April Showers: Diane & Viggo 'Busy Being Free'

waterworks weeknights at 11 in April

Have you ever wondered why people don't talk more about Tony Goldwyn's A Walk on the Moon (1999)?  It's one of those pictures that contains all sorts of stuff people came to love afterwards in embryonic or transformational stages. It was here that Diane Lane practiced the mesmerizingly guilty adulteress act that she'd be Oscar nominated for in Unfaithful (2002). It was the moment when Viggo Mortensen, so often backgrounded in pictures till then, revealed that he was a Star. It was also the mainstream bridge between Anna Paquin's sexually curious wicked child (The Piano) and sexually wicked curious psychic (True Blood) since she played one of her most ordinary roles as a teenager struggling with all the hormones swirling around inside her and outside of her as her screen mother (Lane) was also experiencing a sexual awakening.

It was even in A Walk On the Moon that Liev Schreiber played the uptight wronged husband and, perhaps learning that Sex-On-A-Stick-Wife-Stealer was the better role, flipped parts for The Painted Veil (2006),  bedding Naomi Watts (onscreen) which he's been doing ever since offscreen. Now, maybe we're reading too much into it. But the point is this: We like A Walk on the Moon.

Mostly it's an enjoyable picture because Diane & Viggo were at the arguable peak of their screen beauty and looked even more sensational paired. Certain star pairings just elevate everything, right? And does any actress do 'aroused but totally conflicted about it' as well as Diane Lane? There are moments in this performance that are just mesmerizing like the one pictured above wherein she shyly lets Viggo give her a necklace, briefly daring to meet his gaze before dropping her head into his chest in submission. Her shyness is fascinatingly mixed in by the actress because the repetitive act of visiting his mobile clothing store is rather brazen; she knows instinctively what awaits her therein. Viggo is such a smooth and hypnotic ladykiller that her legs are over his shoulders before she's realized she's horizontal. Next thing you know, she's let her hair down metaphorically enough to experience sex in the outdoors. Under a waterfall, God's own high pressure shower.

More after the jump [mild nudity] including a question for film historians with a minor in sex scenes.

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April Showers: Angelina's Power Cleanse

Kurt here again. How do you like your Angelina Jolie? Hacking the Gibson under the name of Acid Burn? Wailing about her lost son in a cloche hat? Wooing the Hollywood Foreign Press opposite Johnny Depp in Venice? Please. You like her kicking ass, and with respect to fans of Wanted, she's really never done it better than in Tomb Raider, the underrated video game adap that houses what we can probably call her signature performance.

All of 24 when she shot the movie, Angie wasn't yet Salt skeletal, and still had some of those Gia curves to flaunt. She gets her chance when director Simon West shoots her in a post-training shower scene, where she washes off the sweat worked up from emptying clips into a killer robot.

I love this scene because it's so freaking gratuitous. West might argue that he included it to help humanize Lara Croft (tomb raiders need showers, too!), but we all know it has the same objective as a Maxim cover shoot. And who's arguing, anyway?

I'm still of the mind that Angie is the most perfectly put together female on the globe, and this scene might just mark the peak of that perfectly-put-togetherness.

More More More after the jump.

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Natalie Portman and Rooney Mara TOPLESS !

What? I was feeling jealous of everyone else's sensationalist headlines. It's weblag from that NYFCC brouhaha and that 'lazy journalism' Jacki Weaver was talking about in our interview. So, 'bout that headline. Define Topless. We're most concerned with definition #3...

...although we suspect most actresses would like us to use the obsolete definition, #5.

Ubiquitous NATALIE PORTMAN found that she just wasn't making enough bank this year from Black Swan or her four, yes four, 2011 features. Also, the covers of every magazine weren't enough now and won't be enough when she wins the Oscar and still won't be enough this summer when she gives birth either. So now you can find her photos inbetween the reams and reams of magazine articles about her as as she hawks Christian Dior's cosmetics and perfumes. Here she is posing for Miss Dior. 

Her children's children's children will have their trust funds all insured by the end of 2011. Also: many trees will die in her honor.

For what it's worth she's more naked in Wes Anderson's Hotel Chevalier (2007) than she'll ever be in a magazine and it's a damn good miniature performance, too.

Meanwhile...

W Magazine has a whole slide show featuring ROONEY MARA as Lisbeth Salander for David Fincher's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011).

Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander

The photos are pretty amazing though we're still not crazy about that Millenium Trilogy in concept and apart from the money and that unbreakable serial killer obsessions of David Fincher's, we're still not sure why he's doing it. Especially since you know he's not going to actually make the sequels.

Rooney... remember how much she did with just three scenes in The Social Network? Imagine what she might do over the course of two hours!