The Quiller Memorandum (1966)

The Quiller Memorandum is a film adaptation of the 1965 spy novel The Berlin Memorandum, by Trevor Dudley-Smith under the name "Adam Hall", screenplay by Harold Pinter, directed by Michael Anderson, featuring George Segal, Max von Sydow, Senta Berger and Alec Guinness.

The film was shot on location in West Berlin and in Pinewood Studios, England and was nominated for 3 BAFTA Awards, while Pinter was nominated for an Edgar Award for the script.

In the dead of the night a man walks down a deserted Berlin street. He enters a phone booth, but as he dials a number, he is shot dead by an unseen sniper.

Jones was the second British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) operative to be murdered in Berlin by a secret neo-Nazi organisation, Phoenix. SIS send Quiller (George Segal) to Berlin where, at the Nazis' 1936 Olympia Stadium, his controller Pol (Alec Guinness) quietly explains that "a new generation of Nazis has grown up, difficult to recognise because they don't wear uniforms any more", and orders him to find the Phoenix HQ. Pol's SIS superiors in London, Gibbs (George Sanders) and Rushington (Robert Flemyng), are occasionally seen directing the operation from their gentlemen's club.

Back in Berlin, Quiller shakes off someone following him, then confronts the tail in a pub, only to discover that the man is his SIS minder, Hengel (Peter Carsten). Hengel gives him a bowling alley ticket, a swimming-pool ticket and a newscutting, all found on Jones's body. Quiller asks after Jones at the bowling alley without success; the swimming pool manager Hassler (Günter Meisner) also sends him packing. Pretending to be a reporter, Quiller visits the school featured in the newscutting, where a teacher had recently been unmasked as a Nazi war criminal. The headmistress introduces him to teacher Inge Lindt (Senta Berger), who is fluent in English and whom he interviews about her colleagues, before then driving her back to her home and briefly stopping at her flat for a drink.

On leaving, Quiller confronts a man who seems to be following him. Having earlier told Hengel that he understands no German, Quiller is revealed to be able to speaking it fluently. The man strenuously denies following him and other men intervene in the discussion, before Quiller returns to his hotel. Outside the hotel, a porter bumps into his leg with a heavy suitcase. Quiller drives off, managing to shake his minder Hengel, but other cars appear to still be following him. Soon he becomes drowsy, and then semi-conscious while stopped at some traffic lights, where a car stops alongside him a man steps into the driving seat, pushes Quiller over, and kidnaps him.

He wakes in a chair in a palatial room, surrounded by many of the previous incidental characters, who are all Phoenix members led by a German aristocrat, Oktober (Max von Sydow). Quiller refuses to answer Oktober's questions about the SIS operation and how much they know about Phoenix, and makes a dash to escape from the room but is easily overpowered. A doctor injects Quiller with a truth serum, but although in his delirium he utters a few clues Quiller is just able to deflect Oktober's questions. Oktober orders Quiller to be killed.

Quiller comes round lying somewhere in the city beside the river. He hails a cab and steals it, evading a pursuing Mercedes before booking himself into a dingy hotel. He telephones Inge from the hall and they arrange to meet the following evening. Pol also arranges another meeting with Quiller, where his handler explains that each side is trying to discover and annihilate the other's base: Quiller alone is in a position to know both.

After sleeping with Quiller, Inge admits that she has a friend who might know the location of Phoenix's HQ. Inge takes Quiller to the swimming pool manager, Hassler, who is now much more friendly. He drives Quiller, Inge and Inge's headmistress to a dilapidated old building. Quiller wants to investigate the house on his own; Inge says she will wait for Quiller, and the pool manager and headteacher leave the car for Quiller to drive Inge home. When they are finally alone together in the car Inge tells him she loves him.

The street is the same one on which Quiller's predecessor was murdered at the start of the film. Quiller enters the house, which appears deserted, until he notices Oktober's henchmen standing all around him. They take Quiller into the same room where he was held captive and walk Quiller down to the cellar, where removal men are organising the move to a new HQ for the organisation. Quiller is horrified to see that Inge has been brought there too. Oktober offers Quiller an ultimatum: either he reveals where the SIS base is by dawn, or both of them will be killed. Quiller is released back onto the dark streets to walk and ponder, surrounded by Oktober's armed men, who - while they keep their silent distance - make it impossible for him to evade them, or use any public telephone to call his controller.

