On this day: False Maria, Party Monster, and the French New Wave
Friday, March 17, 2017 at 10:00AM On this day in history as it relates to showbiz...
Stephen Boyd, Sophia Loren, and Alec Guinness in THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1964)
190 BC Marucs Arelius, the Emperor of Rome, dies. Was he assassinated? That's the suspicion in most Hollywood accounts. He's been played by Alec Guiness (The Fall of the Roman Empire) and Richard Harris (Gladiator)
1906 Character actor of big and small screen Michael O'Shea, who later married Virginia Mayo, is born...
1908 Brigitte Helm is born in Berlin. She claims. Other sources say she was born two years earlier. Regardless age means nothing when you achieve screen immortality as she did with her her dual role in Fritz Lang's classic Metropolis (1927)
1919 'Unforgettable' Nat King Cole, singer and sometime actor, is born in Alabama
1925 Italian movie star Gabriele Ferzetti born. His classics include L'Avventura, Once Upon a Time in the West, and The Wayward Wife
1938 Rudolf Nureyev born in Russia. Goes on to become of the world's greatest dancers and later starred in Ken Russell's biopic of the silent film giant Valentino (1977) and became the subject of many documentaries himself
1944 Charlton Heston marries Lydia Clarke when he is only 21 and not yet famous. They stay together until his death
1949 Dallas and Man from Atlantis star Patrick Duffy born
Kurt Russell and Elvis in IT HAPPENED AT THE WORLD'S FAIR (1963)
1951 Kurt Russell is born in Springfield Massachusetts. He'll be famous within twelve years time and will remain so. Curiously he's never won a major showbiz award - he was sadly snubbed by Oscar for Silkwood (1983) after his sole Golden Globe nomination
1954 Future TV star Lesley-Anne Down is born: Upstairs/Downstairs in the 70s, North and South in the 80s, and several daytime soaps since the 1990s
1956 Lucille Ball wins her second of two Emmys for TV classic I Love Lucy at the 8th Annual Emmy Awards
incidentally, this is The Boyfriend's favorite movie
1960 The seminal French New Wave classic Breathless is released in France. Have you seen it? It's so great
1961 The Absent Minded Professor with Fred MacMurray was new in theaters
1964 Rob Lowe is born
1989 the forgotten movie Rooftops opens in theaters. It was the last theatrical feature from the great director Robert Wise (West Side Story, Sound of Music, etcetera)
1991 The 1990 BAFTAs are held. Goodfellas takes Best Picture but the very next week it will lose the Oscar to Dances With Wolves.
1992 John Boyega (Attack the Block, Star Wars: The Force Awakens) is born in London
1995 Adoptive mom Jessica Lange and former crack addict Halle Berry battle it out in court for custody of a child in Losing Isaiah, new in movie theaters. I never saw that one. You?
Party Monster
1997 Andrew Melendez is murdered by fellow NYC club kid Michael Alig. Wilson Cruz and MacAuley Culkin played these roles in the feature Party Monster six years later
2006 A memorable weekend at the movies as the comedy She's the Man, the genre hit V For Vendetta, and Jason Reitman's debut Thank You for Smoking all open
2017 Disney's Beauty and the Beast remake and the super long in coming sequel to Trainspotting arrive in theaters today
Which of these events will you feel festive about today? Or will St Patrick's Day festivities do it for you?
Reader Comments (12)
Dances With Wolves winning over Goodfellas represents everything that is (was?) wrong with the Academy.
Ugh. That picture of Loren is stunning. She was so beautiful in such an interesting way.
Why didn't Stephen Boyd get an Oscar nomination for Ben-Hur? What a performance.
Nathaniel, Losing Isaiah is pretty great, even though it does often have the feel of a TV movie. Jessica is marvelous. It's an effective tearjerker.
...and Kurt Russell later played Elvis to acclaim in John Carpenter's TV bio on the King, back in '79.
Rudolf Nureyev was a guest in the Muppet Show once, and he sang a duet with Miss Piggy. In a sauna. The song was "Baby, It's Cold Outside", with roles reversed (i.e. the creepy sexual predator lyrics were sung by Piggy).
Check it out on Youtube if you've never seen it, because it's one of the weirdest things pop culture ever created.
I don't understand how a:
3 hour
Western
with Subtitles
and no other stars
about White Guilt
during the Civil War, not World War 2
by a first time director
and a first time screenwriter
and still manages to be a monster commercial and critical hit,
is worse than Martin Scorcese's 2nd (of 4,with a 5th on the way) movie about mobsters, which was a critical triumph but commercial barely minor hit.
They're both great movies. Why is this argument still going?
While Losing Isaiah is one of the quintessential White Savior flicks, Berry does manage to imbue her character, Khaila, with some agency and dignity. When she reveals to her caseworker (the unsung Regina Taylor) that she threw her baby away, I get teary. IMO, that single scene is better than her performance in Monster's Ball. I wonder if Naomie Harris drew some inspiration for her role in Moonlight watching this film...
Adoptive mom Jessica Lange and former crack addict Halle Berry battle it out in court for custody of a child in Losing Isaiah, new in movie theaters. I never saw that one. You?
Since you dislike both leads it should surprise no one why you've avoided it.
Kurt Russell will end up getting an honorary Oscar - I was watching him last night as the town bad boy in Disney's " Follow Me Boys" (1966) he was a natural and was lucky to go from child star to leading man
There was a nice story Kurt Russell had about doing that film with Elvis as Kurt's father Bing was someone Elvis wanted to meet since Bing was a TV star. Kurt introduced Elvis to his dad and they all hung out. Everything Kurt did in that Elvis movie he did that was directed by John Carpenter was based on his own memories spending time with Elvis.
Is it really wrong that I liked "Party Monster" a lot?
And that I thought both Seth Green and Macaulay Culkin were great in it? A pity Culkin doesn't get more work today, this one, and "Saved" make me think he's deserving meaty, daring roles. I still think his best performance was in "The Good Son", the film that finally made me see him as an actor, rather than a child star.
Plus, while "Goodfellas" might be more perfect all together, than "The Godfather Part III"...
... "The Godfather; Part III", despite Sofia Coppola's performance, is my pick for Best Picture/Director/Actor/Adapted Screenplay of 1990. And Film Editing. 5 Oscars at least... Despite being the "minor" of the trilogy, it's the one I admire the most, for how it handled the assasination of John Paul I - ooops... "sudden death" of the short-lived Pope.