Curio: Michelle Pfeiffer in Vogue, 1991

Alexa here. Nathaniel's post on stars posing as other stars brought to mind a spread in Vogue that seared my brain when I was a teenager, so much so that I tore it out and saved it.  After a bit of digging in our basement, I found it: a now-famous set of photos of Michelle Pfeiffer by Herb Ritts.  This shoot has her posing as six different characters, which she chose herself. "I had lists and lists compiled, and I did a lot of reading, and it all kind of boiled down to these characters," she said in the accompanying interview.

as Louise Brooks as Lulu

as Laurence from Noël Coward's Private Lives

Another series I remember were the portraits Kevyn Aucoin shot for his books Making Faces and Face Forward (see here for Calista Flockhart as Audrey, Gwyneth as James Dean). I'm no pop culture historian, but I would think that Cindy Sherman's film stills from the 70s and 80s had a heavy influence on this trend well into the 90s and beyond.  But none of these spreads thrilled me as much as these of Michelle. I can only imagine how much fun they were to shoot.

See more of Michelle's characters after the jump, including Maggie the Cat!

Click to read more ...

A "Cool Rider" Never Forgets

Don't know if you Pfans out there caught PopWrap's interview with Maxwell Caulfield of Grease 2 fame. He's doing Cactus Flower on stage now (yep the property that won Goldie Hawn that early Oscar -- though I personally didn't realize that Adam Sandler's Just Go With It was a reworking???) so he's making the press rounds. He's still an extremely handsome bloke at 51. I've noticed him billed on a couple of stage things here in New York over the years but haven't managed to catch him doing his thing.

PopWrap asks him about Grease 2 (1982) of course and I love his humble appreciative response despite the film career never really working out.

PW: Do you remember it fondly? 
Maxwell: I haven’t hit enough home runs in the film world to say, “oh yea, ‘Grease 2,’ isn’t that a cute movie?” For me, it is a very major part of my filmography. I still have my great friends from the experience and when it pops up on TV, I stick with it – it brings back so many happy memories.

PW: It was filmed almost 30 years ago and some actors can't remember projects they made 3 years ago -- do you recall shooting it? 
Maxwell: Oh yes! You’re never going to forget a liplock with Michelle Pfeiffer! [laughs] I remember being in the bowling alley and the school. I have very distinct memories from making that movie ... But I do look at it and think, “damn, why didn’t they give me a second picture?” [laughs]  But them is the breaks.

He's never forgotten his liplock with Michelle Pfeiffer? Well neither have we.

Yum!

"New Year's Eve" Throws Pfeiffer in the Trash

The headline may be provocative but it's unfortunately (and literally) true. To my great distress veteran director Garry Marshall has decided to throw Michelle Pfeiffer in the garbage in a scene from the all star "comedy" New Year's Eve (2011). Here she is filming in NYC.

Sigh.

Honestly Mr. Marshall, this just seems like asking for trouble. If you make jokes involving movie stars and garbage, aren't you daring the reviews to write themselves? It's not like the star-studded lead-in Valentine's Day (2010) was a critical darling!

And if you're going to cast Michelle Pfeiffer why do you want her drabbed down? I hate it when they make her mousy. She looks better than this just walking around with her husband without a team of makeup artists handy. Mousy Michelle is not what audiences come to see. There better be a makeover moment later in the film.

New Year's Eve, which like its predecessors charts the intertwining lives of several couples and singles throughout a holiday, has a couple dozen stars in it including other big names like Hilary Swank, Julie Andrews, Halle Berry, Sarah Jessica Parker,  some TV biggies (Sofia Vergara, Lea Michele) and many more but apparently La Pfeiff is paired with a bike riding Zac Efron somehow (mother/son? fateful strangers?)

I can't decide whether I should be happy to see her onscreen again on December 9th or dread the very likely probability that she is adding another terrible movie to her weirdly haphazard filmography.

On that note the actress herself has generously demonstrated this How I Feel / How I Wish I Felt conundrum for me.

When thinking about this movie, which look best describes your mood: left or right?

