StinkyLulu on The 8 Things Meme (Squared)

StinkyLulu had just begun to feel left out of the "8 Things" that's been zipping around when - lo, behold - two "tags" landed within but a few hours. As I do love being tagged for these things, I opted to answer both tags...at the same time. So, for each of the 8 Things you may not know about StinkyLulu, you'll get two tidbits: the first in the literary & queer historical spirit of Queering The Apparatus (tagger #1) and the second in the trashtastic pop cultural vibe of I Am Screaming And Punching Myself (tagger #2). The two halves do indeed make up the whole of StinkyLulu, 'magine that.

THE RULES
1. All right, here are the rules.
2. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
3. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
4. People who are tagged write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
5. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to tag and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

8 THINGS ABOUT STINKYLULU

1. I have never seen* Casablanca, Gone With The Wind, Singin' in the Rain or Schindler's List; I have seen every single one of Designing Women's 163 episodes no fewer than four times. (*"Never seen" in this context means that I have never seen the entire movie, from front to back, in one screening.)

2. I was personally introduced to Diana Ross while we were both standing in a Wendy's parking lot in Providence, Rhode Island; later that day, I introduced myself to Edward Albee while we were both standing in the lobby of a Times Square porn theatre/go-go boy palace.

3. I realized I was gay while reading an article in my mother's Cosmopolitan magazine; the article was about transsexuals.

4. In 1986, I was named the first place national winner of a patriotic speech contest; at the award ceremony, they presented me with a huge fake check and a "gold record" purportedly of my speech.

5. My first sexual experience took place in The Netherlands when I was barely a teenager; my first experience with intoxicants took place that same year in Saudi Arabia.

6. While a struggling theatre dude in NYC post-college, I paid the bills by working as a phone sex operator; my two most popular personas were "Dean" and "Sheena."

7. At an event celebrating Item 4, Strom Thurmond -- the controversial Senator from South Carolina -- sought me out and offered me a job as a speech writer; at another such event, I lunched with Olivia De Haviland, Mary Lou Retton, and Shirley Temple Black.

8. If I had it to do all over again, I would return that call I got in 1991 from that assistant producer of that new MTV show about roommates and try finagle a gig on the production side of things; my biggest fantasy is to be a contributor to This American Life.

And as per the instructions, StinkyLulu tags the following: Your Mom, Fag Yer It, Raybee, In Which Our Hero, Anna, RBurton, and Canadian Ken.

Supporting Actress Sundays for July '07: 1988

The results are in from the voting for July's Supporting Actress Sundays. With nearly 40% of the 100+ votes cast for this July, StinkyLulu and The Smackdowners will take on...

1988

Oscar's Supporting Actresses for 1988 are:

Joan Cusack in Working Girl
Geena Davis in The Accidental Tourist
Frances McDormand in Mississippi Burning
Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Liaisons
Sigourney Weaver in Working Girl

Supporting Actresses Smackdown for 1988:
Sunday, July 29.
Featuring an all-star Smackdown panel, including
Ken, Nathaniel, Nick, Brad, Newland &
welcoming Keith!
Hostessed of course by yours truly, StinkyLulu.
Save the date!

Whoo-whee, off we go!!!!!

"Need We Say More?" (Homo Heritage Fridays)

from MANDATE: The International Magazine About Men.

July 1982, Inside Front Cover.
For details, click the image; then click again to magnify.

"Gee, I Wonder..." (Photoquote Thursdays)

via the reliably sensible noggin of Cary Tennis at Salon
click image to be routed to full post
(it's Salon so you have to watch an ad-let)

Meryl Streep in The Deer Hunter - Supporting Actress Sundays

Screening The Deer Hunter for the first time caused StinkyLulu to develop an attitude problem. See, StinkyLulu finds it just creepy and annoying that "one of the most important and powerful films of all time", before it's even 1/4-way done, stages not one but two separate scenes in which a blonde in a pink bridesmaid dress gets punched in the face. As a device -- perhaps -- to demonstrate the brutality of life on the "homefront" the blonde-punching might make a certain kind of sense...a certain kind of gratuitous, hyperbolic and misogynist sense. (We won't get into how lazy it is that, even as Cimino lugubriously details the distinctive "pain" of each of his 6 or 7 male characters, the female characters are basically old bats, drunk sluts, catatonic brides or designated punching bags.) But, then again, everything about Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter is gratuitous, hyperbolic -- and, on those infrequent occasions when Cimino pauses to think about women at all -- "punched up" with misogyny. Just pisses StinkyLulu off...'specially when one of those punching bags just happens to be...

