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Hero is 20 y.o.

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 On October 24, 2002, Zhang Yimou's film "Ying xiong  英雄 (Hero)" was released in theaters in China. According to one of the most authoritative Russian film critics, Sergei Kudryavtsev ,  "Zhang Yimou harbored hopes of creating ... a philosophical work of the Confucian persuasion, which would deal with the problem of choosing between life and death, the right of one person (the killer) to determine the fate of another person (the emperor). "    For this purpose, Zhang Yimou used Ying Zheng, the ruler of the Qin kingdom, as one of the main characters in his film narrative. Let me remind you that Ying Zheng ascended the throne of the kingdom of Qin in 245 BC at the age of 13. By the time of his accession, China was a collection of 7 kingdoms that had been in a state of brutal and bloody war of all against all for two hundred years. By the age of 39, Ying Zheng had conquered all the other 6 kingdoms one by one and thus, for the first time in the history of China, cr...

A quarter of a century to The Devil's Advocate

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 On October 13, 1997, Taylor Hackford's "The Devil's Advocate" premiered in Westwood, California. On October 17, 1997, the film was released in wide release in cinemas in the United States and Canada. Taylor Hackford's film is an adaptation of the 1990 bestseller of the same name by American writer Andrew Neiderman. The book's success prompted the writer to approach Warner Bros. with a proposal to film the novel. The film company agreed and in 1994 hired director Joel Schumacher to direct the film. He, in turn, was going to shoot in the role of a young lawyer Brad Pitt. The problem arose with the selection of an actor for the role of John Milton. While Schumacher was looking for a suitable actor, interest in the subject of the film faded from the film company, and the project was shelved indefinitely. But very soon this interest arose again, moreover, with a vengeance. The reason for the outbreak of interest in the topic of Andrew Neiderman's bestseller wa...

To Live 70 years

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 On October 9, 1952, Akira Kurosawa's film "To Live (Ikiru 生きる)" was released in Japanese cinemas. The content of the film is inspired by Leo Tolstoy's story "The Death of Ivan Ilyich". The film "To Live" was not the first work of Kurosawa inspired by Russian literary classics. A year earlier, Akira Kurosawa filmed his favorite novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, "The Idiot", moving its action to Japan. However, it should be borne in mind that, as noted by the outstanding Soviet and Russian literary critic Elena Katasonova, "In this work, as usual, the director did not seek to literally reproduce the plot and ideas of Tolstoy, but tried in his own way to understand and comprehend the situation described in the story of the Russian classic: what to do to a hopelessly dying person at that moment a small allotted rest of his life?" Despite the fact that Akira Kurosawa's film "To Live" was inspired by one of the most famous ...

David Fincher is 60!

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 August 28, 1962 in the city of Denver, Colorado, USA, in the family of Howard Kelly Fincher, also known as Jack, the head of the bureau of Life magazine, and his wife Claire, a mental health nurse who specialized in the treatment of drug addiction, a son was born - David Andrew Leo. When David was two years old, his family moved from Denver to Marin County, California. It just so happened that two doors from the Fincher house George Lucas lived, the future creator of " Star Wars ". This circumstance played a certain role in the fate of David Fincher. David Fincher during an interview, August 4, 2017 Shortly before David entered high school, the Fincher family moved again, this time to Ashland, Oregon. There, in the life of young David, another event occurred that seriously influenced his future fate. Namely, he saw George Roy Hill's "Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid", and then also a documentary about how this George Roy Hill's film was made. David Fincher la...

Birthday of the South African film star

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 On August 7, 1975, in the city of Benoni, in the South African province of Transvaal, in the family of Charles Jacob Theron and his wife Gerda Jacob Aletta (nee Maritz), a daughter was born, who was named Charlize in honor of her father. (By the way, the current Princess Charlene of Monaco was born in the same city three years later.) The Charlize family, by the standards of South Africa, was far from ordinary. The mother, who had German roots, owned a farm and a road construction company, and her father, who had Franco-Dutch ancestors, came from a family of descendants of the famous and revered in South Africa, Dani Theron, who became famous for his exploits committed during the national liberation Anglo-Boer war at the beginning of the 20th century. There is even a monument to him in one of the districts of Pretoria. Charlize Theron in Taylor Hackford's "The Devil's Advocate". 1997. Movie's Rating - 7,940; 819th Rank in the Golden Thousand. Charlize's child...

Natalie Portman's Birthday

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 On June 9, 1981 in Jerusalem, in the family of gynecologist Avner Hershlag and his wife Shelley (nee Stevens), a daughter, Neta-Lee, was born. Three years after the birth of Neta-Lee, the Hershlag family moved from Israel to the United States. In New York, Neta-Lee Hershlag first began her studies at Solomon Schlechter's Jewish Elementary School, and then continued her studies at Siosset High School, whose alumni are many prominent US citizens. Léon: The Professional. Director Luc Besson, 1994. Movie's Rating - 8,682, 252nd Rank in the Golden Thousand. At the age of 11, Neta-Lee Hershlag caught the eye of an agent of the cosmetics company Revlon. He suggested that the girl become the face of the company's children's cosmetics line. The precocious Neta-Lee replied that she was not interested in a career as a model, but she would very much like to become an actress. The agent informed her about the ongoing casting for the role of Mathilda in Luc Besson's film "L...