Batman killed by his OWN dad

Bruce Wayne – who by night is Batman – gets murdered by a man claiming to be the father he thought was dead.
In a highly controversial new storyline Bruce, who first appeared in 1939, is killed by Simon Hurt – the leader of the shady Black Glove organisation.

Simon claims he is really Dr Thomas Wayne, saying he faked his own passing when Bruce was a child.
The superhero dies when he tries to stop his foe escaping by helicopter in the new comic Batman R.I.P.
Bad father ... Batman's dad
Writer Grant Morrison said: “This is so much better than death. People have killed characters in the past but to me, that kind of ends the story!
"I like to keep the story twisting and turning. So what I am doing is a fate worse than death. Things that no one would expect to happen to these guys at all.
"This is the end of Bruce Wayne as Batman."
Batman will live on though, with another character filling his Batsuit.
Two likely contenders are Dick Grayson - the original Robin - or current Boy Wonder, Tim Drake.

Home at last part 7 : TV, stereo and records

What I want for Christmas 2

Christies Lot 85 / Sale 5426
Lot Description
Kevin McClory Warhead, 1976 Never Say Never Again, 1983
Kevin McClory's script for Warhead, an unmade James Bond project, the script entitled "Warhead" Based on "JAMES BOND OF THE SECRET SERVICE" by Ian Fleming, Kevin McClory, Jack Whittingham, giving further details on the title page of the screenplay's authors Len Deighton, Sean Connery and Kevin McClory, production details including c Branwell Film Productions, March 21, 1976... and FIRST DRAFT 6 September 1978..., 137pp. mimeographed typescript, various characters in the cast list include the hero James Bond and Bond girls: Justine Lovesit and Fatima Blush, other Bond regulars include: Ernst Stavros Blofeld, Felix Leiter, Moneypenny, M and Q, original blue paper covers; accompanied by a black and white photograph of the three authors of the screenplay, Connery, Deighton and McClory at the latter's home in Ireland, taken during their collaboration on this project [printed later] -- 8x10in. (20.4x25.5cm.); and
Kevin McClory's shooting script for Never Say Never Again, 119pp. of mimeographed typescript, variously dated from 7.9.82 to 23.9.82; 123pp. of mimeographed storyboards including many dramatic underwater sequences including shipwreck shark attacks on Bond, the duel between Bond and Largo and the assassination of Largo by Domino, the pages contained in a maroon vinyl ring binder -- accompanied by a letter from the vendor explaining the provenance.

Kevin McClory's personal copy of the 'NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN' shooting script & corresponding underwater storyboard which accompanies his personal copy of the almost mythical script for the 'James Bond film that never was'; 'WARHEAD', written by the triumvirate of 'Ipcress File' writer Len Deighton, James Bond's most famous incarnation Sean Connery and Kevin McClory. This iconic script has been variously described as:

'The Bond film that got away.' and 'One of the great unfilmed scripts – so good it tempted a retired Sean Connery to return as 007.' - Total Film Magazine

'It is the most ambitious and action-packed James Bond movie ever.' - Scotland On Sunday

'It's like a mythical sort of beast, almost the Holy Grail, this Bond film that never was.' and ,It would have been the most extravagant Bond film ever.' – The Battle for Bond Author Robert Sellers

Miss Emma Peel

Emma Peel is a fictional television spy played by Diana Rigg in the British 1960s adventure series The Avengers. She was born Emma Knight, the daughter of an industrialist, Sir John Knight.

The partner of John Steed, Mrs Peel was introduced as a replacement for the popular Cathy Gale, played by actress Honor Blackman, who left the series at the end of the programme's third season to co-star in the James Bond film Goldfinger.

Elizabeth Shepherd was cast as Emma Peel and production on the fourth season began. After filming all of one episode and part of a second, however, the producers decided that Shepherd was not right for the part, and she was dismissed. No footage of Shepherd as Peel is known to have survived.

The producers scrambled to find a replacement and found her in Diana Rigg; the Shepherd episodes were subsequently re-filmed.

The character was notable for a number of characteristics. She is a feminist heroine, eschewing traditional "damsel-in-distress" portrayals of women (she is rarely bested in any fight and rescues Steed as often as he rescues her.) She is a master of martial arts and a formidable fencer. A certified genius, she specializes in chemistry and other sciences. She is often seen in episodes engaging in artistic hobbies and had success in industry at the helm of the company of her late father, Sir John Knight. The name "Emma Peel" is a play on the phrase "Man Appeal" or "M. Appeal", which the production team stated was one of the required elements of the character.