As dawn breaks, he returns to his hotel, while Oktober's men stand guard outside in the street. The hall phone has already been destroyed to prevent him using it, but he escapes into a courtyard of lock-up garages. Noticing a piece of wire on the ground, he finds that the car has been booby-trapped in case he attempted this method of escape. He leaves the engine running to explode the bomb, and Oktober's men assume that he has been killed in the explosion. Quiller reports to the SIS office with the location of Phoenix's centre of operations. Pol appears calmly indifferent as he arranges to round up the gang; they are all arrested, yet Inge turns out not to be among them.

Later, Quiller walks into Inge's classroom. Inge explains that she "was lucky they let me go", but Quiller appears to have concluded that she is not who she seems. He says that if ever he comes to Berlin again he will call her. He then walks away from the school building, as Inge watches him depart from the classroom window before returning to her schoolchildren.

In memoriam : Dennis Hopper (1936-2010)

Artificial life

Richard III (1995)

Richard III is a 1995 drama film adapted from William Shakespeare's play of the same name, starring Ian McKellen, Annette Bening, Jim Broadbent, Robert Downey Jr., Nigel Hawthorne, Kristin Scott Thomas, Dame Maggie Smith, John Wood and Dominic West.

The film relocates the play's events to a fictional version of England in what appears to be a fascist-inspired 1930s. Despite some anachronisms, the film's atmosphere is easily recognizable to viewers.

The film's concept was based on a stage production directed by Richard Eyre for the Royal National Theatre, which also starred McKellen. The production was adapted for the screen by McKellen and directed by Richard Loncraine.

The film is notable for its unconventional use of famous English landmarks, often using special effects to move them to new locations. The transformed landmarks used include the following:

• St Pancras railway station is relocated to Westminster and becomes King Edward's seat of government.
• Battersea Power Station is relocated to the coast of Kent and becomes a bombed-out military base.
• Bankside Power Station becomes the Tower of London where Clarence is imprisoned.
• Brighton Pavilion is relocated to a coastal clifftop and becomes King Edward's country retreat.
• Senate House of the University of London is Richard's seat of government and is used for interior and exterior scenes.
• The famous art deco facade and clock of Shell Mex House is also featured in exterior shots.

Perhaps the play's most famous line—"A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!"—was recontextualised by the new setting; during the climactic battle, Richard's scout car becomes stuck, and his lament is cast as a plea for a mode of transport with legs rather than wheels.

In a surprising ending, where Richard refuses to be captured and leaps down to his death with the "wrong" closing line "Let us to't pell-mell; if not to heaven, then hand-in-hand to hell", his falling into the inferno is followed by the eerily upbeat tune "I'm Sitting On The Top Of The World" (Ray Henderson, Joe Young and Sam Lewis) in the classic version sung by Al Jolson.

The film enlarges the role of the Duchess of York considerably by combining her character with that of Queen Margaret. The roles of Rivers, Grey and Vaughan are combined into Rivers. The death scenes are shown rather than implied as in the play, and changed to suit the time (Hastings is hanged rather than beheaded) or historical accuracy (Clarence dies by having his throat cut in a bathtub, rather than being drowned in a wine barrel). Each character's pre-death monologues is also removed, except that of Clarence.

McKellen himself stated on his website: "When you put this amazing old story in a believable modern setting, it will hopefully raise the hair on the back of your neck, and you won't be able to dismiss it as 'just a movie' or, indeed, as 'just old-fashioned Shakespeare.'"

Time Square, New York City - 1965

Zeppelin

A Zeppelin is a type of rigid airship pioneered by the German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin in the early 20th century. It was based on designs he had outlined in 1874 and detailed in 1893. His plans were reviewed by committee in 1894 and patented in the United States on 14 March 1899. Given the outstanding success of the Zeppelin design, the term zeppelin in casual use came to refer to all rigid airships.

The zeppelin airships were lighter-than-air craft using a rigid frame construction with an aerodynamic outer envelope and several separate balloons called 'cells' containing the lighter-than-air gas hydrogen completely within the frame. A comparatively small compartment for passengers and crew was built into the bottom of the frame. Several internal combustion engines provided motive power.

In addition to founding the airship construction business, which altogether finished 119 ships until 1938, in the early 20th century, Count von Zeppelin also founded the world's first commercial airline called DELAG (Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-AG). Both business were based in Friedrichshafen, Germany.

Zeppelins were operated by the Deutsche Luftschiffahrts and served scheduled flights before World War I. After the outbreak of war, the German military made extensive use of Zeppelins as bombers and scouts.

