The Woman in Black

To say that The Woman In Black is a throwback to an old style of thriller doesn’t quite do it justice. From the first moment we see the renewal of the Hammer moniker show up on screen we know that this picture at the least stems from the same tradition as the films that made the likes of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing international stars.

The Woman In Black is the story of a lawyer who must travel to a damp coastal town in order to settle the affairs of an recently deceased client. Upon arrival in the town, he quickly discovers that things are a bit kooky, with, among other things, a run of child deaths plaguing the community. Traveling to the house of his client, while riding across a causeway that floods every change of tides literally trapping the house on an Island of its own, he encounters a strange vision of a Woman in Black.

So, yeah, it’s a haunted house/ghost movie. You’ve no doubt seen hundreds of them, yet this one does manage to elevate the source by being extremely stylish. There’s some excellent creepy imagery, in particular, the Victorian era windup toys that are shot particular well. A scene where the candle light makes one toys eyes come alive as if their pupils are moving is particularly effective.
While there’s a capable supporting cast, this really is Daniel Radcliffe’s movie. A great deal of the film consists of Daniel traipsing through spooky rooms by candlelight, and he certainly seems up to the task of carrying the film on his own. The sheer hoopla surrounding his involvement will no doubt shape audience expectations of the work, but I think as a standalone performance he’s absolutely up to the task. Aside from the obvious cliché elements, there are quite a few genuinely disturbing scenes, and the film’s pitiless execution of a number of children throughout the film (sometimes in graphic detail) at least show that it’s unafraid to actually commit to the type of tale it’s trying to tell.

The Woman In Black is a horror movie for those that never go see them, a perfectly fine, serviceable thriller. Radcliffe has chosen an interesting genre piece to make his foray into adult cinema. This film is for people that don’t often go to scary movies, but it may not hold the interest of those that like more explicit or brutal kinds of movies.

Runtime – 1 hour and 34 minutes
Director – James Watkins.

Who was born on this date:

Actress Bonita Granville was born on February 2, 1923 in Chicago, Illinois. She made her film debut at the age of nine in Westward Passage (1933). Over the next couple of years she played un-credited supporting roles in such films as Little Woman (1933) and Anne of Green Gables (1934) before playing the role of Mary in These Three (1936), for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actress. Despite this success, and although she continued to work, the next few years brought her few opportunities to build her career. In 1938, she starred as the saucy mischievous daughter in the multi-Academy Awards nominated hit comedy film Merrily We Live and as girl detective Nancy Drew in the hit film Nancy Drew, Detective. As a young adult, she was once again cast in supporting roles, often in prestigious films such as Now, Voyager (1942), as well as two Andy Hardy films with Mickey Rooney, Andy Hardy’s Blonde Trouble (1944) and Love Laughs at Andy Hardy (1946). Her career began to fade by the mid-1940s. Bonita died on October 11, 1988 in Santa Monica, California and is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Los Angeles.

Who died on this date:

On February 2, 1996, actor Gene Kelly died. He was born on August 23, 1912 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was known for his energetic and athletic dancing style, his good looks and the likeable characters that he played on screen. Kelly was a dominant force in Hollywood musical films from the mid 1940s until the late 1950s. His many innovations transformed the Hollywood musical film, and he is credited with almost single-handedly making the ballet form commercially acceptable to film audiences.

He began his entertainment career on the Broadway stage in November 1938 as a dancer in Cole Porter’s Leave It to Me!. His first career breakthrough was in the The Time of Your Life, which opened on October 25, 1939, where for the first time on Broadway he danced to his own choreography. In the same year he received his first assignment as a Broadway choreographer, for Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe. Offers from Hollywood began to arrive but Kelly was in no particular hurry to leave New York. Eventually, he signed with David O. Selznick, agreeing to go to Hollywood in October 1941. Selznick sold half of Kelly’s contract to MGM and loaned him out for his first motion picture, For Me and My Gal (1942) with Judy Garland. Kelly’s first opportunity to dance to his own choreography came in Thousand Cheers (1943), where he performed a mock-love dance with a mop.

