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The History of American Cinema: 2003

6/1 -

The Online Film Critics Society awards best film to Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.   Jackson also wins the Best Director award. [ADD]

26/1 -

Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini's American Splendor wins the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. [ADD]

27/1 -

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences discourages foreign-language entries from running ‘for your consideration’ adverts because they have no effect on Academy voters. [ADD]

5/3 -

The National Association of Theater Owners reports that its tickets sales reached 1.6 billion in 2002, making it the best film-going year since 1957.   Americans paid an average of $5.80 per ticket to each see 5.7 films on average. [ADD]

12/3 -

The mockumentary A Mighty Wind premieres at the South by Southwest Film Festival.   A large cast includes Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Jane Lynch, Parker Posey, John Michael Lynch, David Alan Blasucci, Steve Pandis, Christopher Moynihan, Paul Dooley, Patrick Sauber, Fred Willard and Bob Balaban. [ADD]

23/3 -

National Guard and police in riot gear patrol the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles – venue of the 75th Annual Academy Awards – as protestors against the war in Iraq roam neighbouring streets.   Inside the theatre, Chicago wins the Best Film award, while Roman Polanski is the surprise winner of the Best Director award for The Pianist. [MORE]

25/4 -

James Mangold's Identity, in which a group of strangers holed up in a rundown motel in which a killer is at work each find they share a common bond, is released.   John Cusack, John Hawkes, Ray Liotta and Clea DuVall star. [ADD]

25/4 -

James Foley's Confidence is released.   Edward Burns, Rachel Weisz, Dustin Hoffman, Andy Garcia, Paul Giamatti, Donal Logue and Luis Guzman star. [ADD]

30/5 -

F. Gary Gray's remake of The Italian Job is released.   More an entirely different film with the same title, it stars Mark Wahlberg in the role previously taken by Michael Caine.   Edward Norton, Donald Sutherland, Charlize Theron, Jason Statham, Seth Green and Mos Def also star. [ADD]

30/5 -

Disney’s Finding Nemo is released.   The fishy characters are voiced by Albert Brooks, Barry Humphries, Geoffrey Rush and Ellen DeGeneres. [ADD]

1/6 -

Finding Nemo records the best ever opening for an animated movie with a box-office haul of $70.6 million. [ADD]

12/6 -

FBI agents find one of the three Academy Award statuettes still missing since the entire haul of 55 statuettes were stolen in 2000.   Two remain on the loose. [ADD]

30/6 -

Jonathan Mostow’s Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is released.   Arnold Schwarzenegger returns once more, this time to rescue John Connor (Nick Stahl), the future saviour of mankind.   Kristanna Loken appears as Arnie’s nemesis, Terminatrix. [ADD]

9/7 -

Gore Verbinski's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, probably the first film to be based on a fairground ride, is released.   Johnny Depp stars as Captain Jack Sparrow, buccaneering scalawag, with support from Keira Knightley, Orlando Bloom and Geoffrey Rush as the undead Captain Barbossa. [ADD]

25/7 -

Gary Ross' adaptation of Laura Hillenbrand's bestseller Seabiscuit is released.   It stars Tobey Maguire as a half-blind jockey who rides the eponymous bow-legged racehorse to glory in depression-era America.   Jeff Bridges plays the horse’s owner, with Chris Cooper as his trainer. [ADD]

15/8 -

Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman’s American Splendor is released.   Character actor Paul Giamatti stars as Harvey Pekar, an everyman who finds an audience for the cartoon chronicles of his mundane life.   Hope Davis also stars. [ADD]

20/8 -

Thirteen, Catherine Hardwicke’s tale of a teen girl’s downfall is released.   Evan Rachel Wood stars as Tracy, a 13-year-old girl who believes she can attain her dream of being cool through her friendship with off-the-rails Evie (Nikki Reed).   Holly Hunter plays Tracy’s long-suffering mum, and Kip Pardue is the older boy with whom Evie tries to engineer a threesome. [ADD]

5/9 -

A number of Hollywood studios, including Paramount, Universal and 20th Century Fox, join forces to file a copyright infringement suit against the makers of Hollywood's Hottest, a series of videos containing nude scenes from their movies. [ADD]

12/9 -

Ridley Scott's Matchstick Men is released.   Nicolas Cage plays a neurotic scam artist who is persuaded to make contact with the teenage daughter he has never met.    Alison Lohman, Sam Rockwell and Bruce Altman also star. [ADD]

