Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Zemeckis, Robert - Director



Zemeckis applied  to University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, and went into the Film School on the strength of an essay and a music video based on a Beatles song. While at USC, Zemeckis developed a close friendship with the writer Bob Gale, who was also a student there. Both were interested in Hollywood movies and  Clint Eastwood,  James Bond and Walt Disney He graduated from USC in 1973.

As a result of winning a Student Academy Award at USC for his film, A Field of Honor, Zemeckis came to the attention of Steven Spielberg.  Spielberg became Zemeckis's mentor and executive produced his first two films, both of which Zemeckis co-wrote with Bob Gale. He later executive produced other Zemeckis films, including the Back to the Future trilogy and Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Michael Douglas hired him in 1984 to film Romancing the Stone. A romantic adventure starring Douglas and Kathleen Turner,  the film became a sleeper hit.

In 1992, Zemeckis directed the black comedy Death Becomes Her, starring Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, and Bruce Willis.  1994's Forrest Gump was his biggest commercial success. Starring Tom Hanks in the title role, and borrowing to some extent from Woody Allen's earlier Zelig, Forrest Gump tells the story of a man with a low I.Q., who unwittingly participates in some of the major events of the twentieth century  and interacts with several major historical figures in the process. The film grossed $677 million worldwide and became the top grossing U.S. film of 1994; it won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Hanks as Best Actor, and Zemeckis as Best Director.


Robert Zemeckis accepting the Oscar Award

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Monday, April 29, 2013

Yul Brynner - Biography and Interviews




Yul Brynner made his film debut in Port of New York (1949). Two years later he played the role of the King in Richard Rodgers' and Oscar Hammerstein II's musical "The King and I". Brynner became an immediate sensation in the role, repeating it for film (The King and I (1956)) and winning the Oscar for Best Actor.

For the next two decades he maintained a starring film career performing in a wide range of roles from Egyptian pharaohs to Western gunfighters, almost all with the shaved head. In the 1970s he returned to the role that had made him a star, and spent most of the rest of his life touring the world in "The King and I". When he developed lung cancer in the mid-1980s, he left a powerful public service announcement denouncing smoking as the cause. 

Saturday, April 27, 2013

X-Men - Film Released in 2000




X-Men is a 2000 American superhero film based on the fictional Marvel Comics characters of the same name.

The film has in its cast Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen, Anna Paquin, Famke Janssen, Bruce Davison, James Marsden, Halle Berry, Rebecca Romijn, Ray Park and Tyler Mane.

It depicts a world in which a small proportion of people are mutants and posess superhuman powers.  The film focuses on the mutants Wolverine and Rogue as they are brought into a conflict between two groups that have radically different approaches to bringing about the acceptance of mutantkind: Professor Xavier's X-Men, and the Brotherhood of Mutants, led by Magneto.

Te film rights went to 20th Century Fox in 1994. Filming took place from September 22, 1999 to March 3, 2000, primarily in Toronto. X-Men was released to positive reviews and was a financial success for Fox, spawning a reemergence of superhero films and a series of sequels and spin-offs.

Friday, April 26, 2013

William Wyler - Three Oscars Winning English Film Director


Wyler's directorial career spanned 45 years, from silent pictures to the movies of  1970s.  He was nominated a record 12 times for an Academy Award as Best Director and  he won three.  In 1966, was honored with the Irving Thalberg Award, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences' ultimate accolade for a producer. He was the fourth recipient of the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award, after Ford, James Cagney and Welles. Along with Ford and Welles, Wyler ranks with the best and most influential American directors, including Griffith, DeMille, Frank Capra, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg.

Born Willi Wyler on July 1, 1902, in Mulhouse in the province of Alsace, then a possession of Germany,  Wyler emigrated to the US in 1920 at the age of 18. After starting in Universal's New York offices as an errand boy, he moved his way up through the organization, ending up in the California operation in 1922.

