Population Control Freaks

I somehow missed the 2006 horror flick Population 436 at my local theater.

Jeremy Sisto and Limp Bizkit lead singer Fred Durst star in this thrilling story about a U.S. census taker who is assigned to assess the population in a remote mountain community. The census taker becomes trapped in this prison-like town full of 'golden rules' (that no one ever breaks) that doesn't allow its population to drop below or exceed exactly 436 citizens, a number in accordance with 'God's Law.' He eventually learns that NO ONE is ever allowed to leave Rockwell Falls and that the town citizens will do whatever it takes to maintain the status quo. After fending off a lobotomy and pretending to go along with the program, the U.S. census taker eventually tries to escape. Will the population finally be altered, or will the story of Rockwell Falls live on?

I don't know why Hollywood hasn't produced more movies in which census takers fend off lobotomies. It sure would have made Driving Miss Daisy more exciting.

The Stooges Take the Census

In 1940, the Three Stooges were recruited as census takers. Hilarity ensued.

Like Your Ancestors, Except Sexier

Golden Door—an award-winning film about sexy immigrants heading to Ellis Island—is now showing in selected cities.

On a perilous steamship journey from his Sicilian village, the widower Salvatore Mancuso (Vincenzo Amato) encounters a ravishing, mystery-shrouded Englishwoman, Lucy (Charlotte Gainsbourg, The Science of Sleep) — as the Old World literally collides into the New with seductive results.

Amid a harrowing crossing, an unexpected love story unfolds all the way to the halls of Ellis Island, where both Salvatore and Lucy will stop at nothing to make it through the GOLDEN DOOR to the America of their imaginations.

According to IMDb, there is "brief graphic nudity," so I may have to see it twice.

Hitler's Favorite Jewish Filmmaker

In his new biography of Leni Riefenstahl, Steven Bach claims that "Hitler's filmmaker" was even more Jewish than her patron.

[She] had her mother’s birth records falsified. There could be only one reason for that, theorized Bach: Leni Riefenstahl had Jewish ancestors.

“Intimate friends who knew her mother swore that she was Jewish,” said the author. “It shows the depths of her ambition, if true, that nothing, not even her own genetic heritage, could stand in the way of that ambition. She was not a deeply emotional anti-Semite, but she was most definitely an opportunistic anti-Semite: One of those people who goes along wholeheartedly once it became the temper of the times.” [Link]

Try Not to Lose the Plot

When conducting genealogical research in a large graveyard, it is always advisable to stop by the cemetery office before heading out to search for stones. Otherwise, you might end up like the guy in this YouTube clip at GENanon.

An Action Hero With Ancestors

Nicolas Cage plays a typical family historian in the upcoming sequel National Treasure: Book of Secrets. In fact, the plot sounds suspiciously like my usual summer vacation, but with more gunfire.

In the film, Cage plays treasure hunter Ben Gates, whose ancestor is implicated in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. He sets off on a globe-trotting adventure to clear his family name and find a missing treasure along the way. [Link]

Ace Ventura: Family Historian

Jim Carrey is set to star in a film called "Me Time," which—despite the following synopsis—will be a comedy.

[The story] revolves around a writer penning a book about his great-great-grandmother, a frontier woman. When his pregnant wife has to go on bed rest, leaving him to care for the house and their other child, his confidence is shaken as he reads his ancestor's diary, in which she describes raising a family, plowing the fields and taming the wild environs. [Link]

Damn Those Figs!

Martin Scorsese grew up in Manhattan, but his grandparents lived on Staten Island. In his 1974 documentary Italianamerican, he interviewed his mother about her parents, Martin and Domenica Cappa.

"I remember one time we had a fig tree. (My father) used to love fig trees, but my mother couldn't stand them. In the winter time you had to cover them very, very well, otherwise they froze. One winter when he did climb up -- he was getting old -- my father fell off the ladder and he got hurt, and my mother was so angry. She says to him, 'I hope those fig trees die, I hope they never bloom again!' she said, and then, of course, my mother became ill. And the next winter she passed away and the trees never bloomed anymore. It was like she took them with her, and that was that." [Link]

A reporter from the Staten Island Advance went to the Cappa home to see if the curse still held. "I've tried three times to plant a fig tree here," the current owner said, "I've given up on that. It won't take."

They Made a Big Production Out of It

ThinkFilm just picked up North American distribution rights to the 2005 indy feature The Last Confederate: The True Story of Robert Adams (formerly known as Strike the Tent). The Civil War-era film about a man from the South who falls for a gal from the North was written and produced by descendants of Robert and Eveline (McCord) Adams, and stars their great-great-grandson Julian Adams as Robert, and Julian's father Weston as "Grandfather Adams."