He achieved his breakthrough as a dancer on film, when MGM loaned him out to Columbia to work with Rita hayworth in Cover Girl (1944), where he created a memorable routine dancing to his own reflection. In his next film Anchors Aweigh (1945), MGM virtually gave him a free hand to devise a range of dance routines, including the celebrated and much imitated animated dances with Jerry Mouse, and his duets with co-star Frank Sinatra. Anchors Aweigh became one of the most successful films of 1945 and it garnered Kelly his first and only Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. In Ziegfield Follies (1946), Kelly collaborated with Fred Astaire. After World War II and his return to Hollywood in the spring of 1946, MGM had nothing lined up and used him in a B-movie, Living in a Big Way. The film was considered so weak that Kelly was asked to design and insert a series of dance routines, and his ability to carry off such assignments was noticed. This led to his next picture with Judy Garland, the film version of Cole Porter’s The Pirate, in which Kelly plays the eponymous swashbuckler. Now regarded as a classic, the film was ahead of its time and was not well received.

Although MGM wanted Kelly to return to safer and more commercial vehicles, he ceaselessly fought for an opportunity to direct his own musical film. In the interim, he capitalized on his swashbuckling image in The Three Musketeers and also appeared in Slaughter on Tenth Avenue (1948). He was due to play the male lead opposite Garland in Easter Parade (1948), but broke his ankle playing volleyball. He withdrew from the film and encouraged Fred Astaire to come out of retirement to replace him. Kelly then appeared in Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949), his second film with Sinatra, where Kelly paid tribute to his Irish heritage in The Hat My Father Wore on St. Patrick’s Day routine. It was this musical film which persuaded Arthur Freed to allow Kelly to make On The Town, where he partnered with Frank Sinatra for the third and final time, creating a breakthrough in the musical film genre which has been described as “the most inventive and effervescent musical thus far produced in Hollywood.”

Then two musicals secured Kelly’s reputation as a major figure in the American musical film, An American in Paris (1951) and probably the most popular and admired of all film musical of all time Singin’ in the Rain (1952). An American in Paris won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture and, in the same year, Kelly was presented with an honorary Academy Award for his contribution to film musicals and the art of choreography. Kelly, at the very peak of his creative powers, now made what in retrospect is seen as a serious mistake. In December 1951 he signed a contract with MGM which sent him to Europe for nineteen months so that Kelly could use MGM funds frozen in Europe to make three pictures while personally benefiting from tax exemptions. Only one of these pictures was a musical, Invitation to the dance, a pet project of Kelly’s to bring modern ballet to mainstream film audiences. It was beset with delays and technical problems, and flopped when finally released in 1956. When Kelly returned to Hollywood the film musical was already beginning to feel the pressures from television, and MGM cut the budget for his next picture.

Kelly did not return to stage work until his MGM contract ended in 1957, when in 1958 he directed the musical play Flower Drum Song. He continued to make some film appearances, such as Hornbeck in the 1960 Hollywood production of Inherit the Wind. However, most of his efforts were now concentrated on film production and directing. He made frequent appearances on television during the 1960s, but his one effort at television series, as Father Chuck O’Malley in Going My Way (1962–63) was dropped after thirty episodes. Kelly died in his sleep from a stroke on February 2, 1996 at his Beverley Hills home. His body was cremated, per his instructions there was no funeral or memorial services and his remains were given to family. Final disposition is unknown.

On February 2, 1969, actor Boris Karloff died. He was born William Henry Pratt on November 23, 1887 in London, England. Karloff is best remembered for his roles in horror films and his portrayal of Frankenstein’s monster in Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), and Son of Frankenstein (1939). His popularity following Frankenstein was such that for a brief time he was billed simply as “Karloff” or “Karloff the Uncanny.” His best-known non-horror role is as the Grinch, as well as the narrator, in the animated television special of Dr. Seuss’s, How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966). Although he played many sinister characters on screen, Karloff was known in real life as a very kind gentleman who gave generously, especially to children’s charities. Karloff lived out his final years in England at his cottage, ‘Roundabout,’ in the village of Bramshott. After a long battle with numerous ailments, he contracted pneumonia and died on February 2, 1969. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered at the Guildford Crematorium, where he is commemorated by a plaque in the Garden of Remembrance.
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Who was born on this date:

Actor Clark Gable was born on February 1, 1901 in Cadiz, Ohio. His mother Adeline died when Clark was only seven months old. The acting bug struck Gable when he was fifteen and working as an errand boy at the Akron Theater but this foray into the entertainment industry was short lived, after the death of his step mother; his father moved the family to Oklahoma, where the young Gable worked as a roustabout in the oil fields. Determined to be a star, and against his father’s wishes, Clark left Oklahoma for a job as a stage hand at a small theater in Portland, Oregon. It was there that he met his future wife, Josephine Dillon, a well known Broadway actress. She tutored Clark and brought him to Los Angeles, where they were married on December 13, 1924, the pair would divorce six years later.