12/9 -

Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation is released.   Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson star as a couple of Americans who connect in Japan.   Giovanni Ribisi also stars. [ADD]

3/10 -

Writer-director Tom McCarthy’s The Station Agent, an unusual tale about a reclusive dwarf (Peter Dinklage) who inherits a disused train depot in New Jersey, is released.   Bobby Cannavale and Patricia Clarkson also star. [ADD]

15/10 -

Clint Eastwood's thriller Mystic River is released.   Sean Penn plays a shopkeeper whose teenage daughter is murdered.   Kevin Bacon plays the investigating detective, and Tim Robbins the mutual childhood friend who comes under suspicion.   Marcia Gay Harden and Laura Linney also star. [ADD]

17/10 -

Peter Hedges’ Pieces of April is released.   Katie Holmes plays a black sheep who invites her family to thanksgiving dinner in an attempt to build bridges.  Patricia Clarkson, Oliver Platt, Alison Pill, John Gallagher Jr, Alice Drummond and Derek Luke also star. [ADD]

24/10 -

Gus Van Sant's Elephant is released.   The film, about a high-school shooting spree, uses real high school students improvising their dialogue.   Alex Frost and Eric Deulen star. [ADD]

14/11 -

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Peter Weir’s adaptation of two Patrick O’Brian novels, is released.   Russell Crowe plays Captain Jack Aburey, commander of the HMS Surprise during the Napoleonic wars, who is ordered to destroy the French privateer Acheron.   Paul Bettany also stars as the ship’s surgeon. [ADD]

21/11 -

Alejandro González Iñárritu's 21 Grams is released.   Told out of chronological sequence, it relates the story of a disparate group of characters whose lives eventually intertwine.   Sean Penn is a heart transplant recipient whose wife (Charlotte Gainsbourg) wants a baby, Cristina (Naomi Watts), is the widow of the man whose heart Penn received, while Benicio Del Toro is the ex-con who caused the donor’s death. [ADD]

26/11 -

Wayne Kramer’s independent film The Cooler, starring William H. Macy as a man employed to stand next to winners at a Las Vegas casino to ‘cool’ their winning streaks, is released.   Maria Bello, Alec Baldwin, Paul Sorvino and Ron Livingston also star. [ADD]

10/12 -

Big Fish, Tim Burton’s adaptation of the Daniel Wallace novel, is released.   Albert Finney and Ewan McGregor play Edward Bloom, old and young, a salesman who makes up his life each day.   Burton’s exotic tale is populated by an impressive cast:  Jessica Lange, Billy Crudup, Danny DeVito, Steve Buscemi, Alison Lohman and Helena Bonham Carter. [ADD]

15/12 -

Lions Gate Entertainment announces the completion of its $200 million-plus merger with Artisan Entertainment.   Lion's Gate will now own the Artisan film library, which comprises of more than 6,000 films. [ADD]

15/12 -

Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King receives the Best Film of 2003 award from the New York Film Critics Circle.   Best director goes to Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation, with Bill Murray collecting the Best Actor award for the same film. [ADD]

16/12 -

Another 25 films – amongst them, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) – are added to the Library of Congress' National Film Registry, which now contains 375 films. [ADD]

19/12 -

Errol Morris' documentary film The Fog of War is released.   The film relays the thoughts and memories of Robert McNamara who led America into the Vietnam war at the behest of President Lyndon B. Johnson. [ADD]

24/12 -

Writer-director Patty Jenkins' Monster is released.   Charlize Theron goes ugly for her role as the infamous female serial killer, Aileen Wuornos, who was executed in Florida in 2002 for the murder of six men.   Christina Ricci also stars as Wuornos’s girlfriend. [ADD]

25/12 -

Anthony Minghella's historical romance Cold Mountain is released.  Jude Law stars as a soldier in the American Civil War trekking from the battlefront to the town of Cold Mountain to be reunited with his love (Nicole Kidman).   Philip Seymour Hoffman, Natalie Portman, Renée Zellweger, Ray Winstone, Brendan Gleeson and Giovanni Ribisi also star. [ADD]

26/12 -

Vadim Perelman's House of Sand and Fog is released.   Ben Kingsley stars as a former colonel in the Iranian air force who buys a house cheap at auction only to find himself embroiled in a legal battle with its former owner (Jennifer Connolly) a junkie who unfairly lost the property because of non-payment of taxes.   Shohreh Aghdashloo, Jonathan Ahdout and Ron Eldard also star. [ADD]

Other Key American Films of 2003