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The History of American Cinema: 2000

21/1 -

Kenneth Lonergan 's You Can Count on Me premieres at the Sundance Film Festival.   Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo play a brother and sister who have become estranged following the deaths of their parents in a car crash.   Rory Culkin plays Linney’s eight-year-old son. [ADD]

29/1 -

Long Night's Journey into Day (documentary) and Girlfight and You Can Count on Me (dramatic) win the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. [ADD]

31/1 -

Steven Spielberg is named as the winner of this year’s lifetime achievement award from the Directors Guild of America, which will be awarded to him on 11^th March. [ADD]

14/2 -

At the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado, veteran comic Jerry Lewis declares that he doesn't like women comics and views women as "producing machines" for children [ADD]

18/2 -

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences considers taking legal action against the Ain't-it-cool-news.com website for posting an (incorrect) list of Oscar nominees. [ADD]

25/2 -

Curtis Hanson’s The Wonder Boys, in which Michael Douglas stars as a once-famous writer struggling to finish his latest book as he undergoes a mid-life crisis and attempts to deal with a number of personal problems, is released.   Frances McDormand, Robert Downey, Jr and Tobey Maguire also star. [ADD]

17/3 -

Steven Soderbergh's, Erin Brockovich, in which Julia Roberts plays the legal assistant who pursues the indictment of a large company for the poisoning of a small town, is released.   Based on a true story, the film also stars Albert Finney as a lawyer who finds he has taken on more than just a cleric when he employs Ms Brockovich. [ADD]

20/3 -

52 of the 55 Oscar statuettes stolen from a Southern California loading dock one week ago are found in a dumpster behind a 24-hour supermarket and coin-op Laundromat in Los Angeles.   The LAPD announce the arrest of two employees of Roadway Express, the haulage firm that lost the statuettes. [ADD]

26/3 -

Sam Mendes’ American Beauty wins five Oscars at the 72nd Annual Academy Awards: best picture, best director, best actor, best cinematography and best original screenplay. [MORE]

28/3 -

M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense becomes the 10^th highest-grossing film of all time in the States, taking $290.3 million since its release last year. [ADD]

31/3 -

Stephen Frears’ adaptation of Nick Hornby’s novel High Fidelity is released.   The action is switched from London to America, with John Cusack playing a 30-something record shop owner who tries to find out why his relationships always seem to fail.   Iben Hjehle, Lisa Bonet, Todd Louiso and Jack Black also star. [ADD]

10/4 -

George Lucas announces he will use high-definition digital cameras to shoot most of the live-action scenes in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, which is due to start filming in June. [ADD]

21/4 -

Following a highly criticised career as an actress, Sofia Coppola’s directorial debut, The Virgin Suicides, is released.   An adaptation of the Jeffrey Eugenides novel, in which four sisters' youthful ideals are eroded with fatal consequences.   An accomplished cast includes Kathleen Turner, James Woods, Josh Hartnett and Kirsten Dunst. [ADD]

1/5 -

Ridley Scott's summer blockbuster Gladiator is released.   Russell Crowe stars as Roman General Maximus who finds himself demoted to the role of gladiator at the behest of the evil emperor Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix).   Oliver Reed and Connie Nielsen also star. [ADD]

12/5 -

Michael Almereyda's Hamlet, in which the action in the bard’s tragedy is updated to modern-day New York, is released.   Ethan Hawke, Bill Murray, Julia Stiles, Kyle MacLachlan and Sam Shepard star. [ADD]

5/6 -

Lions Gate Entertainment finalises a deal to acquire Los Angeles-based film company Trimark Pictures, Inc. for nearly $50 million. [ADD]

6/6 -

20^th Century-Fox’s Titan A. E. becomes the first film to be distributed via the internet from Burbank, California to a digital projector located in Arizona. [ADD]

14/6 -

The American Film Institute announces the 100 funniest American films as chosen by members of the film community.   The top ten, in descending order, are Some Like It Hot, Tootsie, Dr. Strangelove..., Annie Hall, Duck Soup, Blazing Saddles, M*A*S*H, It Happened One Night, The Graduate and Airplane! [ADD]

