"The Message Is Clear" (Homo Heritage Fridays)

from Drummer: America's Mag for the Macho Male.
June 1982, page 65.
For details, click the image; then click again to magnify.

Grilled Cheese at Flying Star

Flying Star serves the most reliably delicious grilled cheese in the ABQ.
(The fries are usually really good too. Same for the cakes and pies.)
(But their overstuffed fiesta muffins? Mmmmm.)

image via the daily zen delight of the hypothetical wren

Supporting Actress Blogathon - The Class of 2006

Actressing at the Edges in 2006
Supporting Actress Blogathon!
Scroll down for appreciations of all kinds of actressing @ 23 actressexual blogs
check back throughout the day for more posts

and 2006's Supporting Actresses are...
(click blog name for link)

Adriana Barraza in Babel (Strange Culture)
Lindsay Beamish in Shortbus (StinkyLulu)
Emily Blunt in The Devil Wears Prada (All About My Movies)
Abigail Breslin & Toni Collette in Little Miss Sunshine (Crumb by Crumb)
Princess Diana in The Queen (I Am Screaming & Punching Myself)
Vera Farmiga in Running Scared (Ultimate Addict)

Pam Ferris in Children of Men (As Little As Possible)
Deborra-Lee Furness in Jindabyne (Stale Popcorn)
Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls (Fumbling Toward Divinity)
Ashley Johnson in Fast Food Nation (Nick's Pick Flicks)
Rinko Kikuchi in Babel (Deep In Your Eyes)
Mia Kirshner in The Black Dahlia (Radio-Allegro - with audio!)
Lindsay Lohan in A Prairie Home Companion (The Cellar Door)
Catherine O'Hara in For Your Consideration (And Your Little Blog Too)
Blanca Portillo in Volver (Criticlasm)
Laura Ramsey in She's The Man (Just Jakey)
Diana Rigg in The Painted Veil (Sarcasm with a Light Cream Sauce)
Chloë Sevigny in Big Love (Electronic Cerebrectomy)
Phyllis Somerville in Little Children (He Thinks He's A God)
Meryl Streep in A Prairie Home Companion (The Film Experience)
Emma Thompson in Stranger Than Fiction (Joe's Movie Corner)
Kerry Washington in The Last King of Scotland (Modern Fabulousity)
Grace Zabriskie in Inland Empire (Mainly Movies)

...and how thoughtful of the New York Times critics
to develop their own contribution to the Supporting Actress blogathon...

And if, like Stephen, AO & dear Manohla, you find yourself unexpectedly inspired to contribute to "The Class of 2006" just email the link to your post to StinkyLulu. Contributions will be added to the list as they are received...

Coming Attractions: Supporting Actress Blogathon (Sunday, January 7, 2007)

The Class of '06 - Supporting Actress Blogathon will start up in mere hours.
In the meantime, look for your favorite actress at the edges in this "coming attraction":

click image to be routed to video
video crafted by The Cellar Door

Lindsay Beamish in Shortbus - Supporting Actress Blogathon

Well. You'd think, after a couple months knowing that StinkyLulu'd be hosting a "Supporting Actress" party, that the hostess would've been all good and set with a contribution for the actressexual fandango. But no. It's curious burden. Sorta like hosting a costume party. It's easy to feel that you gotta look real good. So. It took StinkyLulu way long to settle on "the" performance to feature. Wanted it to be compelling, magnetic, memorable, revelatory actressing at the edges. An important, truly supporting performance (a) that StinkyLulu hadn't already talked about and (b) that might be just far enough off the awards-map to be at least a little surprising. And then. All of a sudden. Out of nowhere. It was clear. StinkyLulu's contribution to The Class of 2006 Supporting Actress Blogathon simply had to be...

...Lindsay Beamish in Shortbus (2006).

In John Cameron Mitchell's ode to intimacy, Shortbus, Beamish plays Severin, the melancholy dominatrix/polaroidist who seems absolutely ready for a change. Every aspect of the character's early impressions shapes Severin as perhaps the film's most conspicuously guarded character. The mildly intimidating post-goth affect. The bored-to-death dominatrix verbal style. The sharp hair. The big shoes. The bigger bag. The eye makeup (!)... Beamish's Severin seems so clearly a person hiding behind her persona that it's at first easy to think that you've got the character figured out. Yeah, sure -- the tender-hearted dominatrix -- got it, got it all figured out from the first frame.

But Beamish's quiet, astute performance toys with this very assumption, for -- indeed -- Severin too thinks she's got everything figured out. She's gotten so good at her job (performing her role, controlling the situation) that she doesn't even think about it anymore. She's always two steps ahead. Beamish adeptly shows Severin's myriad techniques for judging herself separate from & superior to pretty much everyone around her. Severin just keeps people at a distance as a matter of course. But it takes a surprising encounter with another character's righteous vulnerability to see that -- somehow -- Severin also judges herself separate from and superior to her own persona. Right behind the Severin that everyone sees -- scary goth dominatrix -- is the Severin that no one notices -- a snarky, judgmental, fundamentally sad snob. Severin's gotten stuck. In herself. And, as the film unfolds, Beamish's accomplishment derives from her ability to convey this character arc -- Severin's escalating, terrifying discovery that she wants to be neither of the Severins she knows -- with humor, poignancy, and precision. Somehow Beamish is able to animate Severin's frustrated stagnancy and crafts a character, who happens to be the film's least nude as well as its most emotionally naked. Images and scenarios dominate StinkyLulu's visual and narrative memory of Shortbus, to be sure. But emotionally? Beamish's portrayal of Severin's stunted empathy (creeping, often literally, in at the edges) anchors the film for StinkyLulu. It's a remarkable and evocative debut. And one worth remembering...

