Jodie Foster is Wrong. On the Mandatory Price of Fame.

Though I'm late to this discussion -- damn that day job! -- I'm curious how many of you read Jodie Foster's piece at The Daily Beast on the pressures of stardom and her feelings about the current Kristen Stewart media witch hunt? I am, by no stretch of anyone's definition, a fan of Kristen Stewart's but I agree that the treatment she's getting in the press is hideous. While it's not directly comparable the obvious sexism of the whole thing reminds me of the Janet Jackson / Justin Timberlake "wardrobe malfunction" fiasco. The woman is blamed and the man in the equation emerges unscathed -- in this case the Snow White and the Huntsman director keeping his sequel job while the actress loses hers. Men we are free to "tsk tsk" for a couple of seconds before they get back to work but Women? Women have to serve time as Human Dartboards of Shame before they are publicly allowed to yank the Scarlet "A" from their garments and go on living.

Deplorable really.

Foster has a right to defend her former co-star and I'm glad she did and with so much spirit, too. But does this mean we have to start reinterpreting Panic Room (2002) as a metaphor of the insatibale media mob vs the trapped movie star? Damnit, I hadn't thought of that...

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Same Link Time Same Link Channel

Matt's Movies Harvey Weinstein is talking up movies he had nothing to do with and is not distributing. "Is this some sort of reverse psychology marketing strategy?"
Towleroad a filthy gay love song for Joseph Gordon-Levitt 
/Film Anthony Mackie could be up for the Falcon role in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. We could end up with two Hurt Locker guys in The Avengers 2

Press Play has a smart piece on the new Sigourney Weaver Clintonesque drama Political Animals.
Salon on the "adorable nihilism" of Bunheads with Sutton Foster. I keep wondering if I should write about this show. Are any of you watching? 
The Advocate on Bollywood's problem with gay characters
Cinema Styles warns us not to be alarmed by all the media pieces telling us that today's generation doesn't care about old movies.

It's Batman's World...
Interiors Film Journal analyzes the physical space of The Dark Knight's opening bank robbery. I love the concept behind this monthly journal.
Joblo compares the five actors who've put on the bat cowl to date
Hello Tailor isn't excited about The Dark Knight Rises for Catwoman-related reasons and here's why...  

Remember a few years ago when I just couldn't stomach the absolute blurb whore hysteria for The Dark Knight and posted things like this which pissed people off.

 I'm having a slightly easier time with The Dark Knight Rises (at least until I see it) partially because I'm too busy to contemplate and fully absorb the "Greatest! Movie!! Of !!! All!!!! Times!!!! [sic]" (yes, even the 'Of' gets exclamation points because... hysteria!). The huge undulating waves of excitement and attendant mob with pitchforks anger towards brave dissenters have already started again. Cheeky Eric D. Snider posted a fake negative satirical review, which was pulled before I could read it but it apparently ended by acknowledging that he hadn't seen the movie and that he was conducting a social experiment. The  fanboys aneurysms proved his shooting-fish-in-a-barrel point. RT freaked out and banned him from the site. Death threats for an authentic  negative review by Marshall Fine and both sane and über self-serious handwringing over the fake one ensued.

It's gonna get crazier. Especially once Awards Season rolls around. Steel yourself Gothamites.

The only thing I care about is Anne Hathaway's Catwoman. Bring it Hathaway. But perhaps you should steer clear of La Pfeiffer on your way to brought.

gifs via

Pfeiffer Next Pfriday... "People Like Us"

I'm not supposed to talk about the movie yet but Pfans rejoice. I can't resist telling you that Michelle Pfeiffer enters the new drama People Like Us with a bracing cold snap. The movie has been racing along rather manically to set up its plotty-plot-plot and suddenly she's there slapping it with a "snap out of it!" move. Settle down, movie, settle down. 

Pfeiffer's Confession in PEOPLE LIKE US

She's wonderful in it. Three friends were seen afterwards arguing about how wonderful and no one agreed. Friend A: She's special in it if you haven't seen her seminal performances. Friend B: I thought she was great but there's no part... ugh, there's no part! Friend C: [unintelligble drooling] Pffeifffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffferrrr.

I confess. Friend C was me. (I'm not especially verbal immediately post-screening.) My point: It's easily her best work since Chéri. Not that there's been much work since Chéri. Shut up!

Pfeiffer hits the media circuit (Good Morning America) to promote People Like UsBut as for her current state of work. She promises more now that the empty nest looms in just one year's time. She recently made a rather grandiose statement in a Zap2It interview...

I’m always feeling that my best performance is still in me. And I think all artists feel that whether you’re a painter, actor, a musician — I hope so. I think it’s what keeps me going... I’ve noticed a lot of people who win the Academy Award — Best Actor, Best Actress — they go through a long period where they don’t work for a while and I worry about them. There’s sort of that wanting to achieve that, which keeps you going, and then when you achieve it, it’s like, ‘Well, what now?’ I don’t ever want to lose that fire that I have for it.”

Pfeiffer talking Oscar? Whoa. In a better entertainment world, that'd be leading story everywhere.

