Highest Paid Actresses. What Are They Worth To You?

Forbes released a list of the highest paid actresses a few days ago, tallying earnings between last summer and this one. Have you stopped to think it over? As usual there's not much in the way of specifics as to how they earned the money but it's usually a combo of residuals, new movie deals, and commercial endorsements and the numbers are pre-tax and pre-overhead -- their agents and managers get a chunk of this as does the government. (But you know how kind the government is to millionaires so don't worry for their bank accounts! Millionaires aren't expected to help so the ones with true altruism -- hi Angie! -- are even more lauded for it.)

I used to love all lists as I once interpreted all of them as "people love lists as much as I do!" but now of course it only means "crank up the page views!" . Forbes is especially shameless as you actually have to hit arrows and whatnot an incredible 34 times to read every word of the article! Page View Trickery. I'll save you the trouble. The list is as follows:

1. ANGELINA JOLIE - $30 million
2. SARAH JESSICA PARKER - $30 million
3. JENNIFER ANISTON - $28 million
4. REESE WITHERSPOON -$28 million
5. JULIA ROBERTS - $20 million
6. KRISTEN STEWART -$20 million
7. KATHARINE HEIGL - $19 million
8. CAMERON DIAZ - $18 million
9. SANDRA BULLOCK - $15 million
10. MERYL STREEP - $10 million

On first glance it might seem like a boring list of ubiquitous names but if you stop to consider it offers up a few different career trajectories. You've got your TV stars who leveraged that into massive global fame and then steady film careers  (SJP, HEIGL, ANISTON), you've got a woman who became synonymous with Great Acting (STREEP) early in her career and just refused to vacate her throne, you've got an Otherworldly Movie Queen who seems to belong to the entire world less for her movies than for her celebrity and outreach (JOLIE), you've got the RomCom Queens of the 1990s (ROBERTS, BULLOCK) and their natural successor (WITHERSPOON) who all won Oscars as career honors. [Theory: it's much easier to win an Oscar after RomCom riches than to just win an Oscar due to your dramatic gifts. Discuss!]

And then you've got DIAZ who is sort of in the Roberts/Bullock/Witherspoon school but maybe closer to a Meg Ryan in terms of Hollywood's lack of interest in rewarding her for it (other than monetarily). Finally, you've got a new rock star like franchise queen (STEWART). Will Stewart be able to convert her Twilight fame into a career beyond celibacy-advocate vampirism?

You can't just have a gazillion corporate endorsement print campaigns like Scarlett Johannson or Julianne Moore to name two quick examples, you need to get paid a lot to make the movies that you do make. 

Two things are certain about making it to the top ten.

1. You need to have long hair.
2. If you're not a true original (Streep) and if you haven't slept with Brad Pitt (Aniston and Jolie) it's absolutely crucial to headline romantic blockbusters and/or a single blockbuster franchise. (SJP, Witherspoon, Bullock, Roberts, Diaz, Stewart). 

That covers everyone but Katharine Heigl but maybe you'll have better luck explaining her in the comments.

"Sookiiiiiieee"

It's sounds pornographic when Bill & Eric say it, right?

Are you watching tomorrow night? If so make sure to chime in when we get to Monday's review. Previously on True Blood recaps "She's Not There" and "You Smell Like Dinner"

First and Last, "Deo Gratis"

first and last images & lines from a motion picture

and the first and last lines of dialogue.

first: deo gratis
last: ...yet I never knew nor ever learned her name.

Can you guess the movie? 

Extremely Loud-Mouthed and Incredibly Close-Up Oscar Predix

...and everyone is doing it now that the year is half over. Wheeee.

Best Picture
Here are updated predictions in all categories from Best Picture down to Best Key Grip. The new Best Picture rule -- they can have anywhere between 5 to 10 nominees and we won't know until Oscar nominations are announced -- is causing me chart difficulties. I can't figure out, aesthetically, how to divvy up charts with so many different numerical outcomes. If you must know I would like to make this wild July speculation that there will be 6 nominees to include War Horse, The Descendants, We Bought a Zoo, J Edgar, The Artist and new entry Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close which now plans to arrive in 2011.

It's not that I have any particular hunch or faith in that upcoming Stephen Daldry 9/11 film. It's more like anti-wishful thinking: See, I'm allergic to movie representations of that day since I was here in New York City and I tend to find the world's and especially the media's obsession with it absolutely grotesque. (For reasons that have nothing to do with cinema or the Oscars, so let's move on...)

John Williams and Steven SpielbergBiggest Annoyance
The music categories are always high-maintenance in terms of predictions. Original Song has zillions of hard to figure eligibility issues. Plus, there are still so many films that have not announced their composers in the Original Score category. Yes, it's often a late-to-the-party job as movie productions go. But I always suspect that even after the composers are announced that it takes a good long while for that information to trickle onto key pages like official sites and the IMDb. If you know of a better source of who's scoring what, do let me know. (I don't want to have to call 12 production companies!) With J Edgar, however, which also hasn't announced, it feels safe to assume that Clint Eastwood will compose some simple piano motifs for it because that's how he do.

That said, this category might be easier to predict than usual because the King of the Category John Williams will surely take up 40% of it. Oscar's music branch has always trembled for his Treble, zinged for his Strings and mooned over his melodies so they'd never pass up the chance to honor him for The Adventure of Tin Tin and for War Horse now that he's scoring again after basically a six year break from features (excluding that Crystal Skull reprising). John Williams turns 80 next year and chances are strong that they won't want him to retire without a sixth Oscar.

