birthday Archives - Page 15 of 50

Sigourney Weaver turns 70

Journeyer

Given the relatively few roles of hers that I’ve actually seen, I’ve nevertheless felt as though I’ve watched Sigourney Weaver in lots of films.

The first movie she was in, I’ve viewed several times, a non-speaking part as a date for Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) in Annie Hall (1977).

Then I went to see Alien (1979). OMG. She was fierce and strong and smart, and that was very appealing. No doubt that her character, Ripley, is one of the most significant female protagonists in all of cinema. I never watched any of the sequels – there were at least three – but I’m glad I saw the original. She did reprise Ripley briefly on the TV show Full Frontal with Samantha Bee in 2019.

In Ghostbusters (1984), Sigourney held her own as Dana in the mostly male film. I saw the sequel (1989) to this, but honestly, I’m not remembering it that much.

The performer played a real person, Dian Fossey, in Gorillas in the Mist (1988), a woman studying the primates and trying to stop their decimation. She was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Golden Globe for Best Actress for this role. She’s become a supporter of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and is now its honorary chairwoman.

Sigourney is the mean boss in Working Girl (1988). I know we’re supposed to root for the Melanie Griffith character over the conniving boss stealing her ideas, but Weaver, Oscar-nominated, was such a good villain! The Golden Globes picked as best supporting actress, meaning she won BOTH GG acting awards in the same year.

I loved Dave (1993), even though the Constitutional premise is absurd. Sigourney plays the First Lady, estranged from President Bill Mitchell (Kevin Kline). The White House staff use his doppelganger Dave (Kevin Kline) to cover up the fact that Mitchell had a stroke.

My, but The Ice Storm (1997) was depressingly good at portraying suburban ennui. She won the BAFTA Award – think British Oscars – for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.

Sigourney played The Warden in Holes (2003), and the voice of the ship’s computer in WALL-E (2008).

I wish I had seen the performer, trained at the Yale University School of Drama, on stage. She was a 1985 Tony nominee as Best Featured Actress In A Play in Hurlyburly.

On television, she’s hosted Saturday Night Live twice; I saw the 1986 episode but not the one in 2010. I’ve heard her speak fondly about her father, the late Sylvester L. Weaver Jr., better known as Pat. He virtually pioneered the very concepts of morning and late-night television programming in creating both the Today Show (1952) and Tonight! (1953).

Sigourney and Pat went to the Academy Awards together in 1987, when she was nominated for Best Actress for Aliens; she lost to Marlee Matlin in Children of a Lesser God.

Susan Alexandra “Sigourney” Weaver took her first name from a minor character in The Great Gatsby. My spellcheck does not like that first name, wanting to change it to Journeyer, which would also be appropriate.

She received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in December 1999. Sigourney Weaver turns 70 today. Read this June 2019 interview in PARADE.

Baseball’s Bill James turns 70

sabermetrics

Bill James is quite a noteworthy personage in baseball. No, he doesn’t throw a 95 mph fastball or hit 30 home runs. His approach to baseball is to scientifically analyze the game to figure out why some teams win and some lose.

As someone who used to read the backs of baseball cards, I know the game has always been driven by numbers. James, though, uses what he calls sabermetrics, named for the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). He came up with several categories that others hadn’t concocted; you can see them in the Wikipedia article.

“James began self-publishing an annual book… beginning in 1977. The first edition, titled ‘1977 Baseball Abstract: Featuring 18 categories of statistical information that you just can’t find anywhere else,’ presented 68 pages of in-depth statistics compiled from James’s study of box scores from the preceding season and was offered for sale through a small advertisement in The Sporting News. Seventy-five people purchased the booklet.” Eventually, Bill James found different outlets to present his broader look at statistics.

“Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane began applying sabermetric principles to running his low-budget team in the early 2000s, to notable effect, as chronicled in Michael Lewis’ book Moneyball.” I did see the Moneyball movie, with Brad Pitt.