...Meryl Streep in The Deer Hunter (1978).

approximately 30 minutes and 56 seconds
25 scenes
roughly 17% of film's total running time

Meryl Streep plays Linda, the girl caught between her devotion to her fiance Nick (Christopher Walken) and her attraction to his incredibly hot (nsfw) best friend Michael (Robert DeNiro), both of whom -- as the movie begins -- are readying for tours in Vietnam.

The character of Linda is barely a character at all. As scripted, she's little more than the all-purpose movie "girl" -- the good girl, the girl at home, the kind of girl a guy marries, the girl whose picture the fighting soldier holds close to his heart, the girl who writes the "dear john" letter, the girl who works at the market in the hometown that never feels like home again to the returning veteran, the girl that got away... Linda's an archetype, a symbol, a stock character drawn in bold, unoriginal strokes. That is, until an emerging actress named Meryl Streep took the role.

Meryl Streep does more than spin gold from straw in her performance; Streep retrieves a fully-inhabited characterization from a role that's not so much a character as a pathetically underconceptualized plot device. Through the forceful clarity of her performance and the (mostly wordless) chemistry she establishes with DeNiro's Michael and even a little bit of goofiness, Streep's Linda becomes one of the most vivid presences in Cimino's film.

Truly, Streep acts her butt off in this thankless prop of a part. Her Linda is beautiful, gentle, a little bit dangerous and absolutely riveting. What's more, even though I'm left with no idea “who” Linda is, Streep’s emotional intricacies make me care about Linda anyway. I may not understand "who" Linda is, but I have no doubt "that" she is a living, breathing, complicated woman. Hers is a curious accomplishment. She's in the film, but somehow not of the film.

Streep's performance as Linda proclaimed her arrival on the screen as perhaps THE film actress of her generation. Her performance is vastly greater than the role, more emotionally substantial in some ways (at least for StinkyLulu) than the film. And while StinkyLulu somehow, for some reason, stops short of loving the performance, this much is clear: Meryl Streep's admirable and memorable performance as Linda in The Deer Hunter proclaimed her arrival as an actressing force to be reckoned with.

Now, if only she had punched back...

To Dos Day

___ Item 1: REJOICE at the "return"...
...of one of StinkyLulu's most favoritest blogs in all the whole wide blogosphere: 6 Things.

___ Item 2: FOLLOW...
...Bitch PhD's simple instructions. (Just do what she says already.)

___ Item 3: CROSS-STITCH or NEEDLEPOINT or QUILT...

...or Sharpie your experience in this very smart action (via Feministing).

___ Item 4: DISCOVER the delights...

...of your Dead Celebrity Soulmate. And check out who popped as StinkyLulu's -- XY version & XX version. Apropos, no? (Via Electronic Cerebrectomy.)

___ Item 5: TAKE a shower...
...after screening One D At A Time's totally NSFW mashup of Alpha Dog. The sick part? After that, I want to see that trash more than ever... Emile Hirsch and Shawn Hatosy are totally the focus of my best cradlerobbing fantasies. Woof.

___ Item 6: TUNE in...
...on Wednesday for the final 1978 Supporting Actress profile...on the one and only Meryl Streep, in her first nomination, for her second film no less. Then, be sure to weigh in on the Streep-toversy that emerged during this past Sunday's 1978 Smackdown. And, while you're breathing all those Supporting Actress fumes, don't forget to toss in your vote on the roster for July. (A new month of Sundays starts in just 5 days!!!)

Have at it, lovelies...