"An Irresistible Invitation to Hard 'n' Heavy Action!" (Homo Heritage Fridays)

from Mandate: The International Magazine of Entertainment and Eros.
December 1981, page 73.
For details, click the image; then click again to magnify.

Mmmm. Cozy.

POLL: Oscar-Bait Torture

Trying to squish in as many screenings during this last week before school begins but don't want to overdo the trauma... So do tell:

Which Dreaded Oscar-Bait Movie
Should StinkyLulu Screen This Week?

SAG's Supporting Actresses

The SAG Nominations were announced this morning.
And the Supporting Actresses are:


Yawn.
(And while Abigail Breslin is a truly good younger actress, the Globes roster is better.)

Cathy Moriarty in Soapdish - Supporting Actress Snapshot

The character of Montana Moorehead in Soapdish -- the oddly off-pitch 1991 spoof of television soap operas -- has to be one of the coolest examples of pure camp genius sneaking into a mainstream pic. And off at the edges, Cathy Moriarty just does Ms. Montana (over the top, into the ground, up to the heavens) in a way that probably no other actress ever could. Moriarty's Montana is, all at once, an apparently "talent-free" soap actress, a vicious manipulative schemer, and an enigmatic erotic powerhouse with -- ahem -- a bit of a secret. As Moriarty's Montana bullies Robert Downey Jr. into delighted erotic submission while also plotting her misguided career-vaunting revenge, Moriarity uses her tough girl persona to assure one and all that Montana's got the biggest balls of any bitch on the set. Which'd be fun enough in any case, but this bitch's got a little something extra -- making for a high-farce character joke that really pays off. Loads. Indeed, in a film just crammed (almost to a one) with folks who were or would soon become some of Oscar's and Emmy's favorites, Moriarty's performance as Montana Moorehead stands out as the only truly great turn in the bunch. Somehow, Moriarty's Montana maintains all the edges, keeping things just close enough to a truly human horror while never becoming mean-spirited. It's a smart, savagely funny and surprisingly humane performance of an almost lethally tricky role. As a result, every time Lu gets caught in the bizarrely entrancing vortex of this film, the potentially humiliating narrative twists that befall Moriarty's Montana inspire StinkyLulu's empathy, curiosity and fascination all the more.... And, while few movies deserve a sequel less than Soapdish, if 'twere "The Montana Moorehead Story starring Cathy Moriarty"? Well, that'd be a ticket worth stealing.

--Special thanks to My New Plaid Pants for the inspiration.

StinkyLulu's FilmLog - 2007

Movies Screened since January 1, 2007...
(The "+" or "-" indicates general yay/nay sentiment about a given flick.)

• I Am Legend (-)
• Atonement (-)
• Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (+)
• Into the Wild (+)
• King Corn (+)
• Sweeney Todd (+)
• Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (-)
• No Country for Old Men (+)
• Enchanted (+)
• I'm Not There (-)
• The Mist (+)
• Gone Baby Gone (+)
• Dan in Real Life (+)
• Across the Universe (-)
• Michael Clayton (+)

• Save Me (+)
This film -- a low-budget gay indie featuring teevee stars -- might seem, at first glance, a woeful trainwreck. Two men find love at an ex-gay camp? Astonishingly enough, the film is quite effective -- sincere, emotional, often moving, with enough wit to keep it from being too bleak. Judith Light gives a strong performance in the kind of role Meryl Streep or Kathy Bates would snag in a higher profile picture. Chad Allen is really good as the film goes along (his rowdy gay agony in the film's opening section is a bit hamfisted and forced). Robert Gant is ok -- a bit milquetoast and tv-husbandy. Most of the minor characters are underdeveloped -- presences more than characters. (Only one performance is truly off-pitch: the chubby, sweet, emotionally damaged virgin Lester. Which proves unfortunate as the character is the fulcrum of several pivotal plot points.) What's truly interesting/unusual about the film is how it takes all aspects of the premise seriously: how gay men do get themselves mired in self-destructive behaviors and how that the spirals of shame and despair do have spiritual dimensions; how the Christian evangelicals are offering these reparative therapies out of a genuine spirit of help and support; how all are seeking connection to spirit and to healing through love. Allen said in the Q&A that the film came from an impulse to present a film in which "Gay" and "God" might not be presented as mutually exclusive. The NM settings are both beautiful and apt. The film gets little "wrong" in the NM-ness of it all. The film also pivots on notions of recovery -- a 12-step model is used here for recovery from gayness. It's an interesting film -- resolving the way gay films do, with a romantic discovery -- but there's a heart to the film that actually transcends the occasionally boilerplate aspects of the story and the filmmaking. It's not the greatest film, and it's inexpertness shows at times. But the film is perhaps the only example (at least that I can think of) of a kind of gay spirit/ual moviemaking.

• Eastern Promises (-)
A genre picture with an art overlay. The film is -- ostensibly -- a crime thriller about a British doctor who stumbles into the path of Russian organized crime in London. But unlike a genuinely surprising movie (ala Dirty Pretty Things) this flick moves in banalities that never quite deliver. (An episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent usually has more sophisticated plotting, and more gratifying final act twists.) The team of Cronenberg and Mortenson do well together, with Cronenberg understanding how to play Mortenson's distinctive mix of vague menace, still-waters, and palpable sex appeal. Mortenson's character here is basically the obverse of his History of Violence character, but with a less effective set-up. Secondary male characters -- Armin Mueller-Stahl and Vincent Cassell -- get to have some fun with the mafia machismo, but the true crime here is the obtuse (under)utilization of Naomi Watts at the narrative center. Amazingly, if this were all I had to go on, I would think Naomi Watts couldn't act at all. The character is categorically uninteresting and underdeveloped. Indeed, the fact that she's a blonde girl even tosses the rhythm of the piece off. Where the film has its most electric current of energy is in the finely tuned male intimacies: the relationships among the men are thrilling, once completely homoerotic and entirely asexual. Cassell's character seems almost to be in love with Mortenson's, and Mortenson works it; the daddy drama is very SM in its coy power plays. All of which made me wonder if the whole film would have made more sense if Naomi Watts' character was male -- a male nurse, a male midwife, possibly gay, possibly recently broken up with a lady doctor. The whole thing would have been much more mysterious and dynamic if the character was a boy... The most homoerotic sequence is the brutally violent full naked wrestling double murder scene -- I'm struck once again how Cronenberg is perhaps the queerest straight director out there. I just wish this film wasn't so banal.

• Superbad (+)
Funny - very very funny. Jonah Hill -- who I actually find basically uninteresting -- is just incredibly, heartstoppingly funny. His patter, his filth, his fearlessness -- he makes me uncomfortable but I find him hilarious. Michael Cera, on the other hand, I adore. So cute, so sweet, so charismatic, and also fearlessly funny. The film is really straighforward: it's basically a nostalgic sex comedy, set in the present, in which teenage boys obsess and plot and scheme about getting booze and sex, suddenly stumble upon a golden opportunity which they pursue with single minded abandon, encountering all the requisite humiliations, jabs at authority and "surprising" scores along the way. But the film finds its true narrative momentum in the relationship between Cera and Hill, with a driving sweetness that takes it well beyond Porky's territory. Moreover, this seems to be a teen sex comedy for a whole 'nother generation. Where American Pie allowed the female characters to have sexuality, the female characters here are formidable human beings. There's something really interesting in the way the film uses obsession with alcohol as a device. The guys have totally bought into the idea that booze will make things (like sex) easier, but the film details -- with often gory specificity -- the myriad ways that alcohol mostly makes things really unappealing and totally complicated. As a result, the film becomes mostly about how the guys THINK they want booze and sex, but come to discover that what they really want is emotional intimacy: both with the girls and with one another. Emotional honesty becomes the biggest score. This Apatow/Rogen school of comedy is so much about male tenderness -- it's wild. O'course babes go for schlubs in this world, but there's a consistent spin toward male emotional vulnerability that's totally not about the conquest. It's an amazing turn, really. Plus to have it loaded with filth, in a way that actually illuminates the characters, it's just hilarious and captivating. The other thing I found shocking: many of the biggest laughs were scenes from the previews, but -- in context -- most of them were even funnier. I can't remember that ever happening. I don't know if I gassed from the pleasure of recognition, OR whether the jokes were actually funnier in character context, but certain bits just killed me, even though I had seen them before. Also, there's a funny bit in home ec class -- where a peripheral character does this kitty impression -- it's just astonishingly funny, even in retrospect.

• No Reservations (+)
No surprises here. Utterly predictable, utterly delightful. Patty Clarkson is underutilized (& so skinny!) but otherwise this movie allows really appealing performers to just be really appealing. Abigail Breslin is beyond dear -- she seems like an actual kid on screen, which injects an emotional clarity to the whole proceeding. She's much better and more solid here than in Little Miss Sunshine. Eckhart is a scruffy goofball; Zeta-Jones plays a Zellweggerish/Julia Robertsish part and totally sells it. She's an ice princess warming ever so slightly from within. The thing that's so refreshing about this movie? It skips the faux-tension cliches of American romantic comedies -- there's no estrangement montage, there's no idiotic betrayal (necessitating public contrition/redemption), there's no sabotaging villain... For once, the limitations on these relationships come from the people involved, not some utterly contrived device. It's sweet, smart enough, and pleasantly cute.

• El Cantante (-)
Wow. This mooovie's a dooozy. The biggest problem is that there's no story. It tries to accomplish a kind of vast, epic, classical love story. Hector and Puchi were lovers, and oh how they loved...you know the rap. Unfortunately the story doesn't really bear the weight of all the simply incredible visuals, often brilliant acting, and generally heartstompingly brilliant music. Marc Anthony is so great in his songs -- he brings his voice to Hector's and makes something new, not an imitation necessarily, but something actually better. Just so good -- and Anthony more than rises to the task of using the songs as monologues (which is what the screenplay has him do). Lopez's Puchi gets to do all the talking, and she's often very good. And she has one aria monologue (after the funeral, right before the beginning of the movie's last act) that is some of the most powerful screen acting I've seen in recent memory. (Why oh why does JLo do her best acting in movies regular folk dismiss derisively?) And some folks are making fun of her age makeup? I don't see why. Indeed, the film's visual execution -- costume, hair, scene setting as well as montages, subtitles, media layering -- is even more appropriately creative than last year's Thank You For Smoking. Unfortunately, the visual tricks can't make up for a flabby story architecture. I'm praying that some real Puchi footage is included in the dvd, because my operating theory now is that the project changed to the doomed love story after Puchi's first interview and subsequent accidental death. I would love to have it refined. As far as Latino representation goes, this is standard narco-traffic/junkie porn with really good tunes. The faux-spiritual dimension mirrors La Bamba in surprisingly conspicuous ways, and it's just as ineffective. It's nice to see some of these latin actors working but it's really a 2-person show. On Addiction: the tropes are there in only occasionally sophisticated ways. The bathroom shootup with the kid in the other room. The stylized shots of the shooting gallery. Funny bits with white powder. The most interesting bits were toward the beginning -- the "never doing that again" & the feeling out of place until -- but soon it's just way too too. But with all of that, the film remains just moving enough to be effective. And JLo just works some of the best looks since Diana Ross in Mahogany. Worth seeing for the outfits alone.

