To Kill a Mockingbird (film)

To Kill a Mockingbird is a 1962 American drama film directed by Robert Mulligan. The screenplay by Horton Foote is based on Harper Lee's 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. It stars Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch and Mary Badham as Scout.

The film, considered to be one of the best ever made, received overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics. A box office success, it earned more than 10 times its budget. The film won three Academy Awards, including Best Actor for Peck, and was nominated for eight, including Best Picture.

In 1995, the film was listed in the National Film Registry. It also ranks twenty-fifth on the American Film Institute's 10th anniversary list of the greatest American movies of all time. In 2003, AFI named Atticus Finch the greatest movie hero of the 20th century.

To Kill a Mockingbird marked the film debuts of Robert Duvall, William Windom, and Alice Ghostley.

Plot

Peaky Blinders

The Peaky Blinders were a criminal gang based in Birmingham, England, in the late 19th century and to a lesser extent, in the early 20th century. They were one of the many urban youth gangs in the era.

Name

According to Carl Chinn, the name Peaky Blinders is popularly said to derive from the practice of stitching razor blades into the peak of their flat caps, which could then be used as weapons. Chinn describes this as an unrealistic scenario and says a more mundane explanation is that "peakys" was a common nickname for popular flat caps with peaks. The gangs were known to have a distinctive clothing style, wearing peaked caps, cravats, and bell-bottom trousers, and jackets whose "line of brass buttons down the front gave added distinction". Their style of dress was similar to that of the Scuttlers, a Manchester-based gang of the same period.

History

Whether the Peaky Blinders were a single gang or a local Birmingham term for a form of violent youth subculture is debated. Eric Moonman states that, in Birmingham, youth street-gangs were known as "Peaky Blinders" or as "Sloggers". Paul Thompson writes that "These gangs would attack a drunkard and probably leave him insensible in the gutter. If they cannot trip a man or knock him down, they kick or use the buckles of belts…. They will use knife, poker, fork or anything.'"

Steven Knight

Steven Knight (born 1959) is a British screenwriter and film director. Knight has written the screenplays for the films Closed Circuit, Dirty Pretty Things and Eastern Promises, and also directed as well as written the films Locke and Hummingbird (a.k.a. Redemption). Knight has also written scripts for numerous British television programmes such as the British version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (and is also the series creator, the UK version being the inspiration for the US version), BBC's Commercial Breakdown, The Detectives and others.

Screenplays

Knight is best known for screenplays he wrote for the films Dirty Pretty Things and Eastern Promises. His work on the screenplay for Dirty Pretty Things earned him the Edgar Award for Best Motion Picture Screenplay and London Film Critics Circle award for British Screenwriter of the Year. The screenplay was also nominated for several other awards including the Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay and the BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay.

Port Arthur

Port Arthur may refer to:

In China:

In Australia:

In the United States:

In Canada:

In Finland:

Cillian Murphy

Cillian Murphy (/ˈkɪliən/; born 25 May 1976) is an Irish actor of stage and screen. Since making his debut in his home country in the late 1990s, Murphy has also become a presence in British and American cinema—noted by critics for his performances in a wide range of roles.

A native of Cork, Murphy began his performing career as a rock musician. After turning down a record deal, he made his professional acting debut in the play Disco Pigs in 1996. While continuing with stage work he also began appearing in independent films, first coming to international attention in 2002 as the hero of Danny Boyle's post-apocalyptic film 28 Days Later. Murphy's profile continued to grow in 2005 when he appeared in a series of successful films: firstly as the Scarecrow in Christopher Nolan's 2005 blockbuster Batman Begins—a role he reprised in The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012)—and secondly in the action-thriller Red Eye (2005). For his performance as a transgender woman in Breakfast on Pluto (2005), Murphy received a Golden Globe award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy.