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The History of American Cinema: 1999

11/1 -

James Cameron’s Titanic overtakes Disney’s The Lion King as the No 1 best-selling videotape of all time with worldwide video sales of at least 57 million copies (approx. $1 billion in sales). [ADD]

27/2 -

Movie exhibitors name Tom Hanks Box Office Star of the Decade.   His films of the 90s have grossed $1.38 billion. [ADD]

14/3 -

Rip Torn is awarded $300,000 for loss of income and $175,000 for emotional distress from Dennis Hopper after Hopper erroneously claimed on the Tonight Show in 1994 that Torn pulled a knife on him in the 60s during a restaurant meal to discuss Torn playing the role of a tuned-out lawyer (eventually played by Jack Nicholson) in Easy Rider. [ADD]

18/3 -

The New England Journal of Medicine reports that the polyethylene fibres used to make fake snow for movies can cause a lingering cough and runny nose. [ADD]

16/3 -

Mystery writer Faye Kellerman files suit against the producers of Shakespeare in Love claiming their story is derived from her 1989 novel, The Quality of Mercy. [ADD]

19/3 -

After successfully suing a British tabloid and having a paparazzo charged with federal wiretapping charges, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman prepare to take legal proceedings against the Star and National Enquirer. [ADD]

18/3 -

A gown worn by Elizabeth Taylor to the 1969 Academy Awards sells for $167,500 at an Oscar-dress charity auction in New York. [ADD]

21/3 -

John Madden’s Shakespeare in Love wins the Best Film Award at the 71st Annual Academy Awards ceremony.   It also wins a further six awards including Best Actress, Best Screenplay, Best Supporting Actress for Judi Dench, Best Costume Design, Score and Art Direction.   Spielberg’s war epic Saving Private Ryan wins five statuettes. [MORE]

31/3 -

The Matrix, Andy and Larry Wachowski’s follow up to Bound (1996) is released.   Keanu Reeves stars as Neo, a computer hacker who discovers the world in which he lives is nothing more than a computer simulation, and that he is the chosen one, destined to set the world free.   Carrie-Anne Moss, Laurence Fishburne and Hugo Weaving also star. [ADD]

2/4 -

Robert Altman’s comedy Cookie's Fortune is released.   Glenn Close, Julianne Moore, Liv Tyler, Chris O'Donnell, Charles Dutton and Patricia Neal star. [ADD]

6/4 -

Universal Pictures moves up the release date of Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant’s Notting Hill to 28^th May, just nine days after the eagerly anticipated release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. [ADD]

8/4 -

A proposed California law to make it more difficult to use the images of dead actors and actresses in new movies works its way through US legislation. [ADD]

4/5 -

The bitter court case between Disney CEO Michael Eisner and former colleague Jeffrey Katzenberg, in which Katzenberg claims was cheated out of millions in bonuses because of Eisner's "personal animus" toward him, comes to a head when Eisner takes the stand and admits to stating that he hated Katzenberg. [ADD]

4/5 -

The premiere of Stephen Sommers' adventure film The Mummy takes place.   A loose remake of the 1932 Universal original but with state of the art special effects, the film stars Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz and Arnold Vosloo. [ADD]

7/5 -

Director-co-writer Alexander Payne’s Election is released.   Matthew Broderick stars as a high school teacher strangely obsessed with getting one over on squeaky-clean student Reese Witherspoon.   Chris Klein also stars as the slow-witted but popular athlete whom Broderick persuades to run against Witherspoon for a place on the school council. [ADD]

13/5 -

Former Superman Christopher Reeve quashes rumours that he is walking again following a riding accident in 1995 that left him paralysed from the rib-cage down. [ADD]

19/5 -

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, the long-awaited fourth instalment of George Lucas’s space saga, is released.   Ewan McGregor and Natalie Portman can be spotted between the wealth of special effects. [ADD]

4/6 -

Wim Wenders' Buena Vista Social Club, featuring the music of Ry Cooder and a number of forgotten Cuban musicians, is released. [ADD]

