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4 items from 2012

28 May 2012 12:45 AM, PDT | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

As we celebrate sixty years of the Queen's reign, our blogger explains how film can trick your pupils into learning about the UK's heritage - and their own identity

The poster on my classroom wall, a publicity shot for last year's part British film, Hugo, shows a boy hanging from the hands of a clock, in a parody of a famous Harold Lloyd portrait. It serves as more than decoration. Time and again it's used in lessons to illustrate the language of imagery: the clash of colours, the angle of the dangling feet, the font of the title, the expression on the protagonist's face. It illustrates how, a century on from the pioneering cinema of the Lumieres and Melies and the birth of the Hollywood studios, movies have found their way into every nook and cranny of school timetables.

Hele's School in Plymouth uses film extensively to reinforce learning »

7 May 2012 9:50 AM, PDT | MTV Movie News | See recent MTV Movie News news »

We do our best to catalog each and every pop-culture nod, wink and jab featured in Marvel's ultimate crossover movie.

By Kevin P. Sullivan

Chris Evans as Captain America In "The Avengers"

Photo: Walt Disney Studios

For as many epic fight scenes as "The Avengers" has, it has even more pop-culture Easter eggs sprinkled throughout. Thanks in large part to the combined efforts of writer/director Joss Whedon and snark master Robert Downey Jr., "The Avengers" is chock-full of witty pop-culture references worth dissecting and analyzing. So we did our best to catalog each and every nod, wink and jab featured in Marvel's ultimate crossover movie.

Here is your pop-culture cheat sheet for "Marvel's The Avengers."

AC/DC: The Australian rock group known for hits such as "Back in Black" and "Highway to Hell" appeared on the soundtracks for both "Iron Man" films and "The Avengers."

"Ant and boot": »

3 February 2012 11:15 AM, PST | The Guardian - TV News | See recent The Guardian - TV News news »

A familiar face on stage and screen, he often played authority figures

In an acting career that lasted for well over half a century, Frederick Treves, who has died aged 86, specialised in playing men in positions of authority – senior police officers, peers, admirals, colonels and scientists. He was a tall man with a heavily jowled, amiable face, a hawk-like profile and a patrician bearing. A regular National Theatre player, he supported many television dramas, including The Regiment (1973), a BBC series set in India; Destiny, David Edgar's 1978 Play for Today; The Jewel in the Crown (1984); The Invisible Man (1984); Poirot (1991); Hetty Wainthropp Investigates (1997); and The Rector's Wife (1994). In all of these disparate productions, he played a colonel.

Treves was the great-nephew of Sir Frederick Treves, the surgeon who rescued Joseph Merrick, the "Elephant Man" (he also had a role as an alderman in David Lynch's 1980 film about the case). He was born in Margate, »

- Gavin Gaughan

27 January 2012 4:05 PM, PST | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

Ty Jeffries, son of actor Lionel Jeffries, tells Maureen Paton how he never revealed his sexuality to his father while he was alive. So what would Lionel have thought of his new drag act?

The look is Dusty Springfield with a towering blond beehive and seven pairs of false eyelashes stuck to the upper lids. The music pays witty homage to Noël Coward and other showbusiness greats in the lyrics and the spirit of 70s cabaret in its yearning torch-song melodies. Miss Hope Springs, a 6ft 2in "ex-Las Vegas showgirl", is the retro-glam, vaudevillian alter ego created by the pianist Ty Jeffries in order to sing his own compositions in theatres and clubs around the country. Although he comes from a performing background, with the occasional foray into drag over the last decade, he never did anything quite as flamboyant and fully realised as his ambitious trilogy of Miss Hope Springs »

4 items from 2012