The members of the HFPA (The Golden Globes) have to turn in their ballots today with nominations announced on Monday. In the less celebrated corner of Precursor World the BFCA Critics Choice ballots are also due for the winners. My own votes are all over the place as I don't do lazy sweep voting but judge each category separately as one should. The Critics Choice Awards are this Sunday evening -- watch it live -- and the Golden Globe nominations are announced Monday morning. But movies, as events to celebrate, are more than just temporal things. You can celebrate anything you'd like across the time continuum via the happy things known as anniversaries and birthdays...
On this day in history as it relates to showbiz
1854 Alfred Tennyson published his famous war poem "Charge of the Light Brigade" - it would be made into a movie three times, most famously with Olivia de Havilland and Erroll Flynn in the Thirties.
1902 Margaret Hamilton, The Wicked Witch of the West herself, was born in Cleveland Ohio. She really should've been nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar, don'cha think?...
1905 Oscar winning Dalton Trumbo, recently played by Oscar nominated Bryan Cranston in Trumbo, was born
1909 Douglas Fairbanks Jr, the first Mr Joan Crawford and son of silent film star Douglas Fairbanks, was born in New York...
1916 Happy Centennial to movie legend Kirk Douglas, four time Oscar nominee, and father of Michael
1929 The legendary John Cassavettes was born in NYC. Spoiler Alert: He wasn't the biological father of Rosemary's Baby! (But he was kind of the father of the American Independent Film)
1934 Judith Olivia Dench was born on this day in England. "Dame Judi" happened much later.
1941 Beau Bridges, a Fabulous Baker Boy and brother o' Jeff was born in Los Angeles
1948 Dutch film director Marleen Gorris, the woman behind the Oscar winning Antonia's Line (1995), was born
1950 Oscar winning Titanic cinematographer Russell Carpenter born in Van Nuys
1957 Donny Osmond born to the huge singing Osmond family (the seventh boy of nine children!) in Ogden, Utah. Semi-famous by the time he was 5, he was a household name by 18 when he "went a little bit rock-n-roll" to younger sister Marie's "country" on Donny & Marie, the first variety show ever hosted by teenagers and a very big deal to baby Mormon's in the 1970s like uh... well me. I was obsessed.
1962 Future Desperate Housewife and person-we-often-forget-was-Oscar-nominated Felicity Huffman came into the world
1965 The first "Peanuts" animated TV special A Charlie Brown Christmas debuts on CBS
1968 Jim Morrisson famously arrested on stage in New Haven CT, an incident Val Kilmer and Oliver Stone recreated for The Doors (1991). Damn but Kilmer was excellent in that movie but it arrived before mimicry became Oscar's favorite actor skill.
1980 Simon Helberg, of Big Bang Theory and now Florence Foster Jenkins fame was born on this day
1983 Two enduring classics Scarface and Terms of Endearment go wide in US movie theaters. Only Terms is greeted warmly at the time becoming an enormous hit (second only to Return of the Jedi that year) and winning the Oscar for Best Picture, the last traditional 'Woman's Picture' to do so. (Oscar ignored Scarface entirely.)
1988 the Kim Basinger oddity My Stepmother is an Alien, the hit comedy Twins, and the Best Picture nominee Mississippi Burning all opened in theaters
1997 Tomorrow Never Dies, the 18th Bond film, premieres in London starring Pierce Brosnan as 007 and Michelle Yeoh as Wai Lin one of the best ever Bond girls
2000 The Supreme Court ends the Insane Presidential Election by stopping the Florida vote count. We'd be such a better world today if they had tipped the other way. *sniffle*
2005 "Jack, I swear." Instant classic and masterpiece Brokeback Mountain hits movie theaters. It goes on to become a major hit but Oscar makes one of their worst blunders of all time by passing on it for Best Picture.
2011 Young Adult a comedy, at least in part about refusing to grow up, is aging very well don't you think? It opened on this day five years back
2016 La La Land opens in limited release while Miss Sloane goes wide - will you see both this weekend?