Wyler was given the opportunity to direct in July 1925, with the two-reel western The Crook Buster (1925).  For almost five years he performed his apprenticeship in Universal's "B" unit, turning out a score of low-budget silent westerns. In 1929 he made his first "A" picture, Hell's Heroes (1929), Universal's first all-sound movie shot outside a studio. The western was a commercial and critical success.

Wyler subsequently established himself as a major director in the mid-1930s, when he began directing films for independent producer Samuel Goldwyn. Willi would soon find his freedom fettered by the man with the fabled "Goldwyn touch," which entailed bullying his directors to recast, rewrite and recut their films, and sometimes replacing them during shooting.

The first of the Wyler-Goldwyn works was These Three (1936). His first unqualified success for Goldwyn was Dodsworth (1936), an adaptation of Sinclair Lewis' portrait of a disintegrating American marriage, a marvelous film that still resonates with audiences in the 21st century. He received his first Best Director Oscar nomination for this picture. The film was nominated for Best Picture, the first of seven straight years in which a Wyler-directed movie would earn that accolade, culminating with Oscars for both Willi and Mrs. Miniver (1942) in 1942.

Wyler's potential greatness can be seen as early as "Hell's Heroes," an early talkie that is not constrained by the restrictions of the new technology.  However, it was with "Dodsworth" that Wyler began to establish his critical reputation. The film features long takes and a probing camera, a style that Wyler would make his own.

Now established as Goldwyn's director of choice, Wyler made several films for him, including Dead End (1937) and Wuthering Heights (1939).

Goldwyn loaned out Wyler to other studios, and he made Jezebel (1938) and The Letter (1940) for Warner Bros. Working with Bette Davis in the two masterpieces, as well as in Goldwyn's The Little Foxes (1941), Wyler elicited three of the great diva's finest performances.


Wyler won his first Oscar as Best Director with "Mrs. Miniver" for MGM, which also won the Oscar for Best Picture, the first of three Wyler films that would be so honored. Made as a propaganda piece for American audiences to prepare them for the sacrifices necessitated by World War II, the movie is set in wartime England and elucidates the hardships suffered by an ordinary, middle-class English family coping with the war. An enthusiastic President Franklin D. Roosevelt, after seeing the film at a White House screening, said, "This has to be shown right away." The film also won Oscars for star Greer Garson and co-star Theresa Wright, for cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg and for Best Screenplay.

After "Miniver," Wyler went off to war as an officer in the U.S. Army Air Corps. One of his more memorable propaganda films of the period was a documentary about a B-17 bomber, The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress (1944), He also directed the Navy documentary The Fighting Lady (1944), an examination of life aboard an American aircraft carrier. It won an Oscar as Best Documentary,

Wyler's first picture upon returning from World War II would prove to be the last movie he made for Goldwyn.  "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946)  won Wyler his second Oscar. The movie, which featured a moving performance by real-life veteran and double amputee Harold Russell, struck a universal chord with Americans and was a major box office hit. It was the second Wyler-directed picture to be named Best Picture at the Academy Awards. The film also won Oscars for star Fredric March and co-star Russell, film editor Daniel Mandell, composer Hugo Friedhofer and screenwriter Robert E. Sherwood, and was instrumental in garnering the Irving Thalberg Award for Samuel Goldwyn, who also took home the Best Picture Oscar that year as "Best Years" producer.



Wyler films in his postwar period include The Heiress (1949), a fine version of Henry James' novel "Washington Square," with an Oscar-winning performance by Olivia de Havilland; Detective Story (1951), a police drama that takes place on a minimal, controlled set almost as restricted as that of Hitchcock's Rope (1948); and Roman Holiday (1953), which won Audrey Hepburn an Oscar in her first leading role. The other films of this period are Carrie (1952), The Desperate Hours (1955) and Friendly Persuasion (1956).