• Sunshine (+)
I think I liked it. I think. Visually it's a stunner --a fascinatingly crafted movie world, with a really attractive cast of unconventional beauties. (I do swoon for Troy Garity -- boyhowdy do I swoon.) I like that the film's a hodgepodge of all the intrepid voyage movies, with the plot and the characters almost mirroring The Core (2003). But where The Core was B-movie trashtasm, this one's all gourmet & arty. The film does a good job of explaining just enough to keep the action within the realm of the comprehensible without getting so intricate as to become distracting. Likewise, the film does a generally nice job of ratcheting up the anxiety quietly, allowing the intensity to amplify in small increments until the final act when things just blow off the chart. I've been going back and forth on whether I like the supernatural thriller/slasher twist toward the end. I think that's the only piece that the film left a little too oblique...I needed just a little bit more to explain the nature of the monstrosity, so that I could hook into a fear/marvel of it. As it was, the monstrosity was mostly about anxiety, rather than actual horror. Plus, I think the way the film operated -- with the most important characters each representing a different way of understanding the world (physical, mechanical, psychological, ecological, emotional) the import of the cosmological seemed to be signaled by this monstrous character but it was never quite clear how, why or what caused the monster's initial transformation. There's an interesting mystery there and the film, for some reason, dodges it. Further, I wonder what it means that Sunshine only imagines a future including white people and Asians. Just odd. I can't say I'd recommend it but it was a fascinating way to spend a couple hours. So soo soooo beautiful.

• Gypsy Caravan (+)
Wow. Wow. Wow. What an astonishing, brilliant film. Built loosely along the lines of a conventional concert documentary, the film loops elliptically. What appear to be random expository tangents, providing cultural background and introductory context, end up accumulating imperceptibly to fortify the force of the film. It's an aggregate portrait of a singular tradition that is the root of Roma performance: song, dance and poetry describing suffering and transcending it in the process. Where the film is really smart is in how confident it is in the use of such conventional documentary devices, like the expository voice over or the translating subtitles. The stage manager, whose voice over headset or the bus intercom, becomes as a docent to this crazy museum tour -- as he tells the followspot operators what to anticipate (ie. anything) he's also cuing the audience into the improvisatory dynamic of Roma performance. Likewise, the subtitles -- with often discordant translations and occasionally stylized application on the screen -- emerge as a creative device to comment upon and to illuminate the emotional or stylistic motion of the scene being depicted. The emotional effect of the film accumulates -- as the disparate national groups of Roma begin to discover their affinity with one another, their amplifying sense of mutual appreciation provides the emotional arc of the film -- because the backstories slowly, assuredly detail the arduous paths that brought these performing bodies (both individually and collectively) to the sequence of stages featured in the Gypsy Caravan tour. The mutual adoration that grows between the Indians and the Spanish. The Macedonian mama Ezme performing a healing, unifying function for all... It's just amazing. And who knew about the trans Indian knee dancer... Zowie kawowie. I'm fascinated by the gender complexity of the three traditions in which vocality was so central -- Indian, Spanish, Macedonian -- and the relative deprioritization of the singular human voice in preference for the ensemble of brass/string voices, performed almost entirely by men. Interesting, fascinating, challenging, moving. Possibly the only great movie I've seen this year.

• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (-)
This film of what is probably my favorite book in the series lumbers through the plot machinations with little verve or style. It feels exposition heavy -- which it is but it shouldn't feel that way -- with little of the idiosyncratic style that animates the best films in the series (ie. Askaban & Goblet of Fire). Radcliffe's getting much better as an actor, same for Rupert Grint. Emma Watson not so much. The standout here is of course Imelda Staunton as Dolores Umbridge, but even she's without the necessary verve. She doesn't illuminate the character so much as deploy it. The problem, in some ways, is that Staunton's Umbridge is always operating out of a curious sense of desperation, her righteousness always in search of some kind of vengeful validation, rather than the incredible exuberant zeal of a true believer. Her sadism should not be so much of a "so there!" as a gliding confidence that she alone knows what's true and right. The character is among my favorites in the entire series and I'm sorry that Staunton's performance, while delightful, bore a little too much commentary...she's offering the character for our judgment, rather than just offering the character. Also, I'm sorry that the film didn't create a stronger platform for the character of Luna Lovegood. The actress -- Evanna Lynch -- is seemingly well-cast, but the director didn't support her developing the character's necessary and distinctive dimensions.

• Hairspray (+)
A giddy romp aiming to please. And, for the most part, it does. Most of the performances are just deee-light-ful. I think my favorite was James Marsden as Corny and, of course, the portly pepperpot herself, Nikki Blonsky, as Traci. A close third would be Zac Efron as Link. These three performances, more than the others, really nail the tone of the piece -- with an overthetop sincerity that ends up making the nearly maudlin sincerity of the civil rights stuff work. Most of the other performances hold back -- what I'm not sure -- but they hold back something that gets in the way as the plot convolutes its way along. It's a totally cute movie, that I would see again and again and again. I'm reminded of Nigel's comment on So You Think You Can Dance: you just sit there with an enormous grin on your face, not sure why... Travolta & Pfeiffer both deliver game performances that are a little lost within the swim of the rest of the movie. Travolta's problem is he's too busy twinkling -- being cute, being clever, being fat -- the problem is that he misses Edna's heart in the process. Where Traci and Corny and Link seem to be REAL amidst the stylized frippery, Travolta's Edna doesn't. It's too bad, really. The fact that Travolta's Edna misses the point of the role/film ends up throwing the whole piece a little off balance. It's such a great role, and it's too bad that Travolta's busy having fun with Edna rather than WITHIN Edna.

