On this day in movie history - 12 Monkeys (1995)

12 Monkeys

directed by Terry Gilliam,

written by David Peoples and Janet Peoples,

was released in the United States on December 8, 1995.

Inspired by the short movie La Jetée (1962), directed by Chris Marker.

Music by Paul Buckmaster.

Cast:

Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, Brad Pitt, David Morse, Christopher Plummer, Jon Seda, Christopher Meloni, Michael Chance, Vernon Campbell, H. Michael Walls, Bob Adrian, Simon Jones, Carol Florence, Bill Raymond, Ernest Abuba, Irma St. Paule, Joseph Melito, Bruce Kirkpatrick, Wilfred Williams, Rozwill Young, Nell Johnson, Frederick Strother, Rick Warner, Frank Gorshin, Anthony 'Chip' Brienza, Joilet Harris, Drucie McDaniel, John Blaisse, Louis Lippa, Stan Kang, Pat Dias, Aaron Michael Lacey, Charles Techman, Jann Ellis, Johnnie Hobbs Jr., Janet Zappala, Thomas Roy, Harry O'Toole, Korchenko, Chuck Jeffreys, LisaGay Hamilton, Felix Pire, Matt Ross, Barry Price, John Panzarella, Larry Daly, Arthur Fennell, Karl Warren, Paul Meshejian, Robert O'Neill, Kevin Thigpen, Lee Golden, Joseph McKenna, Jeff Tanner, Faith Potts, Michael Ryan Segal, Annie Golden, Lisa Talerico, Stephen Bridgewater, Ray Huffman, Jodi Dawson, Jack Dougherty, Lenny Daniels, Herbert C. Hauls Jr., Charley Scalies, Carolyn Walker, Tiffany Baldwin, Bart the Bear, Al Brown, C.J. Byrnes, Phillip V. Caruso, Tom Detrik, Donald Faison, Kelly Farnan, Joe Gerety, Laura Glas, Robert Gleason, John Hagy, Adam Hatley, Bonnie Love, Julie Mabry, Raymond Mamrak, Sal Mazzotta, Roger Pratt, Allelon Ruggiero, Renee Spei, Richard Stanley, Thang, Ruth Leon Weiman, Susan Wool-Rush.

On this day in movie history - The Disaster Artist (2017)

The Disaster Artist

directed James Franco,

written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber,

was released in the United States on December 8, 2017.

Based on the book The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made by Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell.

Music by Dave Porter.

/

Cast:

James Franco, Dave Franco, Seth Rogen, Ari Graynor, Alison Brie, Jacki Weaver, Paul Scheer, Zac Efron, Josh Hutcherson, June Diane Raphael, Megan Mullally, Jason Mantzoukas, Andrew Santino, Nathan Fielder, Sharon Stone, Melanie Griffith, Hannibal Buress, Bob Odenkirk, James Dean, Judd Apatow, Kristen Bell, Ike Barinholtz, Adam Scott, Kevin Smith, Keegan-Michael Key, Lizzy Caplan, Danny McBride, Zach Braff, J. J. Abrams, John Early, Joe Mande, Charlyne Yi, Kelly Oxford, Tom Franco, Zoey Deutch, Sugar Lyn Beard, Brian Huskey, Randall Park, Jerrod Carmichael, Casey Wilson, Lauren Ash, Angelyne, Bryan Cranston, Greg Sestero, Tommy Wiseau.

Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day – December 7:

Honoring all who served and died for our freedom.

Elizabeth Hardwick, on reading:

 

The greatest gift is a passion of reading.

It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites,
it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind.

It is a moral illumination.

- Elizabeth Hardwick.

Recommended reading - Alice Guy Blache: Lost Visionary of the Cinema

 

Alice Guy Blache: Lost Visionary of the Cinema

by Alison McMahan.
 
Filmed as Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché (2018), documentary directed by Pamela B. Green.
 
Published by Continuum Intl Pub Group.
Published 2002.
Hardcover.

ISBN-10: 0826451586
ISBN-13: 978-0826451583
 
Description:
 

The time has arrived, so it would seem, when woman must take her place beside man in the majority of arts and professions in the business world. In women of the caliber of Madame Alice Blaché it has also been demonstrated that there is a possibility of their doing so without being shorn of that most desirable of womanly qualities, femininity. – The Moving Picture News, 1912.

 

It has long been a source of wonder to me that many women have not seized upon the wonderful opportunities offered to them by the motion-picture art to make their way to fame and fortune as producers of photodramas. Of all the arts there is probably none in which they can make such a splendid use of talents so much more natural to a woman than to a man and so necessary to its perfection. – Alice Guy Blaché, 1914.

