5 random things that happened on this day, February 19th, in history (as it relates to showbiz)...
1942 /1945 Two historic and tragic days in the history of Japan & US relations. In '42 President FDR ordered Japanese-Americans into internment camps. This shameful moment is rarely dramatized in English-language movies outside of documentaries (surely because Hollywood doesn't love looking at America's own sins) though its shown up in a few like Go For Broke (1951) about Japanese-Americans serving in the US Army at the time and 1990's Come See the Paradise about an interracial family during the war. Later in '45 the US marines invasion of Iwo Jima begins. We recently saw it dramatized, from the Japanese perspective, in Clint Eastwood's Best Picture nominee Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)...
1995 Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee marry after knowing each other for less than a week. Their honeymoon sex tape is leaked online later. Scandal! Yes, they're currently making a miniseries out of this tabloid sensation coupling which will star Lily James and Sebastian Stan.
2006 The 59th BAFTAs are held with Brokeback Mountain winning Best Film and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit winning Best British Film, the only animated film to ever do so. (if you ask us the history of the Best British Film award is far more interesting than their other awards because by its nature they can't constantly try and predict the Oscars with it.) The other interesting thing about this night is that Jake Gyllenhaal won his first of only four televised showbiz awards that night as Best Supporting Actor for Brokeback Mountain even though Ledger lost Best Actor. (The second and third were MTV awards for Best Performance -- Ledger wasn't nominated because MTV? -- and Best Screen Kiss for this same film and the fourth and most recent for this underappreciated star was a Spirit Award for Best First Feature, a shared award as one of the producers of Nightcrawler.)
2016 After a 13 month wait post Sundance raves, A24 finally puts The Witch in US theaters, an instant horror classic albeit a divisive one. General audiences definitely didn't love it unanimously though I saw it three times in the theater (the most I've ever seen a horror movie in theaters). And of course it sets Anya Taylor-Joy up for her current world domination phase. (We've written about the Witch a lot.)
Today's Birthday Suit
Happy 35th to Swedish comedian/actor Björn Gustafsson. We've been waiting for Hollywood to catch on and we thought they might after his very funny bit in Spy (2015, nominated right here) but no such luck.
Other birthdays.today: Oscar winner Benicio Del Toro (Traffic, 21 Grams, Sicario), Oscar winner Lee Marvin (Cat Ballou, Paint Your Wagon), Oscar nominee Merle Oberon (Wuthering Heights, The Dark Angel), Emmy winner Jeff Daniels (The Newsroom, Purple Rose of Cairo), Millie Bobbie Brown (Enola Holmes, Stranger Things), Arielle Kebbel (Ballers, John Tucker Must Die), director Josh Trank (Fantastic Four, Chronicle), Tatanka Means (The Son, Saints & Strangers), Bellamy Young (Scandal, Scrubs), Ray Winstone (Sexy Beast, Cold Mountain), Justine Bateman (Family Ties, Desperate Housewives), Quinn Lord (the Man in the High Castle, Firefly Lane), Luke Pasqualino (Snowpiercer, The Musketeers), Sam Reid (Belle, 71), Jackson Pace (Homeland, The Walking Dead), Ann Savage (Detour, My Winnipeg), Kathleen Beller (Dynasty, Promises in the Dark), Martin Hewitt (Endless Love, Yellowbeard), Old Hollywood character actor Cedric Hardwick (Suspicion, The Ten Commandments), Steve James (The Warrior, I'm Gonna Git You Sucka), weirdly Oscar snubbed director John Frankenheimer (Seven Days in May, Seconds, The Manchurian Candidate), and rock stars Seal and Beth Ditto.