• You Kill Me (+)
A perfectly efficient oddball comedy. The central premise -- a contract killer starts AA because his drinking is getting the way of him doing his job -- is an almost obvious spin on the mobsters+selfhelp genre (ala Sopranos and Analyze This or That). It's not entirely successful on this count, largely because the film takes the organized crime angle much more seriously than the recovering addict/alcoholic angle. It seems the screenplay asks that they both be considered deadly practices, while the film/maker seems insistent on framing them both as fun. I frankly don't think that the director understands how deadly alcohol is in his protagonist's hand and barely comprehends that Ben Kingsley's character is ok with the killing but the drinking is kicking his ass. What redeems the film, though, is Ben Kingsley's lucid and entirely sensible performance. He's great. Further, this is the first part perhaps ever in which Tea Leoni's particular prickly gifts are showcased to winning effect. Their chemistry is great and the romance evolves with astonishing plausibility: they just happen to be two freaks who find themselves in each other. The film loses a little traction in the other supporting performances (Bill Pullman, Luke Wilson, Dennis Farina, Philip Baker Hall) each of whom is fine -- especially Pullman who's almost very good -- but oddly cast and not entirely in synch with the rest of the picture. (Indeed, it seems like they aimed for the biggest stars they could get in these parts, with little consideration of how right or wrong they were for the role. Poor Dennis Farina. Believable as a wiseguy, yes -- but an Irish wiseguy? I think not.) I'm inclined to think the screenplay of this is genius, but the direction is self-involved and misguided -- demonstrating little understanding of the central character's actual journey. It's annoying that the AA meetings are played for giggles, but the screenplay's intrinsic understanding of the program/fellowship helps to keep the heart of the piece on track, to keep it from lapsing too far into genre parody.

• Evening (+)
Again, I'm spoiling the curve. While Evening is mostly a mess, it's not all bad. There's something genuinely potent in the emotional limbo that the film explores: the quiet stagnation, the curious emotional paralysis, that can come from longing for the path not taken. The film's rhythm seems stunted by the fact that there are no big releases of emotion, not even any little ones for that matter. BUT. My eyes puddled over a few times, never in gushing flows, but a few times nonethe. The script's a structural mess -- with all the bits and bobs squishing up against one another, with no real clarity or confidence. The adaptation seems to have very theatrical instincts but doesn't really embrace them. (Indeed, I wonder if the piece wouldn't work better as a grand stage piece, with the actor playing Anna in both times.) Also, I just didn't get Harris -- what was the big deal? Hugh Dancy was fine but the best boy was Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Toni Collette's beloved. I felt the meat of the story was in the contemporary, but the film let itself get distracted by the grandiosity of the scenes from the past. Vanessa Redgrave was almost brilliant. Glenn Close plays evil so well. Mamie Gummer was just ok, but Claire Danes was pretty good. Natasha Richardson and Toni Collette were great, and the scenes with Ebon and Meryl just awakened my heart. The piece seems to be about emotional architecture -- the intricate interconnections of intimacy -- and the paralysis borne of hesitancy. That Anna had to reconcile with her own heart, realize that there are no mistakes... In some ways this brings up ideas from Strange Piece of Paradise -- of being haunted by a younger self that's been left behind as a result of trauma -- and the absolute necessity to effect reconciliation to move on... It's not about closure, it's about reconciliation. Which, right now, is a topic that moves me deeply...

• Ratatouille (-)
Beautifully executed, with often delightful voice talent (say hey Patton Oswalt) and -- thank goddess -- without the exhausting popculture snark. But something doesn't cohere for me in the basic premise (beyond the squickiness of the swarming rat hordes). I guess it's the self-loathing Little Mermaid problem... Remy's story is basically that old queer parable -- they don't appreciate the misfit in his hometown so he has to go to the big city to become a star -- mixed with some trans-species grass-is-greener envy. Beyond the fact that the "moral" of the story (Anyone Can Cook!) is proven false by every major plot point (and the basic concept of Remy's character as a rat with an exceptional nose), there's just something that doesn't work in the foundational premise. I like the timelessness of it, and its comparative lack of manic showoffiness. It may grow on me but, for now, I don't get the raving. Though I did love the Auguste Gusteau floating fatty angel. A lot.

A Mighty Heart (+)
Nancy Drew (+)
Knocked Up (+)
Shrek the Third (-)
Mr. Brooks (-)
Away From Her (+)
Waitress (+)
Hot Fuzz (+)
Georgia Rule (-)
Year of the Dog (+)
The Hoax (-)
In the Land of Women (-)
Grindhouse (+) : Planet Terror (-); Death Proof (++); interstitials (++)
The Lookout (+)
The Namesake (+)
Meet the Robinsons (-)
Blades of Glory (+)
The Host (+)
The Lives of Others (+)
Inland Empire (+)
Zodiac (+)
Reno 911: Miami (+)
The Pursuit of Happyness (-)
Blood Diamond (+)
The Bridge to Terabithia (+)

The Last King of Scotland (+)
Notes on a Scandal 2 (-)
Dreamgirls 2 (-)
Notes on a Scandal (-)
Pan's Labyrinth (+/-)
Volver (+)
The Painted Veil (+)
Little Children (+)
Children of Men (+)
Babel (-)
The History Boys (+)

Happy Feet (-)

And I Am Telling You... StinkyLulu's New Year's Resolutions

Happy New Year, Lovely Reader.

