Tagged: Scientist
Oscar Isaac’s Byronic Black Frock Coat and Red Kerchief as Victor Frankenstein
Oscar Isaac in Frankenstein (2025)
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Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein, baron and budding mad scientist
Edinburgh, Scotland, Fall 1855
Film: Frankenstein
Release Date: October 17, 2025
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Costume Designer: Kate Hawley
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
“I feel like, if I were around in the 1850s, this is how I would have dressed,” I commented to my wife, who just nodded with her characteristic patience when I say insane things. While she didn’t respond by telling me how much I look like Oscar Isaac (but was definitely thinking it, right? Right??), I was nonetheless intrigued by Kate Hawley’s deservedly Academy Award-nominated costume design in Guillermo del Toro’s 2025 retelling of Frankenstein, adapted from the famous 1818 novel by Mary Shelley, who died 175 years ago this week on February 1, 1851.
Director and screenwriter del Toro updated Shelley’s Romantic era setting to the 1850s, incorporating the medical advancements during the Crimean War into the context around Dr. Frankenstein’s experiments. We are introduced to the adult Frankenstein as he vehemently defends himself to a disciplinary tribunal for the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh:
If we are to behave as immodestly as gods, we must—at the very least—deliver miracles, wouldn’t you say? Ignite a divine spark in these young students’ minds: teach them defiance rather than obedience!
Back to the Future: Doc Brown’s Snakeskin Robe for a Scientific Breakthrough
Christopher Lloyd as Doc Brown in Back to the Future (1985)
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Emmett “Doc” Brown, eccentric inventor and amateur chronophysicist
Hill Valley, California, November 5, 1955
Film: Back to the Future
Release Date: July 3, 1985
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Costume Designer: Deborah Lynn Scott
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
If my calculations are correct… 70 years ago today was a red-letter date in the history of science: November 5, 1955. For those who haven’t seen Back to the Future, this was the day that Hill Valley’s resident mad scientist Emmett “Doc” Brown slipped from standing on his toilet to hang a clock, hitting his head on the bathroom sink—triggering his concept of the flux capacitor, which would make time travel possible.
Even a freshly bandaged Doc (Christopher Lloyd) seems unaware of that day’s significance when he’s visited by Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox)—not a space man from Pluto but a high school student from 1985 who was flung thirty years into the past by the DeLorean that Doc had transformed into a time machine. Continue reading
Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove
Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove (1964)
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Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove (né Merkwürdigliebe), ex-Nazi nuclear war expert
Washington, D.C., September 1963
Film: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Release Date: January 29, 1964
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Costume Designer: Bridget Sellers
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Comedy icon Peter Sellers was born 100 years ago today on September 8, 1925, making today an ideal opportunity to celebrate Stanley Kubrick’s political satire that featured Sellers in one three of his most memorable roles. Continue reading
Oppenheimer: Cillian Murphy’s Charcoal-Blue 1950s Suit
Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer in Oppenheimer (2023).
Photo credit: Melinda Sue Gordon.
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Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, theoretical physicist and “father of the atomic bomb”
Washington, D.C., Spring 1954
Film: Oppenheimer
Release Date: July 21, 2023
Director: Christopher Nolan
Costume Designer: Ellen Mirojnick
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Among its seven Oscar wins including Best Picture (as seen by Al Pacino’s eyes), last year’s blockbuster Oppenheimer received the Academy Award for Best Actor for Cillian Murphy’s spectacular performance as the eponymous J. Robert Oppenheimer, born 120 years ago today on April 22, 1904.
The latter portions of Oppenheimer‘s chronography are set across his security clearance hearings throughout the spring 1954. Between April 12th and May 6th, the United States Atomic Energy Commission investigated 24 allegations questioning Oppie’s allegiance, loyalty, and Communist affiliations, as well as his opposition to the hydrogen bomb despite his influential development in nuclear weaponry that resulted in his nickname as the “father of the atomic bomb.” Continue reading
Oppenheimer: Cillian Murphy’s Brown Suits at Los Alamos
Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer in Oppenheimer (2023). Photo credit: Melinda Sue Gordon.
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Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, theoretical physicist and “father of the atomic bomb”
Los Alamos, New Mexico, Spring 1943 through Summer 1945
Film: Oppenheimer
Release Date: July 21, 2023
Director: Christopher Nolan
Costume Designer: Ellen Mirojnick
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Released last summer (on my 34th birthday!), Oppenheimer has been deservedly sweeping accolades this year, including seven BAFTAs, five Golden Globes, and 13 Academy Award nominations ahead of the ceremony this Sunday, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for Christopher Nolan, a trio of acting nominations, and Best Costume Design for Ellen Mirojnick.
