Today's 5: Gigi, Bulworth, and much Cannes mania

Here are you five mood boosting anniversaries from showbiz history. Do these things today and report back on how they made you feel!

May 15th

2015 At the 68th annual Cannes Film Festival Son of Saul, Embrace of the Serpent, and The Lobster, all have their world premieres. All three go on to successful awards runs and arthouse releases.

In their honor: Embrace your singular point of view, however strange it seems at first. So many of the greatest movies over the years did this...

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Shakespeare in Love > Saving Private Ryan (your periodic reminder)

On this day in movie history...

1617 Though the exact date of her death is unknown, Pocahontas's funeral was held on this day. She died on a ship with husband John Rolfe (played by Christian Bale in The New World but he wasn't a character in Disney's Pocahontas because that woulda been hella depressing). She was only 21 or 22
1880 "Bronco Billy" Anderson, the original movie cowboy star (he made hundreds of silent shorts) is born
1941 The Sea Wolf starring Edward G Robinson and Ida Lupino is released. Director Michael Curtiz is warming up for his rather incredible peak decade (Captain of the Clouds, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Casablanca, Mildred Pierce and more are next)
1949 Slavoj Zizek of The Perverts Guide to Cinema (2006) is born
1956 The 1955 Oscars. Marty becomes both the shortest film to ever win Best Picture and the first indie to do so.
1958 Gary Oldman is born...

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Feud: Bette and Joan. "Mommie Dearest"

Previously
Ch. 1 "Pilot"
Ch. 2 "The Other Woman" 

Feud's writing team is nothing if not devoted to playing to a single theme per episode. All but a couple of scenes in chapter 3 of Feud are devoted to the notion of mothering (though Victor Buono's more generous notion of "legacy" might have been a smarter move for retroactive potency). Or at least the show spends this hour playing with our pre-conceptions of the mothering skills of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. That's evident in the way it pulls the episode title from the infamous Christina Crawford memoir that damned Joan forever in the public eye as a psychopath and child abuser. In one of the earliest scenes we even get a potent reminder of this memoir as Joan pretends she's not going to send Christina a card congratulating her on the opening of a play until she reads reviews, but then signs the card "Mommie Dearest," as soon as two of her other children are out of sight.

I know what you think of my mothering...

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On This Day: Globes for two goddesses. Plus a non-jolly green giant

On this day in history as it relates to showbiz...

1892  One of Old Hollywood's most undersung but talented 1930s directors Gregory La Cava is born. Classics include Stage Door and My Man Godfrey
1913 Famed abolitionist and American hero Harriet Tubman dies of pneumonia. So glad she's getting biopic treatment soon. And twice over!
1938 The 10th annual Oscars are held with The Life of Emile Zzzzzola winning Best Picture and Louise Rainer taking her consecutive Best Actress prize but the most enduring anecdote was of course the theft of Alice Brady's Oscar for In Old Chicago.
1958 Sharon Stone is born in Pennysylvania

The 1959 Golden Globes (and more) are after the jump...

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25 Days Until Oscar...

Twenty-five days is not much. Are you ready? For today's special number, I thought we'd look back at the 25th annual Oscars, the first televised Academy Awards ever, but then I realized we'd already written a huge post about it with actresses falling on stairs and everything! So let's keep this simple. What's your choice for BEST of 1952 (beyond Singin' in the Rain)?

The nominees were:

• The Greatest Show on Earth
• High Noon
• Ivanhoe
• Moulin Rouge
• The Quiet Man

...and if there'd been three to five more nominees they would surely have included The Bad and the Beautiful which won 5 Oscars, the most ever won by a non Best Picture nominee), and Viva Zapata! which had 5 nominations, 3 of them major categories. If it had extended beyond 7 perhaps a combo of less loved or more divisive pictures like My Cousin Rachel (the remake is coming out this very year starring Rachel Weisz), Sudden Fear (4 noms and it's awesome), 5 Fingers (2 major nominations and British so prestige), or either of the traditional biopics like Hans Christian Anderson (6 nominations) or With a Song in My Heart (5 nominations). Famously they weren't into Singin' in the Rain at the time (2 nominations) which will always be a bonkers fact.