“In 2003, James was hired by a former reader, John Henry, the new owner of the Boston Red Sox… During his time with the [team, he] has received four World Series rings for the team’s 2004, 2007, 2013, and 2018 victories.”

In the office where I write this purple prose, on the closest bookshelf, resides The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract (1985). It’s a reference book, suitable for a librarian. James provides “an overview of professional baseball decade by decade, along with rankings of the top 100 players at each position.” The book has been updated a couple times, most recently in 2001.

Bill James is more of a geek than I am. He turns 70 on October 5.

Annie Leibovitz turns 70

Visual brilliance

For decades, I had been mispronouncing the last name of photographer Annie Leibovitz. I can even tell you when I figured it out, in December 2011, watching JEOPARDY! of course. One of the contestants gave the response, “Who is Annie Leibowitz?” with a W rather than a V. It is a common mistake, Alex Trebek explained.

Still, I should have figured it out. I had been looking at her work since the 1970s, when she was first staff photographer at Rolling Stone before she became chief photographer in 1973 at the age of 23. She had a “look”, maybe her choice of lighting, that seemed distinctive to me.

She took lots of pictures of the Rolling Stones when they were on tour. Bette Midler in a bed of roses after she starred in the 1979 film The Rose was iconic. Her most famous magazine cover may have been taken on December 8, 1980, of a nude John Lennon lying next to his clothed wife Yoko Ono, taken hours before his murder.

VF

In 1983, Annie Leibovitz she moved to Vanity Fair. Her most noted photo at that magazine was likely a 1991 cover shot showing this actress Demi Moore nude, holding her pregnant belly. In 2003, the magazine noted that her name had become synonymous with the magazine’s “visual brilliance.” In those twenty years, she shot “104 covers and countless portraits for the magazine. In this 24-page portfolio…, V.F. honors the art of America’s most famous photographer.”

Among her other photographs is the one on Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” album showing the Boss’ rear end. For Vogue’s millennium special issue, she grouped 13 historic supermodels to shoot the gatefold cover.

In 1991 she had her first museum exhibition at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, a rare honor for a living photographer.

In 2014 Annie Leibovitz discussed Nine Assignments that Shaped Her Career. “Leibovitz said some of her most important work was a series of photos she took of her apparently abusive partner, essayist Susan Sontag. She said Sontag had extremely high expectations for the photos, which Leibovitz found frustrating. After Sontag died of Myelodysplastic syndrome in 2004, Leibovitz looked back at photos and said she was proud.”

She is teaching photographyonline . In a 2017 issue of Rolling Stone, she looked back on her legendary career.

Anna-Lou “Annie” Leibovitz turns 70 today.

Bruce Springsteen turns 70

“the writer has made one promise”

When Bruce Springsteen made the covers of the magazines TIME and Newsweek in the same week in 1975, I thought his career was pretty much doomed.

I became even more convinced when it took nearly three years between his third album, Born to Run, and Darkness on the Edge of Town.

Bruce put out a double album, The River, in 1980, which actually has a Top 10 single. So naturally, he follows it with the fine, if stark Nebraska, which did OK commercially.

Then the massive commercial and artistic album Born in the USA in 1984. Bruce had to tell Ronald Reagan’s people that the title track does not mean what they thought it meant. There were SIX Top 10 singles from that collection and regular play on MTV, when that was something.

AFTER “THAT” ALBUM

Naturally, Springsteen followed that with a FIVE-ALBUM collection, maybe a tad excessive, but with another charting single. But it’s interesting that after that, he became less the guy with the hits, and more the album-driven artist.

If you exclude live albums and compilations, all of Springsteen’s albums released between 2002 and early 2014 went to #1 on the Billboard charts. That exception was We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions which “only” went to #3. I thought that album a bit too reverent. But the Live Dublin albums, with many of the same musicians and songs, that came out the next year, was loads of fun.

