BIRTHDAY
December 18, 1980
Staten Island, NY

RECENT CREDITS
Burlesque (FILM) Nov. 24, 2010
Get Him to the Greek (FILM) Jun. 4, 2010
Making the Video (TV) Feb. 21, 2007
Late Show With David Letterman (TV) Feb. 8, 2007
Ellen DeGeneres Show (TV) Feb. 7, 2007

Download Christina Aguilera

Hollywood cranked out women's pictures (or 'weepies' as they came to be known, or are now known as "chick flicks") with excessive emotional fervor in the 1930s and after. In part because they contained few strong male characters and matinee idols suitable for swooning, they were films created for the female segment of the audience. Producers thought women would be more interested than men in relationships, love, and marriage, thereby escaping from their own problems, and empathizing (and weeping) with the on-screen sufferings of strong female protagonists. Female audiences would be attracted to plot lines that included doomed love affairs, infidelity, unrequited love, various family crises, or marital separation. The protagonists of women's films would often overcome stereotypical gender roles, and the films would examine the strong achievements of these characters.

Download The 30s "Weepies"

In the 1930s and early 40s, American sound films with hybrid science fiction/horror themes included an oddball collection of mad scientist films, with memorable characters who created mutated or shrunken creatures:

Download Mad Scientists in Early Horror/Sci-Fi Films

The first American serial was the groundbreaking 12-reel What Happened to Mary? (1912), a production of Thomas A. Edison's Company, that starred Mary Fuller (the first true serial queen), and was released concurrently with the serial story "What Happened to Mary?" in McClure's Ladies' World Magazine. Each film chapter was released simultaneously with the corresponding story in the magazine, one story per month, beginning July 26th, 1912. The series was followed with the six-episode Who Will Marry Mary? (1913), and with another twelve episode series, The Active Life of Dolly of the Dailies (1914).

Download The Earliest US Serials

The first "Lord of the Jungle" was actor Elmo Lincoln - he started the trend in 1918 during the silent era with Tarzan of the Apes (1918). There were a couple of 1920s Tarzan silent serials: the 15-chapter serial The Adventures of Tarzan (1921) with Elmo Lincoln, the 15-chapter serial Tarzan the Mighty (1928), and the 15-chapter serial Tarzan the Tiger (1929). Others who played Tarzan before Weissmuller were Gene Pollar, P. Dempsey Tabler, Jim Pierce, and Frank Merrill.

Download Early Tarzan Serials

War films were revived in the mid-1920s during peace-time. MGM's and King Vidor's The Big Parade (1925) was a new kind of war film, and the first to realistically portray the horrors of battle and the struggle for survival by three soldier-comrades (a bartender, a riveter, and a millionaire's son) in the trenches. It also told of a love affair between an American doughboy (John Gilbert) and a French peasant girl (Renee Adoree). The film was a spectacular success, and made more money than any other MGM film production up to its time. MGM wished to repeat the film's success with Tell It To the Marines (1926), with Lon Chaney as tough Marine sergeant, O'Hara (Chaney's own favorite role, a 'straight' one without makeup). Next to Garbo's Flesh and the Devil (1926), it was MGM's second most profitable film of the year.

Download A Revival of War Films in the Mid-1920s

Another hardboiled detective, a suave and sophisticated sleuth named the Falcon, was featured in another RKO series during the 1940s - almost a carbon-copy of RKO's former Saint. The debonair and aristocratic Falcon character was taken from Michael Arlen's detective stories. In six years, there were 13 black and white films in the RKO series. Various actors portrayed the Britisher (named Gay Falcon, Tom Falcon, and Mike Waring) in the 16 Falcon pictures, including the former Saint George Sanders (1941-1942) in the first four, and then Tom Conway (Sander's real-life brother) in the next nine (from 1943-1946). After a two-year break, independent low-budget Film Classics bought the rights to the Falcon, and produced three more entires with John Calvert (1948-49):

Download British Detectives - The Falcon

Creative director Rouben Mamoulian stylishly remade the Fairbanks' 1920 Zorro tale almost two decades later as the historical swashbuckler The Mark of Zorro (1940) with Tyrone Power as the dashing, masked and foppish hero Don Diego Vega in old California, who duels with a villainous oppressor (Basil Rathbone) to the death in the film's climax. The 1940 version also featured glowing and gorgeous Linda Darnell and Gale Sondergaard as the good and bad female characters respectively.

Download The Zorro Tales

# Peter Medak's tense haunted house entry The Changeling (1980), with George C. Scott as a mourning widower who moved into a haunted Seattle historical mansion, which ultimately manifested a murder committed many years earlier in its attic
# Stanley Kubrick's stylish and overlong The Shining (1980), a loose adaptation of Stephen King's novel, with Jack Nicholson as an ex-alcoholic, failed writer who becomes the caretaker of a huge, wintry Colorado resort and turns psychotic toward his family as he resorts to the same behavior as the former caretaker who axe-murdered his family in the past

Download Ghost Stories also abounded during the 80s and after

Prep work continued on David O. Russell’s adaptation of Matthew Quick’s novel The Silver Linings Playbook with Winter’s Bone and X-Men: First Class actress Jennifer Lawrence in talks for the role of an eccentric neighbor who befriends a former high school teacher trying to restart his life after being institutionalized for depression.

Download Jennifer Lawrence In Talks for THE SILVER LINING!