And to kick things off, please enjoy this New Year's Firecracker of a mashup from the always inspired ultranow: Jennifer Hudson & Jennifer Holliday both singing "And I Am Telling You" (link). Or as Lu likes to call it - J-Squared. Simply must be heard...

And now to the handful of Resolutions
that StinkyLulu'd like to share:

1. Personal Pronouns: This is the big one. As you may have noticed, there's been something of a moratorium on personal pronouns here on StinkyLulu -- an avoidance of "I" and "me" and "my" in preference for a mildly "royal" StinkyLulu. Well. That started as a style thing -- an attempt to cultivate a kind of 3rd person authorial voice -- & it seems to have run its course. So, beginning today: I will use the first person (as well as -- inevitably -- the royal Lu). May seem like a little thing, but it's a big shift for me and my writing on this blog.
2. Snapshots of Actressing At The Edges: A few seriously smart, treasured readers have encouraged Lulu -- see, it's pretty ingrained at this point -- have encouraged me to further develop the "actressing at the edges" angle of this forum. Supporting Actress Sundays will continue as they have but I do want to try some new things. And because I'm a historian by inclination and by training, I'm reluctant to do so too much in terms of current cinematic events. So, over the next few months, I'm going to be experimenting with a few new features to see what else is to be mined from this "actressing at the edges" hook. The most prominent among these new features will likely be my "snapshots of actressing at the edges" in which I will, as frequently as I can get it together to do so, offer very short appreciations of particular performances and/or specific moments within a performance.
   
3. Actressing At The ______ Edges: In another new feature, taking the place of the noble but always-thwarted "Coulda Shoulda Woulda" series, I will -- about once or twice a month -- write-up an incredible or noteworthy performance in a movie that would otherwise escape critical notice. (The inspiration for this really came from the fun I had doing my piece on Ketty Lester in Blacula -- which would be "Actressing At The Edges of Blaxploitation.") So things like "Actressing At The Splattered Edges" for a performance in a splatter movie -- or "Actressing At The Direct-To-Video Edges" or "Actressing At The Silent Edges" etcetera etcetera. But here, lovely reader, I'll absolutely need your help making a list of such performances -- so please do email me your suggestions and inspirations. The more notorious, obscure or generically marginal the better.
4. Supporting Actress Sunday/Smackdown: Rumors of the demise of StinkyLulu's most satisfying series/feature are unfounded. However, Supporting Actress Sundays are "on hiatus" until April. (Though there may be a Smackdown on one or more of the mornings of the big award shows, if folks are interested.) I am interested, however, in tweaking the format of the Smackdown a little and need some distance to clarify how I want to do that. Doing Supporting Actress Sundays has been more gratifying than I could have ever anticipated when I started them last March. So thank you for that and Supporting Actress Sundays/Smackdowns will be back on track before you know it.
5. Write More: Coming perilously close to the typical, doomed-to-failure "lose 20 pounds" and "exercise daily" and "learn to latch hook" kinds of resolutions, I am nonetheless publicly proclaiming here that I want to make 2007 a year where I actually do write nearly every day. Experience has shown that I am happiest in all parts of my life when I am in a solid writing routine. So. What's stopping me? A lifetime of cultivating procrastination techniques perhaps? But Lulu's sucking it up. It'll be one day at a time, to be sure, but Resolutions 1-4 are part of the plan for Resolution 5... So! Thanks in advance, lovely reader, for the support...
   

JEEPERS. That was a lot of "sharing"... Ack. (Part of why the "royal Lulu" rule was instituted, truth be told.) But "resolutions" bring that out, s'pose. Y'all got any similar sharing to do? Resolutions of your own? Opinions? Suggestions? Random testimonials? Do tell...

Supporting Actress Smackdown - 1975

The Year is...

1975

And the Supporting Actress Smackdowners for November are NICK of Nick's Pick Flicks; TIM of Mainly Movies; KEN of Canadian Ken On...; and welcoming CRITICLASM! And though NATHANIEL of The Film Experience hadn't the time to fully blurb us, he did bestow the incomparable delights of one of his (now legendary & elusive) NatReels!

click image to be routed to video

1975's Supporting Actresses are...
(Each Smackdowner's comments are listed in ascending levels of love. A summary comment from each Smackdowner arrives at the end. Click on the nominee's name/film to see StinkyLulu's Supporting Actress Sunday review.)

Ronee Blakley in Nashville
Criticlasm Sez...
The songs she wrote serve to give her the greatest platform for her work. Alive when she's performing and unsure when she's not, she remains a mystery on to which the other characters can project their needs and desires. Fascinating, compelling, leaves you wanting more.
Tim Sez...
Manages a warbly breakdown one agonising step at a time, and does almost all of it publicly, without the safe retreat of backstage contrast. The film says music is life, death, madness: with her skilfully precarious playing, Blakley exemplifies how.
Stinkylulu Sez...
Blakley conveys the cavernous distance between Barbara Jean's electrifying performance persona and her near absence of self with haunting, guileless poignancy and thus contributes the essential link for Altman’s extraordinary chain of events. A fascinating, formidable and enduring accomplishment for a neophyte actress.
Ken Sez...
Altman supposedly let Blakley build Barbara Jean herself. Result - a stunning portrait of what a saint might be like in the modern world. Blakley's earthy and ethereal. And - when she sing "Dues" - astonishing, capturing both star-power and soul. Wonderful.
Nick Sez...
Attains two remarkable accomplishments: giving an unridiculous performance of a vaguely absurd person, and rendering a highly theatrical character without calling undue attention to her own acting. Sings beautifully and emanates a persuasive, disconcertingly cheerful sadness. Shifts and shines like a prism in the light..