Wyler returned to the western genre one last time with The Big Country (1958),  featuring Gregory Peck, Heston, and Wyler's old "Hell's Heroes" star Bickford. Burl Ives won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as the patriarch of an outlaw clan in conflict with Bickford's family. Wyler was next enlisted by producer Sam Zimbalist to direct MGM's high-stakes "Ben-Hur" (1959), a remake of its 1925 classic.   "Ben-Hur" went on to win 11 Oscars out of 12 nominations, including a third Best Director Academy Award for Willi.

In the last decade of his career, he remade "These Three" as The Children's Hour (1961), a franker version of Hellman's play than his 1936 version. The Collector (1965) was his last artistic triumph, and he had his last hit with Funny Girl (1968), for which Barbra Streisand repeated Audrey Hepburn's success of 15 years earlier, wining an Oscar in her first lead role. Wyler's last film was The Liberation of L.B. Jones (1970),

William Wyler died on July 27, 1981, in Beverly Hills, California, as one of the most accomplished and honored filmmakers in history.

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Ursula Andress - Biography and Interviews





Birth: 19 March 1936, Ostermundigen, Bern, Switzerland


Ursula Andress started her movie career with small roles in Italian films.  Eventually,  she signed a contract with Columbia Pictures and came to the United States. She and married John Derek in 1957, and dropped out of movies for several years.

In the year 1962, she co-starred with Sean Connery in the first movie version of Ian Fleming's fanciful "James Bond" novels, "Dr. No".

The success of "Dr. No" established her screen presence and she was cast along with icons  such as Elvis Presley, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr.

Andress made many more movies in the United States and Europe from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. Casino Royale (1967) was another foray for her into the world of James Bond.

In 1979, she began her second romance with Harry Hamlin, her handsome young co-star from Clash of the Titans (1981).  She and Hamlin had a child, who was named  Dimitri Hamlin.

After the her son's birth, Andress scaled back her career and she raised Dimitri in Rome. She last worked on a film in 1997.



http://movies.yahoo.com/person/ursula-andress/biography.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1079213/My-bones-like-glass-Why-Bond-Girl-Ursula-Andress-blames-ravaged-osteoporosis.html

Monday, April 22, 2013

Sylvester Stallone - Biography and Interviews - Videos



Birth 6 July 1946

Sylvestor Stallone got a crucial career break in the effectively written teen gang film The Lord's of Flatbush (1974).

Rocky (1976) became the stuff of cinematic legends, scoring ten Academy Award nominations, winning the Best Picture Award of 1976 and triggering one of the most financially successful movie franchises in history.   Stallone had truly arrived on his terms, and offers poured in from various studios eager to secure Hollywood's hottest new star. The sequel Rocky II came in 1979.


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Saturday, April 20, 2013

Robert Redford - Biography and Interviews - Videos





Birth 18 August 1936


Robert Redford's breakthrough role was "The Sundance Kid" in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969).  The Way We Were (1973) and The Sting (1973), both in 1973, made Redford the number one box office star.  In 1980, he established the Sundance Institute for aspiring filmmakers.  Redford's directorial debut, Ordinary People (1980), won him the Academy Award as Best Director in 1981.

1993 brought Redford one of his most popular and recognized roles when he starred as a millionaire businessman who tests people's morals through bribery in Indecent Proposal, which became one of the year's biggest hits. The actress was Demi Moore in this movie

He was given Oscar for Lifetime Achievement in 2002 (Video available below).

His recent movie as a director an actor is "The Company You Keep" released in 2012.


Robert Redford receiving Honorary Life Achievement Oscar Award - 2002
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hr-v9cGG_vA
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Friday, April 19, 2013

Question (II) - A Documentary Film



A documentary film in which a  filmmaker shares a direct first-person account of his experiences in the military.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2008605/


Thursday, April 18, 2013

Penelope Cruz - Biography and Interviews - Videos


Birthday 28 April 1974

Spanish Actress


Penelop Cruz  made  feature film debut in Jamón, jamón (1992), to critical acclaim. She acted in some more Spanish films and she acted in English films also.  Her  roles in the 1990s and 2000s included Open Your Eyes(1997), The Hi-Lo Country (1999), The Girl of Your Dreams (2000) and Woman on Top(2000). Cruz achieved recognition for her lead roles in the 2001 films Vanilla Sky and Blow.
She has  built a successful career, appearing in films from a wide range of genres. The films include Waking Up in Reno (2002), the thriller Gothika (2003), the Christmas movie Noel (2004), and the action adventure Sahara (2005). She has received critical acclaim for her roles in Volver (2006) and Nine (2009) receiving Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations for each. She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2008 for Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Video included). 




