One-Eyed Jacks (1961)

One-Eyed Jacks (1961)
Director: Marlon Brando
Writers: Guy Trosper (screenplay) and
Calder Willingham (screenplay) ...
Release Date: 6 October 1961 (France) more
Genre: Western


* Cast :


Marlon Brando ... Rio
Karl Malden ... Sheriff Dad Longworth
Katy Jurado ... Maria Longworth
Pina Pellicer ... Louisa
Ben Johnson ... Bob Amory
Slim Pickens ... Deputy Lon Dedrick
Larry Duran ... Chico Modesto
Sam Gilman ... Harvey Johnson
Timothy Carey ... Howard Tetley
Miriam Colon ... Redhead
Elisha Cook Jr. ... Carvey (as Elisha Cook)
Rodolfo Acosta ... Mexican rurale captain (as Rudolph Acosta)
Joan Petrone ... Flower girl
Tom Webb ... Farmer's son
Ray Teal ... Barney


* Plot :


Running from the law after a bank robbery in Mexico, Dad Longworth finds an opportunity to take the stolen gold and leave his partner Rio to be captured.


Years later, Rio escapes from the prison where he has been since, and hunts down Dad for revenge.


Dad is now a respectable sheriff in California, and has been living in fear of Rio's return.

Evel Knievel (1971)

Evel Knievel: For Fame, Fortune and Broken Bones! (1971)
Director: Marvin J. Chomsky
Writers: Alan Caillou (story) & Alan Caillou (screenplay)
Release Date: 10 September 1971 (USA)
Genre: Action - Biography - Drama
Runtime: 1:22:31


Biography of the famed motorcycle daredevil, much of which was filmed in his home town of Butte, Montana. The film depicts Knievel reflecting on major events in his life just before a big jump.


This 1971 biographical flick stars the leather-faced George Hamilton in his least celebrated role, playing a true American icon. Jam-packed and overflowing with lovingly recreated Knievel speeches, a massive amount of actual bone-snapping Knievel footage, and the irrepressible bigness of Montana's craziest son, this crusty cinema will have you wincing in pain as you watch Knievel's famous crash at Caesar's Palace in glorious slow-motion.

Hercules

Hercules (Italian: Le fatiche di Ercole) is a 1958 Italian epic fantasy feature film based upon the Hercules myths and the Quest for the Golden Fleece. The film stars Steve Reeves as the titular hero and Sylva Koscina as his love interest Princess Iole. Hercules was directed by Pietro Francisci and produced by Federico Teti. The film spawned a sequel, Hercules Unchained (Italian: Ercole e la Regina di Lidia), that also starred Reeves and Koscina.


Hercules made Reeves an international film star and effectively paved the way for the dozens of 1960s sword and sandal flicks featuring oily bodybuilders as mythological heroes and gladiators battling monsters, despots, and evil queens.


The film's Italian title means "The Labors of Hercules".


The film opens with Hercules (Steve Reeves) on the road to the court of King Pelias of Iolcus (Ivo Garrani) to tutor Pelias' son Prince Iphitus (Mimmo Palmara) in the use of arms. Pelias' beautiful daughter Princess Iole (Sylva Koscina) updates Hercules on the history of her father's rise to power and the theft of the kingdom's greatest treasure, the Golden Fleece. Some suspect -- and it eventually proves true -- that King Pelias has acquired the throne through fratricide. Hercules and Iole are attracted to each other and a romance eventually develops.

King Pelias is warned by a seeress (Luciana Paluzzi) about a stranger wearing one sandal who will challenge his power. When his nephew Jason, the rightful King of Iolcus, (Fabrizio Mioni) arrives in town wearing one sandal, Pelias takes fright and packs him off to retrieve the Golden Fleece from the distant land of Colchis. Jason and Hercules sail aboard the Argo with their friends Ulysses and his father Laertes (Gabriele Antonini and Andrea Fantasia), Argos (Aldo Fiorelli), the twins Castor and Pollux (Fulvio Carrara and Willi Colombini), the lyre-strumming Orpheus (Gino Mattera), the physician Aesculapius (Gian Paolo Rosmino) and others.


