OTD: Don Cheadle debuts, Mae West sentenced, Marie-Antoinette marries (sort of)

On this day (April 19th) in history as it relates to showbiz...

1770 Marie Antoinette married by proxy to Louis-Auguste. A month later she travels from Austria to the forest of Compiègne to meet her husband (essentially where Sofia Coppola's great 2006 film starring Kirsten Dunst begins) and the two soon have a ceremonial wedding.

1898 Silent screen star Constance Talmadge born (the year is disputed but around there!). One of many silent giants whose fame didn't transfer to "the talkies"...

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Halfway House 2012. Lead Actress (Thus Far)

Don't you love to take stock every six months? At the very least it's a good excuse for list-making. Lists! Wheeee. If all Academy members did this before they sent in their nominee ballots in January, we might end up with a spread of nominees that wasn't so December slanted. I never decide who to vote for this early but I do draw up lists of performances I enjoyed /  respected to consider again later in the year when all the advertising rushes in an effort to shape the highly malleable collective subconscious and thus, votes.

If I had to draw up a ballot right now:

• Judi Dench, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
  The movie is considerably less broad once it's reigned in by her warmth, laughter, and subtlety
• Valerie Donzelli, Declaration of War (France's Oscar submission 2011, US release in 2012)
  She still has raw wound access to what must have been a highly traumatic experience (she and her ex-boyfriend play fictionalized versions of themselves trying to save their nearly fatally ill child) but the turn has a wide range of feeling and levity via mischievous romantic impulses and gallows humor.
• Jennifer Lawrence, The Hunger Games
  How soon till she's back at the Oscars? Maybe not for this... directly. 
• Stephanie Sigman, Miss Bala (Mexico's Oscar submission 2011, US release in 2012)
  Wonderfully naturalistic. She just vibrates with impotent terror. 
• Quvenzhané Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild 
  A force of nature even while nature is whipping up mythological force all around in "the bathtub" 

Oscar thoughts and other fine performances after the jump...

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