 

Over a hundred years after she started making films (which was considerably earlier than D.W. Griffith, Mabel Normand, and Lillian Gish began their careers), the life and work of Alice Guy Blaché is still shrouded in myth and controversy.

 

Only a fraction (111) of the approximately one thousand films that she directed still exist, and almost half of these have been found very recently. The films are spread out in archives all over the world. Not all of them are available for viewing, even to scholars, and many of them are in desperate need of conservation and preservation.

 

It is widely agreed that she was the first woman filmmaker but there is considerable debate as to whether she made the first ever fiction film. She played a key role in early sound film production, and yet this part of her career is almost always ignored. She is, to this day, the only woman ever to have owned and run her own film studio. And yet she made her final film in 1920, at the age of 47, and died in New Jersey in 1968, unacknowledged, unheralded, almost totally forgotten.

 

Ten years of painstaking research has enabled Alison McMahan to piece together the career of this extraordinary woman. What results is the first full-length treatment of Alice Guy Blaché’s work, the debunking of several long-standing myths about her and, ultimately, the emergence of a feminist figurehead of the filmmaking industry.

 

"McMahan s book is an obsessively detailed history of a true motion-picture pioneer." – American Cinematographer, July 2002.
 
"The author provides intriguing information about Guy s life, the early days of film production, and Guy s independent film company (Solax)." – Choice, November 2002.
 
"A fascinating book that will interest scholars and general readers alike." – Richard Abel, Drake University.
 
"Monumental...a daunting achievement." – Los Angeles Times, August 15, 2002.

Born on this day – Clementine Plessner:

Clementine Plessner

Actress

Singer

December 7, 1855 – February 27, 1943

Credits:

Bar el Manach (1920); Bara en danserska (1926); Bigamie (1922); Das Geheimnis der vier Tage (1921); Das Hexenlied (1919); Das Medaillon der Lady Sington (1920); Das Recht zu leben (1927); Das Tagebuch einer Verlorenen (1918); Das weisse Paradies (1929); Der Bankkrach unter den Linden (1926); Der Fleck auf der Ehr' (1930); Der Glücksschmid (1919); Der hauptmann von Köpenick (1926); Der krasse Fuchs (1926); Der Monte Christo von Prag (1929); Der Schatten der Gaby Leed (1921); Der Todesreigen (1922); Der verliebte Blasekopp (1932); Der Weg, der zur Verdammnis führt, 1.Teil - Das Schicksal der Aenne Wolter (1918); Der Weg, der zur Verdammnis führt, 2.Teil - Hyänen der Lust (1919); Der Wilddieb (1930); Die Benefiz-Vorstellung der vier Teufel (1920); Die eiserne Braut (1925); Die entfesselte Menschheit (1920); Die Frau mit den zehn Masken, 2. Begebenheit - Der Schatten des Gehenkten (1922); Die graue Macht (1923); Die schwarze Paula (1922); Die Stimme des Herzens (1924); Die Tragödie der Entehrten (1924); Die Tragödie eines Großen (1920); Die verschwundene Frau (1929); Die weiße Sonate (1928); Die Zirkusprinzessin (1925); Different from the Others (1919); Eine weisse unter Kannibalen (1921); Eleven Who Were Loyal (1926); Fräulein Josette - Meine Frau (1926); Giovannis Rache (1917); Gobseck (1924); Großstadtmädels, 2. Teil - Erlebnisse aus Berlin (1921); Hallig Hooge (1923); Henriette Jacoby (1918); Hingabe (1929); Im Zeichen der Schuld (1918); Jettchen Gebert's Story (1918); Journey into the Night (1921); Kaiserjäger (1928); Kaliber fünf Komma zwei (1920); Klatsch (1921); Kord Kamphues, der Richter von Coesfeld (1919); Lady Hamilton (1921); Lo, die Kokette (1920); Lucrezia Borgia (1922); Mädchen, die man nicht heiratet (1923); Manolescus Memoiren (1920); Nocturno der Liebe (1919); O alte Burschenherrlichkeit (1925); Povara (1928); Ratten der Großstadt. 1. Die geheimnisvolle Nacht (1921); Seelenverkäufer (1919); Sklaven der Liebe (1924); Spitzenhöschen und Schusterpech (1928); Steuerlos (1924); Störtebeker (1919); Stürmisch die Nacht (1931); Superfluous People (1926); Taras Bulba (1924); The Story of Dida Ibsen (1918); Theodor Körner (1932); Vagabund (1930); Wie bleibe ich jung und schön – Ehegeheimnisse (1926); Zwei Kinder (1924).