Postcard US-4002447 to the United Kingdom shows Prince Eric's Castle from a 1989 Disney movie the Little Mermaid based on a Danish fairy tale. It tells the story of a beautiful mermaid princess who is dissatisfied with underwater life and dreams of becoming human. The film's success marked the beginning of the era known as the Disney Renaissance.
The card is part of the Art of Disney: the Renaissance and Beyond (1989-2014). The castle may have been inspired by Chillon Castle, a medieval fortress on the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland. Attraction Under the Sea: Journey of the Little Mermaid opened on June 3, 2011 at Disney California Adventure Park in Anaheim, California, and on December 6, 2012 in New Fantasyland at Magic Kingdom, Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida.
Outgoing postcard US-3869982 to Mexico shows a film frame from the 2009 Disney Movie "The Princess and the Frog."
Re-telling a classic tale with a modern twist, this animated movie sets stage in New Orleans, featuring a beautiful and hard-working waitress named Tiana, and Prince Naveen who is transformed into a frog by a voodoo magician and desperately wants to be human again. Sealed with a fateful kiss, they are on a hilarious journey to break the spell and pursue their dreams through the mystical bayous of Louisiana.
Just like Walt Disney once said: "All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them."
Postcard DE-4980404 from Germany shows a concept art for the Pixar Animation Studios' Toy Story by Nilo Rodis. Buzz Lightyear is a fictional character in the Toy Story animation series. He is a toy space ranger hero in the movies and an action figure in the Toy Story franchise.
Postcard US-1852497 to Ukraine shows a 1955 movie scene with actress Marilyn Monroe appearing in the Seven Year Itch where her dress blows up from the subway grate. It becomes one of the most famous Marilyn Monroe scenes of all time. The subway grate is marked at East 52nd Street and Lexington Ave in New York City.
Fifty three years ago on Saturday May 19, 1962, Marilyn Monroe sung "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" for President John F. Kennedy at a celebration of his forty-fifth birthday, ten days before his actual date on Tuesday May 29, 1962.
Less than three months later, Monroe was found dead at her home at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California on August 5, 1962. She was 36 years old.
Postcard SG-171940 from Singapore shows a portrait of Giorgio Bassani by artist L. Lee. Giorgio Bassani (March 4, 1916 – April 13, 2000) was an Italian writer, poet, and editor. He was best known for the Oscar Award winning movie The Garden of the Finzi-Continis in 1970, based on his 1962 novel Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini exploring the city of Ferrara with its Christian and Jewish elements of life.
Postcard DE-3646240 from Germany shows the Pilsum Lighthouse by the Emshörn channel on the North Sea coast in Germany. Built in 1889, the 11-meter or 36-foot tall lighthouse had guided ships through the narrow Emshörn channel until 1915 from the top of a levee near the village of Pilsum in the municipality of Krummhörn. The height of the light is 15 meters or 49 feet above the sea level.
During World War I, its light was turned off so that enemy ships could not use it for navigation. After the war, the lighthouse was no longer needed as the channel had been changed.
Today the lighthouse is one of the best recognized landmarks in East Frisia, partially due to the movie Otto - the Outer Frisian by comedian Otto Waalkes who lives in the lighthouse in the movie.
Mere one day after the U.S. Supreme Court decided not to hear appeals against lower courts' rulings that declared banning same-sex marriage were unconstitutional in Oklahoma, Utah, Indiana, Virgina, and Wisconsin, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Idaho and Nevada’s bans on same-sex marriage violated equal protection rights on October 7, 2014. The court's decision also covers Alaska, Arizona and Montana.
Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval and State Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto announced this Tuesday evening that they would not appeal the ruling. The Marriage Bureau in Clark County, located at 201 Clark Avenue in the Regional Justice Center, will start to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples at 2 p.m. Wednesday October 8, 2014. Now, Las Vegas can truly claim itself as the wedding capital of the world.
Postcard US-1864037 to Germany shows the Little Church of the West Wedding Chapel on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada. Built out of California redwood as part of the Last Frontier Hotel in 1942, it is the oldest building on the Las Vegas Strip. It had since moved several times until it was relocated to the current location in 1996. The wedding chapel was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 14, 1992. It is known for the 1964 movie Viva Las Vegas filmed at the Little Church of the West, where Lucky Jackson (played by Elvis Presley) and Rusty Martin (played by Ann-Margret) recited their vows.
Update 2: Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy Justice Kennedy revised his order in the afternoon on October 8, 2014, removing Nevada (case No. 12-17668) from the hold.
Update 3: Nevada started to issue same-sex marriage licenses on October 9, 2014.
I got this Brokeback Mountain movie promotional card during its Ft. Lauderdale International Film Festival premiere at Cinema Paradiso in 2005. The movie told a powerful story of two young men, a ranch hand and a rodeo cowboy, who sheepherded in the Wyoming mountains in the summer of 1963 and formed a life-long bond with love and conflicts.
Sixteen years ago today on October 6, 1998, Matthew Shepard, a student at the University of Wyoming, was beaten, tortured and left to die near Laramie, Wyoming. He was targeted and attacked by two men because he was gay. His death from severe head injuries six days later brought national and international attention to hate crime legislation. However, it wasn't until October 2009 that the United States Congress passed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. President Barack Obama signed the "Matthew Shepard Act" into law on October 28, 2009.