"Baby there's no other superstar you know that I'll be... ♫ "

Michelle Pfeiffer sightings are so rare these days that I have to share them every time (the last big day out was the White House Correspondents dinner in May of last year). Here she is at the Lady Gaga concert at Madison Square Garden yesterday. (I'm guessing she was on her way out because she's totally smiling and Gaga concerts are fun.) Which means she was right here in NYC last night. Wheeee.

They filmed that particular concert for HBO. She and David E Kelley were taking their kids Claudia Rose and John Henry who are now 17 and 16 respectively. This is all an effort to make me feel old since I still remember the first photo I ever saw of Claudia Rose, her daughter, (who turns 18 very shortly), which happens to be my favorite paparazzi photo of Michelle  since she looked ridiculously happy. I'm sure she didn't like the intrusion of the cameras though since Pfeiffer is not a Fame Monster. She once told Rolling Stone.

I act for free, but I demand a huge salary as compensation for all the annoyance of being a public personality. In that sense, I earn every dime I make.

What does Pfeiffer make of Lady Gaga and her ilk, the celebrities who LIVE for their own celebrity? Different times. Different breeds of stars. When Lady Gaga was born (1986), Michelle was probably filming The Witches of Eastwick! Bye Jack. Now Gaga is the horned one.

What do you suppose La Pfeiff's favorite Gaga song is?

Dark Shadows Slowly Moving Our Way

A big screen adaptation of television's cult oddity supernatural soap opera  "Dark Shadows" has been in development for ages now but it looks like it's finally happening. Tim Burton is finalizing his cast. In previous years this news would have thrilled me to no end. But it's been a long time since I could love a Burton film without reservation and adapting long form serials to the two hour demands of the big screen is wrought with... ahem... issues, no matter how talented the team. But maybe it's worth hoping that Burton could regain some early 90s glory? The last "vampires" (of sorts) that Tim Burton trained his camera on were actors playing them in his superb biopic Ed Wood (1994) so let's take that as a good omen.

And this:

"Elizabeth Collins Stoddard" and Michelle PfeifferDeadline reports that both Michelle Pfeiffer (wheeeeeeeee) and Helena Bonham Carter (duh! It's a Burton film) are both lined up for the major roles of Elizabeth Collins Stoddard and Dr. Julia Hoffman respectively.

The best part of this news might be this sentence at The Hollywood Reporter.

Pfeiffer is finding herself very much in demand this new year.

Music to a pfan's ears.

Since I've never seen an episode of Dark Shadows (have you?) I had to look these roles up. Elizabeth sounds like a beauty of a part. She's the regal shut in matriarch of the mansion where the story takes place and Wikipedia says "Despite her imperious and reserved exterior, Elizabeth is a deeply passionate woman who harbors several dark secrets." Ice queen with deep wells of inner fire? That's what you call Pfeifferian. It's not exactly a stretch but let's pray that Burton gets performances as good as he got for Ed Wood (which won Martin Landau the Oscar as the drug-haunted, faded star Bela Lugosi).

Dr Julia Meet Dr HelenaAs for Helena's role, she's a doctor who specializes in blood disorders who discovers the vampiric lead character Barnabas Collins. Over the course of the series her relationship to the vampire changes apparently but since this is a feature film with only two hours to tell the story who knows if she's friend or foe.

Some of you may recall that my friend Susan wrote a piece on this movie a couple years back at the old Film Experience blog and wherein she saw HBC coming in this exact role, writing.

Dr. Julia Hoffman's questionable methods and attitude make her my favorite character (so far) from the original series. The epitome of Barnabas’s foolishness is that he can’t see how fabulous the not-so-good doctor is since he’s blinded by the boring (but youthful) babes. If Burton ends up directing this, I’ll expect Helena Bonham Carter to take on this role, and since she doesn’t have to sing, I think she’d be a pretty good choice.

I presume I don't have to tell you which movie star has the lead role of Barnabas Collins. Who else would it be? Yes, him. Eva Green as the witch Angelique and Jackie Earle Haley as the con artist Willie Loomis have also joined the ballooning cast.

Have you ever seen Dark Shadows? Do you like the casting?