On this day in television and book history - Anne Frank: The Whole Story (2001) and The Biography (2013)

 

Anne Frank: The Whole Story

a two-part TV miniseries directed by Robert Dornhelm,

written by Kirk Ellis,

based on the book Anne Frank: The Biography by Melissa Müller,

was released in the United States on May 20, 2001.

Music by Graeme Revell.

 
Cast:

Ben Kingsley, Hannah Taylor Gordon, Brenda Blethyn, Lili Taylor, Jessica Manley, Carly Wijs, Tatjana Blacher, Jean-Luc Julien, Joachim Król, Nicholas Audsley, Jan Niklas, Peter Bolhuis, Victoria Anne Brown, Jeff Caster, Rob Das, Cees Geel, Holger Daemgen, Michaela Horáková, Johannes Silberschneider, Jade Williams, Branka Katic, Klára Issová, Karel Dobrý, Veronika Nowag-Jones, Nancy Bishop, Dominique Horwitz, Suzanne Friedline, Pavel Kríz, Petra Lustigová, Joel Kirby, Robert Russell, David O’Kelly, Petr Meissel, Yanna Fabian, Zdenka Volencová, Howard Lotker, Michael E. Perry, Phil Jones, Nicky Kantor, Jaroslava Siktancova, Jelena Juklová, Jan Klíma, Lisa-Marie Gravell, Ela Lehotská, Olga Schmidtová, Kristina Beranova, Talya Gordon, Alec Gordon.

Recommended reading:

Anne Frank: The Biography:
Updated and Expanded with New Material

by Melissa Müller.

Published by Metropolitan Books.

Published 2013.

ISBN-10: 0805087311

ISBN-13: 978-0805087314

Description:

Praised as "remarkable," "meticulous," and "long overdue," Anne Frank: The Biography, originally published in 1998, still stands as the definitive account of the girl who has become "the human face of the Holocaust." For this nuanced portrait of her famous subject, biographer Melissa Müller drew on exclusive interviews with family and friends as well as on previously unavailable correspondence, even, in the process, discovering five missing diary pages. Full of revelations, Müller's richly textured narrative returned Anne Frank to history, portraying the flesh-and-blood girl unsentimentalized and so all the more affecting. Now, fifteen years after the book first appeared, much new information has come to light: letters sent by Otto Frank to relatives in America as he sought to emigrate with his family, the identity of other suspects involved in the betrayal of the Franks, and important details about the family's arrest and subsequent fate. Revised and updated with more than thirty percent new material, this is an indispensable volume for all those who seek a deeper understanding of Anne Frank and the brutal times in which she lived and died.

On this day in movie and book history - Shutter Island (2010 and 2003)

Shutter Island

directed by Martin Scorsese,

written by Laeta Kalogridis,

based on the novel by Dennis Lehane,

was released in the United States on February 19, 2010.

Cast:

Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Max von Sydow, Michelle Williams, Emily Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson, Jackie Earle Haley, John Carroll Lynch, Ted Levine, Elias Koteas, Ruby Jerins, Robin Bartlett, Christopher Denham.

Recommended reading:

Shutter Island

by Dennis Lehane.

Published by William Morrow Paperbacks.
First published 2003.
Mass Market Paperback.

ISBN-10: 0062068415
ISBN-13: 978-0062068415

Description:

“Fasten your seat belts for a bumpy, breakneck ride…utterly absorbing… is an express train with no local stops…engrossing.” – Boston Globe.

“The ride this novel provides is as good as entertainment gets.” – Miami Herald.

“Combines the claustrophobia of . . . Agatha Christie . . . with the creepiness of a good Stephen King yarn. . . . Good luck putting this one down. – San Francisco Chronicle Book Review.

“Startlingly original…instantly cinematic… unfolds with increasing urgency until it delivers a visceral shock in its final moments.” – New York Times.

“There is no mystery…about how good this book is; like Mystic River, it’s a tour de force.” – Publishers Weekly.

“A lollapalooza of a corkscrew thriller…sure to be the most talked–about thriller of the year.” – Kirkus Reviews.

“Nightmarish…it’s not a book to start before bedtime. Even if you finish before dawn, Shutter Island will trouble your sleep.” – Orlando Sentinel.

The year is 1954. U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his new partner, Chuck Aule, have come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, to investigate the disappearance of a patient. Multiple murderess Rachel Solando is loose somewhere on this remote and barren island, despite having been kept in a locked cell under constant surveillance. As a killer hurricane relentlessly bears down on them, a strange case takes on even darker, more sinister shades – with hints of radical experimentation, horrifying surgeries, and lethal countermoves made in the cause of a covert shadow war. No one is going to escape Shutter Island unscathed, because nothing at Ashecliffe Hospital is what it seems. But then neither is Teddy Daniels.

On this day in movie history - Sexy Beast (2000)

Sexy Beast

directed by Jonathan Glazer,

written by Louis Mellis and David Scinto,

was released in the United Kingdom on January 12, 2001.

Music by Roque Baños.

Cast:

Ray Winstone, Ben Kingsley, Ian McShane, Amanda Redman, James Fox, Cavan Kendall, Julianne White, Álvaro Monje, Robert Atiko, Nieves del Amo Oruet, Enrique Alemán Fabrega, Gérard Barray, José Maria Cano Ramos, Desirée Erasmus, Santiago Frias Munoz, José Hernández, Ana Maldonado Herreria, Andy Lucas, José Lirola Ramos, José López Carrillo, Antonio Fco. Márquez Quesada, Juan Manuel Martníez Cobos, Dionisio Mesa, Eddie O'Connell, Terence Plummer, Manuel Sánchez Berlanga, Frank Scinto, Darkie Smith, Rocky Taylor, Chris Webb, Pedro Zamora Hernández, Tina Simmons.

On this day in movie history - Schindler’s List (1993)

Schindler’s List

directed by Steven Spielberg,

written by Steven Zaillian,

based on the book Schindler’s Ark by Thomas Keneally,

was released in the United States on November 30, 1993.

Music by John Williams.

Cast:

Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, Ralph Fiennes, Caroline Goodall, Jonathan Sagall, Embeth Davidtz, Małgorzata Gebel, Mark Ivanir, Beatrice Macola, Andrzej Seweryn, Friedrich von Thun, Jerzy Nowak, Norbert Weisser, Albert Misak, Michael Gordon, Aldona Grochal, Uri Avrahami, Michael Schneider, Miri Fabian, Anna Mucha, Adi Nitzan, Jacek Wójcicki, Beata Paluch, Piotr Polk, Bettina Kupfer, Grzegorz Kwas, Kamil Krawiec, Henryk Bista, Ezra Dagan, Rami Heuberger, Elina Löwensohn, Krzysztof Luft, Harry Nehring, Wojciech Klata, Paweł Deląg, Hans-Jörg Assmann, August Schmölzer, Hans-Michael Rehberg, Daniel Del Ponte, Adam Siemion, Jochen Nickel, Ludger Pistor, Oliwia Dąbrowska.

Ben Kingsley, on writers and inspiration:

All the great writers root their characters in true human behavior.

- Ben Kingsley.