland or New York locations. If you’re unable to join us in person, please unite your prayers with ours. Honoring Saint Ann and Saint Joachim’s Feast Day is a way we can say our thanks for everything that God has done for us through their intercession. Continued on next page...
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| i don't know |
Who wrote 'Appley Dapply's Nursery Rhymes', published in 1917? | Appley Dapply's Nursery Rhymes by Beatrix Potter
You know the old woman who lived in a shoe?
And had so many children she didn't know what to do?
Beatrix Potter gathered material for a book of nursery rhymes for many years before Appley Dapply's Nursery Rhymes was eventually published in 1917. Charming characters like Old Mr. Pricklepin, Diggory Diggory Delvet and, of course, Appley Dapply are brought to life with funny rhymes and beautiful watercolour illustrations.
Appley Dapply's Nursery Rhymes is number 22 in Beatrix Potter's series of 23 little books, the titles of which are as follows:
1 The Tale of Peter Rabbit
2 The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin
3 The Tailor of Gloucester
4 The Tale of Benjamin Bunny
5 The Tale of Two Bad Mice
6 The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle
7 The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher
8 The Tale of Tom Kitten
9 The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck
10 The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies
11 The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse
12 The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes
13 The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse
14 The Tale of Mr. Tod
15 The Tale of Pigling Bland
16 The Tale of Samuel Whiskers
17 The Tale of The Pie and the Patty-Pan
18 The Tale of Ginger and Pickles
19 The Tale of Little Pig Robinson
20 The Story of a Fierce Bad Rabbit
21 The Story of Miss Moppet
22 Appley Dapply's Nursery Rhymes
23 Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes
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| Beatrix Potter |
In 1930, Ghandi headed a march in protest against a tax on which commodity? | Appley Dapply's Nursery Rhymes : Beatrix Potter : 9780723267966
Appley Dapply's Nursery Rhymes
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Description
It's been 110 years since Frederick Warne published Beatrix Potter's very first book, "The Tale of Peter Rabbit", and in celebration, we are delighted to be publishing special editions of her entire body of work. Unlike the traditional little white books, these editions have delightful colourful covers and specially designed endpapers. And to make them extra special, we have included a publisher's note to tell you all about the history of how each book came to be. Beatrix Potter gathered material for a book of rhymes over many years. In 1917, when her publisher was in financial difficulties and needed her help, she suggested that "Appley Dapply's Nursery Rhymes" could be brought out quickly, using her existing collection of rhymes and drawings. The fact that the illustrations were painted at different times explains why the style occasionally varies. "Appley Dapply's Nursery Rhymes" is number 22 in Beatrix Potter's series of 23 little books. show more
Product details
106 x 142 x 8mm | 81.65g
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