After weathering a tempest at sea, the Argonauts dally in a lush garden-like country with Antea, the Queen of the Amazons (Gianna Maria Canale) and her ladies (Gina Rovere and Lily Granado). Jason falls in love with Antea, but, when the Amazons plot the deaths of the heroes, Hercules forces Jason to board the Argo and secretly set sail in the night. On the shores of Colchis, the heroes battle hairy ape-men while Jason slays a dragon and retrieves the Golden Fleece. The Argonauts embark for home with their prize.


In Iolcus, the populace greet the returning heroes but Pelias and his henchman Eurysteus (Arturo Dominici) steal the Golden Fleece, deny Jason's claim, and plot his destruction. A tense battle between Pelias' forces and the heroes follows. Hercules halts Pelias' cavalry dead in its tracks by toppling the portico of the palace upon them. The defeated Pelias drinks poison. Jason ascends the throne while Hercules and Iole set sail for new adventures.


Subplots involve the death of Pelias' headstrong son Prince Iphitus, and exploits for Hercules resembling the Labors of the Nemean Lion and the Cretan Bull. Cast includes (Lidia Alfonsi) as Iole's Maid, (Afro Poli) as Jason's mentor Chiron, Aldo Pini as Tifi, Spartaco Nale and Paola Quattrini in the uncredited role of Young Iole.

Magic Voyage Of Sinbad

Director: Aleksandr Ptushko
Writers: Konstantin Isayev (writer), and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (libretto).
Release Date: 1962
Genre: Adventure - Fantasy
Runtime: 01:18:18

Cast:
Sergei Stolyarov ... Sadko
Alla Larionova ... Lyubava
Yelena Myshkova ... Princess of Lake Ilmen (as Y. Myshkova)
B. Surovtsev ... Ivashka the boy
Mikhail Troyanovsky ... Trifon
Nadir Malishevsky ... Vyashta the Giant (as N. Malishevsky)
Nikolai Kryuchkov ... Omelyan Danilovich
Ivan Pereverzev ... Timofey Larionovich
Yuri Leonidov ... Kuzma Larionovich
Lev Fenin ... Varangian Leader (as L. Fenin)
Mikhail Astangov (as M. Astangov)
Lidiya Vertinskaya ... The Phoenix (as L. Vertinskaya)
Stepan Kayukov ... Neptune
Olga Vikland ... Neptuna (as O. Vikland)
Sergei Martinson ... The Monk


A fantastic feature of terror, fantasy and spectacle! In the early 1960s, American International Pictures imported a series of foreign films boasting fantastic special effects, strange storylines and eye-popping color.


* Plot:

An oddly Russian Sinbad seeks to bring happiness to his people - first by trying to give money and goods to the poor, then by seeking out the Blue Bird of Happiness.

Gang Boy (True Story)

Gang Boy (1954)
Director: Arthur Swerdloff
Production: Sid Davis Productions
Runtime: 27 min


Based on a true story on Anglo and Latino gangs in Los Angeles, California in the early 1950s.


The film is also an interesting historical record of west-coast 50s gang life. Cinematically, this film is spectacular, great color and the kids in the film all do a great job in acting.


It is one of the few movies that honestly depicts the conflict that often occured between minority youth groups and white youth groups. It examines the Latino American experience and the struggle to attain equality in an unjust society.


* Plot:


Two street gangs, one white and one Chicano, are on a course for a major clash until a friendly police officer suggests that they have a sit-down dinner together.

George Orwell's 1984 (Nineteen Eighty-Four)

BBC Television's live production of George Orwell's "1984". Produced in 1954. Creative Commons license: Public Domain.

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a classic dystopian novel by English author George Orwell. Published in 1949, it is set in the eponymous year and focuses on a repressive, totalitarian regime. The story follows the life of one seemingly insignificant man, Winston Smith, a civil servant assigned the task of falsifying records and political literature, thus effectively perpetuating propaganda, who grows disillusioned with his meagre existence and so begins a rebellion against the system.


The novel has become famous for its portrayal of surveillance and society's increasing encroachment on the rights of the individual. Since its publication the terms Big Brother and Orwellian have entered the popular vernacular. Orwell, who had "encapsulated the thesis at the heart of his novel" in 1944, wrote most of Nineteen Eighty-Four on the island of Jura, Scotland, during 1947 - 1948 while critically ill with tuberculosis.


