"Cast This!" Box Office Special: Female Expendables?

Sylvester Stallone and his team of aged action heroes ruled the box office with their high-octane throwback The Expendables 2. The title is perfect because it's the kind of disposable flick you can imagine people watching half-assed for years on end on cable while eating, cleaning, making phone calls, taking a sick day, you name it.

Top o' the Box Office *newbies in bold*
01 THE EXPENDABLES 2 $28.7 
02 THE BOURNE LEGACY $17 (cum $69.5)
03 PARANORMAN $14 
04 THE CAMPAIGN $11.8 (cum. $51.6)
05 SPARKLE $12 ...more on this one soon 
06 DARK KNIGHT RISES $12 (Cum. $409.9) Review
07 THE ODD LIFE OF TIMOTHY GREEN $10.9 

The Expendables franchise is weirdly sexist -- how can you have like a dozen action stars per movie (*stars* being a smudgey concept here once you're past the one name icons), many of them past their prime, and never include any of the women who've led or played a major hand in action hits in any decade? Yes, they exist! Word is out that the producers are planning on backing a female heavy edition of the franchise, a spin-off if you will. Why we're not allowed to have a co-ed Expendables I do not know. 

But let's help the producers out by casting it for them in the comments.
I'll start right here with six must-haves from Nathaniel's Crowded Actressexual Brain

• Sigourney Weaver -- seriously, if she's not already at the tippity top of the "throw money at her" list, they're imbeciles.
• Michelle Yeoh -- always riveting when she fights and a damn good actress, too.
• Linda Hamilton - Duh! Even her name is tough.
• Milla Jovovich - knows her away around an action scene and will get naked for your R rating
• Daryl Hannah - because she's an awesomely imposing amazon (think Blade Runner and Kill Bill) and doesn't get nearly enough work 
• Pam Grier - because think of the fun they could have referencing her fame-making work. Razors in an afro please! 

Once I got started I couldn't stop. I literally thought of 22 more actresses who would be perfect while collecting these photos -- like give me a scene of Run Franka Potente Run. Even if it's just a cameo! -- including recent action divas like Léa Seydoux (so very hawt in Mission: Impossible -Ghost Protocol or Kate Beckinsale (fresh in the brain on account of Total Recall).

But I don't want to hog all the fun. Which actresses would you line up to see in a huge dumb explosive ensemble actioner? Give me at least six of your favorite options, preferrably ten, ranked, in the comments. Maybe we'll revisit this once we have all your lists.

Ready... set... GO!

Hollywood's Current Hierarchy (According to Vulture)

Recently we discussed Forbes list of the highest paid actresses of the last year but money alone paints a crap portrait about what matters in the movies. Vulture recently released a list of the Top 100 Valuable Stars and weighed numerous factors like Oscar pull, box office, and media interest of various kinds. It's the kind of list that Premiere and Entertainment Weekly used to do in ye olden times, a list with more to say than just "hey, we need more page views, click on me 100 times for random photos with two sentence capsules!").

Since there's way too much to say about a list of 100 for a blog post, let's recap their Actressy stance within the top 100, only 30% of that list (sigh), starting with the undisputed queens...

Queen of Action.
Queen of Everything.
Queen of "America's Sweethearts".

27 more actresses (and commentary) after the jump

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Review: "Farewell My Queen"

An abridged version of this review originally appeared in my column at Towleroad 

There are numerous reasons why the Marie Antoinette story has fascinated artists and storytellers for centuries now. From the Court's commitment to theatrical flamboyance with a blind eye to the consequent suffering of the masses (modern pop culture echos were seen as recently as The Hunger Games this spring), to the complexity of the Queen's intimate lonely gilded cage tragedy played against the backdrop of a vast messy violent history. One could argue that the now mythic story is super relevant all over again in this era of rampant socioeconomic injustice and the angry gap between the 1 and 99%. 

Benoît Jacquot clues you in early that he means to tell the famous story differently in the just released French import  Farewell My Queen. For one, it's told "backstage" through the stressful lives of the servants. Consider it the French Revolution: Downton Abbey Edition... without Maggie Smith or the jokes.

The German actress Diane Kruger (Inglourious Basterds) plays the troubled big-spending transplanted queen, Léa Seydoux (Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol), the film's actual lead, is her bosomy devoted servant Madame Laborde, and Virginia Ledoyen (8 Women) is the Queen's Object of Affection, the Duchess de Polignac. The French people were so unhappy with this rumored affair that the ostensibly powerless Duchess was fairly high on the list of the 286 heads demanded for the guillotine! [More...]