Archie Panjabi in A Mighty Heart (2007) - Supporting Actress Watch

For a long while, StinkyLulu's been inclined to think of Michael Winterbottom's A Mighty Heart as the "Angie does brownface" movie. The whole docudramatic premise -- a "ripped from the headlines" story of a woman waiting to hear that her missing husband's been brutally murdered -- seemed possibly well-intentioned but just, oh, tacky and self-important. (Sorta like StinkyLulu's baseline opinion of Angelina Jolie, but that's another post, for another time.) So 'magine Lu's surprise when it turned out that Winterbottom's film version of Mariane Pearl's memoir proved to be a startlingly effective movie. And, much to StinkyLulu's delight, the film worked not in spite of Angelina Jolie's central performance but precisely because of the way the film utilized a top-notch supporting ensemble to maneuver the distractions of Jolie's celebrity. (Not to mention those lips!) As a result, Jolie's performance as Mariane Pearl is simple and, at times, genuinely affecting.

But more interesting are the supporting performances, especially a stark, enigmatic performance by Irfan Khan (as Captain, the Pakistani police official leading the investigation of Daniel Pearl's disappearance) and a noteworthy turn by Archie Panjabi as Daniel Pearl's longtime friend and colleague, the Indian Muslim feminist Asra Q. Nomani. Of course, Khan's Captain is given a pile of plot to muck through, and Khan's measured intensity here blends with an emotional generosity (the kind he gave this year's The Namesake) in all kinds of scenes. Panjabi's Asra, on the other hand, is given next to nothing to do -- except answer phones, print photos, shuffle papers, and write on the whiteboard. But Panjabi, too, even in this helpmeet of a part, delivers a formidable performance as a woman cruelly disregarded as her life, too, is tossed into complete upheaval with Danny Pearl's disappearance.

Panjabi's work (literally, her actressing at the edges) is crucial to Winterbottom's construction of this film. It seems that Winterbottom -- charged with making a movie about a missing man starring one of the most conspicuously polarizing contemporary celebrities -- determined to tell this story through oblique angles. Winterbottom rarely shoots Jolie's Mariane straight on, opting instead to capture Jolie's face in profile or at 3/4 angles. Indeed, the child of the houseservants (whose playful gestures echo and mirror the action around her) might just have more close-ups than Jolie. And this seems to be Winterbottom's point. Winterbottom's movie is not about Mariane or Daniel -- but about the experience of being in the midst of an unknowable terror storm, where the actions of everyone around you become charged with potential meaning, significance, import.

And Panjabi's Asra is perhaps the most essential presence in this cinematic storm -- the only one in the room we know to trust unconditionally, the one to whom we look for hints, for cues, for explanations. With every glimpse and glance, Panjabi's performance presents a precise portrait of a complicated woman negotiating uncharted territory. Hers is the kind of performance that will likely never receive much notice, let alone a nomination, largely because the role itself seems so peripheral (as Nomani herself has scathingly alleged). But Winterbottom seems to know what he's doing, and he clearly knows what he has in Panjabi's performance. His careful attention to Panjabi's presence on the scene (as well as Khan's, and Denis O'Hare's, and pretty much every cast member's) provides a reminder that Daniel Pearl's disappearance, his absence, consolidated a meaningful and powerful community.

Michael Winterbottom's A Mighty Heart is perhaps the most evocative cinematic treatment of traumatic loss I've ever encountered (not to mention one of the strangest surprises of 2007). And Archie Panjabi's work -- her actressing at the edges -- helps lay the emotional foundation for the film's complexity and its impact.

Supporting Actress Smackdown - 1978

The Year is...

1978

And the Smackdowners for the 23rd Annual Academy Awards are...

...with old hands...
KEN of Canadian Ken On...
BRAD of Criticlasm & Fag Yer It
TIM of Mainly Movies

...some new to the smackdown joy...
GOATDOG of goatdog's movies
RBURTON of Adam Waldowski Doesn't Watch Non-Oscar Nominees

...and, of course, featuring...
Yours Truly, STINKYLULU.

1978's Supporting Actresses are...
(Each Smackdowner's comments are arranged according to ascending levels of love. Click on the nominee's name/film to see StinkyLulu's Supporting Actress Sunday review.)