Today on October 6, 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review those cases where state laws banning same-sex marriage were overturned by federal appeals courts, which resulted immediate recognition of same-sex marriage in Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin. Wyoming could see same-sex marriages recognized by the end of this year as it was covered by the same circuit appeals courts as Utah and Oklahoma. Five additional states: North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia, Colorado, and Kansas, are also covered.
The card was sent in to obtain a first-day-of-issue postmark on a Harvey Milk Forever Stamp on July 21, 2014, along with other first-day-of-issue postmark and digital color postmarks. It took two months for the fulfilled order to be returned on September 23, 2014.
Postcard FR-420722 from France shows Moulin Rouge, meaning Red Mill in French, a cabaret co-founded by Charles Zidler and Joseph Oller in Paris, France in 1889.
Marked by the red windmill on its roof, Moulin Rouge is best known as the spiritual birthplace of the modern form of the can-can dance. According to Wikepedia, "originally introduced as a seductive dance by the courtesans who operated from the site, the can-can dance revue evolved into a form of entertainment of its own and led to the introduction of cabarets across Europe. Today, the Moulin Rouge is a tourist attraction, offering musical dance entertainment for visitors from around the world. The club's decor still contains much of the romance of fin de siècle France."
It inspired Moulin Rouge!, a 2001 musical film, that was nominated for eight and eventually won two Oscars at the 74th Academy Awards on March 24, 2002. A music video featuring 1974 "Lady Marmalade" that was used as part of a medley in the movie, was produced in March 2001 with Christina Aguilera, Lil' Kim, Mýa, and Pink performing. The video won the 2001 MTV Video Music Award for "Best Video of the Year" and "Best Video from a Film" and a 2002 Grammy Award in the category of "Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals". The video reached 100,977,923 views on Vevo/Youtube by the end of today.
In Las Vegas, there was the Moulin Rouge Hotel and Casino located in the West Las Vegas neighborhood where the African Americans were forced to live. It first opened on May 24, 1955, with multiple references to Paris: Eiffel Tower appeared on the sign at the entrance, and on the casino chips; a French Chef was the head of the largest restaurant in the casino; security guards were dressed in the uniform of the French Foreign Legion.
The hotel and casino was the first integrated hotel casino in the United States while other casinos on the Las Vegas Strip were still segregated and off ff limits to blacks unless they were the entertainers or labors. The Moulin Rouge Hotel and Casino closed in November, 1955. Its short but vibrant life fueled the civil-rights movement in Las Vegas. It was added to the United States National Register of Historic Places in 1992. The shuttered hotel suffered a series of fires between May 29, 2003 and May 6, 2009. The Las Vegas Historic Preservation Commission approved demolition of the remains of the buildings in June, 2010,
Postcard NL-2367054 from the Netherlands shows a scene from My Neighbor Totoro (龍貓), a 1988 Japanese animated fantasy film that tells the story of a professor's two young daughters Satsuko and Mei, who move to the country to be near their ailing mother in postwar rural Japan. They have adventures with the friendly forest spirits. The film won the Animage Anime Grand Prix prize and the Mainichi Film Award for Best Film in 1988.
Postcard NL-2316706 from the Netherlands shows a popular phase "Bakkie doen?" in Dutch, meaning "Let's have a cup of coffee?"
There was a short documentary film titled "Bakkie doen!" that was made during the 48 Hour Film Project at Breda, the Netherlands in 2011, when 37 teams of filmmakers went out for a weekend of filmmaking in Breda. Based on a randomly assigned genre, a character, a prop and a line of dialogue, filmmakers would wrote, shot and edited a movie in 48 hours. 30 out of the 37 finished on time. All completed movies were shown at Pathé Breda during the International Film Festival Breda on March 27th, 2011. "Bakkie doen!" won the awards of the Best Directing, the Best Female Acting, and the Public Choice. It was a Runner-up for the Best Film.
Postcard DE-2339136 from Germany was of the 2012 movie Django Unchained. A German bounty hunter and former dentist, Dr. King Schultz, played by Christoph Waltz, bought the freedom of a slave, Django, played by Jamie Foxx, with the intent to train him as his deputy bounty hunter. However, he was led to where Django's wife was under the control of Calvin Candie, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, a ruthless plantation owner.
I am sending this movie advertising card US-2334372 that I got in 2004 to France. Coincidentally, "the Dreamers" was an American movie about a Californian student Matthew in Paris developing a friendship with a twin French brother Theo and sister Isabelle, with the 1968 Paris student riots "May Revolution" in the background.
The movie has a MPAA Rating of NC-17. You can purchase a copy of DVD from Amazon. Both Jake Gyllenhaal and Leonardo DiCaprio were initially considered for the role of Matthew but both turned it down because Jack's was concerned about the explicit nature of the nude scenes and Leonardo was in pre-production with "the Aviator".
Thirty five years ago, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) opens its priesthood to "all worthy men" on June 9, 1978, ending a 148-year-old policy of excluding black men. A line in the lyrics of "the Book of Mormon" alluded above event: "I believe that in 1978 God changed his mind about black people..."
I realized that I still had a couple of the advertising cards of the movie "Latter Days" from its screening at the Gateway Theatre in Fort Lauderdale on February 20, 2004. According to IMDB, the movie is about a promiscuous gay party animal who falls for a young Mormon missionary, leading to crisis, cliché, and catastrophe. You can watch Latter Days' official trailer on Youtube.
I bought a copy of the Latter Days movie when it was out in DVDs. I feel It still resonate with anyone who has ever fallen in love when I watched it again after all these years. Now you can own a copy in Blu-ray from Amazon.
