Browsing: Cinema & TV

A Brief History On April 6, 1941, German forces commenced the invasions of Greece and Yugoslavia.  The Second World War was a conflict that left tens of millions dead, perhaps even as many as 60-80 million.  Being such a monumental historical event, many motion pictures have been made about the war, and in a follow up to our previous article on the “10 Best World War II Movies,” here we list 10 of the worst ever.  If we hurt your feelings by listing some of your favorites in the “worst” list, please know that we actually like some of these as well.  There are so…

A Brief History On March 28, 845 A.D., a Viking raiding party led by Ragnar Lodbrok (a.k.a. Lothbrok) sacked Paris, the future capital of France, proving that it was not just coastal towns that were susceptible to such raids.  As was typical, they were given an enormous ransom to leave. Digging Deeper Ragnar Lodbrok is also the star character of the current History Channel series Vikings, in which he is depicted as a semi-mythical Viking hero kind of a George Washington, Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, King Arthur, Hercules, Theseus, Perseus, all rolled into one.  A first-class production, the television series has superb acting and…

A Brief History On March 1, 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French, returned to France from exile on the island of Elba to reclaim his empire.  Of course, his great comeback only lasted about 100 days, but in that time he reshook Europe.  Other people, teams and companies have also made impressive comebacks from near defeat, death, ruin or other calamities.  Here we list 10 of those that rank among the greatest.   Digging Deeper 10. John Travolta, 1994. After becoming a teen idol on television and having experienced success with movies such as Grease, Saturday Night Fever and Urban…

A Brief History In February 2014, the headlines were of censorship, the enemy of free people.   Digging Deeper In Australia, censors had banned the Swedish film Children’s Island because it contains scenes of naked children.  Far from pornographic, the film was first released back in 1980 and had won the most prestigious Swedish movie awards and was even submitted for consideration at the Academy Awards.  The threat of 10 years imprisonment for anyone showing or selling the film sparked animated debate in Australia. On the Internet, Muslims applied enough pressure to have the YouTube video of Katy Perry’s song “Dark Horse” edited to remove…

A Brief History On February 6, 2014, one year ago today, Jay Leno ended his run as host of The Tonight Show for the second time. The affable comedian who had made “Headlines” a treasured feature of the show first made headlines himself when he retired for the first time in 2009 after having hosted the show since 1992 upon Johnny Carson’s retirement. Digger Deeper When The Tonight Show’s rating began to suffer under Lenos’ successor Conan O’Brien, Leno asked to come back, and NBC shocked O’Brien and the public by granting Leno his wish.  Unfortunately, Leno’s reputation suffered terribly as a result of the perception…