Fearful (both meanings) actresses

For more on the particular problems facing Hollywood actresses, check out this review of Basic Instinct 2 and Sharon Stone's performance therein. (registration required)

_________________

"Uh, if it's OK with you,

I'll just drink it neat."

In praise of fearless actresses

As you can tell from the previous entry, I'm excited to see The Notorious Bettie Page when it opens two weeks from today. (Of late, it seems A and I talk of little else.) I finally saw a trailer for it last weekend before Thank You for Smoking (which itself was pretty good). The trailer as a whole was no great shakes, but I was thrilled to see images from the movie at long last.
As Bettie, a nearly unrecognizable (to me) Gretchen Mol nonetheless bears little physical resemblance to the hypnotic pinup queen. More importantly though, like Bettie, she appears game. I don't think I've seen Ms. Mol in anything, but I am familiar with the basic outline of her late-90's Hollywood narrative, a story in which, to destroy her nascent career, the celebrity-entertainment complex did everything short of awarding her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar (all apologies to Marisa Tomei), including lavishing (damning?) her with the excessive or, at best, premature praise most notably captured in that now-notorious Vanity Fair cover article and photo. (Pursuant to the tired Hollywood clichés, we'll dispense with any distinctions between praise and coverage.) The magazine asked, "Is she Hollywood's next 'it' girl?" History answered with a resounding no. I don't know whether her own unfortunate Hollywood experience gives Ms. Mol special access to any maltreatment and manipulation in Bettie's story; in any event, I can't wait to see this biopic of the "dark Marilyn."
The role required Ms. Mol to perform nude and, from what I can tell, to gain a staggering amount of weight to place her just inside the normal-range minimum. I predict, when the film opens, certain middle-aged (heterosexual) male film critics will breathlessly praise the actress' fearlessness in what to them will seem like the second coming of Maria Bello. Don't get me wrong; I like Ms. Bello, especially her performance in A History of Violence. I find, though, it can be difficult to parse the notices for performances in which an actress removes her clothes because it appears that some reviewers have every interest in keeping the T&A pipeline open (a possibly noble but nonetheless distinct goal from that of assessing a performance's quality, I would think).
Another form of "fearlessness" is suggested by Ms. Mol's Bettie but is often calculated to other, more grandiose ends: a clear and sometimes showy attempt on the part of an otherwise beautiful actress to appear unattractive or merely plain or "raw" by gaining substantial weight (by their standards) or abandoning the usual public demands of hair and makeup. Julianne Moore, Naomi Watts and, yes, Maria Bello have all done this to great success, but the statuesque Charlize Theron's Oscar-winning performance in Monster is the ne plus ultra (or nadir) of this aesthetic slumming. Her serial killer was scary and naked! (Of course, male actors have undergone dramatic physical transformations for a role -- Robert DeNiro's Jake LaMotta and Tom Hanks in Cast Away are obvious examples -- but they are usually not similarly regarded for their striking beauty and red-carpet appearances.) Take heart, then, Gretchen: if you want to be thought of as fearless, you are well on your way as a result of exposing your new curves. Now, if you could just do the same while looking positively frightful, you might follow Charlize's gilded path, bypassing altogether the supporting actor awards and any associated curses.
The Notorious Bettie Page opens in limited release April 14.

Spring Movie Showdown: Battle of the Bangs

V vs. B

Go, Bettie!

You know where I stand/stumble/lurch

Add my voice to the din.

From Sunday's New York Times:

Perhaps the biggest debate in the zombie world is whether zombies have to move slowly, as they do in the Romero movies, or whether they may run. Some of the first sprinting zombies appeared in the 2002 film "28 Days Later." In [the novel] "The Rising," Mr. [Brian] Keene's zombies can sprint and even drive vehicles, qualities some zombie purists object to.

"I gave them an upgrade," Mr. Keene said.

Warren St. John, "Market for Zombies? It's Undead (Aaahhh!)" (registration required)

"Upgrade"?!? Hmph.

Death stalks

Driving in to work today, I passed some middle-aged jogger mid-warmup or cooldown. From the telltale sheen on his bald pate, I guessed the latter. But beyond mild Monday-morning contempt and a vague instinct to jerk my wheel and swerve over his healthy-for-his-age body without slowing, I wasn't preoccupied with him or anything. I did notice, though, that his regimen involved raising his hands to the sky in worshipful obeisance to the false god of exercise. (It really wasn't that pious. His stretching merely made him look like some kind of official or referee acknowledging some kind of score or goal in some kind of sport or pastime. Then again, if we are to believe professional ballplayers and the like, maybe there's little difference between the two activities: God's active involvement in the play and outcome of such games, not to mention the Grammys and, of late, reality TV, no longer seems a legitimate subject of debate.) It's not that I'm some anti-jogger fascist, and these sentiments aren't quite as callous as my former hope that cell phones actually do cause brain cancer. (I had to moderate my opinion in light of my own begrudging acquisition of a mobile.) I just don't understand the chosen activity of running and find it unattractive in any form. Like many boys my age (29ish), I love zombies, an evergreen topic as far as I'm concerned, but was disheartened to see the titular characters of the Dawn of the Dead remake (2004) giving vigorous chase like a pack of wild dogs after their human quarry. Zombies, for the most part, are part of the prestigious tradition of the lumbering but single-minded movie monster, a tradition that includes, for instance, Halloween's masked Michael Myers and extends at least as far back as Karloff's mummy. (Willing suspension of disbelief permits me to accept that the dead could be reanimated, but not without some resultant loss of motor functioning, skills and speed. I forgive 28 Days Later and its clever gloss on zombie lore. Its "zombies" weren't strictly undead but had contracted a disease that had immediately manifested itself in hyperaggression, no doubt making neocons in the Pentagon salivate with envy.) These slow yet deliberate villains are, like death itself, an implacable force. The stories in which they appear often have added resonance because it is only through royally fucking up that we, the stupid and petty living, whether individually or as part of some band of survivors, fall prey to these monsters' patient persistence. With or without zombies or some other bugaboo, the risk of death is a constant presence from the moment we are born. Death stalks, and no amount of jogging or other exercise will alter his endgame. Run all you want; he'll wait.
Happy Monday, and thanks, A & L, for your own version of persistence.