Dyan Cannon in Heaven Can Wait
goatdog - Ugh. She's a big-haired, high-energy bundle of Not Funny. I can appreciate what she's going for enough to wish someone else had tried it. I spent her scenes feeling sorry that Grodin had to share them with her...
Tim - Hyperventilates her way through the potentially plum part of a gold-digging murderess, to no great avail. She's drably cast (I want Lesley Ann Warren) and seems constantly in cahoots with the surrounding mediocrity. I tried to like her, but it was simply no use...
StinkyLulu - Cannon’s flailing here. She’s working her gifts – distinctive looks, loud voice, zesty screen presence, formidable hair – but her characterization stays stuck in stock comedy shrewishness, rendering her Julia bereft of both humor and charm...
Brad - I kept waiting for the scene that would make this nomination make sense. Maybe it was for the hair, or for the variety of screams and shrieks she managed, but I can't really figure out what this nomination was for. Servicable, even funny, but nomination worthy?...
RBurton - In the hands of a better actress, this would be a funnier role. Cannon can't even rise above Charles Grodin, who's much more amusing. The most comical thing about her whole performance is that really, really tall hair...
Ken - An unnecessary retread of Here Comes Mr. Jordan, elephantine whimsy intact. But Cannon – with her distinctive lion ‘s mane – is a scream. Punctuating her freak-outs with hilarious mile-a-minute barrages of polite murmur. She and the buttoned-down Grodin interact with the the high-style precision of a handcrafted cuckoo clock...

TOTAL: (11)

Penelope Milford in Coming Home
RBurton - This is a do-nothing nomination if ever I saw one. I'd call Milford an uninteresting sidekick, but she doesn't have enough screen time for the title. With Fonda, Voight, and Dern, it's peculiar that anyone remembered her...
Brad - Not a very interesting characterization, especially considering the powerful perfs surrounding her (Jane redeemed herself from Plaza Suite). I was aware of her acting "the tough girl", but it never felt true or went deeper. I imagine the nomination was on the tide of the film or on the breakdown scene, but weirdly thought I would've preferred to see Didi Conn...
Tim - As the least tidily idealised character in a peaceniks' love-in, Milford's pluck and vitality come in handy. But she's chucked away as the drama proceeds, and that hotel-room striptease isn't the wrenching sequence it should be. It's a good perf that just doesn't quite count for enough...
goatdog - What was supposed to be world-weary cynicism concealing a tender heart registers instead as vacancy. She seemed at a loss for what to do in the moments when the film needed her the most. She's likeable, but that wasn't nearly enough...
Ken - Looking and sounding like Shelley Duvall’s normal sister, Milford fulfills the obligations of the role but never goes that extra mile. Of course, the part’s merely an accessory to Fonda’s – and next to that fully realized star turn, the best Milford can muster is a minor matter of fact twinkle...
StinkyLulu - Though she contributes an essential tenderness to the film, Milford’s wan performance – all vapid listening and shallow reactions – doesn’t meet the tricksy balance essential to the role of Vi. A remarkable role; an appealing actress; a negligible performance...

TOTAL: (11)

Maggie Smith in California Suite
Tim - When she's not caught turning her nose up at the ghastly furnishings, Smith sails through these brittle marital tirades and gets round to Simon's required notes of bedside pathos. But she could do this crap in her sleep, and the contemptuous efficiency of the perf makes for a strangely grim spectacle. The punchline? She actually won!....
Ken - I don’t generally like it when Maggie Smith goes to her “funny” place. Noel Coward attitudinizing, lips (and everything else) permanently pursed. That’s where her dial’s mostly set in this flavorless buffet. Duelling with Michael Caine, she comes in second – more talkative but less interesting....
StinkyLulu - From this mere piffle of a part, Smith somehow avoids bathetic cruelty to retrieve a performance that – in both a comedic and a melancholic register – adeptly conveys the quiet anxiety of a woman who, for perhaps the first time, is beginning to ask: is that all there is?...
RBurton - If Neil Simon's dialogue ever falls flat, you can't tell in Smith's scenes. Her comic timing and delivery make whatever she says a riot. Her chemistry with Michael Caine is incredible and their section is the funniest. Still, the Fonda/Alda plot has all the heart...
Brad - Manages to make the stagy dialogue sound natural, even giving it a depth that is missing from any other performance in the film (save Michael Caine). Truly rises above and elevates the material, providing a nuanced, compelling performance in a forgettable relic of a film...
goatdog - Her lovely, hilarious, heartstring-tugging portrayal of a woman forced to reevaluate her entire life in the face of critical acclaim revitalizes, however briefly, Simon's stinker of a script. Her comic timing is superb, the heartache fueling her sarcasm palpable...

