Showbiz History: Norma, Viola, and Two Sexy Guys Named "Chris"

10 random things that happened on this day in history (Aug 11th)

1902 Norma Shearer is born in Montreal. Or was she? IMDb lists her date as August 10th but most sources say August 11th. There were previous disputes about the year, too -- 1900, 1902, 1904? But most sources seem to have settled on 1902. Regardless she was a huge star in the 1920s and 1930s. We love her here at TFE even if nobody else does.

1937 The Life of Emile Zola premieres. It goes on to win Best Picture and oh my god y'all...  J'accuse that one of being a giant slog! Seriously it's unending. They had so many better choices that year including one of the all time best screwballs The Awful Truth (Sigh)...

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Months of Meryl: Music of the Heart (1999)

John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep. 

#27 — Roberta Guaspari, a real-life violinist and instructor who brought music education to the classrooms of Harlem.

MATTHEW:  One of the pitfalls that tends to come with occupying such a prominent position in the highly public realm of moviemaking is a gradual inability to disappear into the most straightforward of roles. I’m not talking about the magical acts of self-vanishing that allow Daniel Day-Lewis to seemingly become figures as disparate as Bill the Butcher and Abraham Lincoln nor the larger-than-life personas achieved through virtuosic, full-scale deglamorizations by the likes of Elizabeth Taylor and Charlize Theron, but rather the everyday characters who may achieve great things but whose lives are decisively rooted in reality, their appearances neither remarkable nor particularly conspicuous. No matter how hard a performer tries to shed her star persona and immerse herself in distinctly un-Hollywood settings, it is often up to us, the viewers, to forget everything we know about a star in order to actually believe her as, more or less, one of us...

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Tammy Teaser

Can we redo the "We Can't Wait 2014" list and put Tammy way the hell up there? Here's the teaser. The business with the spoon. I died.

P.S. I know that Susan Sarandon (unseen here) is the co-star but due to the music choice, I convinced myself for a milisecond that La Pfeiffer would appear to ask Melissa McCarthy "you wanna tell me what this is all about?"

icymi in the "We Can't Wait" series we named these 2014 titles as the one's we're most gagging for:
01 Carol (TBA) 02 The Grand Budapest Hotel (March) 03 Foxcatcher (TBA)
04 Under the Skin (April) 05 Inherent Vice (TBA) 06 Into the Woods (X-Mas)
07 Snowpiercer (TBA) 08 Nymphomaniac (March) 09 Boyhood (May)
10 Big Eyes  (TBA) 11 The Last 5 Years (TBA) 12 Gone Girl (Oct)
13 Can a Song Save Your Life (TBA) 14 Veronica Mars (March) Runners Up

Sage Advice From the Movies

Always reward correct answers with chocolate!
The next time anybody tells you what you want to hear, give them a candy bar. (Unless that somebody is a dog or an unfortunate human with allergies) Positive reinforcement, baby!

"The Great Lesson: Chocolate, the Ultimate Reward" -Nathaniel Rogers

This worked for Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds. Let that be a lesson to us all!

Any teachers reading? Have you tried this or do you do boring things like give them good grades when they answer well?

I did this drawing for Illustration Friday since the week's theme is "lesson" and the very first thing that came to mind was the ridiculous Dangerous Minds (1995) which I love, don't you? I love chocolate more than just about anything and if "White Bread" Michelle Pfeiffer was tossing it to me for being a good boy I'd probably love it even more.

Next up in the ridiculous teacher genre:
BAD TEACHER with Cameron Diaz. We didn't do a yes no maybe so on that trailer but are you excited for it?