Lee Grant in Shampoo
Stinkylulu Sez...
Grant's Felicia – an almost endearingly elaborate assemblage of tics and pouts and fussinesses – somehow devolves as the narrative complicates, becoming a shrill one-note of steely glares and ranting asides. A curiously grim performance.
Nick Sez...
For every interesting, unexpected mannerism in a Grant performance, there are two or three more that feel incongruous and over-rehearsed. Plus, this rigid script needs all the lightness and personality it can get. Hawn, Christie, and Fisher have them. Grant doesn’t.
Ken Sez...
A nice showcase for Grant's tightly coiled style. She attacks the part with gleaming precision. And dominates the climactic restaurant scene, delivering a series of reactions that can best be described as nuclear implosions. A worthy nominee.
Criticlasm Sez...
A focused performance of an unfocused character that's written as a shrewish neurotic wife stereotype. I was more interested in her story than the one I was watching. It made me wish for a Lee Grant/ Carrie Fisher mother daughter road movie.
Tim Sez...
A spiky turn that keeps getting better, so much so that I found myself more engaged with Grant’s Felicia than anyone else: her dagger-staring in the party scene really draws blood. Too generic to be a worthy winner, but a perfectly respectable nominee.

Sylvia Miles in Farewell, My Lovely
Tim Sez...
Makes sense and acquits herself in two economical if poorly edited scenes. But this aging floozy is dead before you know it, and her surroundings are so dismally lethargic I lost track of what she’s even doing here.
Ken Sez...
Jessie's a boozy old tramp who generally misses the glass when she pours the bourbon. By Miles' standards, pretty laid back - even the stagger down memory lane to relive the days when she had "a lotta pep." But nicely fermented.
Stinkylulu Sez...
Miles' signature emotional forthrightness converges with Jessie's devastating isolation to accomplish an almost shockingly open-hearted performance, the singular instance of nuanced and textured work in a film loaded with stock characters and familiar types. Memorably effective.
Criticlasm Sez...
At turns sweet and unexpected when she easily could have been broad and tragic drunk. Watch the way she deals with objects: drink glasses, the ottoman she steps over, her robe; the brown paper bag. A charming, hopeful performance that could have dissolved into bathos in the hands of a lesser skilled performer.
Nick Sez...
A textbook case of a pearl cast before a swinish film. Miles sets the sad, seedy, peripherally comic tone that the movie should have adopted. There’s not enough of her, and her second scene isn’t as good as her first, but she’s a trouper, and inimitably so.

Lily Tomlin in Nashville
Ken Sez...
A minimalist approach although, frankly, I don't think Tomlin has the dramatic firepower to do it any other way. Her big scene ("I'm Easy") depends on how much expression she can drain out of an already mask-like face. And it does work.
Nick Sez...
Tomlin wins a place in movie history by doing exactly the right thing—i.e., very nearly nothing—while Altman hands her the loveliest, saddest scene in a deliriously perfect film. She’s solid in the rest of her scenes, but picks the right moment to be transcendent.
Stinkylulu Sez...
Tomlin transforms her comedian’s rubber-face into a half-smiling mask of serene implacability, communicating the fact of her experience – not necessarily what's happening, more that it's happening – almost electrically through her eyes. Defiantly private yet embarassingly open, meticulously constructed yet casually expressive – it's uncommonly confident screen acting.
Criticlasm Sez...
Easily one of my favorite performances of the last few decades. Her work with her children, the stillness in the I'm Easy scene, her self-possession and presence when she's gone through with the affair, all combine in an electric, riveting, unforgettable perf.
Tim Sez...
Now we’re talking. Tomlin’s face, a slightly impassive mask at times, seems tragically composed here with minute flickers of sadness and longing playing over it. The most complete characterisation in the movie, its most moving performance, and the part of a lifetime.

Brenda Vaccaro in Jacqueline Susann's Once Is Not Enough
Criticlasm Sez...
Against the vapid blankness of Deborah Raffin’s performance she looks like Duse, mostly notable for her energy in an otherwise languid, lackluster film. I can hear the HS choir director: "You should all have energy like Brenda. Just look at her jazz hands.”
Tim Sez...
Vaccaro always comes over as a good-time husky dame to me, but an Oscar nod for this?! She’s wooden or under-rehearsed in scene after scene, charging through her atrocious dialogue in the hope that – who knows? – there might be a cosmopolitan or a fuck waiting after take two. Truly baffling.
Ken Sez...
She says words like "horny" and "screw" right out loud. Imagine! But like Deborah Raffin's unfurrowed brow, the script offers no subtext, no undercurrent, no nothin'. Still, next to David Janssen's blood-clot of a performance, Vaccaro's at least energetic.
Stinkylulu Sez...
Vaccaro provides a brash breeze of energy and zest that whips through the deadly dullness of the film, hitting every note of the performance with clarity and verve. Yet without an emotional architecture to connect the disparate moments of the character's desperation, Vaccaro's Linda remains a mildly amusing accessory.
Nick Sez...
Hardly one for the ages, but there wasn’t a moment in this performance that I didn’t enjoy; nor was there one that didn’t help the film. Vaccaro endows her stock character with genuine gusto and humor, without straining herself like Mira Sorvino or leaning on broad affectations like Marisa Tomei.

Oscar awarded Lee Grant...
What the hell is on Lee's noggin?

For the SMACKDOWN, on the other hand, it's a close one -- a near tie between Ronee Blakley and Lily Tomlin -- a tie that would have certainly even been tighter had Nathaniel been able to contribute his blurbs.

