Great... Train Robbery, Detective, Balls of Fire
Sunday, May 22, 2016 at 9:01AM On this day in history as it relates to the movies...
1859 Arthur Conan Doyle is born. Probably rolls over in his grave 150 years later when Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes premieres and the great detective becomes a slo mo action hero
1868 The Great Train Robbery happens. It's the subject of a highly influential 10 minute silent film (embedded above) as soon as people figure out what to do with cameras and celluloid in 1903. Cross-cutting, breaking the fourth wall, inventing the western action movie genre? It's all happening right here.
1907 Laurence Olivier is born. Not yet a "Sir" but already expecting a cooing audience
1945 Paranormal investigators Lorraine and Ed Warren are married. They become the fab Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson in The Conjuring (2013) and The Conjuring 2 (2016)
1958 Jerry Lee Lewis tells the world he's married his 13 year old cousin Myra. Later they look just like Dennis Quaid and Winona Ryder in a movie
1967 Brooke Smith, the girl in the pit, is born
1973 Nikolaj Lie Kass, Danish actor of underappreciated hotness (Brothers, The Idiots), is born
1998 The Opposite of Sex hits theaters, Christina Ricci gets a well deserved Golden Globe Best Actress nod for her inspired star turn
2005 The razor sharp Cronenberg film A History of Violence was stiffed of any prize at the Cannes Film Festival despite a strange round of winners which at least included Michael Haneke as Best Director for the brilliant Caché. Both films went to to make the Best Picture lineup right here at The Film Experience.
2016 The 69th annual Cannes Film Festival closes. Awards ceremony tonight in France so come back for the winners in the late afternoon!
Reader Comments (2)
I love the juxtaposition of the two sex scenes in Cronemberg's A History of Violence: that first tender scene of marital intimacy between Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello, including him going down on her (we don't get male on female oral sex that often in movies), before the movie twist takes place, and then that passionate, agressive staircase sex scene once his past demons come to light and their marriage is completely shaken.
There's so much character development in the movie and those two scenes, put together, epitomize just how much they have changed and grown apart, despite still loving each other. Probably in my all time top 10 of sex scenes.
Plus, that unexpected William Hurt nom makes it eligible for an Oscar-themed double feature along with Charlotte Rampling's 45 Years.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles was my fave Sherlock book as a kid. I was even convinced to watch Le Pacte des Lupes as teen when my friend described the movie to me as a French old timey take on the Hound of the Baskervilles with slo mo fighting and Monica Belucci.
Carmen -YES. on the sex scenes in A History of Violence. not gratuitous at all because they are storytelling / character scenes.