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He Was Gunning for Them
Arsenal (“The Gunners”) have not had many reasons to celebrate in triumphant fashion in recent years, yet they’re reminded at every home game at Emirates Stadium of the eternal truth that one goal can change everything.
To celebrate this “Throwback Thursday,” let’s visually travel back to the far back yesteryear of 2002. The match was Arsenal hosting its bitter rival Tottenham Hotspur and the player was Thierry Henry. If you’re struggling to place Thierry Henry, he’s that world-class French forward who doesn’t run in strides, but glides with speed and cool precision.
I present the story of his goal and its iconic (and elaborate) celebration that literally and figuratively cemented Mr. Henry’s legacy in London.
What’s French for power and strength?
Thierry Henry.
At least France has one non-joke answer to that question.
Cinema’s First Steps
“Je veux vous montrer quelque chose…”
(“I want to show you something…”)
This could have been said by the Lumière brothers (Louis and Auguste), who were pioneers in motion pictures in Lyon, France. Long before IMAX, 3-D and superheroes galore, cinema was born out of, to put it in a disappointingly anticlimactic way, walking out of a factory.
That was it. No exaggeration.
Still, despite the pedestrian nature of this cleverly titled documentary, “Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory” or “Exiting the Factory,” seeing the inception of cinema with the first projected film is a wonderful reminder of how far movies we enjoy today have improved and innovated through the decades. There’s a beginning to everything and, as a movie fan, the following video is quite exciting because this film underscores how the world was forever changed in ways the workers walking from their job and the Lumière brothers never could’ve imagined.
On March 22, 1895, cinema visually framed the world.
French factory workers literally opened the doors of cinema.
Dunkirk’s Memento
Christopher Nolan’s next film will be…
Un film Seconde Guerre mondiale (A World War II movie).
Instead of venturing into the deepest depths of our subconscious or navigating towards the the farthest galaxies in space, Mr. Nolan and his wife (who co-founded Syncopy) and his brother Jonathan will travel back in time to the 1940s in war-torn France, possibly in a straightforward, linear fashion.
That, in itself, is a bit of a mind-bender.
“News began to surface over the weekend via French newspapers that Nolan was planning a WWII movie, and that he and his brother, screenwriter Jonathan Nolan, had been scouting in Dunkirk. The story centers on the 1940 evacuation of more than 300,000 Allied troops who were surrounded by the German army in the French city of Dunkirk”
–Rebecca Ford, The Hollywood Reporter)
As each new detail about Dunkirk involving the script, casting (of course Michael Caine will be in it), the biggest news is that Mr. Nolan appears to be widening his genre portfolio IMAX-style and, therefore, is taking his second daring step into the mainstream with a war movie.
I’m counting The Dark Knight trilogy as one step.
Is Dunkirk a hint of what’s to come regarding future Christopher Nolan projects?
(“British and other Allied troops waiting to be evacuated from the beach at Dunkirk, France, 1940,” Britannica)
Odds are, we’ll bend our minds trying to answer that question.
Jimmy's Daily Planet 