Her style of dress typified the period, and the character is still a fashion icon. John Bates was brought in as the costume designer for Emma Peel in the second half of Season 4. He created a wardrobe of black and white op-art mod clothing and mini skirts. Before this, people had believed that lines, circles and other bold patterns would not work on the television cameras of the day. It was also filmed before the mini skirt had become mainstream. Bates even had to stop leaving hems on the mini skirts because the production team kept lowering them again. He also licensed his designs to several manufacturers under the Avengerswear label and these pieces were sold in various shops throughout the country. She is often best-remembered for the leather catsuit she wore early on in her first season, but in fact Rigg disliked wearing leather and John Bates designed softer stretch jersey and PVC catsuits for her instead. For the colour season, the designer was Alun Hughes who used bold colours and lurid, psychedelic patterns. Hughes also created the Emmapeeler catsuit which was made of stretch jersey in bright block colours. The Emmapeelers and several other pieces from this season's wardrobe were also licensed and sold in the shops.

She drove a convertible Lotus Elan at high speeds, and convincingly portrayed any series of undercover roles, from nurse to nanny. Her favorite guise was that of a women's magazine reporter, trying to interview big business tycoons and rich playboys

Peel's interactions with Steed range from witty banter to sexual tension. The tension was never broken except for a chaste peck on the cheek she gives Steed at the end of her final episode before departing with her husband, Peter Peel. He was a test pilot and was lost on a mission. When he returns, at the end of "The Forget-Me-Knot", Peel leaves Steed and her spy career behind. In the distant shot in which he appears, Peter Peel looks suspiciously like Steed.

In real life, Diana Rigg had chosen to leave the series for a number of reasons, one of which was in order to accept a role in the James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service. She also experienced ongoing conflict with the series producers (she later said she discovered she was being paid less than the cameraman).

Emma Peel was replaced by agent Tara King played by actress Linda Thorson, but appeared one last time in an episode of The New Avengers entitled "K is for Kill." Rigg had declined an offer to appear on the series, so stock footage of her from an Avengers episode was used instead.

The Day The Clown Cried

In 1971, producer Nate Waschberger asked Jerry Lewis to direct and star in "The Day the Clown Cried", based on Joan O’Brien’s book by the same name, about a German clown who was arrested by the Gestapo, interred in a concentration camp, and used to march Jewish children into the ovens. Jerry lost close to 40 pounds to play the role. The shooting began in Stockholm, but Waschberger not only ran out of money to complete the film, but he failed to pay Joan O’Brien the money she was owed for the rights to the story. Jerry was forced to finish the picture with his own money. The film has been tied up in litigation ever since, and all of the parties involved have never been able to reach an agreeable settlement. Jerry hopes to someday release the film, which remains to this day, a significant expression of cinematic art, suspended in the abyss of international litigation.

synopsis:
It's World War Two (already a bad start) and Lewis plays a German clown named Helmut Doork (!?). He's fallen in the ranks at the great circus and rages on in hopes of being number one again. The problem is he's a mean drunk and a jerk. He goes on a drunken speil at a tavern accusing the great Adolph Hitler and his mad schemes for making his job harder (it's always someone else, eh?). While literally falling down drunk (Jerry Style), he lands at the feet of two Gestapo agents who arrest him for ridiculing their Furher. He's interrogated and gives up names of everyone he knows, anti-Hitler or not, just to save his skin.
He's taken to a political prison adjacent to a concentration camp where he's tortured and ridiculed all the while signing his own praises as a great clown. When he tries to stand up to his wardens and then beaten down, he criticizes himself for showing any backbone. At one focal point, he's thrown down in the mud and notices the children laughing at him from the concentration camp side. He makes an effort to apply mud to his nose and this makes the children laugh harder. More children gather at the fence who laugh. He then exclaims, "Look....They're laughing at me. I am a great clown!" The children are some sort of catalyst and he works for only them. (This is where art imitates life with Lewis...children in need of a clown) He takes soot from the stove to work up some make up, some bird droppings for the white base, trades some food for a larger man's shoes and coat, and starts really giving the kids some performances.

The head Nazi sees how Jerry can handle the kids and is ordered to entertain them for their duration. Eventually they are herded onto a train boxcar and are headed for Auschwitz. To quiet the children and keep them distracted, the Nazis force Jerry to ride on the boxcar as well. He ends up going to Auschwitz with them and then is told to lead them to the gas chambers. The children thinks it's just showers, but Jerry's character knows differently and yet does nothing. He entertains them to the very chamber door and enters in with them. The door closes behind them and they're gassed. The End.

From all reports from the people that have seen it, Jerry plays is cold, flat and the humor is so terribly wrong as to be legendary.
Harry Shearer, who saw the rough cut in the 80's, has said," If you say'Jerry Lewis is a clown in a concentration camp' and you make that movie up in your head, it's so much better than that...and by better I mean worse. You're stunned.

