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Julius Caesar: The Making of a Dictator (2023) #1521
DOCUMENTARY
Main,Disk
3x1 hour episodes. BBC. Julius Caesar: The Making of a Dictator BBC 2023 He came. He saw. He conquered. The tale of an ambitious power-grab that turned to tyranny. How Julius Caesar dismantled five centuries of ancient Roman democracy in just 16 years. 1 High Priest Caesar seeks to become consul, the highest political position in Rome. To do so, he enters into dangerous alliances and bends the rules of the republic, courting the popular vote, exploiting division and using bribery and intimidation to get his own way. But his unconventional approach to politics and disregard for established customs sets him at odds with the conservative elite within the senate. And one man – Cato – is hellbent on bringing him down. 2 Veni Vidi Vici Caesar has brokered an uneasy alliance with the two other most powerful men in the republic – Pompey and Crassus. Between them, they dominate the political system, and Caesar appears untouchable. He leaves Rome to take the governorship of Gaul – modern-day France – to conquer its people and win yet greater power and prestige. But events beyond his control threaten to unravel his plans and leave him isolated. Pushed into a corner, he makes a decision that will change the course of the republic forever. 3 Ides of March As Caesar takes control of Rome and consolidates his grip over the republic, he awards himself ever-greater powers. Appointed dictator for one year to restore peace, he soon extends this to ten years... then dictator for life. Caesar has become untouchable, and Rome is now – in the modern sense of the word – a dictatorship. Caesar’s ambition has turned to tyranny. A handful of senators, including some of his closest allies, plot to end his rule in the only way they can: by taking his life. But will that be enough to save the republic? |
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1944: Should we Bomb Auschwitz? (2019) #1211
DOCUMENTARY
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1 hour. Rise of the Nazis - Episode 3. 1 hour. BBC. In April 1944, two Jewish prisoners miraculously escaped from Auschwitz. When they recounted what they had left behind, their harrowing testimony revealed the true horror of the Holocaust to the outside world for the first time. They described in forensic detail the gas chambers and the full extent of the extermination programme. The news they brought presented the Allies with one of the greatest moral questions of the 20th century: Should we bomb Auschwitz? While the Allies deliberated in London and Washington, the killing machine ground on in southern Poland. One month after the men’s escape, almost 800,000 Hungarian Jews had been rounded up awaiting transport to Auschwitz. By early July 1944, the majority had been transported. Most of them were murdered on arrival. As the killing at Auschwitz reached its frenzied climax, the outcome of the Second World War hung in the balance. Millions of troops were fighting on both fronts and battling for supremacy in the air. Should the Allies use their resources to push on and win the war or to stop the industrial slaughter at Auschwitz? The request to bomb the camp, with 30,000 captive prisoners, was remarkable and came from a place of utter desperation. But it was a direct response to the destruction of an entire people. There were operational challenges - was it possible to reach the camp to bomb it? How many heavy bombers would it take? What would the Nazi propaganda machine say about such an attack? - as well as complex moral ones. How many prisoners would likely die in such a raid? Can you kill friendly civilians in order to save the lives of those being transported towards the death camp? These were the hard questions faced by Churchill, Allied Air Command and the Jewish Agency. For the first time on television, we tell the whole of this incredible story. |
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Colette (2018) #1358
FILM
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Directed by Wash Westmoreland. With Keira Knightley, Fiona Shaw, Dominic West, Robert Pugh. Colette is pushed by her husband to write novels under his name. Upon their success, she fights to make her talents known, challenging gender norms. |
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The Man Who Shot Tutankhamun (2017) #987
DOCUMENTARY
Main
1 hour. BBC. Margaret Mountford travels to Egypt's Valley of the Kings to discover the story of an unsung hero of British photography - Harry Burton, the man whose images of the Tutankhamun excavation created a global sensation in the 1920s. As she explores the spectacular locations where Burton worked, including Tutankhamun's tomb, she investigates how Burton's photographs inspired a craze for Egyptian designs and made the archaeologist Howard Carter an international celebrity. She discovers why Burton's images are still studied today by Egyptologists around the world. And she works with a present-day photographer Harry Cory Wright to find out how Burton pushed the boundaries of photographic art to create his extraordinary and influential pictures of the world's most famous archaeological discovery. |
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The Post (2017) #1300
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Directed by Steven Spielberg. With Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Sarah Paulson, Bob Odenkirk. A cover-up that spanned four U.S. Presidents pushed the country's first female newspaper publisher and a hard-driving editor to join an unprecedented battle between the press and the government. About the 'Pentagon Papers' - prior to the Watergate affair.. |
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British Art at War: David Bomberg: Prophet in No Man's Land (2014) #855
DOCUMENTARY
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In the years preceding 1914, David Bomberg, Walter Sickert and Paul Nash set out to paint a new world, but, as the century unfolded, found themselves working in the rubble. David Bomberg is now recognised as the most startlingly original British painter of his generation, but died in obscurity more than half a century ago. A Jewish immigrant from London's east end, his early modernist works pushed art to its limits. Fighting at the Somme, David Bomberg watched the world splinter and fall apart just like the works of art he had created. Bomberg spent the rest of his life searching for order in an increasingly disordered world, and his wanderings took him as far as Palestine, before he settled at the end of his life in Ronda, Spain. When he died in 1957, embattled and in poverty, he seemed to be no more than a footnote in the history of British art. However, the works that survive David Bomberg tell their own story. Combative and iconoclastic, he remains the most elusively original British painter of the 20th century. |
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Boychoir (2014) #1083
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Directed by François Girard. With Dustin Hoffman, Kathy Bates, Eddie Izzard, Kevin McHale. Stet, a troubled and angry 11-year-old orphan from a small Texas town, ends up at a Boy Choir school back East after the death of his single mom. Completely out of his element, he finds himself in a battle of wills with a demanding Choir Master who recognizes a unique talent in this young boy as he pushes him to discover his creative heart and soul in music. aka The Choir |
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The Proposal (2009) #147
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Directed by Anne Fletcher. With Sandra Bullock, Ryan Reynolds, Mary Steenburgen, Craig T. Nelson. A pushy boss forces her young assistant to marry her in order to keep her Visa status in the U.S. and avoid deportation to Canada. |
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Push (2009) #152
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Directed by Paul McGuigan. With Camilla Belle, Dakota Fanning, Chris Evans, Colin Ford. Two young Americans with special abilities must race to find a girl in Hong Kong before a shadowy government organization called Division does. |
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Drag Me to Hell (2009) #169
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Directed by Sam Raimi. With Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Ruth Livier, Lorna Raver. A loan officer who evicts an old woman from her home finds herself the recipient of a supernatural curse. Desperate, she turns to a seer to try and save her soul, while evil forces work to push her to a breaking point. |
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Eagle Eye (2008) #183
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Directed by D.J. Caruso. With Shia LaBeouf, Michelle Monaghan, Rosario Dawson, Michael Chiklis. Jerry and Rachel are two strangers thrown together by a mysterious phone call from a woman they have never met. Threatening their lives and family, she pushes Jerry and Rachel into a series of increasingly dangerous situations, using the technology of everyday life to track and control their every move. |
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The History Boys (2006) #52
FILM
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Directed by Nicholas Hytner. With Richard Griffiths, Frances de la Tour, Clive Merrison, Samuel Anderson. An unruly class of gifted and charming teenage boys are taught by two eccentric and innovative teachers, as their headmaster pushes for them all to get accepted into Oxford or Cambridge. |