Consider what Nathaniel Sez about Lily Tomlin's Linnea:

The holidays have thwarted my efforts to investigate all five performances thoroughy enough to do them justice. But I did feel the need to send y'all my praise for Lily Tomlin's work in Nashville. Every time I see this great film her work improves. She'd certainly get my vote. It's the kind of performance that rarely gets enough praise: she makes it look too easy. It strikes me as very similar to Catherine Keener's recently lauded work in Capote -- the actresses in question don't appear to be doing much but the character is commendably complete and of value to the film without any showboating.

I love Tomlin's subtle reveal of a totally compartmentalized woman. Linnea keeps each piece of her life separate from the others which only adds to the refreshingly complex and adult sequence in her lovers hotel room in which you see her, briefly, with her guard down: that mix of her selves in his bed (the sign language instruction is a beautiful moment) before she quickly packs up her separate selves again, disappointed with his other selves and hers. She heads out the door, all separated again. It's just masterful stuff from a regularly underappreciated talent. She doesn't work enough.

Because the tally's so tight, because the sentiment's so strong among the Smackdowners (see below), StinkyLulu feels compelled to defer to the general consensus that underscores the Smackdown's Blakley/Tomlin near tie.

Therefore, The Smackdown gives
a special New Year's celebration trophy to:

THE WOMEN OF NASHVILLE!
Lily Tomlin, Karen Black, Shelley Duvall, Barbara Baxley, Geraldine Chaplin, Barbara Harris, Cristina Raines, Gwen Welles, & Ronee Blakley.

And now some "Final Thoughts" from our intrepid SMACKDOWNERS:

Nick Sez: Can you tell I’m a nut for Nashville? Here’s some more proof: I think this whole roster could have (and should have) been filled by the women of Altman’s masterpiece, and we’d still be looking at a richer-than-usual Supporting Actress lineup. In fact, there are too many deserving performances to accommodate in one race. My own impulse would be to bump Blakley up to Best Actress and give the Supporting slots to Tomlin, the delightfully fruity Geraldine Chaplin, the blowzy but finally heroic Barbara Harris, the fierce and mysterious Cristina Raines, and the bravely, sympathetically idiotic Gwen Welles…and that still means leaving out the nattering but charismatic Barbara Baxley, the most fluid, graceful turn of Karen Black’s career, and the spaced-out minimalism of Shelley Duvall. Miles and Vaccaro were nice surprises in dreadful films; under the circumstances, let’s console them with well-earned Good Sport awards. And while we’re at it, let’s invent some special award for Marisa Berenson in Barry Lyndon, whose unique achievement has less to do with acting than with so sublimely enabling Kubrick’s vision, emerging as a nonpareil object of pristine, painterly, and period-specific beauty.

Ken Sez: Most of the supporting actress action in '75 comes from Nashville, with Blakley's work - a beam of clear white light - setting the bar pretty high. Not too high, though, for Barbara Harris, whose sublimely unsinkable Winifred bobs along on a current of slightly punchdrunk shrewdness. And surely Duvall's selfish walking scarecrow is a vivid enough monster to meet Abbott and Costello. No faulting Karen Black either as the conniving Connie White. "Turn that off," wails Barbara Jean when Connie's on the radio. If Barbara Jean's a saint, then Connie White's just the one to try her patience. Meanwhile Barbara Baxley serves up so much extra piss 'n vinegar one almost expects Susan Sarandon - in full Bull Durham mode - to spring Athena-like from her forehead. Tomlin does fine. But, in his DVD commentary, Altman casually mentions that Louise Fletcher was originally cast. Wow! Double wow! Now there's a performance I'd love to see!

Criticlasm Sez: What a confounding year. Although all but Vaccarro are strong, they are all over the map. Miles and Grant don't stand up for me to the work of Geraldine Chaplin or the curiously overlooked and heartbreaking Gwen Welles. And I love Lee Grant. I can't help thinking the group is an indication of where women were in the mid'70's, each character struggling with a relationship to a man and finding her worth in it. Although the same could probably be said for most years, I can only think they "liberated woman" vote went for Vaccarro to get her the nom, and the wronged wife wins the prize. And although I loved Miles, it's strange that she garnered a nomination against the Nashville troupe, not only Chaplin & Welles, but Barbara Harris and Shelley Duvall as well. Puzzling year.

Tim Sez: The first time I’ve had a full spread of s, as befits a wildly uneven year which would be a grim one if you took Nashville out. It seems criminal neither Blakley nor Tomlin managed to win for giving among the best in a huge gallery of terrific performances in a Best Picture nominee, but if ever a film made the case for a Best Ensemble Acting category all by itself, Nashville does. Geraldine Chaplin must have just missed out on a nod for Opal From the BBC, but she’s the film’s snarkiest source of laughs and I’m not having it; Gwen Welles instead, please, for that heartwrenching striptease. Also from this year I’d want ex-nominee Rachel Roberts, at her stern best as the headmistress in The Picnic at Hanging Rock… and then I run out of suggestions. Nashville aside, it strikes me as a year of great male ensembles mainly – Dog Day Afternoon, Jaws – so as usual it’s lucky for this category (and us, and cinema) that Altman was around.

StinkyLulu Sez: Seems a fitting tribute both to Altman, and to the delights drawn from this first year of Supporting Actress Sundays, that 2006 end en ensemble. Well done, gents. Thanks for a great year! And here's to a great 2007! To actressing at the edges!!!

So, lovely reader, tell the Smackdowners what YOU think!
Join the dialogue in comments.

(And don't forget to
sign up for
The Class of '06
Supporting Actress Blogathon!)