With most of these kinds of things, you find that the anticipation, or the concept, is better than the thing itself. But seeing this film was really awe-inspiring, in that you are rarely in the presence of a perfect object. This was a perfect object. This movie is drastically wrong, it's pathos and it's comedy are so wildly misplaced, that you could not, in your fantasy of what it might be like, improve on what it really is.
O'Brien and Waschberger felt the same way, refused to allow this version to surface, and that's where we stand today, 37 years later. Jerry has a rough cut and a VHS copy in his vault and doesn't take interviews on the subject.

Best sounds of 2008 : Parov Stelar Shine

Like life, music must move on and progress. But like life, we must remember to reminisce and recall the past at times. It is the sole reason why we enjoy experiencing new and going back to old music, it is an extension of life. Shine, the third artist album by Parov Stelar, gratifies life´s movements and moods perfectly, the new the old. What we already know about Parov Stelar and what we don´t know. This is obvious to Marcus Füreder aka Parov Stelar too. Sampling Charleston and Jazz, conjuring up new Breakbeat and Pop into a creation of interesting music is no easy task, but Parov Stelar seems to have a sensibility about what it should sound like. Thankfully his worldwide fans agree as the Cinderella story of a new unheard artist from Austria´s third largest city Linz shows no sign of slowing down. In fact, things can only snow roll more as word gets around of the brilliant new music of Parov Stelar. Fans will enjoy traditional Parov Stelar tracks that offer sexiness and sophistication, these same fans will be delighted that this artist is not standing still and resting on his laurels and just repeating the same sound as he gets a little rougher and dirtier in places. This is not elevator music, this is not lounge, this is simply good music with influences and cognitive factors far and wide.

Best sounds of 2008 : Waldeck Ballroom Stories

One of Austria’s finest nujazz/downtempo artists and a member of the original Vienna sound alongside Kruder & Dorfmeister. After 2001’s The Night Garden, Klaus Waldeck has released new longplayer "Ballroom Stories". Our musical journey begins in the Americas at the beginning of the 1920ies. Tango meets Swing. Delicous cocktails and a live that seems even richer than the thick smoke of Cuban Cigars. The opener "Make my Day" reminds of the days when Al Capone was making a fortune by selling booze. Singer Joy Malcolm gives us an impressive performance of how she would have sounded, if she were born 60 years earlier. If, this track sounds familier to you, it may be, because Mercedes Benz chose it, for its latest TV-campaign featuring the Formula 1 world champion Mr. Alonso. All there is to say: "Turn the radio on, the neighbour´s gone!" Another highlight "Addicted" sneaks in with an intriguing bass line and a healthy dose of tango-feeling. Zeebee is the new voice on this masterpiece.
Waldeck pulls off effortlessly what so many artists aspire to sound like. It's hard to describe - but imagine songs that sound like the vocals are sampled from classic jazz, R&B and cabaret eras, combined with back-up that sound like live trios or quartets, with a full range of instruments - piano, clarinet, brass, violin, saxophone and accordion. Beats range from lounge/chill, to dub, and to 20s swing. The soulful, sultry, female vocalists bring Waldeck's melodies and retro canvases alive. Add to that a crackle that doesn't sound like radio fuzz, but as if the music was coming off a gramaphone. Frigging brilliant.

Theatre of blood (1973)

Douglas Hickox directed Theatre of Blood, a first-rate production that scriptwriter Anthony Greville-Bell crams full of Shakespearean evocation. Featuring a fabulous soundtrack and inspired ensemble cast, Vincent Price produces a tour de force in this stylishly dark, comedy horror, boasting the appealing premise of an indignant actor seeking revenge on his detractors.
Edward Lionheart (Vincent Price), a classically trained Shakespearean ham actor, is denied a prestigious annual acting award by the London Theatre Critic's Circle. Intruding on their meeting, he steals the award, throws himself into the River Thames and is presumed drowned. A short while after, critics start dying in the manner of famous death scenes from Shakespeare's plays. George Maxwell (Michael Hordern) is first; a death of a thousand cuts in a deserted warehouse being his fate (Julius Caesar). The effeminate Meredith Merridew (Robert Morley) is forced to eat his two beloved poodles in a baked pie, and is force-fed to death (Titus Andronicus). Chloe Moon (Coral Browne) is fried under a hair-dryer in a beauty salon (Henry VI). Horace Sprout (Arthur Lowe), is decapitated in his bed, his head is then replaced on his body so that his wife will knock it off in the morning (Cymbeline). Trevor Dickman (Harry Andrews) is lured away by a sexy young actress and ends up having his heart cut out (The Merchant of Venice). Drinker, Oliver Larding (Robert Coote), is drowned in a vat of wine and dragged through the cemetery by wild horses (Richard III). Solomon Psaltery (Jack Hawkins) strangles his wife Maisie (Diana Dors), who he suspects of infidelity after a Lionheart ruse, thus condemning himself to prison (Othello).
The only critic to survive is Peregrine Devlin (Ian Hendry), who suspects Lionheart is committing the murders. Wounded in a trampoline-fencing duel with Lionheart when replicating a scene from Romeo and Juliet, he is warned that he will be last. With Inspector Boot (Milo O'Shea) and Sergeant Dogge (Eric Sykes) as his only defence, Devlin tries to find out where Lionheart is, starting with his faithful daughter, Edwina (Diana Rigg), a make-up artist. She is little help, not surprising as she is in league with her father, who was saved by a group of tramps with whom he has set up his theatre of death. It is here that Edwina brings Devlin, cheating death thanks to a defective prop intended to put out his eyes, the tramps set fire to the theatre, and he escapes while Edwina and her father perform their last Shakespearean scene on the roof before being consumed by flames.