I’ve only seen him perform once. I say “only” because he’s been in the area regularly. His three-hour shows are legendary.

Bruce performed his one-man Broadway show that was well received. He wrote an autobiography, Born to Run. He says, “Writing about yourself is a funny business. But in a project like this, the writer has made one promise, to show the reader his mind. In these pages, I’ve tried to do this.”

Now his new album, Western Stars, is going to be a movie. Bruce Springsteen IS The Boss.

SOME SONGS

Spirit in the Night, 1973
Rosalita, 1973
Born to Run, #23 in 1975
Jungleland, 1975

The Promised Land, 1978
Darkness on the Edge of Town, 1978
Hungry Heart, #5 in 1980
The River, 1980
Atlantic City, 1982

Pink Cadillac, 1984
Janey, Don’t You Lose Heart, 1985
We Are the World – USA for Africa, #1 for four weeks in 1985
Glory Days, #5 in 1985
My Hometown, #6 in 1986
War, #8 in 1986

Brilliant Disguise, #5 in 1987
57 Channels (And Nothin’ On), #68 in 1992
Better Days, B-side of Human Touch (#16), 1992
Streets of Philadelphia, #9 in 1994, and won an Oscar

My City of Ruins, 2002; WTC benefit
Old Dan Tucker, 2006
Radio Nowhere, #102 in 2007
Outlaw Pete, 2009

His YouTube channel
Coverville 1265: Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A., Covered, Track-By-Track

Bruce Springsteen turns 70 on September 23.

Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits turns 70

“Two men say they’re Jesus”

My Mark Knopfler discography is scattered throughout my collections. The first albums were by Dire Straits, the LPs Dire Straits (1978) and Love Over Gold (1982). One of that first batch of CDs I purchased included Brothers in Arms. I was hardly alone. “The album is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the first compact disc (CD) to sell a million copies, and it has been credited with popularising the CD format.”

After the first Dire Straits breakup, Knopfler formed The Notting Hillbillies in 1989, a country/folk band. It put out but one album, Missing…Presumed Having a Good Time (1990), which I’m quite fond of. Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989) is a movie soundtrack, all instrumental. All the Roadrunning (2006) features duets with country music singer Emmylou Harris.

Though I’ve never heard On Every Street (1991), the final album by Dire Straits, I’m quite fond of a cover of The Bug. It was written by Mark Knopfler and recorded by Mary Chapin Carpenter in 1992; her version got to #16 on the country charts.

The group Dire Straits was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018.

Some Mark Knopfler songs:

Money for Nothing – Dire Straits, #1 for three weeks in 1985.
Feel Like Going Home– The Notting Hillbillies
Why Worry– Dire Straits
Railroad Worksong– Notting Hillbillies. A song I knew from my childhood.

Beachcombing– Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris
Private Investigations . Moody and atmospheric.
So Far Away– Dire Straits, #19 in 1986. Brothers in Arms’ first U.K. single, before it became an international smash. In the US, it was released as the third single, after the album had already gone to #1.
Twisting by the Pool– Dire Straits, #105 in 1983. In between Love Over Gold and Brothers in Arms, the band released a four-song EP of old-school rock and swing cuts.

Will You Miss Me– Notting Hillbillies
This Is Us– Mark Knopfler And Emmylou Harris
Blues Stay away from me– Notting Hillbillies
Walk of Life– Dire Straits, #7 in 1986.

Romeo and Juliet– Dire Straits. A lovely piece with references to other songs. The single didn’t chart in the US.
Your own sweet way– The Notting Hillbillies
Sultans of Swing– Dire Straits, #4 in 1979. Their debut single was described as “a masterwork of precisely pointed guitar, a ringing rhythm section and late-night cool.”
Industrial Disease– Dire Straits, #75 in 1983. A reflection of the decline of British industry, and the anxiety and ailments it caused. “Two men say they’re Jesus; one of them must be wrong.”