If this quote is indication, something has shifted in her headspace. I like to imagine that it was that campaigning for Jeff Bridges' Career Oscar (aka Crazy Heart) a few years ago. Does this mean we'll see her chasing the gold man again in prestige pictures and meatier roles?  I've learned not to expect too much face time from the elusive goddess but it sure would be a welcome sight.

Are you planning to see People Like Us? Or are you waiting for a great picture or a great role before welcoming her back.

Pfeiffer Premieres, Then & Now

It's Pfeiffer Pfriday... on Saturday! (I can't be constrained by calendars and sunsets.) Joe reminded me in the comments earlier today that 20 years ago on this very day the stars were walking the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of Batman Returns (1992) -- I'd casually mentioned it a month ago but pforgot on the day of! -- and just yesterday Pfeiffer was walking the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of People Like Us (2012) so things are set right again in Pfandom-Land. She's right where she's supposed to be.

Look how happy she is hugging Chris Pine!

And just as a reminder here she is exactly 20 years earlier at the Batman Returns premiere and at the Globes and Oscars that year, too ...

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Twins: Michelle's Blonde Brood

We're celebrating twins daily at 2:22 pm while we're in Gemini

Gratuitous Anecdote! I've always loved to draw and in my high school years it's what people knew me for. I won the High School's Departmental Award in Art (Do they still have departmental awards? Hell, do they still have art classes?) in that heady stretch of graduation celebrations where they keep honoring star pupils. One day early in my senior year or maybe it was at the end of my junior year, the art teacher asked one of the students to pose for the class. A guy I didn't know volunteered and I felt totally inspired. Instant crushing helps. He loved my drawing and we became fast friends after the class. The first day I went to his house after school I was stunned to see a whole house full of doppelgangers. He had one of those families where virtually every kid looked like a clone of the previous one and since he was the oldest they were all mini hims. And, yes, there was an actual set of twins to drive the point home. Have you ever met an identical family like that? It's kind of freaky.

Michelle Pfeiffer's first scene in THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK. She's buried in offspring

I flashed back to that memory while screening The Witches of Eastwick for its 25th anniversary week and smiling at Michelle Pfeiffer's introduction where a whole stream of authentically blonde children follow after like a trail of baby ducklings. There are two sets of siblings amongst these child actors who never worked again (perhaps they were locales?). The three towhead girls were played by sisters, surname "Ditmar" -- I couldn't find any information about them as they never acted again but if they're not triplets, there's a twin set in there!

Michelle Pfeiffer is so fertile ...onscreen. In real life the movie legend has only two children but onscreen her progeny number two dozen plus. For such a legendary beauty, Pfeiffer was never scared of screen parenting despite the widespread belief that you risk aging yourself out of leading lady roles when you start playing moms onscreen. La Pfeiffer didn't just dip her toe in to test the water but dove in headfirst becoming a mom onscreen for the first time in The Witches of Eastwick (she was only 28 years old while filming) not once not twice not thrice but six times over. And at the end of the movie Sukie Ridgemont had even had a seventh child, her first boy.

Daryl: Sukie, at last we meet.
Sukie: Hi. Hello. How are you?
Daryl: Let me look at those eyes of yours. My! You are a fertile little creature, aren't you?
Sukie: [uncomfortable laughter] Thank you... I think."
              -The Devil meets Sukie in The Witches of Eastwick. 

Pfeiffer's 27 Screen Children in the order I tend to remember them
Fertile indeed. 

• Alison Lohman - White Oleander (2002)
• Jonathan Jackson & Cory Buck - The Deep End of the Ocean (1999)
• Saoirse Ronan - I Could Never Be Your Woman (2007)
• Six Blonde Girls (Michele Sincavage, Nicol Sincavage, Heather Coleman, Carolyn Ditmars, Cynthia Ditmars and Christine Ditmars)- The Witches of Eastwick (1987)
• Claire Danes - To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday (1996)
• Brittany Snow - Hairspray (2007)
• Anthony J Nici - Married to the Mob (1988)
• Katharine Towne - What Lies Beneath (2000)
• Ryan Merriman & Michael McElroy - The Deep End of the Ocean (1999)
• Chlöe Grace Moretz - Dark Shadows (2012)
• Alex D Linz - One Fine Day (1996)
• Casey Boersma & Dylan Boersma (twins!), Daniel Henson & Jake Sandqiv (1999)
• Colleen Rennison & Tara Blanchard - The Story of Us (1999)
• Chase McKenzie Bebak - I Am Sam (2001)
• infant - The Witches of Eastwick (1987)
• Elisabeth Moss and Michelle Williams - A Thousand Acres (1997)
• infant - Amazon Women on the Moon (1987, her scene is a hospital delivery sequence if I recall correctly?) 

the only one I haven't seen

• Spencer Hudson - Personal Effects (2009) 

 upcoming

• Chris Pine - People Like Us (2012). Yes, she's technically old enough to have a 32 year old son. But her real children are not yet 20.
• Who will play her children in in the upcoming comedy Malavita (2013) ?