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Q&A Returns: Whoopi 3, Actressexual 5, Batman 8

Gee, it only took me a month to answer your questions. So on top of it am I! But, silver lining, the Q&A column is back.  We'll do it again soon. I asked you to ask me questions and I choose a handful or two to answer after chucking out all the top ten and ranking questions (those require entire posts). So, let me reload my coffee (so sleepy) and we're off...

JOEY: What "hotly-anticipated" movie of the summer are you anxious to see disappear?

Awesome Dark Knight Rises billboard

I almost never wish for whole movies to disappear but I get advertising fatigue. I'm so happy to be done with The Amazing Spider-Man which already felt extranneous before its promotional onslaught. I'm anxious to get past The Dark Knight Rises too, both because of the bruising "you must love this or suffer death threats" weirdness that surrounded its predecessor and because then the marketing, however brilliant, will stop. I may not love Chris Nolan's movies as much as Composite American Moviegoer but I'd SO much rather be watching any of them than seeing them advertised incessantly. I also don't think I can take The Watch trailer even one more time; shouting is not comedy.

Mr W: Is there any way to donate a sum to you via Paypal without going for a monthly subscription? I'm not a fan of those, but I do feel generous at the moment...

Why yes there is, though considering it took me a month to do this column, your generous moment may have understandably passed. Donations help me pay basics like rent, groceries, movie tickets (I can't always get to screenings since I have to supplement my meager writing income with higher paying off-writing gigs), and travel expenses if I go to festivals (which I don't get to enough due to the costs). I've added a one time donation button under the subscription button.

JOHN T: A terrific actress that never gets discussed on Film Experience --  Whoopi Goldberg. What are your thoughts on her career? Do you have a fave role? And, most importantly, what would it take to get her a third nomination?

I like Whoopi but I've always viewed her as more of a celebrity than an actor. Maybe this is because she started as a comedienne and ended (well, you know what I mean) as a talk show host.

Whoopi, Joss Whedon, and an Actressexual Film Festival after the jump.

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On Jean Harlow, "Beauty", Screen Presence & Short Lives

75 years ago today Jean Harlow died. The Platinum Blonde superstar, arguably the ur blonde bombshell that Marilyn Monroe gets the bulk of the credit for being, was only 26 years old. She'd been a sensation since the age of 19 when Howard Hughes' Hell's Angels (1930) premiered. I loved the Scorsese-directed Hughes bio The Aviator (2004) when it premiered because of its handsome snapshot of Old Hollywood Glamour but I never quite understood what Gwen Stefani was doing playing Harlow. I couldn't see the resemblance beyond hair color and anyone can have that; Platinum Blonde does not normally occur through natural means!

When I was a baby cinephile and more familiar with Old Hollywood giants from their still photos than their actual work, Jean Harlow's huge fame and legendary sex appeal confused me. I thought she looked... odd and weirdly masculine (maybe it was the nose and chin? or maybe just my youth). Definitely not "beautiful". But I learned quickly that traditional beauty, both the male and female variety, is often flat onscreen. Screen presence always trumps beauty. Even the most famously beautiful movie stars are famously beautiful because their screen presence augmented their beauty, permanently burning it into the collective consciousness.

Leo & Gwen as Hughes & Harlow in THE AVIATOR (2004)

That's a lesson that unfortunately many casting directors and studio executives have never learned. This is especially true on television where entire shows are populated with "beauties" but you can instantly forget what everyone looks like by the time the credits are rolling in the sidebar as commercials for the next whatever play. It's especially true on networks like the CW and for whatever reason it always reminds me of those legendary stories about the casting of X-Files. Many executives didn't want Gillian Anderson because she wasn't "hot" enough but an interchangeable pretty blonde that would be easy to imagine doing photoshoots for men's interest mags, would never have seized the public imagination like Gillian did as Agent Scully. But I digress!

Seeing the pre-code movie Red Dust (1932) cured me of all Harlow doubts, since her carnality still reads as so immediate, unwithered by the passage of time.

Doesn't it feel sometimes as if being a Movie Star was more of an Occupational Health Hazard in earlier cinematic decades. So many film stars died young: James Dean (24), Jean Harlow (26), Rudolph Valentino (31), Carole Lombard (33),  Marilyn Monroe (36), John Gilbert (38), Natalie Wood (43), Monty Clift (45), Stephen Boyd (45), Judy Garland (47), etcetera. Or is it merely that those who die young stick in the memory, filed under What Could Have Been.