When the elderly Count died in 1917, his place as head of the Zeppelin business was taken by Hugo Eckener. Eckener was both a master of publicity as well as an extremely skilled airship captain. It was under Eckener's guidance that the Zeppelins reached their zenith. The most successful airship of this period was LZ 127 "Graf Zeppelin" which flew over 1 million miles including the first (and, to date, only) circumnavigation of the globe via airship.

Following 1933, the establishment of the Third Reich in Germany began to overshadow the Zeppelin business. The Nazis were not interested in Eckener's ideals of peacefully connecting people; they also knew very well dirigibles would be useless in combat and thus chose to focus on heavier-than-air technology.

On the other hand, they were eager to exploit the popularity of the airships for propaganda. As Eckener refused to cooperate, Hermann Göring, the German Air minister, formed a new airline in 1935, the Deutsche Zeppelin-Reederei (DZR), which took over operation of airship flights. Zeppelins would now display the Nazi swastika on their fins and occasionally tour Germany to play march music and propaganda speeches for the people from the air.

On 4 March 1936, LZ 129 Hindenburg (named after former President of Germany Paul von Hindenburg by Eckener) made her first flight. The Hindenburg was the largest airship ever built. However, in the new political situation, Eckener had not obtained the helium to inflate it due to a military embargo; only the United States possessed the rare gas in usable quantities. So, in what ultimately proved a fatal decision, the Hindenburg was filled with flammable hydrogen. Apart from the propaganda missions, LZ 129 began to serve the transatlantic lines together with Graf Zeppelin.

On 6 May 1937, while landing in Lakehurst after a transatlantic flight, in front of thousands of spectators, the tail of the ship caught fire, and within seconds, the Hindenburg burst into flames, killing 35 of the 97 people on board and one member of the ground crew. The actual cause of the fire has not been definitively determined; it is likely that a combination of leaking hydrogen from a torn gas bag, the vibrations caused by a swift rotation for a quicker landing to have started static electricity in the duralumin alloy skeleton and a flammable outer coating similar to rocket fuel accounted for the fact that the fire spread from its starting point in the tail to engulf the entire airship so rapidly (34 seconds).

Whatever caused the disaster, the end of the dirigible era was due to politics and the upcoming war, not the wreck itself, though it surely led to some public misgivings. Despite everything, there remained a list of 400 people who still wanted to fly as Zeppelin passengers and had paid for the trip. Their money was refunded in 1940.

Graf Zeppelin completed more flights, though not for overseas commercial flights to the U.S., and was retired one month after the Hindenburg wreck and turned into a museum. Dr. Eckener kept trying to obtain helium gas for Hindenburg's sister ship, Graf Zeppelin II, but due to political bias against the airship's commercial use by the Nazi leadership, coupled with the inability to obtain helium gas in sufficient quantities due to an embargo by the United States, his efforts were in vain. The intended new flagship Zeppelin was completed in 1938 and, inflated with hydrogen, made some test flights (the first on 14 September), but never carried passengers. Another project, LZ 131, designed to be even larger than Hindenburg and Graf Zeppelin II, never progressed beyond the production of some single skeleton rings.

The Art Deco spire of the Empire State Building was originally designed to serve as a dirigible terminal for Zeppelins and other airships to dock.

Happy birthday BURT BACHARACH!

In memoriam : LENA HORNE (1917-2010)

Lena Horne, the legendary actress-singer who broke new ground in Hollywood and was active in the Civil Rights movement, has died. She was 92. Horne passed away at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York on Sunday night (May 9), as announced by son-in-law Kevin Buckley, reports the New York Times.

As one of the first black performers to significantly infiltrate the studio system by signing a long-term contract with MGM, Horne was instrumental in integrating Hollywood. She appeared in a few well known musicals such as "Stormy Weather" -- which is also one of her signature songs -- and "Ziegfield Follies."

Horne was born in June 1917 in Brooklyn. By her teens she began singing in nightclubs, including the famed Cotton Club as a chorus girl.

Although her Hollywood career spanned six decades, she never really achieved any huge success in that arena often because of her African American heritage was seen by studios as a deterrent when casting for lead roles or roles that might necessitate an interracial relationship on screen.

She was best known in the entertainment world for her singing and showcased that in more nightclubs, on Broadway and on TV variety shows, including "The Ed Sullivan Show" and "The Judy Garland Show." Later in her career she appeared on "The Cosby Show" and "The Muppet Show."

She won several Grammy awards over her career and received a best actress Tony nomination for the musical "Jamaica." Later, she received a special Tony for her one-woman show, "Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music."