Gable had arrived in the city where he would become a legend. His big break came when veteran actor Lionel Barrymore spotted the young actor in a play and got him several bit parts in movies. Director, Darryl F. Zanuck’s first impression of the young star was brutally honest but very wrong, speaking to Gable he said, “Buddy, your ears are too big. You’ll never make it.” The famed director was being candid but wrong. In the 1931 film, The Free Soul, Gable played a gangster, who roughs up actress Norma Shearer’s character. The studio heads, including Louis B. Mayer, thought this would repulse female film goers but it did not, the film made Clark Gable a star. During his time in Hollywood, Gable was the undisputed “king of the movies,” a box office leader, forty-one of his film’s would gross over sixty-three million dollars and he was reportedly paid more than $48,000 a week on a film set.

Gable’s film career spanned nearly four decades from 1923 to 1961, he appeared in eighty-one films some of which included; Hell Divers (1931), Strange Interlude (1932), Manhattan Melodrama (1934), Wife vs. Secretary (1936), San Francisco (1936), They Met in Bombay (1941), Across the Wide Missouri (1951), and Band of Angels (1957). He was nominated for three best acting Oscar’s, his first and only win was in 1934’s, It Happened One Night, he was nominated but lost in 1936 for Mutiny on the Bounty and 1940 playing the legendary role of Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind.

In 1932 on the set of the film, No Man of Her Own, Clark Gable met the love of his life, Carole Lombard. Their first meeting was uneventful, and did not leave a lasting impression. Years later in 1936, at a Hollywood party the pair were again united and hit it off. There was one hitch, they two movie stars were still married, Lombard to Robert Powell and Gable to Maria Langham. This minor detail did not stop the pair from seeing one another and a scandalous affair ensued. The two eventually got divorces from their respective spouses and married on March 29, 1939, during a break in the filming of Gone with the Wind. During his marriage to Lombard, Gable has been characterized as being at his happiest. Carole Lombard’s youthful, yet blunt personality was a good match for Gable. Tragedy struck on January 16, 1942, when Lombard was killed in plane crash, while on a war bond publicity drive. This devastated Gable, and although he would go on to make an additional twenty-seven films, he was never emotionally the same person.

Gable died from a heart attack on the evening of November 16, 1960 at Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital in Los Angeles. He had just wrapped up filming The Misfits, co-starring Marilyn Monroe, when he was stricken by a minor heart condition. He returned home immediately and appeared to be recovering when the fatality occurred. His death is alleged to have been caused by extreme physical exertion and tension on the set of the film. At the time of his death, his fifth wife Kay was five months pregnant. On March 20, 1961, she gave birth to a boy, John Clark Gable. His private funeral was held at the Church of the Recessional at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, where numerous Hollywood notables were present; pallbearers were Jimmy Stewart, Spencer Tracy and Robert Taylor. Gable was accorded full military honors for his military service during World War II. Gables widow Kay consented to his burial beside his third wife, actress Carole Lombard in the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn.

Director John Ford is considered by many to be America’s greatest film director, he was born John Martin Feeney on February 1, 1894 in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. He was known as “Pappy” to his closest friends and his storied and award winning directorial film career spanned nearly five decades from 1917 to 1966 and included one hundred and forty-four motion pictures. The hardnosed director was best known for his numerous Westerns starring John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, and Henry Fonda. He is credited with discovering John Wayne and giving him his first big break in motion pictures (Stagecoach, 1939). Wayne and Ford made numerous films together and the pair remained very close friends all their lives. Ford’s major film credits include: Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), The Battle of Midway (1942, he won a best documentary Oscar), They Were Expendable (1945), Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), Rio Grande (1950), Mister Roberts (1955), The Searchers (1956), The Horse Soldiers (1959), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), and How the West was Won (1962).

During his legendary film career Ford was nominated for five best director Academy Awards, winning four times and include: The Informer (1935, won), Stagecoach (1939, nominated), The Grapes of Wrath (1940, won), How Green is My Valley (1941, won), and The Quiet Man (1952, won). Ford died on August 31, 1973 at his home in Palm Desert, California from cancer. His funeral was held at the Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Hollywood and in attendance were over 1,400 mourners, counted among them were numerous members of Hollywood’s elite. He was eulogized as “the incomparable mater of his trade” by both John Wayne and Cardinal Timothy Manning. He is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Los Angeles.

