The Film Experience April Calendar 2005

	APRIL Welcome to the latest addition to my already completely unwieldly site! Yes, I am hopelessly lacking in self control. I can't stop. April's hot tamale is Brittany Murphy, because I do so love the way she leans out that window in Sin City. I know we're already halfway through the month but if you enjoy, this might become a regular (and theoretically less-belated) feature. As always feedback is appreciated. Feed the obsession. It has a monstrous appetite. Happy Spring!
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10 Happy b-day to Haley Joel Osment (17 -God, I feel old) I don't care for A.I. but that boy can act. Other b-days today are legendary stars Max Von Sydow (75) & Omar Sharif (72) Classics: On this day 55 years ago, All About Eve started shooting --"It's going to be a bumpy night" and 50 years back East of Eden hit theaters.	11 Happy B-day to Bill Irwin who's treading the Broadway stage with Kathleen Turner in an awesome revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? If you are unfamiliar with the play, read it now or rent the superb film version starring those legendary quarreling lovers Liz Taylor & Richard Burton. Taylor won a deserved Oscar for her frumpification. Oh, the formula...	12 Claire Danes is 25! Cross your fingers for Shopgirl (opening this fall) to restore her to glory. On this day in 2001 Gangs of New York finished shooting. Somehow it famously took the next 20 months for post-production and Oscar planning for it's Dec 02 release.	13 B-days for 50ish character actors Hellboy Ron Perlman and William Sadler (known lately for scary/creepy cameo in Kinsey and onstage now as Julius Caesar) It's also the joint b-day of director Stanley Donen (Singin' in the Rain) and the late Howard Keel who together made the über-sexist Seven Brides for Seven Brothers	14 Happy 31st birthday to my former beau Adrien Brody. Who is still piping hot... but needs to be as great as he was in The Pianist again.	15 Here's a question: For biopic obsessed Hollywood, how come Leonardo DaVinci (born 552 years ago today) isn't the subject of one? Not that I'm encouraging it mind you. Biopics = blech. Opening today: that Amityville Horror remake, Duchovny's House of D and the cine-doc Tell Them Who You Are	16 Laws of Attraction opened a year ago today. Nathaniel wept for his Julie Ann. Will 2005 be a big artistic comeback year? Will it? Happy 80th birthday to Henry Mancini. I bet y'all just started humming the Pink Panther score.
17 Last year on this date Oscar nominee Lost in Translation made it to Japan... What did they think of it? Can't recall the media covering this after the American critical lovefest.	18 Thirty-one years ago today Roger Moore began shooting his 2nd James Bond feature The Man with the Golden Gun. Producers are looking now for the 6th (?) Bond Will it be Daniel Craig as rumored?	19 On this date 75 years ago The Divorcée opened and would eventually win Norma Shearer her Oscar for Best Actress. 44 years ago La Dolce Vita hit American theaters. And just 4 years ago the underrated and digitally shot (before that was usual) Center of the World had its US premiere. The film starred the formidable (and now considerably more famous) Peter Sarsgaard and Canada's eery sex goddess Molly Parker.	20 Annie Hall opened 28 years ago today and remains the modern pinnacle of the romantic-comedy. Bram Stoker died on 04/20/1912, not living to see the first screen version of his classic Dracula, FW Murnau's Nosferatu, which opened a decade later.	21 75 years ago today the 3rd Best Picture Oscar winner ever All Quiet on the Western Front debuted. Andie MacDowell turns 47 today. Remember when word was she would never work again when Glenn Close had to redub her vocals for Greystoke (84) but then she reappeared 5 years later with a great performance in sex, lies, & videotape? Auteur Claire Denis turns 57. Joyeuse Anniversaire.	22 Earth Day (USA) Watch your favorite DiCaprio flick. Opening today: The Penn/Kidman drama The Interpreter. I think they're both great actors but I'm just done at the moment with both: Too many films --Let someone else work once in a while! I mean, greedy much?	23 Passover Begins Happy 50th birthday to the estimable Judy Davis. Now Judy --please quit all that nonsense with television movies and return to the big screen where you belong. Remember how grand you were in the 90s? Today also marks the 441st anniversary of Hollywood's favorite screenwriter's birth. He goes by the quaint moniker of "William Shakespeare." They can't stop making movies by him.
24 Happy 71st birthday to Shirley Maclaine! She's all set to have quite a year with three films in which she has crucial roles premiereing (the uniteld Rob Reiner film, In Her Shoes, and Bewitched). Can Shirley nab her 7th nomination? The first after her Terms of Endearment win? Dark-haired beauties Natalie Wood and Gene Kelly (two of this film bitch's all time favs) co-starred in a dramatic film Marjorie Morningstar which opened 47 years ago today. It failed to do much for either's career but it does provide the rare opportunity to see Kelly in a non-musical role.	25 Anzac Day (Aust.) I have no idea what this holiday is for in Australia but so many great movie stars come from the land Down Under that you owe it to yourself to pay homage by viewing any of these lesser seen films with the following actors: Russell Crowe (Proof or The Sum of Us), Nicole Kidman (Flirting), Judy Davis (The New Age or the hilarious The Ref w/ Spacey), Eric Bana (Chopper), Toni Collette (Japanese Story or The Velvet Goldmine) and recently Oscared Cate Blanchett (Oscar and Lucinda w/ Ralph Fiennes or Heaven)	26 Happy b-day to Marianne Jean-Baptiste. Remember how great she was in Secrets & Lies? Kate Winslet had an unheralded but great year 6 years back. On the heels of Titanic, the debut of Hideous Kinky on this day prompted speculation that she was throwing her career away. Holy Smoke! opened 8 months later to similar head scratching. How wrong everyone ('cept me ;) turned out to be!	27 It's Sandy Dennis' (RIP) birthday so if you didn't watch Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? when I told you to on the 11th maybe you should pop it in the DVD player and find out why she won the Oscar for this role. Sean Penn married Robin Wright Penn 9 years ago today and undoubtedly broke Nick's heart. Damn you Sean! (Madonna probably wasn't too happy about that either)	28 Five years ago, Lars Von Trier's controversial (even by his standards) Dogme film The Idiots was finally released in the USA despite having premiered two years earlier elsewhere as part of the one-two punch of the birth of the Danish Dogme 95 manifesto (along with the considerably more acclaimed The Celebration) The Idiots is awesome. Don't believe what you've heard.	29 Happy birthday to the one, the only, the incomparable Michelle Pfeiffer! (see Pfandom for more adulation.) Opening today: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, an Argentian film The Holy Girl which some cinéastes love, and the xXx sequel (w/out Vin Diesel)	30 Kirsten Dunst turns 23 today. She's the best 20something English-speaking actress on the planet now that Kate Winslet is 30. Don't believe me? Have a quadruple feature of Bring It On, The Virgin Suicides, The Cat's Meow, and crazy/beautiful and then try telling me she's not. To my face. In sadder news this day marks the death of Agnes Moorehead in 1974.