INDEPENDENCE DAY 2009

BANDIDAS

Bandidas – International title

A 2004 French, Mexican, U.S.A. co-production [Europa Corp., Ultra Film, TF1 Film
Productions (Paris)]
Producer: Luc Besson
Director: Joachim Roenning, Espen Sandberg
Story: Luc Besson
Screenplay: Luc Besson, Robert Mark Kamen
Cinematography: Thierry Arbogast [color]
Music: Eric Serra
Running time: 95 minutes

Cast:
María Álvarez - Penélope Cruz (Penelope Sanchez)
Sara Sandoval - Salma Hayek (Salma Hayek-Jiminez)
Quentin Cooke - Steve Zahn
Don Diego - Ismael ‘East’ Carlo
Pedro Alvarez - Carlos Cervantes (Gary Cervantes)
Tyler Jackson - Dwight Yoakam
Ashe - Denis Arndt
Clarissa Ashe - Audra Blaser
Bill Buck - Sam Shepard (Samuel Rogers)
Governor - Humberto Elizondo
Brujo - Ernesto Gómez Cruz
Bernardo - Lenny Zundel
Padre Pablo - José Maria Negri
Expl bank director - Edgar Vivar
photographer - Filiberto Estrella (Filiberto Calderón)
Gordo - Yomo Tlazotlalli
Cable bank manager - Justo Martínez
Consuelo - Ana Olellia Murguía
sheriff - Luis Orozco
gate keepers - Terence Strikman (Terence Stickman), Florentino Silva Torres
old peseant - Pedro Gamez
deceased man - Altin Pitrel
little man 40s - Carlos Palacios
100 year old secretaries - Andrea González, Ofelia Herrera
Filly’s owners - Alejandro Campa, Guillermo Panuco, Jorge Ramirez
waiting businessman - Ricardo Ariona (Edgar Morales)
chief secretary - Elena Gonzalez
cleaning girl - Daya Fernandez
regulators - Karl Braun, Julian Sedgwick (Julian Sedgewick), Joseph D. Reitman, Rodolfo Sean, Edgar Tebar, Pascal Greub, Vincent Torres, Erik Prats, Sergio Gonzalez, Armando Alarcon, Eduardo Karam, Christian Arrieta, Ernesto Miyares, Eduardo Corral, Israel Gomez
cave musicians - Constantino Blanco, Manuel Ruiz, Rosalinfo Martinez, Eusebio Reyes
with; Juan Manuel Robledo Rios


The film tells the story of María Álvarez and Sara Sandoval. María is a poor farm-girl whose father is being forced off his land by a cruel US land baron, Tyler Jackson. Sara is the wealthy daughter of the owner of the nearby properties, and has recently returned from Europe where she attended school. In one fell swoop, both María's and Sara's fathers fall under attack by the baron, (Sara's father is killed, María's is shot but survives) giving him free rein in the nearby territories. As an act of revenge, María and Sara become bank robbers, stealing and giving back to the poor Mexicans who had lost their lands.

At first the two are catty and quick to fight over the smallest matters, but under the tutelage of famed bank robber Bill Buck they learn to trust each other. María turns out to be a crack shot and, while Sara can barely hold a gun, she shows that she is an expert with throwing knives.

Angered by the recent attacks by the newly infamous 'Bandidas' Jackson brings in a specialist, criminal investigator, Quentin Cooke. It doesn't take long for Sara and María to hear of this, and they quickly capture Cooke and convince him to help them. He has already figured out that Sara's father was murdered, so realizes that his employer is actually a criminal.

Now there are three robbers, each playing their part in bigger, more ambitious heists. As time goes on, each of the girls competes for Quentin's affections, but he rebukes them since he's engaged. In a move to make the money they've stolen useless, Jackson moves the gold that backs the money on a train up towards U.S. territories. Midway, he decides to steal the gold, betraying the Mexican government. The Bandidas manage to hunt him down, but when they get their chance to kill him, they can't, feeling it would make them no better than him. Jackson manages to draw his gun and almost gets a shot off at María but Sara shoots first, finishing the villain off. In the end Quentin ends up with his fiancée and María and Sara ride off into the sunset, their eyes set on Europe where the banks are, according to Sara, "bigger".

Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgLC_JeRa5E

Happy 50th Birthdrilay Victoria Ab

Born Victoria Merida Rojas on July 4, 1959, in Madrid, Spain, she took the name Victoria Abril and became famous for her role in Pedro Almodóvar’s “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!” (1989). Victoria has been nominated eight time for Goya Awards (The Spanish Academy Awards) as Best Actress winning once. She is also a singer and is married to director Gérard de Battista. Before gaining her fame she appeared in Tony Anthony’s 3-D Euro-western “Comin’ At Ya!” (1981). Today we wish Victoria Abril a happy 50th birthday.

Sir Christopher Frayling Interview

Sir Christoper Frayling poses in front of Francis Bacon's Study from the Human Body, Man Turning on the Light


Passed/Failed: An education in the life of broadcaster, film buff, and rector of the Royal College of Art, Christopher Frayling

'I won the award for best bugler'

Interviewed by Jonathan Sale
Thursday, 2 July 2009

Professor Sir Christopher Frayling, 62, steps down this month as rector of the Royal College of Art, about which he has written two histories. His other books include Spaghetti Westerns and Mad, Bad And Dangerous? He has been chairman of the Arts Council and the Design Council. On 8 July he opens New Designers 2009 at the Business Design Centre, in Islington, north London.


I really can remember the sense of achievement at The Rowans, a private pre-primary school in Wimbledon, when the class made recorders out of bamboo and played "Frère Jacques" in unison. One of my friends was called Ben. I forgot all about him until a dinner at the Tate when [the late] Ben Pimlott said: "I went to a school called The Rowans." I yelled out, "You're Ben!" "You're Chris!" He was director of Goldsmiths College and I am doing the same job at the RCA. The school's art class must have been doing something right.

Then I went at six, a very young age, to Belmont, a small prep school near Hassocks in Sussex. Some of the teachers were fairly sadistic and Evelyn Waugh's Decline And Fall conjures it up pretty accurately. It was near Ditchling, one of the centres of the Arts and Crafts movement, and on a school walk I remember seeing this elderly lady at a loom: it was Ethel Mairet, who taught Gandhi to weave.

I then went to Repton in Derbyshire, which is everybody's idea of what a public school looks like, as it was used for the 1939 Hollywood movie Goodbye, Mr Chips. Michael Charlesworth had a huge influence on me; he believed the performing of plays and the reading aloud of poems made literature come alive. I directed The School for Scandal with James Fenton, later the Oxford Professor of Poetry, in drag as Lady Sneerwell. I wasn't a play-up-and-play-the-game type but I won the "silver bugle" in the school corps for the best bugler of the year.

I got eight O-levels, with 98 per cent in scripture; I don't know what happened to the other 2 per cent. For A-levels I did history, English and French. When I was interviewed for Cambridge, I said I was interested in post-1485 history. The interviewer said, "Oh, a modernist." I got an exhibition to Churchill, which was very recently built: modern architecture and modern sculpture, and centrally heated with wall-to-wall carpets. The college chaplain was a wonderful man who had been the padre at Changi, the worst prison camp in Burma during the Second World War. When he was coaching us for rowing, he used to yell to us (I was in the third Eight) in pidgin Chinese.

I did law for three days, switched to history and got a first in Prelims. I finished up with a 2:1 – too much writing for Varsity. I was film and theatre editor. I wrote so many reviews that I used a pseudonym. If it was an art film I was "Christopher Frayling" but if it was a downmarket movie I was "Ray Fling". I got firsts on five papers but I completely blew the last exam, staying up all night and frantically revising, and got a third on that. Immediately after the exam I saw A Fistful Of Dollars, which started my enthusiasm for spaghetti westerns and gave me the subject for three books – so far.

I did my PhD on the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and during the 1968 riots I went to Paris to study art and the French Revolution. There is a legend that as I was working in the Sorbonne, I said: "Stop turning cars over – I'm trying to study the French Revolution here!" But it's only a legend.

I told a despairing careers adviser: "I want to work in the arts." He said: "Potato Marketing Board!" I didn't take him up on it.

Who Are Those Guys - Giuseppe Addobbati

Giuseppe Addobbati was born in Makarska, Austria-Hungary in 1909. Giuseppe first appeared on film in 1937 and would go on to appear in over 80 films. He appeared in many Spaghetti Westerns, Horror and action films during the ‘60s and ‘70s under his real name and the pseudonyms John MacDouglas and John McDouglas. He played land owners, sheriffs, townsmen and padres. Besides acting in films he appeared many times in Italian television series. He died in Rome, Italy in 1986.