Her contributions to the Civil Rights movement include working alongside Paul Robeson and Medgar Evers, participating on the March on Washington and collaborating to end desegregation and lynching.

Elephants dream (2006)

Elephants Dream is a computer-generated short film that was produced almost completely using the free software 3D suite Blender (except for the modular sound studio Reaktor and the cluster that rendered the final production, which ran Mac OS X). It premiered on March 24, 2006, after about 8 months of work. Beginning in September 2005, it was developed under the name Orange by a team of seven artists and animators from around the world. It was later renamed Machina and then to Elephants Dream after the way in which Dutch children's stories abruptly end.

The film was first announced in May 2005 by Ton Roosendaal, the chairman of the Blender Foundation and the lead developer of the foundation's program, Blender. A 3D modelling, animating, and rendering application, Blender was the primary piece of software used in the creation of the film. The project was joint funded by the Blender Foundation and the Netherlands Media Art Institute. The Foundation raised much of their funds by selling pre-orders of the DVD. Everyone who preordered before September 1 has his or her name listed in the film's credits. The bulk of processing for rendering this film was donated by the BSU Xseed, a 2.1 TFLOPS Apple Xserve G5-based supercomputing cluster at Bowie State University. It reportedly took 125 days to render, consuming up to 2.8GB of memory for each frame. The completed film is 10 minutes 54 seconds long, including 1 minute and 28 seconds of credits.

The film's purpose is primarily to field test, develop and showcase the capabilities of open source software, demonstrating what can be done with such tools in the field of organizing and producing quality content for films.

During the film's development, several new features such as an integrated node-based compositor, hair and fur rendering, rewritten animation system and render pipeline, and many workflow tweaks and upgrades were added into Blender especially for the project.

The film's content was released under the Creative Commons Attribution license, so that viewers may learn from it and use it however they please (provided attribution is given).

The film was released for download directly and via BitTorrent on the Official Orange Project website on May 18, 2006, along with all production files.

The movie was made mostly as an experiment, rather than to tell a certain story and therefore has a strong arbitrary and surreal atmosphere. It features two men, Proog (the elder and more experienced) and Emo (the younger and more nervous) living in a miraculous construction referred to only as "The Machine"; Proog tries to introduce Emo to its nature but the latter is reluctant and argues about its purpose. The creators originally intended for the movie to show the abstraction of a computer.

The final message is not easy to see due to the abstract nature of the movie and therefore some viewers criticized it as pointless and random, and worthy of attention only if seen as a demo. Other people have widely different interpretations of its meaning. Proog cannot abide imaginative, unpredictable fun in his so carefully crafted and isolated logical world, which is why he tries to dominate Emo and eventually attacks him. Another theory is connected to the theory of evolution, with Proog and the Machine representing multicellular life and DNA, whereas Emo represents a single mitochondrion and cannot grasp the complexity of the Machine.

Bassam Kurdali, Director of Elephants Dream, explained the plot of the movie by saying:

"The story is very simple—I'm not sure you can call it a complete story even—It is about how people create ideas/stories/fictions/social realities and communicate them or impose them on others. Thus Proog has created (in his head) the concept of a special place/machine, that he tries to "show" to Emo. When Emo doesn't accept his story, Proog becomes desperate and hits him. It's a parable of human relationships really—You can substitute many ideas (money, religion, social institutions, property) instead of Proog's machine—the story doesn't say that creating ideas is bad, just hints that it is better to share ideas than force them on others. There are lots of little clues/hints about this in the movie—many little things have a meaning—but we're not very "tight" with it, because we are hoping people will have their own ideas about the story, and make a new version of the movie. In this way (and others) we tie the story of the movie with the "open movie" idea."

The original title was to be Machina but was dropped due to pronunciation issues. One motivation for the title regarding the story was the concept of an Elephant in the room, referring to the (unspoken) fact that Proog's precious world only exists for him.

1910-2010 : David Niven 100°

No name, but a date at last…

So now we can stop wondering just when we all get to go back to Gotham City and the world of Bruce Wayne as envisioned by Christopher Nolan. Warners has set the date for Batman 3 as July 20, 2012 in the US.

The date itself isn’t a shocker – The Dark Knight arrived across the pond on July 18 two years ago and Nolan’s latest, Inception, is set for July 16. Hopefully we won’t have to wait to see it hit our cinemas – after all, Inception is day and date over here.

2012 is shaping up to be a heck of a movie year, with The Avengers, Star Trek 2, the new Spider-Man, Battleship and The Hobbit all planned for various dates.

And don’t forget the scheduled Mayan apocalypse! Good times.