Who died on this date:

On February 1, 1966, actor Buster Keaton died. He was born on Piqua, Kansas. He was best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic expression, earning him the nickname “The Great Stone Face.” Keaton made his first film appearance in The Butcher Boy (1917). Other notable film credits include The Playhouse (1921), Cops (1922), The Electric House (1922), Our Hospitality (1923), The Navigator (1924), Sherlock, Jr. (1924), Seven Chances (1925), and The General (1927). Keaton signed with MGM in 1928, a business decision that he would later call the worst of his life. He realized too late that the studio system would severely limit his creative input. He later made numerous TV appearances. Keaton died from lung cancer on February 1, 1966 in Woodland Hills, California and is buried at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills.

On February 1, 1966, famed gossip columnist Hedda Hopper died. She was born Elda Furry on May 2, 1885 in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. Hopper film career began in 1916 with The Battle of Hearts. As her movie career waned in the mid-1930s, Hopper looked for other sources of income. In 1937, she was offered the chance of a lifetime and embarked on a career doing something she was quite adept at, gossip. Her column called “Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood” debuted in the Los Angeles Times on February 14, 1938. After years of struggling as an actress, she had finally found her niche. She christened the home she purchased in Beverley Hills “The House That Fear Built.” She was known for hobnobbing with the biggest names in the industry, for getting a “scoop” before almost anyone else most of the time, and for being vicious in dealing with those who displeased her, whether intentionally or not. Hopper died on February 1, 1966 from pneumonia and is buried at Rose Hill Cemetery in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
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Who was born on this date:

Actress Joanne Dru was born on January 31, 1922 in Logan, West Virginia. Born Joan LaCock, she came to New York City in 1940 and found work as a model. That same year she was chosen by Al Jolson to appear in the cast of his Broadway show, Hold onto Your Hat. Her first film appearance was in Abie’s Irish Rose (1946). Over the next decade, Dru appeared frequently in films and on television. She was cast often in westerns films such as Red River (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and Wagon Master (1950). She also appeared in All the King’s Men (1949), The Pride of St. Louis (1952), Thunder Bay (1953), and Three Ring Circus (1954). Dru was the elder sister of Peter Marshall, who is best known as the original host of The Hollywood Squares. She was also married to Red River co-star, John Ireland from 1949-1957. Joanne Dru died on September 10, 1996 from lymph edema in Los Angeles and her ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean.

Singer/ actor Mario Lanza was born on January 31, 1921 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He began studying to be a professional singer at the age of 16 and after appearing at the Hollywood Bowl in 1947, Lanza signed a seven-year contract with MGM. His movie debut was in That Midnight Kiss (1949), followed by The Toast of New Orleans (1950), and The Great Caruso (1951). Lanza was known to be rebellious, tough, and ambitious, and during most of his film career, he suffered from addictions to overeating and alcohol which had a serious effect on his health and his relationships. He made three more films before dying of a pulmonary embolism on October 7, 1959 in Rome. At the time of his death he was still “the most famous tenor in the world.” He is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. Numerous tragedies followed as Lanza’s widow, Betty, moved back to Hollywood with their four children, but died five months later from a respiratory ailment. In 1991, Marc, the younger of their two sons, died of a heart attack at the age of 37; six years later, Colleen, their elder daughter, was killed when she was struck by two passing vehicles on a highway, she was 48. The couple’s elder son, Damon Lanza, died in August 2008 of a heart attack at the age of 55.

Actress Jean Simmons was born on January 31, 1929 in London, England. She was discovered by Val Guest, who cast her in Give Us the Moon (1944). She then went on to appear in Great Expectations (1946) and Hamlet (1948) for which she received her first Academy Award nomination. Other film credits include Uncle Silas (1947), Black Narcissus (1947), Adam and Evelyne (1949). The Actress (1953), The Robe (1953), Young Bess (1953), Desiree (1954), The Egyptian (1954), Guys and Dolls (19555), Elmer Gantry (1960), Spartacus (1960), All the Way Home (1963), and The Happy Ending (1969), for which she received her second Oscar nomination. In 1950, she married actor Stewart Granger, with whom she appeared in several films, the couple divorced in 1960. By the 1970s Simmons turned her focus to stage and television acting. Simmons died from lung cancer on January 22, 2010 in Santa Monica, California and her cremated remains are interred at Highgate Cemetery in London.
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Who died on this date:

On January 30, 1926, silent film actress Barbara La Marr died. She was born Reatha Dale Watson on July 28, 1896 in Yakima, Washington. She was known as “The Girl Who Is Too Beautiful.” La Marr made the successful leap from writer to actress in Douglas Fairbanks, The Nut (1921). She appeared in over 30 films, wrote seven successful screenplays for United Artists and Fox Studios. La Marr’s notable film credits include The Prisoner of Zenda (1922), and Trifling Women (1922). Although her film career flourished, she also embraced the fast-paced Hollywood nightlife, remarking in an interview that she slept no more than two hours a night.