To ensure authenticity of their family’s story, Julian and Weston turned to the wealth of diaries, letters, and family documents surrounding Robert and Eveline. Records of Robert’s enlistment in the Confederate Army, his military service records, and his prison documents from Elmira, New York, also brought the elegant and horrible details of his story to light. [Link]

Columbus Relative Dreams of Conquest, Rents Movie

From The Maui (Hawaii) News of Oct. 7, 2005:

Voyage of discovery

By LEE IMADA, News Editor

A family historian looking into his Portuguese genealogy discovered that explorer Christopher Columbus is part of the family and lived many years in the Madeira islands, the homeland of many of the Hawaii’s first-generation Portuguese.

[snip]

“History, it’s important,” said [Patrick] Ka’ano’i. “It made me pay more attention. It gave it importance . . . that we were part of history.”

After his discovery, Ka’ano’i rented a copy of the movie “1492: The Conquest of Paradise,” the movie produced by Ridley Scott and released in 1992 starring Gerard Depardieu as Columbus. Ka’ano’i had seen the movie before, but this showing was different.

“It was fascinating to see a movie with a family connection,” Ka’ano’i said, noting that the opening scene was taken in Porto Santo.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

Ka’ano’i really should have rented the other Columbus movie of 1992—Christopher Columbus: The Discovery—in which (to quote Roger Ebert) the explorer "encounters friendly Indians, of which one - the chief's daughter - is positioned, bare-breasted, in the center of every composition." That would really have gotten his genealogical juices flowing.

More Movies for Genealogists

Paul "CensusWhacker" Etherington has asked his RootsChat cohorts for additions to my list of Top Ten Movies for Genealogists. Moderator Boongie Pam's "Lost in Transcription," alcrighton's "Census Sensibility," and Paul's own "Look Back in Ancestry" are early favorites.

I would probably amend Pam's "Kill Bill" entry to read "Kill Bill, then Jot Down the Date and Place of His Death."

Top Ten Movies for Genealogists

10. Divine Membership Lists of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

9. Sex, Lies, and Microfilm

8. The Dukes of Hazardous Inbreeding

7. Family Treeing John Malkovich

6. My Third-Cousin-Once-Removed Vinny

5. Born on the Fourth of July (According to Wisconsin Vital Records)

4. Analyze This Handwriting

3. There's Something About Marriage Intentions

2. I Know What You Transcribed Last Summer

1. The Sixth Census

technorati tags: genealogy

That's Disinter-tainment

From (San Francisco, Calif.) SF Weekly:

Love Among the Tombstones

A collection of cutting-edge films, including one on S.F.'s cemeteries

By Frako Loden

Published: Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Who knew that every strollable square foot of northwestern San Francisco once hid the remains of past citizens, going back to the Gold Rush? Hyperbole aside, that's the indelible impression left after viewing A Second Final Rest: The History of San Francisco's Lost Cemeteries, one of the terrific offerings in the ninth annual MadCat Women's International Film Festival.

[snip]

Highlighting the evening is Trina Lopez's superb A Second Final Rest, which is about far more than just five cemeteries, all immediately south of the Presidio, that no longer exist. It's a history of San Francisco dug up, by both the filmmakers and the mid-20th-century work crews that accomplished one of the largest relocations of human remains in history -- to Colma, "City of Souls" -- so that our metropolis could resume growth.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

That Would Be an Uncomfortable Reunion

From News24.com:

The Hitler Family unveiled

09/08/2005 20:40 - (SA)

Hamburg - Adolf Hitler left no offspring when he died in his bunker in 1945. But despite his lifelong attempt to conceal his origins, he in fact had numerous relatives, some still living in America.

Aside from a sister called Paula, he had a half-brother named Alois who owned a bar in Berlin and he had a nephew, William Patrick "Willie" Hitler.

[snip]

Filmmakers Oliver Halmburger and Thomas Staehler have unearthed rare film interviews along with hitherto unseen genealogical records in their film "Die Familie Hitler" (The Hitler Family).

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

"You know how to whistle past the graveyard, don't you?"

cinespia offers us a chance to merge our love of cemeteries with our love of old movies:

Screenings every saturday all summer long!

TO HAVE AND TO HAVE NOT
Directed by Howard Hawks
Saturday, June 11th
NEW TIME: GATES AT 7:30PM FILM AT 9:00PM
Hollywood Forever Cemetery
6000 Santa Monica Boulevard at Gower
No reservation necessary.
$10 Donation Tickets available at gate.

As a courtesy to fellow moviegoers:
NO TALL CHAIRS ON THE FIELD, NO DOGS
Click on our home page for this week's event
Upcoming:
June 18th: Some Like It Hot
June 25th: Lolita

More Reading:

• Hollywood Forever Cemetery