TOTAL: (22)

Maureen Stapleton in Interiors
Ken - Stapleton invades the hermetically sealed world of Interiors like Ethel Merman barging into a monastic retreat. But instead of belting out showtunes, she steps on the brakes. The script oversells the Pearl-as-lifeforce thing. But Stapleton’s playing balances that nicely. Restrained. Homey. Eloquent...
Tim - We breathe a sign of relief on Stapleton's arrival – the whole movie does. She's a trouper in a vaguely demeaning stock role, adding some memorable notes of honest confusion, warmth, vulgarity and social embarrassment to an otherwise hermetic chamber piece. It would be a mausoleum without her...
Brad - Literally a breath of fresh air in a stifling film. So good that I found myself agreeing with Pearl if only to side against the self-involved snobs surrounding her. The costuming helps her natural magnetism, but Stapleton is always the real person in the film you'd like to know...
StinkyLulu - Stapleton's performance as the loose, sloppy Pearl is a marvel of precision, infusing this clomping film with something just exhilarating and scary and wonderful...
RBurton - Stapleton makes a huge impression when she explodes onscreen in her red dress. Eager to please and not too bright, she's still the film's sole source of energy and passion. Commanding every second she's on screen, she's simply unforgettable...
goatdog - She's a hypodermic of day-glow adrenaline stabbed into the film's dead, beige heart. If that were all, she'd be good, or just welcome. But there was something extraordinary in those close-ups on the beach that I just can't get out of my head...

TOTAL: (24)

Meryl Streep in The Deer Hunter
Ken - The subject matter has enough power and relevance to resonate despite the film’s self-indulgent pacing. Streep’s very much the serious young actress laboring mightily to look spontaneous. A performance requires planning, yes, but it shouldn’t look quite so studiously concocted. Hardly award-worthy. (Wasn’t Melinda Dillon available?)...
goatdog - She's glass-fragile, wearing all of her thoughts and emotions on the surface in a performance that's sometimes so brutally honest it's hard to watch. But sometimes she overdoes it, not content with one mannerism when there's time for five...
StinkyLulu - Jeepers but Streep acts her bony little ass off in this thankless prop of a part. Her Linda is beautiful, gentle, a little bit dangerous and absolutely riveting. True, even with all those behaviors, I have no idea “who” Linda is, but Streep’s characteristic emotional intricacies make me care about her anyway...
Tim - Prime early Streep – her best work pre-Sophie's Choice. Projects a nervous strength and a tremulous vulnerability as this Odyssey's knitting Penelope; her chemistry with De Niro is palpable. The role's not much, but she's unforgettably luminous in it, and gets a fourth heart because she should have won...
RBurton - With all that hunting and Russian roulette, this is as butch as movies get. Streep's the feminine balance. She subtly plays the vulnerable, lonely woman left behind. Armed with a flat rural accent and giddy laugh, she blows the small role out of the water and breaks your heart...
Brad - What is there to say? Luminous, fascinating, unexpected – she takes a simple small town girl emotionally out of her depths and finds richness of feeling that many would have missed. Every feeling washes across her face. It's what we've come to expect from Streep – when she's on screen, you can't watch anyone else...

TOTAL: (22)

Oscar chose...
Maggie Smith in California Suite!
But the SMACKDOWN gives it to:
Maureen Stapleton in Interiors!

So, lovely reader, tell the Smackdowners what YOU think!