The Movie Timeline - be obsessive, be very obsessive
..............T H E M O V I E T I M E L I N E..............
Welcome. Yes, the coding is gleefully retro here - who knew that websites could look "so 1998". But here we focus our geekery elsewhere: on movies, and more specifically, on the chronology of all movies, pasted together in a big list. Keep your submissions coming in! You make this. The list runs on one simple premise: that everything you see in the movies is true - the real mixes with the fictitious, so long as it's reported in a movie somewhere. So do join in - the above left links should help you Submit the event from the film you'd like, although do a Search first - we may well have it already!
NEWS! We have a Twitter account. Follow @MovieTimeline. You'll then be treated to one 'event' a day from the world of movie history - some'll be real world stuff, some'll be the world of fiction.
I recently blogged about my personally handpicked journey through history in 100 movies. Do click and read. It's in 3 parts, so click on the links at the bottom after part 1.
Today in movie history...
1793: 2nd December: Samuel Taylor Coleridge enlists in the Light Dragoons. (Rime of the Ancient Mariner)
1804: 2nd December: Napoleon Bonaparte is crowned Napoleon I, the first Frenchman to hold the title of emperor in a thousand years. (Paris, France - War and Peace)
1926: Thursday 2nd December: Alfred Hitchcock marries Alma Reville. (South Kensington, London, England - Hitchcock)
1941: Tuesday 2nd December: Ilsa Lund and Victor Lazlo walk into Rick's saloon. (Casablanca - Casablanca)
1942: Wednesday 2nd December: Fermi produces the first nuclear chain reaction. (University of Chicago - Fat Man and Little Boy)
1954: Thursday 2nd December: The U.S. Senate votes 65 to 22 to condemn Senator Joseph R. McCarthy for conduct unbecoming of a senator. (Washington, D.C. - Citizen Cohn)
1961: Saturday 2nd December: Fidel Castro openly declares that he is a Marxist-Leninist. (Che!)
1983: Friday 2nd December: Billy Elliot's mum dies. (Billy Elliot)
1990: Sunday 2nd December: By this point, Chris “Alex” McCandless has kayaked his way into Mexico. (Sea of Cortez - Into the Wild)
2000: Saturday 2nd December: Martin Asher kills someone. (Taking Lives)
2001: Sunday 2nd December: Enron files for bankruptcy. (Texas - Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room)
2011: Friday 2nd December: Arthur receives Gwen's letter and responds. (North Pole - Arthur Christmas)
2012: Sunday 2nd December: Pete and Debbie go to a resort. (Los Angeles, California - This Is 40)
2012: Sunday 2nd December: At 10:32 PM, a post titled DO NOT ANSWER MESSAGES FROM THE DEAD.... is posted by an unregistered user to Unexplained Forums.net (Unfriended)
2013: Monday 2nd December: Keller shows Alex to Franklin Birch. Franklin holds Alex while Keller questions and tortures him. During a vigil, Loki chases a running man who gets away. (Conyer, Pennsylvania - Prisoners)
Here are a few recent films we've put in their chronological place...
Bridesmaids
Tintin
Captain America
Hugo
Moneyball
The Woman In Black
Sherlock Holmes
The King's Speech
Friends With Benefits
...as well as many others.
You can explore the dates on the left-hand bar to see discover...
When Harry Met Sally - that'll be 1977.
The Day The Bubble Burst - it was a Tuesday.
The Day The Earth Stood Still - that was a Wednesday.
Employee of the Month - that month was November 2006.
Hogwarts was founded just 61 years after King Arthur sought the Holy Grail by storming a castle with a large wooden rabbit.
Plus the coincidences, for instance...
- Gangs of New York's Amsterdam Vallon was killing Butcher Bill, down the road Abraham Lincoln was being kidnapped by Bill & Ted...
- Lucky Al Capone - he was sent to Alcatraz by Eliot Ness just in time to miss King Kong rampaging around New York...
- Andy Dufresne was wrongly sentenced to Shawshank a few short months before someone else was framed - Roger Rabbit...
Submit your own historical event from a movie (not TV - yet) by clicking here. It can be a real event (eg. the sinking of the Titanic) or a far-from-real event (eg. Marty McFly attending his parents' school dance) - so long as it's found in a film. It must be a verifiable date - whether a year subtitled at the start ("1941, France..."), a visible clue in the film (character picks up a newspaper), or some historical backdrop (From Hell's Jack The Ripper). If you know what year a movie is set in, let me know.
Thanks for linking to us and please continue to plug us on your journeys round the net. For now please ignore the crappy straightforward appearance - explore the information and trivia, have some fun with it - it really is a very simple idea. But it needs your help!
In the beginning... God created the heavens and the earth (The Bible)
Shortly after the beginning... God subcontracts the fjords to Slartibartfast, a planetary construction engineer from Magrathea (The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy)
26,000,000,000BC Los Angeles (and everywhere else) - The Earth's crust begins to harden (Adaptation)
A long time ago... Luke Skywalker and Han Solo lead a rebellion against the evil empire(Star Wars)
1 zillion BC October 9: Cavemen discover fire, and the joys of eating dinosaur egg (Caveman, 1981)
From this point on the dates get more sensible - begin the timeline...
Some other sites you may like...
The Movie Timeline twitter feed. Do follow.
Movie Banter - our podcast 'n' blog
My site as a stand-up, with gig guides, cv, etc
Ruined Endings (plots and endings of all the best films. And some bad ones.)
And unaffiliated, but friendly sites...