Today's birthdays 11/05
For those prone to celebrating the filmic and famous.
1905 Joel McCrea undervalued 40s star. Read this great piece on his career
1913 Vivien Leigh, more on her soon
1931 Ike Turner didn't deserve Tina. But, ugh, remember how great Laurence Fishburne was in What's Love Got To Do Without It?
1940 Elke Sommer, the German movie star turns 69 years young today. She was very generous with her birthday suit back in the 60s. Wouldn't you be if you looked like that? On a sad note I have never seen the infamous movie The Oscar (1966) which is about the Oscars that she co-stars in. Is it as bad as they say? I must see it.1943 Sam Shepard, playwright/actor/Mr. Jessica Lange
1958 Mo Gaffney turns 51 today. To quote the funny lady herself via AbFab [patting older person on the back] "I love old things". My best friend, who is a touch younger than me, does this Mo Gaffney bit to me all the time. I hate him.
1958 Robert Patrick FBI agent and T-1000 [I ♥ T2!]
1959 Bryan Adams, musician. Sobering if ungenerous birthday thought of the day: Oscar nominations for movie songwriting; Bryan Adams, 3; Madonna, 0. Some songs that Madonna has written for the movies: "Into the Groove", "Crazy For You", "Live To Tell", "This Used to Be My Playground", "I'll Remember", "Beautiful Stranger", "Die Another Day". God, that music branch is f***ed up.
1960 TILDA SWINTON I just felt like shouting the name... the glorious name. One of my favorite moments in all of 90s cinema is when Swinton as the male Orlando wakes up in Orlando, suddenly female. She briefly checks out her new parts in the mirror, full frontal, and then matter-of-factly "same person. different sex". I've loved Tilda ever since but I readily admit I didn't expect that she'd achieve the sort of international fame and enduring reputation that she has. It's a happy miracle. [more on Tilda]1963 Tatum O'Neal (Paper Moon) is still the youngest competitive Oscar winner of all time.
1964 Famke Jannsen, whom I interviewed at length last year, turns 45.
1971 Jonny Greenwood is a brilliant musician. In addition to his work with Radiohead he gave us one of the very best film scores of the entire decade with There Will Be Blood. Oscar's music branch considered it unnominatable in one of their stupidest, most egregiously inconsistent moments. This post has become about how much I hate Oscar's music branch which was not my intention at all... this post is about... Birthdays! Celebrate them.
Finally, we wish Sam Rockwell, secret weapon of many a movie, a very happy 41st birthday. We wish him well on his grassroots Oscar campaign for Moon. Not least because it's important for Oscar to at least think about what constitutes fine acting outside the safe zones of tearful drama and sober historical reenactments. Other genres can provide great performances, too. We would also like to thank Sam for being particularly generous with his birthday suit, considering the full monty (Lawn Dogs) and plentiful moon (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Moon).
Rockwell demonstrates Things You Shouldn't Do While Driving [src]P.S. if it's your birthday today, The Film Experience loves you. If it's your birthday tomorrow, The Film Experience might or might not love you. We'll see how long we can keep this up.
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