La Marr was married five times. At the time of her death she was married to actor Jack Dougherty. Some years after her death, it was revealed that she had mothered a son by a man whose name has never been released. The child, Marvin Carville La Marr, was adopted by the actress Zasu Pitts. The child was renamed Don Gallery and grew up to become an actor and a sometime boyfriend of Elizabeth Taylor. On January 30, 1926, La Marr died of tuberculosis and nephritis in Altadena, California at the age of 29. She is interred at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
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Who was born on this date:

Legendary comedic actor W.C. Fields was born William Claude Dukenfield on January 29, 1880 in Darby, Pennsylvania. He was known for his comic hard-drinking egotist who remained a sympathetic character despite his contempt for dogs, children and women. Fields starred in a couple of short comedies, filmed in New York in 1915. His stage commitments prevented him from doing more movie work until 1924. His best known film credits include Million Dollar legs (1932), The Fatal Glass of Beer (1933), David Copperfield (1935), My Little Chickadee (1940), and The Bank Dick (1940). Fields died on January 29, 1946 at the Las Encinas Sanitarium in Pasadena, California from alcohol related stomach hemorrhage. His cremated remains are interred at Forest Lawn Glendale.

Actor Victor Mature was born on January 29, 1913in Louisville, Kentucky. He was discovered while on stage at the Pasadena Playhouse, his first leading role was as a fur-clad caveman in One Million B.C. (1940). His other notable film roles include My Darling Clementine (1946), Samson and Delilah (1949), Million Dollar Mermaid (1952), and The Robe (1953). Mature was famously self-deprecatory about his acting skills. Once, after being rejected for membership in a country club because he was an actor, he cracked, “I’m not an actor — and I’ve got sixty-four films to prove it!” He was quoted in 1968 on his acting career: “Actually, I am a golfer. That is my real occupation. I never was an actor. Ask anybody, particularly the critics.” Victor Mature died of leukemia on August 4, 1999 at his home in Rancho Santa Fe, California and is buried at St. Michael’s Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky.

Who died on this date:

On January 29, 1980, actor/ comedian Jimmy Durante died. He was born on February 10, 1893 in New York City. His distinctive clipped gravelly speech, comic language butchery, jazz-influenced songs, and large nose helped make him one of America’s most familiar and popular personalities of the 1920s through the 1970s. His jokes about his nose included referring to it as a “Schnozzola”, and the word became his nickname. Durante retired from performing in 1972 after suffering a stroke that left him confined to a wheelchair. He died of pneumonia on January 29, 1980 in Santa Monica, California. And is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.

On January 29, 2002, actor Harold Russell died. He won the best supporting Oscar winner for 1947 was not even a professional actor. Harold John Russell was born on January 14, 1914 in North Sydney, Nova Scotia and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He joined the Army on December 8, 1941, the day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and became a paratrooper and explosives expert. In 1944, at Fort Mackall, North Carolina, he had a charge of TNT explode in his hands during a training exercise. The injuries were so extensive that both hands hand to be amputated. A short time after the accident, he was cast in an Army documentary, Diary of a Sergeant that detailed his rehabilitation efforts. Hollywood film director, William Wyler saw this documentary and offered Russell the part of Homer Parish in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). His performance in this film was critically and commercially well received, and he was nominated for a best supporting Academy. He beat out other veteran actors to win the award. Upon accepting the gold statuette, Russell was so moved by the rousing applause from the audience that he was overcome with emotion and reduced to tears. He also received an honorary Oscar, “For bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans through his appearance in The Best Years of Our Lives.” He is the only actor to ever receive two Oscars for the same role.