Giuseppe Addobbati’s Euro-westerns:
Zorro and the 3 Musketeers – 1962 [as Giuseppe Addobbati
The Implacable Three – 1963 [as John MacDouglas]
Three Swords of Zorro – 1963 (Padre Geronimo) [as John MacDouglas]
Ride and Kill – 1963 (Judge Stauffer) [as John McDouglas]
Joe Dexter – 1964 (Doc Burton) [as John McDouglas]
Blood for a Silver Dollar – 1965 (Donaldson) [as John MacDouglas]
Colorado Charlie – 1965 (Sheriff of Little River) [as John McDouglas]
Deguello – 1965 (Colonel Cook/Clark) [as John McDouglas]
Django – 1965 [as John McDouglas]
The Man from Oklahoma – 1965 (Ken Hogg) [as John McDouglas]
The Brute and the Beast – 1966 (Jason Scott Sr.) [as John McDouglas]
$4.00 for Revenge – 1966 [as John MacDouglas]
Death Rides Alone – 1967 [as John McDouglas]
Django, the Last Killer – 1967 (Ramón’s father) [as John McDouglas]
A Hole in the Forehead – 1968 (Padre Blasco) [as John McDouglas]
The Stranger Returns – 1967 (Donald Stanley)
God Will Forgive My Pistol – 1969 (Sheriff Martin Brennan)

THE BALLAD OF KID DIVINE

The Ballad of Kid Divine: The Cockney Cowboy – English title
The Ballad of Kid Divine – English title

A 1991 Italian, British co-production [Fortuna Films (Rome)]
Producers: Alessandro Von Giannini, Giorgio Rossi
Director: George Rossi (Giorgio Rossi)
Screenplay: Alexander Richardson
Photography: Tom Ingle [color]
Music: Dave Strut, Anders Sodergren
Running time: 59 minutes

Cast:
Kid Divine - Jesse Birdsall
Hog - Martin Clunes (Alexander Clunes)
Cass Malone - Neil Morrissey
Dr. Nathaniel Bonner - Michael Elphick
Apache Kate - Sue Graham (Susan Graham)
Injun Tom - Ben Cole (Benjamin Cole)
Pedro - David Sternberg
Diablo - Vincenzo Nicoli
Sheriff Dan Johnson - Alex Richardson (Alex Giannini)
Chico - Adriano Notarianni
cowhands - Gianni Verrechia, Emanuela Fella, Davide Ospedale
good time girls - Isabella Verrechia, Cinzia Notarianni
opera singer - Gian Franco Sartori
voice artist - Dawn Hennessey


This spoof of "Spaghetti Westerns" stars Jesse Birdsall as Kid Divine, a killer with a baby face and a $25,000 price tag on his head. Among those Kid Divine comes into contact with are a slick elixir salesman and two Irish bounty hunters.

RIP Jan Rubes

Jan Rubes, the Czech-born artist who had a career in Canada as an opera singer, actor and broadcaster, has died, his family announced on Tuesday June 29th in Toronto, Canada. He was 89. The cause of death was complications from a stroke he suffered earlier in June. Rubes was born in Volyne, Czechoslovakia, on June 6, 1920. He made his opera debut in 1940 in Prague, as Basilio in The Barber of Seville and became a leading singer with the Prague Opera. A bass singer, he represented Czechoslovakia at the International Music Festival at Geneva in 1948 and was a first-prize winner. In 1948, Rubes emigrated to Canada and began to sing with the Royal Conservatory Opera and the CBC Opera. He was a founding member of the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto, performing more than 1,000 times between 1949 and 1989. In the 1960s, he also began acting, appearing on TV programs such as The Forest Rangers, King of Kensington and later, Due South.In 1985, he landed a role as the Amish grandfather in Witness, starring Harrison Ford. That opened the door to feature films and over the next 20 years he appeared in more than 40 films, including Dead of Winter, The Outside Chance of Maximilian Glick, One Magic Christmas, Deceived and Never Too Late. He earned a Genie Award for his role in the film Something About Love and a Gemini for best supporting actor in TV series Two Men. Rubes also won the Queen's Jubilee Medal in 1978, the Canadian Centennial Medal in 1967 and the 1991 Earl Grey Award for lifetime achievement in television. In 1995, at the age of 75, Rubes starred in his first Broadway play, James Lapine's Twelve Dreams at the Lincoln Theatre Centre. Rubes was married to actress Susan Douglas, founder of Toronto's Young People's Theatre and former head of CBC radio drama. He is survived by his wife, sons Jonathan and Tony and three grandsons. He was predeceased by his son Christopher in 1996. Jan Rubes played the role of Hausierer Nathan in the 1992 French/Canadian TV western “By Way of the Stars”.