Adapted by Nolan from Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s biography American Prometheus, this epic cinematic portrait of J. Robert Oppenheimer chronicles the prolific physicist’s career from his 1920s studies in Europe through his work on the Manhattan Project during World War II and the ultimate revocation of his security clearance in the 1950s, depicted as the result of Atomic Energy Commission chairman Lewis Strauss’ petty resentment. Continue reading
Jaws: Richard Dreyfuss as Hooper
Richard Dreyfuss as Matt Hooper in Jaws (1975)
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Richard Dreyfuss as Matt Hooper, oceanographer
Amity Island, July 1974
Film: Jaws
Release Date: June 20, 1975
Director: Steven Spielberg
Costume Design: Louise Clark, Robert Ellsworth, and Irwin Rose
Background
As this summer’s headlines are dominated by stories of orcas reclaiming the sea, now is as good a time as any to revisit the 1975 blockbuster Jaws that thrilled audiences upon its release 48 years ago this month.
Based on Peter Benchley’s bestselling novel of the same name, Jaws centers around the hunt for a man-eating shark terrorizing the beach of a New England resort town. The hunters include aquaphobic police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider), fearless shark hunter and USS Indianapolis survivor Quint (Robert Shaw), and the intense, serious-minded marine biologist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), visiting from the Oceanic Institute. Continue reading
Jeffrey Wright in Hold the Dark
Jeffrey Wright and Riley Keough in Hold the Dark (2018)
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Jeffrey Wright as Russell Core, thoughtful and grizzled wolf expert
Alaska, December 2004
Film: Hold the Dark
Release Date: September 28, 2018
Director: Jeremy Saulnier
Costume Designer: Antoinette Messam
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
With another snowstorm predicted for this weekend, I tend to find strange comfort in dark, brooding winter-set tales. A recent search to replenish my cinematic catalog led me to the moody Hold the Dark, an under-promoted Netflix release starring Jeffrey Wright as a wolf expert summoned to a remote Alaskan town by a quietly distressed mother, Medora Slone (Riley Keough), who hopes he can use his skills to hunt the wolf she believes responsible for the disappearance of three local children, including her own six-year-old son.
Despite his doubts that the activity can be attributed to wolf behavior, Core investigates and finds himself enveloped in a bleak and brutal mystery appropriately dark for a grim place that gets less than six hours of sunlight each day. Continue reading
The Omega Man: Charlton Heston’s Safari Jacket and Ford Convertibles
Charlton Heston as Robert Neville in The Omega Man (1971)
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Charlton Heston as Colonel Robert Neville, MD, former military scientist and resourceful survivor
Los Angeles, August 1977
Film: The Omega Man
Release Date: August 1, 1971
Director: Boris Sagal
Costumers: Margo Baxley & Bucky Rous
Tailor: Albert Mariani
Background
As #CarWeek continues, let’s check out the pair of Ford convertibles that a safari-clad Colonel Robert Neville commandeers as one of the last men in the world at the heart of The Omega Man, released 50 years ago in the summer of 1971.
Sir Timothy Havelock in For Your Eyes Only
Carole Bouquet and Jack Hedley, as Melina Havelock and Sir Timothy Havelock, in For Your Eyes Only (1981)
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Jack Hedley as Sir Timothy Havelock, marine archaeologist contracted by the British Secret Service
Ionian Sea off the Albanian coast, Spring 1981
Film: For Your Eyes Only
Release Date: June 24, 1981
Director: John Glen
Costume Designer: Elizabeth Waller
Wardrobe Master: Tiny Nicholls
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
For Your Eyes Only, my favorite James Bond movie of the Roger Moore era, was released 40 years ago today! To celebrate, I wanted to shift focus from 007 to the stylish and significant—but only briefly seen—character of Sir Timothy Havelock.
Jurassic Park: Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Ian Malcolm
Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park (1993)
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Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Ian Malcolm, “rock star” chaos theorist
“Isla Nublar”, 120 miles west of Costa Rica, Summer 1993
Film: Jurassic Park
Release Date: June 11, 1993
Director: Steven Spielburg
Costumes: Mitchell Ray Kenney, Sue Moore, Kelly Porter, and Eric H. Sandberg
Background
International Dinosaur Day is celebrated twice a year, always on June 1st but also the third Tuesday in May, making today—May 19, 2020—the first observance of Dinosaur Day for the year. Why the chaotic timing?
The answer to questions like that may rest with a chaos theorist like Dr. Ian Malcolm, the swaggering, skeptical, and somewhat frantic mathematician portrayed by Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park, adapted from Michael Crichton’s novel.
“I bring the scientists, you bring a rock star,” the park’s exuberant founder John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) comments upon the first impressions that Dr. Malcolm makes on Hammond’s distinguished guests from the scientific community, Drs. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern).
“You’ll have to get used to Dr. Malcolm, he suffers from a deplorable excessive personality… especially for a mathematician,” Hammond adds. “Chaotician,” Ian corrects.
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