Happy Birthday ...

to Kim Novak, 80 years old today ...

Happy 100th

Gene Kelly. Born one hundred years ago today.

Immortal, unless the post-apocalyptic world has no DVD players. Maybe Betamax will survive. But if all goes well then there are Gene Kelly fans (lots of them) that haven't even been born yet.

Happy Birthday

to two lovely actors, Alec Guinness and Michael Fassbender, one then, one now.

Happy Birthday Kim Novak

Happy Birthday Marion Cotillard

Happy 36th. And this reminds me, when is Little White Lies, the biggest box-office hit in France's history, going to come out here?

Happy Birthday Anna Karina

71 today. Model, actress, novelist, screenwriter, director. But really I'm just posting this as an excuse to post the video below from Bande a Part. I could watch this dance sequence (here it's set to a Nouvelle Vague song, not in the original movie) endless times. Coincidentally, this was the scene that Tarantino showed to John Travolta and Uma Thurman before filming their dance sequence in Pulp Fiction. They were nervous and so he wanted to show them that film dancing didn't necessarily have to be perfect. A Band Apart is also the name of Tarantino's production company. Enjoy.

Happy Birthday, Betty Joan Perske

Better known as Lauren Bacall, and 87 today.

Happy 60th Birthday, Michael Keaton

Underrated, I believe. And still my favorite Batman. I will always dream of the Ray Nicolette movie that never happened. Maybe it's not too late.

Happy 50th Birthday, Alexandre Desplat

Any composer who can do the score for The Painted Veil and the score for Fantastic Mr. Fox (not to mention the last two Harry Potter films) deserves a very happy birthday.

Happy Birthday Hitch

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, 1899 - 1980

Happy Birthday Myrna Loy

Myrna Loy, 1905 - 1993

Happy Birthday Anna Torv

I just wanted an excuse to post this photograph.

Happy Birthday Woody

In honor of Woody Allen's 75th birthday a special Film Frames Wednesday. Stills from ten of my favorite Woody Allen films. I know he has made a ton of mediocre pictures, but how many directors out there have made ten good films, including a few great ones. Happy 75th, Woody.

Happy Birthday Sylvia Plath

Today is Plath's birthday. She wrote a couple of poems about birthdays, including this one, A Birthday Present. She wrote it in September of 1962, about a month before her thirtieth birthday and about five months before she committed suicide.

A Birthday Present

What is this, behind this veil, is it ugly, is it beautiful?
It is shimmering, has it breasts, has it edges?

I am sure it is unique, I am sure it is what I want.
When I am quiet at my cooking I feel it looking, I feel it thinking

‘Is this the one I am too appear for,
Is this the elect one, the one with black eye-pits and a scar?

Measuring the flour, cutting off the surplus,
Adhering to rules, to rules, to rules.

Is this the one for the annunciation?
My god, what a laugh!’

But it shimmers, it does not stop, and I think it wants me.
I would not mind if it were bones, or a pearl button.

I do not want much of a present, anyway, this year.
After all I am alive only by accident.

I would have killed myself gladly that time any possible way.
Now there are these veils, shimmering like curtains,

The diaphanous satins of a January window
White as babies’ bedding and glittering with dead breath. O ivory!

It must be a tusk there, a ghost column.
Can you not see I do not mind what it is.

Can you not give it to me?
Do not be ashamed–I do not mind if it is small.

Do not be mean, I am ready for enormity.
Let us sit down to it, one on either side, admiring the gleam,

The glaze, the mirrory variety of it.
Let us eat our last supper at it, like a hospital plate.

I know why you will not give it to me,
You are terrified

The world will go up in a shriek, and your head with it,
Bossed, brazen, an antique shield,

A marvel to your great-grandchildren.
Do not be afraid, it is not so.

I will only take it and go aside quietly.
You will not even hear me opening it, no paper crackle,

No falling ribbons, no scream at the end.
I do not think you credit me with this discretion.

If you only knew how the veils were killing my days.
To you they are only transparencies, clear air.

But my god, the clouds are like cotton.
Armies of them. They are carbon monoxide.

Sweetly, sweetly I breathe in,
Filling my veins with invisibles, with the million

Probable motes that tick the years off my life.
You are silver-suited for the occasion. O adding machine—–

Is it impossible for you to let something go and have it go whole?
Must you stamp each piece purple,

Must you kill what you can?
There is one thing I want today, and only you can give it to me.

It stands at my window, big as the sky.
It breathes from my sheets, the cold dead center

Where split lives congeal and stiffen to history.
Let it not come by the mail, finger by finger.

Let it not come by word of mouth, I should be sixty
By the time the whole of it was delivered, and to numb to use it.

Only let down the veil, the veil, the veil.
If it were death

I would admire the deep gravity of it, its timeless eyes.
I would know you were serious.

There would be a nobility then, there would be a birthday.
And the knife not carve, but enter

Pure and clean as the cry of a baby,
And the universe slide from my side.

Happy Birthday Carrie Fisher

Happy 83rd Roger Moore

Or should I say, Sir Roger Moore ...

Happy Birthday Bill Murray

In honor of his day, here are my top ten Murray performances:

Zombieland

"Garfield, maybe."

Kingpin
"Tanqueray and Tab and keep 'em comin'."

The Royal Tenenbaums

"You made a cuckold of me."

Lost in Translation

"Hey? Lip them? Lip them? What?"

Scrooged

"I never liked a girl well enough to give her twelve sharp knives."

Tootsie

"That is one nutty hospital."

Stripes

"Chicks dig me, because I rarely wear underwear and when I do it's usually something unusual."

Ghostbusters

"She's not my girlfriend. I find her interesting because she's a client and because she sleeps above her covers... four feet above her covers"

Rushmore

"Take dead aim on the rich boys. Get them in the crosshairs and take them down."

Groundhog Day

"Can I have another one of these with some booze in it?"

Happy 80th Birthday, Mr. Connery

Happy Birthday Hitch

Born today in 1899.