Oscar Award for Penelope Cruz

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Interview - Penelope Cruz
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Wednesday, April 17, 2013

A to Z Blogging Challenge - Film Category Blogs

Olivia Newton John - Biography and Interviews - Videos


Birth 26 September 1948


Newton-John's acted in the film adaptation of the Broadway musical, Grease, in 1978. She was offered the lead role of Sandy after meeting producer Allan Carr at a dinner party.  The film accommodated Newton-John's Australian accent by recasting her character from the play's original American Sandy Dumbrowski to Sandy Olsson, an Australian who holidays and then moves with her family to the United States.


Grease became the biggest box-office hit of 1978. The soundtrack album was at No. 1 in  12 non-consecutive weeks.  Newton-John's performance earned her a People's Choice award for Favourite Film Actress. She was also nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Actress in a Musical and performed the Oscar-nominated "Hopelessly Devoted to You" at the 1979 Academy Awards.

The film's popularity has endured through the years. It was re-released for its 20th anniversary in 1998  and ranked as the second highest grossing film behind Titanic in its opening weekend.


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Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Nick Nolte - Biography and Interviews - Videos



Birthday 8 February 1941




Nolte's first major film role was starring opposite Jacqueline Bisset and Robert Shaw in 1977's The Deep. He followed this with Who'll Stop the Rain in 1978 and North Dallas Forty in 1979.  The 1982 buddy cop/convict film 48 Hrs. strongly bolstered his film career.  His films in the 1980s, included Under Fire (1983), Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), Extreme Prejudice (1987) and New York Stories (1989).

He began the 1990s  with the sequel Another 48 Hours. Nolte had perhaps his greatest box office success in 1991, starring in The Prince of Tides with Barbra Streisand, for which he won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama. That same year he starred in Martin Scorsese's remake of Cape Fear.


Nolte's solid work continued with Lorenzo's Oil (1992), Mulholland Falls (1996), and Afterglow (1997).  . That same year, Nolte starred in Terrence Malick's highly anticipated war epic The Thin Red Line as Colonel Tall.

Nolte continued to work through the 2000s,  In 2011, Nolte portrayed recovering alcoholic Paddy Conlon, dealing with his two estranged sons competing in an MMA tournament in the film Warrior, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.


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Monday, April 15, 2013

Michael J Fox - Biography and Interviews - Videos



Birth: 9 June 1961

He acted in the comedy "Family Ties" (1982). He starred in the feature films Teen Wolf (1985), High School U.S.A. (1983) (TV), Poison Ivy (1985) (TV) and Back to the Future (1985).

Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1991, and disclosed his condition to the public in 1999. Fox semi-retired from acting in 2000 as the symptoms of his disease became more severe.

Since 2000 Fox has mainly worked as a voice-over actor in films such as Stuart Little and Atlantis: The Lost Empire, and taken guest TV roles such as in Boston Legal, The Good Wife, Scrubs, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Rescue Me.


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Saturday, April 13, 2013

Lucy Liu - Biography and Interviews - Videos


Birthday 2 December 1968


Lucy Liu first appeared on the big screen as an ex-girlfriend in Jerry Maguire (1996). Her breakthrough small screen was  "Ally McBeal" (1997). She acted the growling, ill-tempered lawyer Ling Woo as a regular cast member.

The "Ally" win gave Liu's film career a much-needed boost--in 1999, she was cast as a dominatrix in the Mel Gibson action flick Payback (1999 0. The next year she played big roles in Jackie Chan's western Shanghai Noon (2000), and  Charlie's Angels (2000).