The movie is played for laughs from beginning to end with Vincent Price giving one of his best and most campy performances as Edward Lionheart. The beautiful Diana Rigg spends half the film in drag and is barely recognizable behind her groovy 70s male garb. Both of these talented actors have called Theater of Blood their favorite film from their rather large repertoires.

The entire cast of Theater of Blood is filled with great British actors such as Michael Hordern, Dennis Price, Harry Andrews, Ian Hendry, Robert Morley and Coral Browne (Vincent Price’s third wife who he met on the set of the film). Many of them started their careers performing Shakespeare plays on stage or appeared in films based on his work.
The film has gained an impressive cult following over the years and is universally considered one of Britain’s best horror films.

The Bunny Suicides

Richard Amsel designing Agatha Christie

Murder on the Orient Express
Gouache, colored pencils, acrylic on board
28.5 x 15.75 in.
A big creative challenge for any illustrator: meeting the demand of the "Likeness Clause" in the contracts of a film's many stars, where the size of a given actor's likeness must be equal to all the others in the advertising campaign. Such was the case for this lavish emsemble adaptation of the Agatha Christie story. Amsel keenly incorporated the shape of a knife, while using the Orient Express as the blade's "handle".

Death on the Nile
Watercolor, acrylic, colored pencils, pen and ink on board
40 x 30 in.
Here Amsel continued the visual motif he employed with his design for Murder on the Orient Express.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Adapted from the 1920s story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is set in New Orleans from the end of World War I in 1918, into the 21st century, follows a man who is born in his eighties and ages backwards.

The Man in the High Castle (1962)

The Man in the High Castle is a 1962 alternate history novel by science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. The novel is set in the former United States in 1962, fifteen years after the Axis Powers defeated the Allies in World War II and after the U.S. surrendered to Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan.

The Man in the High Castle's point of divergence from our own world occurred when President Franklin D. Roosevelt was assassinated in 1933 by Giuseppe Zangara. He was succeeded by Vice President John Nance Garner, who was subsequently replaced by John W. Bricker. Neither man was able to surmount the Great Depression, and both clung to an isolationist policy regarding the approaching war. This meant that the United States lacked sufficient military capabilities to assist Great Britain and the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany, or itself when the Japanese Empire entered the war in 1941 in this world.
The USSR collapsed in 1941 and was occupied by the Nazis, while most of the Slavic peoples were exterminated. The Slavic survivors of the war were confined to "reservation-like closed regions". The Japanese, on the other hand, entirely destroyed the United States' Pacific fleet in a much more expansive attack on Pearl Harbor. Due to Japan's expanded military capabilities, it was able to invade and occupy Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand and the Southwestern Pacific in the early 1940s. Afterwards, the United States fell to the Axis, with many important cities suffering great damage.
By 1948, Allied forces had surrendered to Axis control. The Eastern Seaboard fell under German control, while California, Washington, Oregon, and parts of Nevada were ceded to Japanese rule. The Rocky Mountain States, the Midwest and much of the South West remained as a buffer between the Axis powers. The South was resurrected as a quasi-Nazi puppet state, much like Vichy France. The German Reich and Japanese Empire became the chief superpowers, and entered a Cold War of their own as a result.
After Adolf Hitler was incapacitated by syphilis, the head of the Nazi Party Chancellery, Martin Bormann, assumed the leadership of Germany. The Nazis created a colonial empire and continued their mass murder of races they considered inferior, murdering Jews in the puppet United States and other areas they controlled, and also carrying out massive genocide in Africa.
Nazi Germany continued its rocketry programs, so that by 1962, it has a working system of commercial rockets used for intercontinental travel and has also pursued space exploration, by sending rockets to the Moon, Mars and Venus (as mentioned early in the book, the Germans were able to send men to Mars at the end of the fifties). In a remarkable presage of later, real-life NASA concepts, PKD describes the Nazis' "...bustling robotic factories across the solar system". The novel mentions television as a new technology in Germany. The Japanese Empire is portrayed as behind the Third Reich in technological development. However, the novel mentions that there are severe supply shortages in Germany, owing to the sums invested in space exploration, and that the economy is on the brink of collapse.
During the novel, Martin Bormann dies and other Nazis, such as Joseph Goebbels and Reinhard Heydrich (whose real-life assassination was foiled in the novel), fight to become the Reich Chancellor (German: Reichskanzler). Various factions of the Nazi party are described as either seeking war with Japan or as being more interested in colonizing the solar system.

