BIRTHDAY
September 28, 1968
Shoreham, England

RECENT CREDITS
Dream House (FILM) Feb. 18, 2011
Fair Game (FILM) Nov. 5, 2010
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (FILM) Sep. 22, 2010
Mother and Child (FILM) May. 7, 2010
The International (FILM) Feb. 13, 2009

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Tragically-realistic films were a big part of the silent film era - the silents naturally lent themselves to melodrama. The only means by which an actor or actress could communicate meaning and feelings was through facial expressions and gestures. One of the earliest melodramas was director Frank Powell's silent film (based upon a stage play) titled A Fool There Was (1915), with Theda Bara (in her star-making film debut) cast as an evil, dark, wicked and mysterious vampire who seductively lures a weak-willed family man away and controls his heart with her sexy wiles.

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he first great category of cinematic epics are the silent epics. The first American epic was early cinematic pioneer D. W. Griffith's Biblical spectacle Judith of Bethulia (1914), a little known four-reel feature film weaving together two Apocryphal stories about the 40-day Assyrian siege of the walled Judean city of Bethulia. Griffith's most influential and complex film, noted for its technical virtuosity and dynamic editing (although controversial for its southern point of view) was the first blockbuster film The Birth of a Nation (1915). It reproduced the Civil War and Reconstruction Periods (including various battles, Lincoln's assassination, and the aftermath) and told of the war's effects upon two families (the Northern Stonemans and the Southern Camerons) with a specific ideological slant that distorted its historical veracity. This almost three-hour film's screenplay was based upon Thomas Dixon's novel and play The Clansman.

Download Silent Epics of D. W. Griffith

The most famous star of the silent serials was Pearl White. The silent serial queen was an early star in a lengthy series of films, beginning with the well-known, multi-chaptered, much-celebrated, archetypal play The Perils of Pauline (1914) - originally 20 episodes in length (but many have since been lost), and now existing as a condensed 9-episode version. The daring, athletic and active female star performed some of the riskiest, hair-raising stunts in her films (on the side of a cliff, in a runaway balloon, in a burning house, etc).

Download Pearl White as Pauline in Peril

The action/adventure film first became popular with weekly Saturday serials, running in installments that often had 'cliff-hanging' endings to entice viewers to return for the next show. Heroine Pearl White in the 20-episode The Perils of Pauline (1914) was the first major super-star of the silent serials. Besides Pearl White, there were other queens of the sound serials, including Kay Aldridge (as jungle Queen Nyoka in Nyoka and the Tigermen (1942)) and Linda Stirling (in the 12 part serial Zorro's Black Whip (1944) and as the "Tiger Woman" in another 12-episode serial, Perils of the Darkest Jungle (1944)).

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The first major form of adventure film was the swashbuckler with energetic Hollywood, beefcake action-heroes in historically atmospheric settings of the 18th or 19th centuries. Swashbucklers included lavish sets, costumes, and weapons of the past, and were often built upon action scenes of sea battles, castle duels, sword and cutlass fighting, etc., and the romancing of damsels in distress.

Download The Swashbuckler and Douglas Fairbanks, Sr

Cast:

Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell, Chris Elliot

Review:
The date is February 2 and the place is Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh weatherman Phil Connors (Bill Murray), on hand to cover the Groundhog Day ceremony, is having one of the most unpleasant experiences of his life. It's one of those days when Murphy's Law seems to be in full effect. But Phil soon discovers that things are worse than they first seemed, because for him, and him alone, time has stopped. Now, he's trapped in a bizarre time loop that forces him to re-live Groundhog Day over and over, with no hope of reprieve or release, and no way of explaining the situation to anyone else since he's the only one who realizes what's happening.

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Films that were concerned with race relations included Hollywood's first major indictment of racism in producer Stanley Kramer's and director Mark Robson's Home of the Brave (1949), the story of a black WWII soldier facing bigoted insults from his squad. Then, there was John Sturges' Bad Day At Black Rock (1955) about small-town Japanese-American prejudice uncovered by a one-armed Spencer Tracy, Stanley Kramer's The Defiant Ones (1958) with Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier as bound-together escaping convicts - and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) about an inter-racial couple (Sidney Poitier as WHO doctor John Prentiss and Katharine Houghton as SF socialite Joanna Drayton) planning on marrying who needed parental approval from Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy (in their ninth and last film together). Also, In the Heat of the Night (1967) featured a bigoted sheriff and a black homicide detective working together to solve a murder, and Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing (1989) - about racial tensions and eventual violence during a hot Brooklyn summer.

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Starring Fernando Tielve
Déborah François
Michiel Huisman
Iddo Goldberg
Richard Lintern
Katia Winter

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