Biography Video
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Friday, April 12, 2013

Kevin Costner -Biography and Interviews - Videos




Birth 18 January 1955

Kevin Costner  has won two Academy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and one Emmy Award.

Costner arrived as major actor in Hollywood in 1987, when he starred as federal agent Eliot Ness in The Untouchables and in the leading role of the thriller No Way Out. He solidified his A-list status with  Bull Durham (1988) and Field of Dreams (1989).

Costner's next success came with the epic "Dances with Wolves (1990)". He directed and starred in the film and is one of its producers.The film was nominated for 12 Academy Awards and won seven, including  the  Best Director for him personally.  The same year  Revenge was released, in which he starred along with Anthony Quinn and Madeleine Stowe.

In 2010, he appeared in "The Company Men" alongside Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones and Chris Cooper.


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Thursday, April 11, 2013

Julianne Moore - Biography and Interviews - Videos


Birthday 3 December 1960

Julianne Moore made her entrance into the big screen with 1990's Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990).  Steven Spielberg  cast her in the Jurassic Park sequel.  Director Todd Haynes gave Julianne her first opportunity to take on a lead role in Safe (1995). Her portrayal of Carol White, an affluent L.A. housewife who develops an inexplicable allergic reaction to her environment, won critical praise. She acted as Hugh Grant's pregnant girlfriend in Nine Months (1995). Following films included Assassins (1995), where she played an electronics security expert targeted for death with Sylvester Stallone and Antonio Banderas as costars and Surviving Picasso (1996), where she played Dora Maar, one of the numerous lovers of Picasso. Julianne appeared  in the movie, Boogie Nights (1997) and played the role of Amber Waves, a loving porn star who acts as a mother figure to a ragtag crew. For this role,  she received both Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations. In 1999,  Moore was very busy as an actress. She starred in a number of high-profile projects. For the outstanding performance in The End of the Affair (1999), she had another Oscar nomination. She ended 1999 with another great performance, that of a grieving mother in A Map of the World (1999), opposite Sigourney Weaver. She is active in films even now.

She  received praise for her performances in The Kids Are All Right (2010) and Game Change (2012), where she portrayed Sarah Palin.

The New York Times Interview 2010
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Golden Globe - Best Actress - 2013
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Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Ingrid Bergman - Biography and Interview Videos


Birthday : 29 August  1915
Death:      29 August  1982


American producer David O. Selznick gave a contract to Ingrid.  Once signed, she came to California and starred in United Artists' 1939  film, Intermezzo: A Love Story (1939).  The film was a hit and so was Ingrid. Her beauty was unlike anything the movie industry had seen before and her acting was superb.  The public fell in love with her. In the US,  her films got enthusiastic audience. She acted in the classic Casablanca opposite the great Humphrey Bogart in 1942.

Ingrid chose her roles well. In 1943 she was nominated for an Academy Award for her role in For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943). Her role of Paula Alquist got her the Oscar for Best Actress. In 1945 Ingrid played in Spellbound (1945), Saratoga Trunk (1945) and The Bells of St. Mary's (1945). She had a fourth nomination for Joan of Arc (1948). Her title role in Anastasia (1956)  won for her second Academy Award.  Her final big-screen performance was in 1978's Autumn Sonata (1978). For this role,  she had her final Academy Award nomination. She gave an outstanding performance in the mini-series A Woman Called Golda (1982) (TV), a film about Israeli prime minister Golda Meir. For this she won an Emmy Award as Best Actress.  Ingrid Bergman died from cancer on August 29, 1982, her 67th birthday, in London, England.



Oscar for Best Supporting Actress 1975

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Best Actress for Anastasia in 1957

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Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Halle Berry - Biography and Interviews Videos




Halle first came into the spotlight at seventeen years when she won the Miss Teen All-American Pageant, representing the state of Ohio in 1985 and, a year later in 1986, when she was the first runner-up in the Miss U.S.A. Pageant.