Following this film, Russell attended Brown University and then became a founder member of AMVETS. He also made it is life long quest to help the disabled. He went on to appear in a handful of films and several television programs such as Inside Moves (1980), Trapper John, M.D. (1981), and Dogtown (1997). Russell wrote two autobiographies, Victory in My Hands (1947) and The Best Years of My Life (1981). In 1992, Russell caused a stir when he decided to sell his best supporting actor Oscar. Russell told the press that he wanted put some money away for his children and grandchildren. The Academy of Motion Pictures Sciences urged him not sell and even tried to purchase the statuette, offering $20,000 but Russell held out and it was eventually sold for more than $60,000 to an anonymous buyer. On January 29, 2002, Russell died from a heart attack at age eighty-eight. Harold Russell’s grave is found at the Lakeview Cemetery in Cochituate, Massachusetts.

On January 29, 1964, actor Alan Ladd died. He was born on September 3, 1913 was born in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Ladd’s film career began with small parts in such movies as Citizen Kane and Joan of Paris (1942). He came into his own as a leading man in This Gun for Hire (1942), in which he played “Raven,” a hit man with a conscience. Ladd went on to star in many Paramount Pictures films that included The Glass Key (1942) and Lucky Jordan (1942). His cool, unsmiling persona proved popular with wartime audiences, and he was quickly established as one of the top box office stars of the decade and was often paired with actress Veronica Lake. In 1946, he starred in a trio of silver screen classics: Tow Years Before the Mast, The Blue Dahlia and O.S.S. Ladd played the title role in the 1953 western Shane, which was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture. In November 1962, Ladd was found lying unconscious in a pool of blood with a bullet wound near his heart from an unsuccessful suicide attempt. In 1963 Ladd filmed a supporting role in The Carpetbaggers but did not live to see its release. On January 29, 1964 he was found dead in Palm Springs, California from an acute overdose of “alcohol and other drugs,” the death was rules an accident. Ladd was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale. .

The Help

Winner of the 2012 Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress (Octavia Spencer) and nominated for three Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Actress (Viola Davis) and Best Supporting Actress (Octavia Spencer)

The Help, set in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi, follows Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan (played by Emma Stone), a young college graduate who has just returned home with a degree from Ole Miss. Skeeter dreams of becoming a real author, and immediately lands a job with the town newspaper as the writer of the cleaning column. She soon decides to secretly pen a book exposing what life is like from the point of view of the African American women who cook, clean and raise white children. Aibileen (played by Viola Davis) is the maid for Skeeter’s best friend Elizabeth (played by Ahna O’Reilly). She does all the cooking, she cleans, she goes to the grocery story, and most important, she takes care of Elizabeth’s daughter. Although reluctant at first, Aibileen is motivated by a desire to remember her late son and is the first maid to agree to talk with Skeeter.

The next maid to agree to tell her story is Minny (played by Octavia Spencer), who works for Hilly Holbrook (played by Bryce Dallas Howard), the town’s queen bee. Minny is the best cook in town but Hilly’s manipulative ways finally become too much for her, and she gets some nasty revenge on her overbearing employer. After which, Minny goes to work for Celia Foote, a naive young lady who is considered white trash by Hilly and her friends. As racial tensions rise and tragedy strikes in the town, more maids find the courage to come forward. Despite the possibility of terrible backlash, the women tell “all” for the book.

The movie sets the tone right away; the bright and sunshiny presentation cloaks the story, and along with genuine humor, lightens the weightiness of the subject matter and hints at the uplifting feeling of triumph and sisterhood that will ultimately prevail. How do you take a potentially highly emotionally charged, painful and divisive civil rights issue and make it into a pleasant, poignant unifying and uplifting story? First, you add a little Southern charm, and then throw in a dash of real, honest humor. Brilliantly adapted to the silver screen from Kathryn Stockett’s bestselling novel, The Help will make you laugh, and probably cry, and it will likely leave you a better person for having seen it.

Release – Dreamworks (2011)
Runtime – 137 minutes
Director – Tate Taylor
Cast – Viola Davis, Bryce Dallas Howard, Octavia Spencer, Emma Stone, Anna Camp, Ahna O’Reilly, Jessica Chastain, Allison Janney

Watch trailer – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_ajv_6pUnI.