12/6 -

The 1940 Best Film Academy Award won by David O Selznick for Gone With the Wind is sold at auction by Sotheby's in New York for $1.54m to singer Michael Jackson.    Clark Gable's annotated script for the film sells for $46,000, while a dress worn by Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara fetches $90,500. [ADD]

15/6 -

The American Film Institute (AFI) announces the 50 greatest American screen legends on a 3-hour CBS TV show.   Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart are named the number one legends among the women and men. [ADD]

25/6 -

A study by the Screen Actors Guild and the Directors Guild of America reveals that ‘runaway productions – i.e. American financed projects filmed overseas to take advantage of cheap labour and materials costs – cost America more than $10 billion in 1998. [ADD]

9/7 -

The teen sex comedy American Pie is released.   Jason Biggs, Chris Klein, Thomas Ian Nicholas, and Eddie Kaye Thomas play four friends determined to lose their virginity, with Tara Reid, Mena Suvari, Alyson Hannigan and Natasha Lyonne the objects of their intentions.   Eugene Levy also makes an impression as the father of Biggs. [ADD]

13/7 -

The premiere takes place of the late Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.   Sidney Pollack and Marie Richardson also star. [ADD]

30/7 -

The $40,000 budget Blair Witch Project goes on general release after premiering at the Sundance Festival in January. [ADD]

2/8 -

M. Night Shyamalan’s supernatural thriller The Sixth Sense, in which young Haley Joel Osment is plagued by visions of dead people, is released.   Bruce Willis also stars as Osment’s counselor, with Toni Collette playing his worried mother. [ADD]

24/8 -

Director Oliver Stone agrees to enter a drug-treatment program in return for felony charges being dropped as part of a plea-bargain deal over a charge of being in possession of a controlled-substance.   A further two misdemeanor charges for drunken driving will be erased from his record if he successfully completes the program. [ADD]

6/8 -

The English language-dubbed version of the Oscar-winning La Vita è bella (Life Is Beautiful) premieres at a free, public screening in New York City's Bryant Park. [ADD]

15/9 -

Sam Mendes’ American Beauty is given a limited release in Los Angeles and New York.   Kevin Spacey stars as Lester Burnham, a man whose mid-life crisis forms the basis of a scathing satire on the American way of life.   Annette Bening co-stars as his materialistic wife while Thora Birch is his moody daughter.   Mena Suvari, Wes Bentley, Chris Cooper,  Allison Janney, Peter Gallagher, Scott Bakula and Sam Robards round out the cast. [ADD]

8/10 -

Steven Soderbergh’s The Limey receives a limited release.   Terence Stamp stars as a violent ex-prisoner who visits the States to find out who murdered his daughter.  Luis Guzman, Peter Fonda, Amelia Heinle and Lesley Ann Warren also star. [ADD]

11/10 -

David Lynch’s The Straight Story, the director’s most accessible film to date, is released.   Richard Farnsworth stars as a man who travels across country on a lawn mower to visit his dying brother.   Sissy Spacek and Harry Dean Stanton also star. [ADD]

15/10 -

David Fincher’s Fight Club is released.   Edward Norton stars as a desperate insomniac who becomes friends with the charismatic Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) and, with his new friend, initiates a network of underground fight clubs that eventually mutates into an anarchic terror group.  Helena Bonham-Carter co-stars as both men’s love interest, and Meat Loaf plays a man with breasts. [ADD]

22/10 -

Kimberly Peirce's Boys Don't Cry goes on limited release.   Based on a true story, the film stars Hilary Swank as a woman who passes herself off as a man in a small Nebraska town where s/he woos the local beauty (Chloë Sevigny). [ADD]

29/10 -

Spike Jonze’s directorial debut, Being John Malkovich, is released.   Written by Charlie Kaufman, the film stars John Cusack as a puppeteer who discovers a portal into the actor John Malkovitch’s head through a door in the 7 ½ floor of a Manhattan office building.   Cameron Diaz and Catherine Keener also star. [ADD]

2/11 -

Saving Private Ryan, Steven Spielberg’s first major release on DVD, is released. [ADD]

