Showbiz History: Tom & Jerry's debut, BAFTA nights, and wild Laura Dern
Wednesday, February 10, 2021 at 10:00AM 7 random things that happened today, February 10th, in showbiz history...
1940 The first Tom & Jerry cartoon, Puss Gets the Boot debuts. Tom & Jerry would go on to become major stars of the short film format and super stars of Oscar's animated short category! The series received 13 nominations (starting with Puss Gets the Boots) and 7 wins.
1972 David Bowie debuts his character Ziggy Stardust at a London pub...
2008 The 61st BAFTAs are held with Atonement winning Best Film plus Production Design. Curiously it lost Best Score, which it later won at the Oscars, to a movie that's primary music focus was classic Edith Piaf songs, La Vie En Rose.
2011 The 61st annual Berlinale begins with the Coen brothers True Grit as opening night film and Isabella Rossellini serving as Jury President. At festival's end Asghar Farhadi's A Separation takes the Golden Bear, the first in a long line of honors for that true masterpiece. We love that movie here.
2013 The 66th BAFTAs are held with Argo winning Best Film and Skyfall making do with Best British Film. Though the BAFTAs are sometimes as shameless as other awards bodies in trying to predict the Oscars they were kind enough to give Emmanuelle Riva the Best Actress prize (which she would lose at the Oscars... on her actual birthday no less). Remember David O. Russell's much discussed reaction face?
2014 Shirley Temple Black, the biggest child star of all time, passes away at 85.
2019 The 72nd BAFTAs are held with Roma taking Best Picture and The Favourite settling for Best British Film.
Today's Birthday Suit
Happy 54th today to Queen Laura Dern (Marriage Story, Big Little Lies, Blue Velvet, Mask, Jurassic Park, and much much much much more). Do you ever randomly stop to think of how brilliant and inventive and, well, wild her performance in Wild at Heart was? Probably shoulda been Oscar-nominated! She and her mother Diane Ladd were both Oscar nominated the following year for co-starring in Rambling Rose but they were even better the year before in this.
You got me hotter than Georgia asphalt.
Other showbiz birthdays today: Robert Wagner (Hart to Hart, With a Song in My Heart), Oscar nominee Judith Anderson (Rebecca, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), Trevante Rhodes (Moonlight) who you will ahem see much more of in United States vs Billie Holliday - yum, Documentarian Michael Apted (Seven up), Uzo Aduba (Mrs America, Orange is the New Black), Writer/Director Alexander Payne (Nebraska, Sideways), Elizabeth Banks (The 40 Year Old Virgin, Pitch Perfect), Chloe Grace Moretz (Let Me In, Kick-Ass), Keeley Hawes (High-Rise, Death at a Funeral), Emma Roberts (Holidate, American Horror Story), Jimmy Durante (It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World) Karen Fukuhara (Suicide Squad, The Boys), Barry Sloane (Revenge, Longmire), Yara Shahidi (Black-Ish, Salt), Lon Chaney Jr (The Wolf Man, High Noon), Cho Yo-Jeong (Parasite, Obsessed), Max Brown (The Royals, The Tudors), The Netherlands Hannah Hoekstar (Hemel, Charlie's Angels), Germany's Tom Schilling (A Coffee in Berlin, Never Look Away), Oscar winning composer Jerry Goldsmith (The Omen, LA Confidential), Italy's Francesca Neir (Hannibal, Live Flesh), influential acting teacher Stella Adler, and Australia's fabulous Peter Allen who Hugh Jackman won a Tony playing on Broadway in The Boy from Oz.
Reader Comments (20)
INLAND EMPIRE and a cow
Tom & Jerry have more Oscars than Kubrick, Welles, Hitchcock, Kurosawa and Almodovar combined...
Let's think about it, for a second. I love them, but... haven't their short films aged quite badly?
Riva, Montenegro and some others, losing at the Oscars, is why I am convinced that Youn Yuh-jung has zero chances of winning (and could easily be snubbed of even the nom). Veteran female foreign language performance... lucky if nom'd. Bakalova performs half the film in English (and the other half in Bulgarian even if it sounds like gibberish) so she has the shot. Think of the Foreign Language performances that won...
Cruz: English and Spanish. Relatively young actress
Cotillard: French, young actress, biopic
Benigni: Italian, veteran actor-director that has worked in Hollywood with Jarmusch and was known at the time. Holocaust.
Dujardin: MUTE.
have any older actress or actor ever won for a foreign language performance? I know Max von Sydow, Fernanda Montenegro, Emanuelle Riva, Marcello Mastroianni, are examples but neither won it, even when in one case, she was running for a Best Picture and Director nominee.
I forgot to add that even Antonio Banderas, last year, was another example of how they don't stand a chance, despite Banderas having a long, successful and respected by his peers career in Hollywood...
That Tom & Jerry shorts won 7 Oscars and Bugs Bunny shorts only won 1 is one of Oscar's biggest travesties.
dios mio, jesus. SOPHIA LOREN!
I love it that the BAFTA honored Emmanuelle Riva and she was a no-show! Love her even more when she received her Cesar.
Yes, Riva, Isabelle Huppert and Fernanda Montenegro would have been great Oscar winners but they ultimately got the bigger prize: their long-lasting moving-image legacies that will be discussed in years to come.
And a requiem to Michael Apted whose longitudinal studies of individuals | participants for his Up series remain one of cinema's enduring case study of several life cycles, even if ethical issues will always hound this oddly-fascinating/absorbing series.
And look, Mrs Danvers is here too!
If Jennifer Lawrence had won for Winter's Bone I'd be more conflicted but as it is the Oscar should have gone to Emmanuelle Riva.
Shirley Temple, the type of Republican that no longer appears to exist in public life-conservative views but living a life of service, honesty and a commitment to helping others especially those less fortunate. She's much missed but what a great legacy she's left us with.
I think Laura Dern's best recent performance is The Tale, but I'm aware I'm very much in the minority on it.
I've been a life-long Tom & Jerry hater. Even as a little kid I thought they were tedious and obnoxious.
Ziggy Stardust is in my Top 10 albums of all time. I listen to it at least once a week.
Atonement should have won the Oscar.
@buttom holed... Sophia Loren won the Oscar when she was young, many, many decades ago. I wasn't even born, and I am 50! Actually she was 28 only!
I am talking about older performers (around 60 or beyond, probably that is why Banderas slipped, because he turned 60 in August last year, after the nom.
Actually the best I've seen Laura Dern are 2 TV performances: Big Little Lies and Enlightened. In Lies she manages to portray rage and craziness without going over the top, and in Enlightened, even though you know she's constantly going too far, you still root for her.
Laura Dern is effortlessly brilliant in her small role in Mask.
Jerry Goldsmith's Oscar win for The Omen is one of my favorite in the score category.
Robert Wagner is one of the last surviving members of the principal cast of The Towering Inferno, my cinematic touchstone.
Why isn't Elizabeth Banks being used more effectively in the movies? Such a waste.
Trevante Rhodes--oh dear. No words.
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars is around my top 5-10 favorite albums by Bowie as it changes all the time. It could be #1 one day but it could be Hunky Dory or Low or Station to Station or Scary Monsters or Black Tie White Noise or Outside. I would put that album somewhere in my top 25-30.
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars definitely top ten Bowie, along with his other studio output from '71-80 (Pin Ups excepted). I'd probably put it around #5 or 6.
And Dern's best is easily Citizen Ruth you dumbasses.
@thevoid99 just one thing - have you SEEN the scene in Big Little Lies where Laura Dern's daughter is talked to by the Mother Goose therapist? I almost split a gut.
I will second Dern’s excellence in The Tale.