Today's 5: Slim Shady and Bruce Almighty (among others)

Have you seen the newest picture of Mera (Amber Heard) from Aquaman? There it is to your left. This is remarkably colorful -- Poison Ivy in Batman & Robin level saturation on the color wheel -- though they'll surely fiddle with the color in post (sigh) since we can't have bright things. (Speaking of DC -- with Wonder Woman getting good advance buzz, should we be hopeful about Aquaman now?) 

Anyway, Amber Heard was on the brain as one of today's curated 'anniversaries to use as mood boosters'  today. Ready? Let's go... 

May 23rd Anniversaries

2016 Amber Heard filed for divorce from Johnny Depp one year ago today.

In honor of this event: Take a step toward getting out of that toxic situation / relationship / job / whatever that's no good for you. 

2004 The 57th annual Cannes Film Festival wraps up...

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Today's 4: Auntie Mame, The Breakfast Club, In the Realm of the Senses, and Laika

Another day, another chance to boost your spirits by celebrating showbiz history whilst you go about your here and now. Only four today since we decided the fifth would be better off in a beauty break style post later today. 

May 18th Showbiz History

2018 Okay this is future history but Laika has claimed this date for their next movie. We don't know what it is yet but who cares, it's Laika!

In their honor today: Rank Laika's releases thus far in the comments. They are in chronological order Coraline (2009), Paranorman (2012), The Boxtrolls (2014), and Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)

Blockbusters of 1985, Auntie Mame and more after the jump...

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Today's 5: "She's got Bette Davis eyes... 🎵 "

Five mood-boosting showbiz anniversaries for today, and if it's a special day for you have a great one. Take these suggestions and let us know if they helped.

MAY 16th History

2003 The fabulous and seriously undervalued Down with Love opened in theaters...

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New Directors / New Films: "Happiness Academy"

Have you ever seen a film which mixes documentary with fiction? Hybrid films, films with documentary and fiction parts or at least performed / acted elements have been around for some time. I'm not enough of a documentary expert to know if this is an increasing trend but in the past few years I've seen a few. From my (extremely limited) experience the combo can spark frissons of excitement and thoughtful layers as in Sarah Polley's autobiographical mystery Stories We Tell. The hybrid approach can also be both fascinating and exhausting simultaneously as with Clio Barnard's The Arbor (2010) in which actors lipsynched to recorded interviews from the actual documentary subjects.

At this year's New Directors / New Films festival, which wraps today in NYC, the hybrid technique (genre?) gets another discussable entry via Happiness Academy...

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The 16 Greatest Music Videos of '16

Every day, different angles on a 2016 wrap up. Tonight Nathaniel with the year's best musical short films...

It's true. They're more commonly referred to as "Music Videos" but since they have their roots in the Movie Musical, we think of them as short film descendants of that greatest of film genres. Music videos, which exploded so spectacularly in the 1980s with the dawn of MTV but experienced something like a midlife death rather than crisis, when MTV dropped the music part of music television, have roared back to life in the past decade with YouTube Vimeo and other saviors. The medium is alive and well and arguably healthier than ever (until the next platform crisis at least).

Though Beyonce's Lemonade dominated the conversation, 2016 actually produced a remarkable number of musical shorts that one might include under the umbrella of "Women Gone Wild," a subgenre equal parts political, erotic, and psychological...

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