The Calcutta Chromosome - A Novel of Fevers, Delirium & Discovery (1996)

In the not too distant future, the morose Egyptian, Antar, works in New York City, as a home-based computer employee, monitoring artifacts which he can study holographically through cyber space. He conjures up the I.D. card of one L. Murugan, who had supposedly disappeared in Calcutta back in 1995. Murugan is/was an expert on Nobel laureate Ronald Ross, discoverer of the role of the anopheles mosquito in the transmission of malaria.

Through flashbacks to the intense week of his disappearance and to episodes in the late nineteenth century, the virtual Murugan roams Calcutta trying desperately to understand and expose a subtext of counter science in Ross's laboratory. He is joined by Urmila, a journalist whose life is endangered by their collaboration.

Murugan theorizes that Ross was sloppy, intent on fame and fortune though a simplistic rendering of the parasite-host relationship; his discoveries were fed to him by others and he was blind to the spiritualistic ambitions of Mangala, his Indian laboratory technologist. Conceiving of the powerful significance of malaria prevention and control, Mangala held different views on the purpose and means of investigating the disease and, Murugan thinks, she anticipated the later discovery of another Nobel laureate, J. Wagner-Jauregg, in the use of malaria for the treatment of syphilis. The travels of Murugan and Urmila imply that these views are still there awaiting their own discovery.

Multiple layers, numerous personalities, and complex time frames wander through the novel. The many Casteneda-like visions and mind-altering encounters spin an atmosphere of intrigue and suspicion around Ross and his Indian associates. Urmila copes with the dilemma of educated Indian women, as she tries to keep a career against the sexist demands of her family, who are indifferent to her desires, the importance of her work, and the risks that she incurs.

In explicating his hypothesis of the "Calcutta chromosome"--a chromosomal means of transmitting information, Murugan utters a Heisenberg-like uncertainty principle that seems to govern the writing: "to know something is to change it." Without clearly articulating any particular alternative explanation for malaria, the work is stimulating for its intriguing allusions to genetics, culture, colonialism, Nobel scientists, and their relationship to the disease that continues to kill two to three million people every year.

Twisted nerve (1968)

Twisted Nerve is a 1968 British psychological thriller film about a disturbed young man, Martin, who pretends, under the name of Georgie, to be mentally retarded in order to be near Susan, a girl he has become infatuated with. In covering his tracks he kills his stepfather and Susan's mother.
Despite its "difficult" subject matter, the film is still evidently a popular and highly-regarded one- hence not only its aforementioned referencing by Tarantino, but also The Damned naming a song after it on their 'Black Album' as far back as 1982, and that popularity was finally vindicated in 2008 when Optimum released it on DVD.

2 0 1 2

December 21 — Winter Solstice at 11:11 UTC.
December 21 — The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, notably used by the Maya civilization among others of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, completes its thirteenth b'ak'tun cycle since the calendar's mythical starting point (equivalent to 3114 BC August 11 in the proleptic Gregorian calendar, according to the "GMT-correlation" JDN= 584283). The Long Count b'ak'tun date of this starting point (13.0.0.0.0) is repeated, for the first time in a span of approximately 5,125 solar years. The significance of this period-ending to the pre-Columbian Maya themselves is unclear, and there is an incomplete inscription (Tortuguero Monument that records this date. It is also to be found carved on the walls of the Temple of Inscriptions in Palenque, where it functions as a base date from which other dates are computed. However, it is conjectured that this may represent in the Maya belief system a transition from the current Creation world into the next when Earth's poles will shift.
2012 is sometimes claimed to be a great year of spiritual transformation (or apocalypse). Many esoteric sources interpret the completion of the thirteenth B'ak'tun cycle in the Long Count of the Maya calendar (which occurs on December 21 by the most widely held correlation) to mean there will be a major change in world order.
December 12, 2012 is 6 years, 6 months, 6 days from June 6, 2006, or 6/6/6 (or 2381 days)
Transit of Venus – June 6, 2012 = 6/6/12(6x2)

tribute to John Williams

Home at last - part 6 : wardrobe

s t a r t r e k 2 0 0 9

Margaret Rutherford's Miss Marple (1962-1964)