21/6 -

Nick Park's Chicken Run, a claymation verision of The Great Escape featuring chickens instead of human POWs, is released.   Mel Gibson provides the voice of Rocky the Rooster who reluctantly attempts to help the chickens of Tweedy’s farm to escape their fate of providing the fillings for the farm’s chicken pies. [ADD]

28/6 -

Roland Emmerich’s Brit-bashing American Revolution drama The Patriot is released.   Mel Gibson stars as a pacifist South Carolina widower who takes up arms when a sadistic British officer (Jason Isaacs) hangs his son (Heath Ledger). [ADD]

12/7 -

Eastman Kodak pays $75 million to have its name on the new Hollywood theatre that will host the annual Academy Awards for the next 20 years. [ADD]

14/7 -

Steven Spielberg’s Shoah foundation commissions a group of international filmmakers to make documentaries about the Holocaust set in five countries: Poland, Argentina, the Czech Republic, Russia and Hungary. [ADD]

21/7 -

Robert Zemeckis' What Lies Beneath, a supernatural thriller in which Michelle Pfeiffer believes a spirit is trying to contact her, is released.   Harrison Ford and Joe Morton play her equally sceptical husband and psychiatrist respectively.   Diana Scarwid, James Remar and Miranda Otto also star. [ADD]

4/8 -

Paul Verhoeven’s effects-heavy action thriller Hollow Man is released.   Kevin Bacon stars as the egotistical scientist tinkering where he shouldn’t, with Elizabeth Shue as the colleague he’s quick to fondle in times of invisibility. [ADD]

18/8 -

First-time director Tarsem Singh’s The Cell, in which Jennifer Lopez plays a psychologist hired by the FBI to enter the deranged mind of comatose serial killer Vincent D'Onofrio in order to find the whereabouts of his latest, still-living, victim, is released.   Vince Vaughn also stars as an FBI agent. [ADD]

27/8 -

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences sues a memorabilia dealer for the special Academy Award Judy Garland won for her role as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. [ADD]

28/8 -

David M Kaiserman’s Driven Together, which was shot, edited and projected entirely in digital form, premieres at the Clearview Strathmore Cinema at Aberdeen, New Jersey. [ADD]

13/9 -

Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous, a fictionalized account of his days as a teenage reporter for Creem and Rolling Stone magazines, is released.   Patrick Fugit plays Crowe’s alter-ego, with Frances McDormand as his mother and Zooey Deschanel as his sister.   Philip Seymour Hoffman, Kate Hudson and Billy Crudup also star. [ADD]

19/9 -

Christopher Guest’s Best in Show, a mockumentary about the world of dog shows and the people who compete in them, is released.   Parker Posey, Michael Hitchcock, Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Fred Willard appear, as does Guest himself. [ADD]

29/9 -

Boaz Yakin's Remember the Titans, a fact-based basketball drama starring Denzel Washington, is released.   Will Patton also stars. [ADD]

6/10 -

Lars von Trier's Cannes Golden Palm winner Dancer in the Dark is released.   Icelandic singer Bjork stars a Czech immigrant raising her son in a small American town who finds herself on trial for murder.    Catherine Deneuve, Peter Stormare, Cara Seymour and David Morse also star. [ADD]

6/10 -

Austin Powers helmer Jay Roach’s comedy Meet the Parents is released.   Ben Stiller stars as the sweetheart of Teri Polo, to whose home he travels for the first time to attend the wedding of her sister (Nicole DeHuff) and to meet her parents Robert De Niro and Blythe Danner.   Owen Wilson also appears as Polo’s old flame. [ADD]

6/10 -

Veteran character actor Richard Farnsworth, who recently starred in David Lynch’s The Straight Story, dies from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.   The 80-year-old actor shot himself to put an end to the pain he suffered from terminal cancer. [ADD]