3/11 -

M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense passes Jaws to become the 12th highest-grossing film of all time in North America with a gross of $260.1 million. [ADD]

5/11 -

Russell Crowe and Al Pacino star in Disney's The Insider, the true story of tobacco-industry whistle-blower Jeffrey Wigand (Crowe) who is sacked from his job as a Brown & Williamson executive who tells all to the ’60 Minutes’ TV show only to see them shelve the story to avoid a possible lawsuit that may affect the imminent sale of the network. [ADD]

9/11 -

’60 Minutes’ producer Don Hewitt expresses his satisfaction at the disappointing box-office for Disney’s The Insider. [ADD]

10/11 -

The Beverly Hills outlet of Christie's auction house announces it is to auction the Academy Award won by Herman J. Mankiewicz in 1942 for his screenplay of Citizen Kane (1941). [ADD]

13/11 -

John Lasseter’s Toy Story 2 is released by Pixar.   Tom Hanks and Tim Allen once again lend their voices to the characters of Woody and Buzz Lightyear. [ADD]

17/11 -

Sleepy Hollow, Tim Burton’s adaptation of the Washington Irving tale of Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman is released.   Johnny Depp stars as a New York City detective dispatched to Sleepy Hollow to investigate a series of murders, in which the victims have been decapitated and their bodies found in the woods.   Christina Ricci, Casper Van Dien, Christopher Walken, Jeffrey Jones, and Christopher Lee also appear. [ADD]

24/11 -

Toy Story 2 is released for both conventional theatrical presentation and electronic projection (e-cinema). [ADD]

7/12 -

The Directors Guild of America reports an imbalance on the number of ethnic minorities employed as film crew at studios and major production companies. [ADD]

8/12 -

James Mangold’s Girl, Interrupted, based on the memoirs of Susanna Kaysen is released.   Winona Ryder stars as Kaysen, committed to a mental institution where she meets fellow inmate Angelina Jolie. [ADD]

8/12 -

Magnolia, Paul Thomas Anderson follow-up to his breakthrough film Boogie Nights, is released.   An ensemble cast is featured in the story of a number of disparate lives intertwining during the course of one day.   Tom Cruise, Jason Robards, Julianne Moore, and Philip Seymour Hoffman star. [ADD]

10/12 -

The Green Mile, Frank Darabont's second adaptation of a Stephen King prison drama after 1994’s The Shawshank Redemption, is released.   Tom Hanks stars as a prison warder on death row at Cold Mountain Penitentiary; Michael Clarke Duncan is the hulking prisoner under his charge. [ADD]

10/12 -

Lasse Hallström's adaptation of the John Irving novel The Cider House Rules is released.   Michael Caine, Tobey Maguire, Paul Rudd, Charlize Theron, Erykah Badu, Kate Nelligan and Delroy Lindo star. [ADD]

15/12 -

The Directors Guild of America removes the late D. W. Griffith as the namesake of its prestigious lifetime achievement award because of the politically incorrect connotations of Griffith’s Birth of a Nation. [ADD]

17/12 -

Children’s film Stuart Little, in which Geena Davis and Hugh Laurie adopt a talking white mouse (voiced by Michael J. Fox) is released.   Jonathan Lipnicki plays the obligatory cute kid while Chazz Palminteri provides the voice of Smokey, a wicked alley cat.   The film was co-written by Sixth Sense director M. Night Shyamalan. [ADD]

25/12 -

A number of major films are released in order to qualify for next year’s Academy Awards.   Alan Parker's adaptation of Frank McCourt’s Angela's Ashes stars Emily Watson and Robert Carlyle.   Julie Taymor’s directorial debut Titus, an adaptation of the William Shakespeare play Titus Andronicus stars Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange.   Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley, based on the Patricia Highsmith novel, stars Matt Damon, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow. [ADD]

31/12 -

Hollywood grosses a record $7.49 billion in 1999, up from $6.95 billion in 1998 despite movie admissions dropping from 1.48 billion to 1.47 billion.   The better gross is due to increased admission prices. [ADD] 

Other Key American Films of 1999