Her role as a crack addict in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever (1991) provided her big screen breakthrough. The following year, she was cast as Eddie Murphy's love interest in Boomerang (1992). In 1994, she acted  in The Flintstones. She next had a highly publicized costarring role with Jessica Lange in the adoption drama Losing Isaiah (1995).  In 1998, she received critical success when she starred as a street smart young woman who takes up with a struggling politician in Warren Beatty's Bulworth.  In 2000, she received box office success in X-Men (2000) in which she played "Storm", a mutant who has the ability to control the weather.

She appeared as Leticia Musgrove, the troubled wife of an executed murderer  in the 2001 feature film Monster's Ball. Her performance won the Oscar for best-actress. She became the first African-American to win the Academy Award for Best Actress.


Biography Video
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Monday, April 8, 2013

Glenn Close - Biography and Interview Videos



Birth: 19 March 1947

Her first film role was in The World According to Garp (1982). She acted further in The Big Chill (1983), and The Natural (1984). All three earned her nominations for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performances in Fatal Attraction (1987), Dangerous Liaisons (1988), and Albert Nobbs (2011) also. Thus, Close is a six-time Academy Award nominee, tying the record for being the actress with the most nominations never to have won (along with Deborah Kerr and Thelma Ritter). Her work has earned her three Tonys, an Obie, three Emmys, two Golden Globes, and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

Biography Video
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Receiving Hollywood Career Award
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Sunday, April 7, 2013

19 March - English Films History



Birthdays

1936 Ursula Andress
1947 Glenn Close
1955 Bruce Willis

7 April - English Films History



Birthdays

1939 - Francis Ford Coppola
1954 - Jackie Chan
1964 - Russell Crowe

Film Releases


2006 - On a Clear Day -  The Benchwarmers - Take the Lead - Phat Girlz - Friends With Money

Saturday, April 6, 2013

Fefe Dobson - Biography and Interview Videos


She is a Canadian song writer and recording artist.

Birthday:  28 February 1985

Acted in films

Christmas in Compton (2012)

Home Again (2012)

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Friday, April 5, 2013

Elizabeth Taylor - Biography and Interview Videos


Date of Birth: 27 February 1932






A family friend noticed little Elizabeth and suggested that she be taken for a screen test. Her screen test impressed executives at Universal Pictures and she acted in There's One Born Every Minute (1942),    when she was ten. The first production she made with MGM studio was Lassie Come Home (1943).  She had minuscule parts in her next two films, The White Cliffs of Dover (1944) and Jane Eyre (1943) Then came the picture that made Elizabeth a star: MGM's National Velvet (1944). She played Velvet Brown opposite Mickey Rooney. The film was a smash hit.  Elizabeth was given a long-term contract with MGM and was its top child star. In 1946, she acted in Courage of Lassie (1946). In 1947, when she was 15, she starred in Life with Father (1947) with such heavyweights as William Powell, Irene Dunne and Zasu Pitts.

 Her busiest year was 1954, with roles in Rhapsody (1954), Beau Brummell (1954), The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954) and Elephant Walk (1954). She was 22 now, and even at that young age was considered one of the world's great beauties. In 1955 she appeared in the hit Giant (1956) with James Dean.

 The next year saw Elizabeth star in Raintree County (1957), an overblown epic made, partially, in Kentucky.  Elizabeth was nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal of Southern belle Susanna Drake. . In 1958 Elizabeth starred as Maggie Pollitt in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958).

The film received rave reviews from the critics and Elizabeth was nominated again for an Academy Award for best actres. She was still a hot commodity in the film world, though. In 1959 she appeared in another mega-hit and received yet another Oscar nomination for Suddenly, Last Summer (1959).  Her Oscar drought ended in 1960 when she brought home the coveted statue for her flawless performance in Butterfield 8 (1960) as Gloria Wandrous, a call girl who is involved with a married man.