Although popular from her first appearance in 1930, Jane Marple had to wait thirty-two years for her first big-screen appearance. When she made it, the results were found disappointing to Christie purists and Christie herself. Murder, She Said (1962, directed by George Pollock) was the first of four British MGM productions starring Dame Margaret Rutherford, a magnificent comic actress. This first film was based on the 1957 novel 4:50 from Paddington (U.S. title, What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!), and the changes made in the plot were typical of the series. In the film, Mrs. McGillicuddy does not see anything because there is no Mrs. McGillicuddy. Miss Marple herself sees an apparent murder committed on a train running alongside hers. Likewise,
The other Rutherford films (all directed by George Pollock) were Murder at the Gallop (1963), based on the 1953 Hercule Poirot novel After the Funeral (In this film, she is identified as Miss JTV Marple, though there were no indication as to what the extra initials might stand for); Murder Most Foul (1964), based on the 1952 Poirot novel Mrs McGinty's Dead; and Murder Ahoy! (1964). The last film is not based on any Christie work but displays a few plot elements from They Do It With Mirrors (viz., the ship is used as a reform school for wayward boys and one of the teachers uses them as a crime force), and there is a kind of salute to The Mousetrap. Rutherford also appeared briefly as Miss Marple in the spoof Hercule Poirot adventure The Alphabet Murders (1965).
Rutherford, who was 70 years-old when the first film was made, wore her own clothes during the filming of the movie, as well as having her real-life husband, Stringer Davis appear alongside her as the character 'Mr Stringer'.

Bunny Lake is missing (1965)

Bunny Lake Is Missing is a psychological thriller directed and produced by Otto Preminger, who filmed it in black and white widescreen format in London. It was based on the novel of the same name by Merriam Modell. The score is by Paul Glass and the opening theme is often heard as a refrain. The Zombies also appear in a television broadcast.

Dismissed by both critics and Preminger as insignificant upon its release in 1965, the film later earned a following as a cult classic, along with strong reviews by critics such as Andrew Sarris. The movie was at last released on DVD in 2005.

American single mother Ann Lake (Carol Lynley) has lately come to England from the US with her four-year-old daughter Felicia whom she calls by the nickname Bunny, planning to settle in London with her journalist brother Steven (Keir Dullea). After Bunny's first morning at her new school (The Little People's Garden) Ann comes to fetch her but Bunny is not there and nobody can remember even having seen her.

Police Superintendent Newhouse (Laurence Olivier) faces an array of suspects in Bunny's disappearance. Among these is Ann's landlord, ageing writer and broadcaster Horatio Wilson (Noel Coward), who lets himself into the Lakes' new apartment as he pleases and is a whip-loving sado-masochist. Retired teacher Ada Ford (Martita Hunt) lives on the school's top floor and collects recordings of children's nightmares. Ada in turn tells Newhouse she thinks there is something "very unusual" about Ann's brother Steven. Meanwhile, Steven acts aggressively towards Newhouse, threatening to create a public scandal through his resources as a reporter unless the police quickly find Bunny.

The family further tell the police that all of the girl's belongings have vanished that same day in a mysterious burglary, along with her passport. The school authorities in turn report that they had never received a tuition check for Bunny. When Steven lets slip that Ann as a young girl had an imaginary friend whom she also called Bunny, Newhouse begins to wonder whether Bunny Lake ever really existed.

At her wits' end from not being believed, Ann suddenly recalls that, before Bunny's disappearance, the girl's doll had been taken in for repair. She sets off across nighttime London to try to get the doll back, thinking that with it in hand the police will have to believe her.

Original poster and credit sequence are designed by Saul Bass.

Endless Night (1972)