Hugo

Winner of the 2012 Golden Globe for Best Director (Martin Scorsese) and nominated for 11 Academy Awards including Best Picture and Director

Martin Scorses’s Hugo is set in Paris in 1931 and begins with a breathtaking shot of the city, as the camera swoops down on to a busy railway station. It ends up on the 12-year-old Hugo, who is peering at the world from behind a giant clock. Hugo (Asa Butterfield) has inherited a love of tinkering with machinery from his late father, and has quite recently taken over the job of superintending the station’s clocks from his drunken uncle. The boy lives in the hidden tunnels and passageways of the building, where he’s repairing a 19th-century automaton. He’s a crafty Charles Dickens like orphan, a cinematic voyeur looking out on the world. Fate has brought him there, and it then draws him into the orbit of a querulous old man, Georges (Ben Kingsley), who runs an old-fashioned shop on the station selling toys and doing mechanical repairs, assisted by his 12-year-old god-daughter, Isabelle. Hugo becomes involved with the old man when he’s accused of theft and has a cherished book of drawings confiscated. He is then assisted by Isabelle in retrieving the book, and in turn, when he discovers she’s forbidden to go to the movies, he takes her on a great “adventure”, a visit to the lost world of silent movies. A labyrinth of plot twists takes the pair on a journey into a mysterious past in which they discover the origins of the movies in the late 19th century careers of the Lumière brothers.

Hugo is a moving, funny and exhilarating film, an imaginative history lesson in the form of a detective story. The film is a great defense of the cinema as a dream world, a complementary, countervailing, transformative force to the brutalizing reality we see all around us. It rejects the sneers of those intellectuals and moralizers who see in film a debilitating escapism. Hugo has a wonderfully gifted team behind it with a talented British cast (except for the delightful young American Chloë Grace Moretz as Isabelle). Scorsese has created a timeless and wondrously imaginative film. It’s a love letter to the cinema and its preservation. An instant classic.

Run-time – 1hour, 27 minutes
Production – Warner Bros. (2011)
Director – Martin Scorsese
Cast – Ben Kingsley, Sacha Baron Cohen, Asa Butterfield, Chloe Grace Moretz, Ray Winstone, Emily Mortimer, Christopher Lee, Helen McCrory, Michael Stuhlbarg, Frances de la Tour, Richard Griffiths, Jude Law

Watch trailer – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5IP-78xH6g.

War Horse

Nominated for six Academy Awards including Best Picture

War Horse succeeds at offering a compelling look at multiple facets of World War I. The movie begins when Albert (played by Jeremy Irvine) suddenly becomes the young owner of an untrained and unruly horse. The pair forms a tight bond as the stubborn horse named Joey helps his young trainer beat the odds and save his parents farm from financial ruin. Despite their victory, Britain begins to deploy for war with Germany, and Joey is effectively enlisted in the British army, acting as the battle horse for Captain Nicholls (Tom Hiddleston) and leaving Albert behind. Nicholls is only the first of many people that Joey touches as he traverses one of the most horrifying human conflicts in history. The vignettes are masterfully woven together, and despite jumping from person to person, it successfully balances Joey’s experience with the overarching effect the war is having on people from all walks of life.

The marketing for the film might lead some moviegoers to think that War Horse is a mostly lighthearted and inspiring adventure suitable for young children would be a mistake. For casual audiences, this film may actually be one of the heavier films of the year, as the World War seemingly destroys everything in its wake (soldiers, innocents, and animals alike) but the heavy tone and heart-wrenching moments don’t detract from the overall success of the film. The unrelenting nature of the film is almost certainly intentional and helps ground audiences in the horrors of World War I. However, there’s no doubt that each of the vignettes can be exceptionally draining, especially because the terrible deeds of man far outweigh any moments of lightheartedness. Spielberg does manage to instill a number of the characters with enjoyable and lively personalities; however, even the most hopeful and cheerful of these personalities are ultimately overrun by the relentless war machine. As a result, the film can at times come across as a continuous descent into increasingly horrifying human experiences.

That’s not to say that there aren’t a number of lighthearted moments, mainly due to the success of the equine actors coupled with some inspired performances from their human counterparts. Joey exudes a tremendous amount of personality and provides believable reactions to the various scenarios portrayed onscreen. Spielberg makes use of the horses to great effect, showcasing the majesty and beauty of the animals, while successfully portraying the horrors that befell them. Jeremy Irvine is competent in the lead role as Albert, and there’s no doubt the actor was challenged selling the emotional bond between his character and Joey. Once the film gets rolling it moves at a brisk pace. War Horse offers a number of memorable moments both tragic and profound but even the most inspiring moments are wrought with the horror of the war. But with that said, War Horse is a compelling and heartfelt film and one of the best of the year.

