Birthday Suits, Well Directed

Lights. Cameras. Birthday Action (for this, the 30th of November). Only one month left to go and it's 2010. How crazy is that?

Ridley, Terrence (in the 70s) and Marc

1835 Mark Twain's books have been adapted into movies ever since the movies began. Most notably The Prince and the Pauper and any tale of Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer
1920 Virginia Mayo 40s and 50s star, frequent Danny Kaye foil
1926 Richard Crenna, character actor
1927 Robert Guillaume, "Benson"
1929 Dick Clark, seemingly immortal creature who may finally be destroyed by the rise of his spiritual offspring Ryan Seacrest. It's all very Cronos vs. Zeus, only without the thunderbolts
1937 Ridley Scott, manly director whose movies are usually way better when they're shot through with a strong female presence. Consider the three classics: Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise, Alien. The rest of the filmography surely has its moments but that's the trinity right there.
1943 Terence Malick, mysterious director, nature lover. He's only directed 4 features but what a quartet: Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line, The New World. His fifth classic (I'm guessing) Tree of Life will arrive next year.
1950 Margaret Whitton potent 80s supporting actress (Secret of My Succe$s, Ironweed) who made her last movie Trial By Jury way back in 1994. I guess Hollywood didn't meet her needs. They certainly didn't capitalize well on her gifts.
1950 Chris Claremont wrote the X-Men, owned my childhood
1951 Bo Welch frequent Art Direction Oscar nominee. The filmography includes The Color Purple, Edward Scissorhands, Men in Black, Batman Returns, The Birdcage and The Little Princess
1952 Mandy Patinkin, singer, Inigo Montaya, broadway star, actor, continually wasted on TV series. I loved Yentl (1983) as a kid but I still can't quite forgive Babs for putting Mandy in a film musical (his only) and not letting him sing. That ain't right. I mean Warren Beatty even let him sing (with Madonna) in Dick Tracy and that wasn't even a musical



1952 Henry Selick director, stop motion miracle worker (Coraline, James and the Giant Peach, The Nightmare Before Christmas. See previous post)
1955 Billy Idol rocks, sneers, acts once in a blue moon (The Doors)
1956 Stephen Dillane actor of stage, screen, tv. Has played husband to two of TFE's favorite actresses: Kidman in The Hours and Moore in Savage Grace
1959 Cherie Currie, about to be portrayed by Dakota Fanning in The Runaways (see previous posts)
1969 Marc Forster hot bald director (Quantum of Solace, Finding Neverland, Monster's Ball)
1969 David Lindsey-Abaire playwright and screenwriter (Rabbit Hole)
1969 Amy Ryan, Oscar nominated actress (Gone Baby Gone)
1973 Nimród Antal the unusual named Hungarian American director (Kontroll) is currently directing Adrien Brody and Topher Grace in a reboot of the Predator franchise imaginatively titled Predators (2010)
1982 Clémence Poésy, French actress, known to millions as "Fleur Delacour"
1985 Aoi Miyazaki, Japanese actress

Finally today is the 31st birthday of diminutive screen god Gael García Bernal, one of the best and most important actors working. My wish for his next decade onscreen is that he reunite with either Alfonso Cuarón (Y Tu Mama Tambien) or Pedro Almodóvar (Bad Education) but preferrably both. Maybe even a reteam with Alejandro González Iñárritu so long as the director hands him an Amores Perros quality role rather than the thankless one he got in Babel.

The cinema doesn't always do right by its most talented partisans but thankfully GGB is in demand. Next up is a romantic drama with Amanda Seyfried called Letters to Juliet. After that he's starring in the period drama También La Lluvia for actress turned director Icíar Bollaín followed by (gulp) a romantic comedy with Kate Hudson called Earthbound. Finally, that Oscar nomination that he's deserved but that's proved elusive could arrive. He has another starring role in a biopic (he's done that before with Motorcycle Diaries) called Gardel and then there's (maybe) Martin Scorsese's Silence, a historical drama about Jesuit priests. The latter, where he'd supposedly partner with the other recent screen "Che", Benicio Del Toro, sounds promising. Wouldn't it be nice to see Scorsese try his hand at directing a young and very talented actor whose name isn't Leonardo DiCaprio for a change?
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