 In 1963 she starred in Cleopatra (1963), which was one of the most expensive productions up to that time--as was her salary, a whopping $1,000,000.

Elizabeth has top performance as  Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). Her performance as the loudmouthed, shrewish, unkempt Martha was easily her finest to date.

For this she would win her second Oscar and one that was more than well-deserved.


Elizabeth Taylor Remembered - ABC News 2011
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Elitzabeth Taylor Winning Oscar for "Butterfield 8" (1961)
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News of Death of Elizabeth Taylor 23 March 2011
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Thursday, April 4, 2013

Daniel Craig - Biography and Interview Videos




Daniel Craig acted as "James Bond" in Casino Royale (2006), Quantum of Solace (2008) and Skyfall (2012).

From the age of 6, Craig started acting in school plays.

At the age of 14, Craig played roles in "Oliver", "Romeo and Juliet" and "Cinderella" at Hilbre High School in West Kirby, Wirral, UK. He left Hilbre High at 16 to audition at the National Youth Theatre's (NYT) troupe on their tour in Manchester in 1984. He was accepted and moved down to London. There,  his stage debut was as "Agamemnon" in Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida".  Craig performed with NYT on tours to Valencia, Spain, and to Moscow, Russia. In 1988, he entered the Guildhall School of Music and Drama at the Barbican.  He graduated in 1991.   Daniel Craig made his film debut in The Power of One (1992).  He shot to international fame after playing supporting roles in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) and Road to Perdition (2002). He was nominated for his performances in the leading role in Layer Cake (2004), and received other awards and nominations. Craig was named as the sixth actor to portray "James Bond", in October of 2005.

He is the first blonde actor to play Bond.  Four of the past Bond actors: Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan have indicated that Craig is a good choice as "Bond".


Biography Video
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Daniel Craig on Hunger TV
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Wednesday, April 3, 2013

3 April - English Films History



Birthdays

1958 Alec Baldwin

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Marlon Brando

Brando - Oscar Award 1955
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Eddie Murphy



1982 Cobie Smulders

Film Releases

1985 - Alamo Bay

Cindy Crawford - Biography and Interview Videos

Date of Birth:  20 February 1966

On FTV
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Chosen by People Magazine as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the World. [1993]
Was ranked #3 in Channel 5's "World's greatest supermodel".

Feature films


54
Body Guards
Fair Game
The Simian Line

Monday, April 1, 2013

1 April - English Films History




Birthdays

Asa Butterfield

Annette O'Toole


Film Releases

2005 - Sin City - Dust to Glory - Look at Me

http://www.movieinsider.com/movies/-/2005/

Anthony Hopkins - Biography and Interviews Videos



Date of Birth: 31st December 1937


Anthony Hopkins was born on 31 December 1937, in Margam, Wales.He studied at College of Music and Drama and graduated in 1957. In 1965, he moved to London and joined the National Theatre. In 1967, he made his first film for television, A Flea in Her Ear (1967). He enjoyed a successful career in cinema and television. In 1968, he worked on The Lion in Winter (1968) with Timothy Dalton. In 1977, he appeared in two major films. In "A Bridge Too Far (1977)' he costarred with James Caan, Gene Hackman, Sean Connery, Michael Caine.  In 1980, he worked on The Elephant Man (1980).

In the 1990s, Hopkins made movies like Desperate Hours (1990), The Silence of the Lambs (1991),  Howards End (1992), The Remains of the Day (1993) (nominee for the Oscar), Legends of the Fall (1994), Nixon (1995) (nominee for the Oscar), Surviving Picasso (1996), Amistad (1997) (nominee for the Oscar), The Mask of Zorro (1998), Meet Joe Black (1998) and Instinct (1999). For "The Silence of the Lambs (1991)"  he won the Oscar for Best Actor and also got a BAFTA for this role.


Oscar award for The Silence of the Lambs
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Anthony Hopkins with Students
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Anthony Hopkins - 2011 - on Alzazeera
On film Thor
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April 1 English Films History