He sent the final typescript to his friends Secker and Warburg on 4 December 1948 and the book was published on 8 June 1949. Nineteen Eighty-Four has been translated into more than 50 languages. The novel's title, its terms, its language (Newspeak), and its author's surname are bywords for personal privacy lost to national state security.


The adjective "Orwellian" denotes many things. It can refer to totalitarian action or organization, as well as governmental attempts to control or misuse information for the purposes of controlling, pacifying or even subjugating the population. "Orwellian" can also refer generally to twisted language which says the opposite of what it truly means, or specifically governmental propagandizing by the misnaming of things; hence the "Ministry of Peace" in the novel actually deals with war and the "Ministry of Love" actually tortures people. Since the novel's publication "Orwellian" has in fact become somewhat of a catch-all for any kind of governmental overreach or dishonesty and therefore has multiple meanings and applications.


The phrase Big Brother is Watching You specifically connotes pervasive, invasive surveillance. Although the novel has been banned or challenged in some countries, it is, along with Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, Kallocain by Karin Boye and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, among the most famous literary representations of dystopia.


In 2005, Time magazine listed it among the hundred best English-language novels published since 1923. The book has often been misinterpreted as an attack on socialism, and Orwell himself had occasion to refute such claims, both privately and in public. In a letter to Francis A. Henson of the United Automobile Workers, dated 16 June 1949 (seven months before he died), excerpts from which were reproduced in Life (25 July 1949) and the New York Times Book Review (31 July 1949), Orwell stated the following:

"My recent novel [1984] is NOT intended as an attack on Socialism or on the British Labour Party (of which I am a supporter) but as a show-up of the perversions ... which have already been partly realized in Communism and Fascism. ...The scene of the book is laid in Britain in order to emphasize that the English-speaking races are not innately better than anyone else and that totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere."


In his 1946 essay, "Why I Write", Orwell described himself as a Democratic Socialist. Nineteen Eighty-Four is set in Oceania, one of three intercontinental totalitarian super-states. The story occurs in London, the "chief city of Airstrip One", itself a province of Oceania that "had once been called England or Britain".


Posters of the ruling Party's leader, "Big Brother", bearing the caption BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, dominate the city landscapes, while two-way television (the telescreen) dominates the private and public spaces of the populace. Oceania's people are in three classes — the Inner Party, the Outer Party, and the Proles. The Party government controls the people via the Ministry of Truth (Minitrue), the workplace of protagonist Winston Smith, an Outer Party member.


As in the Nazi and Stalinist regimes, propaganda is pervasive; Smith's job is rewriting historical documents to match the contemporaneous party line, the orthodoxy of which changes daily. It therefore includes destroying evidence, amending newspaper articles, deleting the existence of people identified as "unpersons".

George Orwell died the 21st January 1950.

The New Girl

Discrimination, Prejudice & Racism:

Racism, by its simplest definition, is discrimination based on the racial groups to which people belong. People with racist beliefs might hate certain groups of people according to their racial groups. In the case of institutional racism, certain racial groups may be denied rights or benefits, or get preferential treatment. Racism typically points out taxonomic differences between different groups of people, even though anybody can be racialised, independently of their somatic differences. According to the United Nations conventions, there is no distinction between the term racial discrimination and ethnic discrimination.


While the term racism usually denotes race-based prejudice, violence, discrimination, or oppression, the term can also have varying and hotly contested definitions. Racialism is a related term, sometimes intended to avoid these negative meanings.


According to the Oxford English Dictionary, racism is a belief or ideology that all members of each racial group possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially to distinguish it as being either superior or inferior to another racial group or racial groups.


The Merriam-Webster's Dictionary defines racism as a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular racial group, and that it is also the prejudice based on such a belief.


The Macquarie Dictionary defines racism as: "the belief that human races have distinctive characteristics which determine their respective cultures, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule or dominate others."


According to the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the term "racial discrimination" shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, religion,descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.' This definition does not make any difference between prosecutions based on ethnicity and race, in part because the distinction between the two remains debatable among anthropologists.


According to British law, racial group means "any group of people who are defined by reference to their race, colour, nationality (including citizenship) or ethnic or national origin".


Excellent drama about an office just about to hire it's first black woman for a secretary, and the ramifications it has in the office.