Craziest What If?
The new prediction I'm most enamored of because it's a Winding road way off the well-paved Bait path and because it would be highly awesome if the crazy thing came to pass and I predicted it first is an editing nomination for the Cannes hit Drive (2011). I mean why the hell not, right? It's July. Think outside the Bait Box! The prediction holdovers that I was initially excited to imagine but am now worried about -- though I didn't change them -- were all the Captain America nominations (Costumes, Makeup, Visual Effects). When I went there months ago I was totally confident that it could happen but public fatigue with superheroics makes me wonder if all films from this genre will be snubbed even in seemingly likely places like visual effects. Did Green Lantern leave an emerald stain?

The movies are getting all jumbled in my head now.

Why is Gosling driving off with the good Captain. Where is he taking him? "SHOTGUN!"

And on a final note, looking over Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor the competitions and competitors seem far more interesting than usual. Supporting Actor, for example, seems to have a number of Career Honors vs. Career Honors vs. Career Honors possibilities and in the lead race, could it finally be Leonardo DiCaprio's year?  Or maybe the manly half of the acting lineups will get boring real fast and it really will come down to a Close vs. Streep 80s throwback Actress-Off. Maybe it's just the oppressive July heat warping our crystal ball.

Comments? You realize we cry a single tear for every post that doesn't enter double digit comments, right? Don't cause us any more agony. Once you're done contemplating Oscar, hit the gym, the links, and the (Italian) showers. Yeah, yeah, it's summer ...but this blog has air conditioning.

Cinema de Gym: 'Outbreak'

Kurt here with your weekly movie exercise. This week at the gym I saw Outbreak, the 1995 disaster drama that cashed in on the Ebola virus fears that tore through the U.S. in the late '80s and early '90s. The virus in Outbreak is known as Motaba, which also has African origins and is spread via a monkey host (the film is loosely based on The Hot Zone, a nonfiction book about Ebola by New Yorker reporter Richard Preston). For me, there is no scarier film villain than the global pandemic. You can always outrun Ghostface, or jab Michael Myers in the eye with a wire hanger. Even an apocalyptic meteor is somehow less terrifying, perhaps because it arrives in a flash, its devastation unseen until that moment of impact. The indiscriminate horror of an unstoppable disease creeps in around you like darkness, randomly affecting others until it catches you, and there's nothing you can do about it. I've never been good with sickness, so the concept of the ultimate sickness always hits a nerve (you can bet I had irrational fears during the whole Swine Flu scare).

Which, of course, is why I've always responded strongly to pandemic films. Though many have surely been done well, global-killer thrillers involving zombies can't elicit the same reaction. The mad upending of all that makes logical sense in the world remains intact, but there's always the comfort of fantasy. Truly scary are things like Stephen King's The Stand, which – before it, too, becomes highly fantastical – offers a chilling vision of a wiped-out population. Released just a year later, Outbreak ditches the fantasy, save your typical Hollywood plot contrivances. Its solace (and script convenience) is that the fatal bug is basically confined to a tiny town (the fictional Cedar Creek, Calif.), and poses only the threat of worldwide infection. But hell if that made a whole lot of difference to yours truly.

I remember being very into this movie in the '90s; however, I don't think I ever knew it was directed by Wolfgang Peterson, he of Das Boot, The Perfect Storm and Poseidon fame. If pandemics are one rung up from earthbound meteors, then Petersen is a few rungs up from his oft-confused German counterpart, Roland Emmerich, who's far more gruesome, bombastic and frequent in his attempts to kill mass amounts of people. Petersen also knows how to assemble a classy cast, as Outbreak stars Dustin Hoffman, Morgan Freeman, Rene Russo (please get back to work!), Kevin Spacey, Donald Sutherland, Cuba Gooding Jr. and a blink-and-miss McDreamey as the first Motaba victim. 

The culpritThe segment I caught consisted mainly of Hoffman's Col. Sam Daniels and Gooding Jr.'s Major Salt tracking down that monkey, first on a ship, then finally in the backyard of a suburban home, where a young girl's been feeding it like a pet. Source of both virus and antivirus, the monkey is the cure, and Col. Daniels is especially motivated, seeing as things have grown personal (ex-wife Russo's got Motaba) and bloodthirsty bureaucrats are on his tail (Sutherland, whom we just saw in Fool's Gold, plays one Gen. McClintock, the sort of military man with bio-weapons on the brain). At the end of my session, McClintock and Daniels were embroiled in a helicopter chase, which kicks off with one of those only-in-the-movies exchanges that beckons for applause. “With all due respect, Col. Daniels, I will blow you out of the sky,” McClintock snarls. “With all due respect,” Daniels retorts, “f**k you. Sir.”

Conclusions?

1. In addition to showing off the enviable physiques of Matthew McConaughey and Will Smith, my gym is now urging me to keep healthy with the threat of disease.
2. Don't let your nieces and nephews and sons and daughters play with monkeys, as fleas could be the least that they're carrying.
3. Donald Sutherland, whom I also just saw in Horrible Bosses, is officially stalking me.
4. Disease > Meteor. Wolfgang > Roland.

What scares the bejesus out of you at the movies?