Endless Night is a Christie, but not really a murder mystery. It's actually more of a psycho drama, but its inclusion on a horror films site is assured by some determinedly spooky set pieces. There are several scenes which linger in the mind long after the film has finished, and it may well have been seen by a lot of you on some late night TV slot and then been half forgotten.
The film starts with one of them, a weird dream sequence involving a woman with a blank face. Enter Hywell Bennet as our fresh faced narrator. He's in Christie's (clever, eh?) bidding on an expensive painting. Luckily, he doesn't get it (he's a penniless chauffeur) but he does display a remarkably original view on auctions which every Ebayer should take to heart:
"Between my bid and the next, I owned that picture..." ("No you didn't!" explains the rest of the world, patiently)
On a driving job in Europe, he meets with an architect and explains his lifelong dream - to build a house in a place called Gypsy's Acre. After being approached by someone (or something) in an art gallery, our baby faced hero develops an attitude problem, travels down to Gypsy's Acre and meets an American girl called Ellie (Hayley Mills, playing against type as a sweet and innocent blonde popsy without a worldy bone in her body). After explaining to her about his dream house (he just won't bloody shut up about it) they meet a spooky old woman and her cats, who intimates that something horrible has happened in the past, and more horrible things will occur.
This is breezily brushed off by Bennett with the immortal line "Nutcase. We breed 'em in England".
As if that wasn't enough, it turns out that Ellie is the "sixth richest girl in the world" and the two marry and build Bennett's dream house on Gypsy's Acre.
The plot wastes no time in introducing several more shady characters, the most important of which is Britt Ekland (also playing against type, as an annoying bint with an impenetrable middle European accent), who is Ellie's best friend Greta. (Greta is basically Ekland's character Lucy from Asylum - a not-very-nice girl who seems to rule Ellie with a rod of iron)
The others are Peter Bowles as a caddish uncle (natch) and his wife Miss Moneypenny.
As rocks get chucked at the window and a murder appears to take place, without the help of any Belgian detectives it's left to the audience to sort it out.
Who is the murderer? According to the cinema posters, only one in 10 people get it right. Filmgoers must have been stupider back in the 70s, but Endless Night is still an entertaining hour and a half.
The temptation with any film that has the word "endless" in its title is to be cruel, but the truth is it's not a bad little movie, especially for Bennett and Mills' excellent taste in James Bond-style 70s pads, complete with swimming pool under the sliding floor.

Mickey Mouse turns 80

He is a famous Oscar-winner, has his name in the Hollywood Walk of Fame and is still going strong despite being an OAP.
He even helped in the war effort during World War II by promoting gas masks and has been painted by the most famous of artists including Andy Warhol.
Yes Mickey Mouse is 80 today. History records his birthday as day of the release of Steamboat Willie, the rodent's first big break.
Unlike most people clocking up 80 years, Mickey has changed very little since his debut at New York's Coloney Theatre on November 18 1928.
Mickey Mouse was born in the imagination of a 26-year-old Walt Disney during a train ride in 1928 from New York to Los Angeles.
He had just lost rights to his first cartoon character Oswald the Rabbit and so set about creating a new character.
Walt originally called the mouse Mortimer. But the name was changed when Walt's wife Lillian suggested Mickey was a more suitable name.

What I want for Christmas

James Bond's Lotus from The Spy Who Loved Me is to go under the hammer at a London auction next month.
The white 1976 Lotus Esprit is expected to fetch between £100,000 - £120,000 at Bonhams annual motoring sale.
It is one of two Lotus cars - driven by Roger Moore in the 1977 film - which turned into an amphibious car when it ended up in the sea during a chase.
Bond fans will get the chance to bid on the car at the auction in Olympia, west London, on 1 December.
The registration number AU1 from Bond classic Goldfinger will also be up for auction in the same sale.
The first registration issued in Nottingham in 1903, AU1 was fitted to the Rolls Royce Phantom III used by arch villain Goldfinger in the film, as AU is the chemical symbol for gold in the periodic table.
Bonhams hope the plate will fetch more than £80,000.

IRAQ WAR ENDS

Washington - The war in Iraq is over, and President George W Bush has been indicted for treason - so it must have been a particularly busy news day at The New York Times. Real news, self-fulfilling prophecy or just a very elaborate hoax?
At least 1.2 million copies of a fake edition of the Times was handed out Wednesday morning to New York commuters, replete with alarming headlines - for some, almost too good to be true.
Accompanying the replica of the print edition was a website, which again looked like the Times: http://www.nytimes-se.com/
Free copies of the 14-page newspaper, which looked exactly like the real Times, were distributed at busy subway stations across the city. Many commuters might not have noticed the fine print - the paper was dated July 4, 2009, US independence day.
Among the other gems that made front-page news: USA Patriot Act repealed; torture, rendition: "not such good ideas after all"; ex- secretary apologizes for WMD scare; and maximum wage law for CEOs succeeds.
It emerged later in the day that the newspaper was the work of a liberal group called the Yes Men, who issued a statement: "In an elaborate operation six months in the planning, 1.2 million papers were printed at six different presses and driven to prearranged pickup locations, where thousands of volunteers stood ready to pass them out."
The spoof paper included the usual sections - international, national, New York, business sections, editorials and corrections. There were several advertisements, including a recall notice for all cars that run on gasoline.
"It's all about how at this point, we need to push harder than ever," said Bertha Suttner, one of the newspaper's writers.
"We have got to make sure Obama and all the other Democrats do what we elected them to do. After eight, or maybe 28, years of hell, we need to start imagining heaven," she wrote in a press release published on the website of the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank.
A New York Times blog - the real one - quoted Catherine J Mathis, a Times spokeswoman, as saying: "This is obviously a fake issue of the Times. We are in the process of finding out more about it."
The pranksters interviewed several gullible commuters and posted the video on the internet. One said, "I can't believe it - the war is over. Wow!"
Another said: "I knew change was coming to America - I just didn't expect it so fast."

