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Entries in Nikola Tesla (2)

Wednesday
Sep092020

The Furniture: Of Tesla and TED Talks

"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber, is our weekly series on Production Design. You can click on the images to see them in magnified detail.

Does genius have an aesthetic? And what would it look like? Tesla poses this question in a big way, tossing out the visual parameters of a typical period piece in the process. Director Michael Almereyda has said that he was inspired by “Derek Jarman, Henry James and certain episodes of Drunk History,” which absolutely comes through - and is a good thing. But, to be honest, Tesla also reminded me of a major component of the 21st century tech aesthetic: the TED Talk.

It’s in the script, too. The first thing we hear is a tale of the title inventor’s childhood, told by our narrator Anne Morgan (Eve Hewson). The young Tesla once noticed static electricity on a cat, a little memory that will be woven into an origin story for genius. This is immediately followed by a scene in which Thomas Edison (Kyle MacLachlan) waxes poetic about his own memories, which include an early boat ride on Lake Ontario and witnessing a friend drown shortly thereafter.

Click to read more ...

Sunday
Jul102016

On this day: Lady Jane, Devil Dolls, Bergman Wedding, Phase Three 

Helena Bonham Carter & Cary Elwes star in Lady Jane (1986)On this day in history as it relates to the movies

1553 Lady Jane Grey takes the throne in England. Her reign is just nine days long and Helena Bonham Carter plays her in her feature film debut (filmed just before A Room With a View though it was released second)
1856 Nikola Tesla, famed inventor and futurist is born in the Austrian empire. He's later played by David Bowie in Christopher Nolan's The Prestige (2006) but isn't it strange that he has never received his own major biopic given his fame and eccentricity and pop culture relevances (bands named after him, characters based on him, etcetera)?
1871 Marcel Proust, French novelist is born.

 1925 The "Monkey Trial" in which a man is accused of teaching evolution in science class, begins in Tennessee. It's later adapted into a famous play and the Stanley Kramer film Inherit the Wind (1960) nominated for four Oscars
1936 The Devil-Doll, a horror flick directed by Dracula's Tod Browning opens in US movie theaters starring Lionel Barrymore, who masquerades as an old womenfor nefarious purposes (!), and Maureen O'Sullivan.

1937 Ingrid Bergman gets married for the first time at the age of 21 in Sweden to Petter Aron Lindström. They are married until 1950 when she divorces him to marry Italian director Roberto Rossellini (Stromboli, Journey to Italy) temporarily making Bergman persona non grata in Hollywood for her scandalous adultery
1946
Sue Lyon, Kubrick's Lolita (1962) is born. She won the now defunct award "Most Promising Performer" from the Golden Globes that year but her career was rather shortlived
1958 Fiona Shaw, British great of stage and screen, is born
1959 Ellen Kuras, great cinematographer (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Summer of Sam) is born
1966 AO Scott, Film Critic for the New York Times is born. He recently released the book "Better Living Through Criticism". Happy 50th, A.O.
1977 Chiwetel Ejiofor, Oscar nominated star of 12 Years a Slave, is born 
1983 Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani (star of About Elly and The Patience Stone) is born. Charlie McDowell is born to actors Malcolm McDowell and Mary Steenburgen on this day as well.  He has recently become a director with the Twilight Zone like romantic dramedy The One I Love and next year's scifi romance The Discovery starring his girlfriend Rooney Mara as well as Riley Keough and Jason Segel 

1992 Roland Emmerich's Universal Soldier battles it out with the live action animated hybrid Cool World and the romantic dramedy Prelude to a Kiss on their opening day in US movie theaters (none of them are unable to unseat A League of Their Own, which stays at #1 in its second week.)
2020 Marvel Studios has already blocked out the date - supposedly for the penultimate film in their "Phase 3" plan though we don't yet know what that is.