8/11 -

Ron Howard’s live-action adaptation of the famous children’s story How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss is released.   Jim Carrey stars as the Grinch, who jealously steals the presents, decorations and Christmas trees from the residents of Whoville.   Molly Shannon, Christine Baranski, Jeffrey Tambor, and Clint Howard also star, with narration from Anthony Hopkins. [ADD]

6/12 -

The National Board of Review awards best film honour to Philip Kaufman’s Quills, with best actress and actor going to Julia Roberts (Erin Brockovich) and Javier Bardem (Before Night Falls). [ADD]

6/12 -

The University of Maryland announces it is to erect a life-size bronze statue of the late Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets at the student union. [ADD]

7/12 -

Cast Away, in which Tom Hanks plays the only survivor of a plane crash who is stranded on a desert island for four years with only a volleyball called Wilson for company, is released.   Helen Hunt plays Hanks’ girlfriend. [ADD]

13/12 -

Sam Barber wins a lawsuit against the makers of The Blair Witch Project, for a share of the film’s $245 million domestic profit for helping to finance the film’s pre-production costs, developing its story, and trailer. [ADD]

13/12 -

Traffic is named best film by the New York Film Critics Circle, while best actor and actress go to Tom Hanks for Cast Away and Laura Linney for You Can Count on Me. [ADD]

15/12 -

Philip Kaufman’s Quills goes on general release.   Geoffrey Rush stars as the Marquis de Sade, incarcerated in the Charenton Asylum for the Insane following the French Revolution, but permitted to continue writing by a sympathetic priest (Joaquin Phoenix).   Michael Caine plays a doctor attempting to put an end to de Sade’s writings, while Kate Winslet is the laundry maid who takes dictation from the Marquis when his writing implements are taken from him. [ADD]

15/12 -

Pollock, a biography of the abstract artist Jackson Pollock produced, directed by and starring Ed Harris, is released.   Marcia Gay Harden plays the troubled artist’s fiercely devoted wife, Lee Krasner, with Jeffrey Tambor and Amy Madigan in support. [ADD]

17/12 -

The Los Angeles Film Critics Association names Wo hu cang long (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) as the year’s best film with best actor going to Michael Douglas for Wonder Boys and Julia Roberts winning best actress for Erin Brockovich. [ADD]

22/12 -

Joel and Ethan Coen’s O Brother, Where Art Thou? is released.   Based, bizarrely, on Homer’s Odyssey, and with a title lifted from Preston Sturges’ 1941 classic Sullivan’s Travels, the film tells the tale of three prisoners on the run in 30s Mississippi.   George Clooney stars as Ulysses Everett McGill, with John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson as his partners in crime, and John Goodman as a one-eyed bad guy. [ADD]

22/12 -

Julian Schnabel's Before Night Falls (Antes que anochezca), the biography of Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas, is released.   Javier Bardem stars as the tortured soul, victim of Castro’s anti-gay regime before moving to New York where he would later commit suicide after contracting AIDS.   Sean Penn and Johnny Depp have small parts. [ADD]

27/12 -

Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic, based on a British TV serial, is released.   Telling three separate tales linked by their theme of the international drugs trade, the film stars Michael Douglas, Erika Christensen, Benicio Del Toro, Don Cheadle, Luis Guzman and Catherine Zeta-Jones. [ADD]

27/12 -

Included amongst the 25 films inducted into the Library of Congress' National Film Registry of “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant motion pictures”. are Apocalypse Now (1979), Dracula (1931) and Shaft (1971). [ADD]

29/12 -

E. Elias Merhige’s Shadow of the Vampire is released.   Willem Dafoe stars as Max Schreck, the actor who played Nosferatu in the 1922 F. W. Murnau film (played here by John Malkovitch). Catherine McCormack and Cary Elwes also star. [ADD]

31/12 -

American admissions totaled a record-breaking $7.7 billion in 2000.   Highest-grossing domestic film of the year is Ron Howard’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas at $253.4 million to date. [ADD]

Other Key American Films of 2000