Run-time – 1 hour 26 minutes
Director – Steven Speilberg
Touchstone Picures
Cast – Jeremy Irvine, Benedict Cumberbatch, David Kross, David Thewlis, Emily Watson, Niels Arestrup, Peter Mullan, Toby Kebbell, Tom Hiddleston

Watch trailer – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7lf9HgFAwQ
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Who was born on this date:

Actor Paul Newman was born on January 26, 1925 in Shaker Heights, Ohio. He won numerous awards, including an Academy Award for best actor in the 1986s, The Color of Money. Newman was a co-founder of Newman’s Own, a food company from which Newman donated all post-tax profits and royalties to charity. Newman attended the Yale School of Drama for one year before moving to New York City to study under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. In 1953, he made his Broadway debut in the original production of Picnic. During this time Newman started acting in television. He had his first credited TV or film appearance with a small but notable part in a 1952 episode of the science fiction TV series Tales of Tomorrow. His first movie was The Silver Chalice (1954) and by 1958, he was one of the hottest new stars in Hollywood, starring in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), opposite Elizabeth Taylor. The film was a box office smash and Newman garnered his first Academy Award nomination.

Newman was one of the few actors who successfully made the transition from 1950s cinema to that of the 1960s and 1970s. His rebellious persona translated well to a subsequent generation. Newman starred in Exodus (1960), The Hustler (1961), Hud (1963), Hombre (1967), Cool hand Luke (1967), The Towering Inferno (1974), Slap Shot (1977), and The Verdict (1982). He teamed with fellow actor Robert Redford for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and The Sting (1973). His last screen appearance was as a conflicted mob boss in the 2002 film Road to Perdition opposite Tom Hanks. Newman announced that he would retire from acting on May 25, 2007. He stated that he did not feel he could continue acting at the level he wanted to.

Newman was married twice first to Jackie Witte from 1949 to 1958. He met actress Joanne Woodward in 1953. Shortly after filming The Long, Hot Summer, in 1957 he divorced Witte. He married Woodward early in 1958. They remained married for fifty years until his death. The Newman’s lived away from the Hollywood environment, making their home in Westport, Connecticut. Newman was well known for his devotion to his wife and family. When asked once about infidelity, he famously quipped, “Why go out for a hamburger when you have steak at home?” In June 2008, it was widely reported that Newman, a former chain smoker, had been diagnosed with lung cancer and was receiving treatment in New York City. In August, after reportedly finishing chemotherapy, Newman told his family he wished to die at home. He died there on September 26, 2008, surrounded by his family and close friends. His remains were cremated and final disposition is unknown.

Actor Charles Lane was born on January 26, 1905 in San Francisco, California. He appeared in numerous movies and TV shows, and at the time of his death may have been the oldest living professional American actor. He appeared in many Frank Capra films, including You Can’t Take It With You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) and It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). He was a favored supporting actor of Lucille Ball, who often used him as a no-nonsense authority figure and comedic foe of her scatterbrained TV character on her TV series I Love Lucy, The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour and The Lucy Show. Lane also appeared in the 1949 film Mighty Joe Young, and 1963’s It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. His final acting role was at the age of 101 in 2006’s The Night Before Christmas. His last television appearance was at the age of 90, when he appeared in the 1995 Disney TV remake of its 1970 teen comedy The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, with Kirk Cameron. Lane died on July 9, 2007 and is buried at Home of Peace Cemetery in Colma, California.

Who died on this date:

On January 26, 1973, actor Edward G. Robinson died. He was born on December 12, 1893 in Bucharest. He began his acting career in 1913 and made his Broadway debut in 1915. He made his film debut in a minor and uncredited role in 1916. Robinson was popular in the 1930s and 1940s and was able to avoid many flops during a 50-year career that included 101 films. An acclaimed performance as the gangster Caesar Enrico “Rico” Bandello in Little (1931) led to him being typecast as a “tough guy” for much of his early career in works such as Five Star Final (1931), Smart Money (1931), Tiger Shark (1932), Kid Galahad (1937), Larceny Inc. (1942), Double Indemnity (1944), The Woman in the Window (1945), Scarlet Street (1945) and The Stranger (1946). As a memorable tribute to his past gangster roles, he appeared as ‘Johnny Rocco’ in Key Largo (1948). He also appeared in numerous ‘B’ movies such as Vice Squad (1953), Tank Battalion (1958).Director Cecil B. DeMille cast him as Dathan in The Ten Commandments in 1956. Robinson’s acting career was later bolstered by notable roles in 1959’s A Hole in the Head and the Cincinnati Kid (1965). Robinson’s last film was Soylent Green (1973). Edward G. Robinson died from cancer on January 26, 1973 and was buried at Beth-El Cemetery in Queens, New York.
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