Salman Rushdie Midnight's Children to be filmed

Sir Salman Rushdie's 1981 novel about Indian independence, Midnight's Children, is to be made into a movie by the prominent director Deepa Mehta.
The author says that he is willing to work with Ms Mehta, an Indian-born Canadian, to co-write the script. Work is expected to begin next year with hopes that the film will be released in 2010.
In July, the novel won the UK's "Best of the Booker" in a popular vote.
The book tells the story of Saleem Sinai, who was born on the stroke of Indian independence day in 1947.
Sir Salman and Ms Mehta made the announcement at a recent event in New York during the annual Mahindra Indo-American Arts Council (MIAAC) Film Festival.
"I'm delighted that my friend Deepa Mehta has agreed to make a film of Midnight's Children. Her passion for the book, combined with her immense talent as a filmmaker, means that my novel has been placed in the best possible hands. I also look forward to working with her on the screenplay," Sir Salman said in a press statement on the MIACC website.
Rushdie also won the Booker of Bookers award in 1993
In 1997, Sir Salman reacted angrily to a decision by the government in Sri Lanka not to allow the BBC to film an adaptation of his novel Midnight's Children there.
He described it as a colossal blow and said those who objected to the film did not object to the novel, but to him personally.
Published in 1981, Midnight's Children is a fictional memoir. Saleem is one of 1001 children born at the stroke of midnight on 15 August 1947, the very moment of India's independence.
Saleem's life is uncannily intertwined with destiny of the country. The story spans a period of 30 years from 1947 ending with the emergency declared by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1977.
The novel continues to enjoy critical acclaim and is popular across a wide age range.

Jonny Quest (often referred to as The Adventures of Jonny Quest, which is actually a separate series) is a science fiction / adventure animated television series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, and created and designed by comic book artist Doug Wildey, about the adventures of a young boy who accompanies his father on extraordinary adventures. The first of several Hanna-Barbera action-based adventure shows, which would later include Space Ghost, The Herculoids, and Birdman and the Galaxy Trio, Jonny Quest ran on ABC in prime time for one season in 1964–1965. After spending two decades in reruns, new episodes were produced for syndication in 1986. Two telefilms and a spin-off series (The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest) later revived the characters for the 1990s.

Nine - first pix

Judi Dench, Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Sophia Loren, Stacy Ann Ferguson, Nicole Kidman, Kate Hudson (and Daniel Day Lewis) in Nine

Soylent Green (1973)

Soylent Green is a 1973 dystopian science fiction movie depicting a future in which overpopulation leads to depleted resources on earth. This leads to widespread unemployment and poverty. Real fruit, vegetables, and meat are rare, commodities are expensive, and much of the population survives on processed food rations, including "soylent green" wafers.

The film overlays the science fiction and police procedural genres as it depicts the efforts of New York City police detective Robert Thorn (Charlton Heston) and elderly police researcher Sol Roth (Edward G. Robinson) to investigate the brutal murder of a wealthy businessman named William R. Simonson (Joseph Cotten). Thorn and Roth uncover clues which suggest that it is more than simply a bungled burglary.

The film, which is loosely based upon the 1966 science fiction novel Make Room! Make Room!, by Harry Harrison, won the Nebula Award for Best Dramatic Presentation and the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film in 1973.

That most blameless of apocalyptic menaces, overpopulation, has been with us for centuries. It compelled Jonathan Swift to write his satirical call for institutionalized cannibalism in the 18th century. And in 1973, Hollywood produced a no-less-sensational (but considerably less satirical) movie about a vastly overpopulated future, where sinister corporate types have resorted to secret, institutionalized cannibalism. Every day is a potential food riot in New York City, but every Tuesday is Soylent Green day, when the latest—and apparently tastiest—flavor of nutrient-rich, plankton-based rations is distributed. Despite that infamous (and unintentionally funny) final line, and despite Charlton Heston, this movie is a surprisingly bleak and unflinching vision of the future. And sure, I get it, the stuff is made out of people. But that revelation won't fix the desiccated environment or shrink the population to manageable levels. The world of Soylent Green is as doomed as its inhabitants are delicious.

Home at last - part 5 : work in progress

Quantum of Solace title sequence

a beer between friends

Home at last - part 4 : doors&handles

...a bit more....

Remember remember the 5th of November

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I see no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t'was his intent
To blow up the King and Parli'ment.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England's overthrow;
By God's providence he was catch'd
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!

Guy Fawkes Night (also known as Bonfire Night, Cracker Night, Fireworks Night) is an annual celebration on the evening of the 5th of November. It celebrates the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot of the 5th of November 1605 in which a number of Catholic conspirators, including Guy Fawkes, attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament in London, England.