TV @ The Movies: "Meryl Streep Realness"

TV @ The Movies is a series that came to life because we always perk up when movies or movie actors are name-checked on the small screen. Who and what fillters into pop culture? And in what form?

Are any of you watching RuPaul's Drag Race Season 3? In the latest episode The Supermodel of The World gave her competing "gurls" scripts to film a movie trailer "Drag Queens in Outer Space: Return to Uranus". The acting in the final trailers was so hideous I didn't even remotely wish the fake movie was real and given that it was called "Drag Queens in Outer Space: Return to Uranus,"  that's a fail.

Shangela & Mimi discuss their upcoming performances

Shangela and Mimi Imfurst already hate each other and have become immediate rivals. This is because they're both crafty disingenuous camera hogs and nothing drives people crazier than seeing their unflattering traits reflected in other people. They're both continually making trouble (Shangela) or breaking down (Mimi) so as to log more camera time. Essentially, this is a fail safe ploy in the reality TV format: I already know their names and faces and the other queens are still bleeding together after two regular episodes. Mimi brags about her acting experience and on the read-through of the script, they have this exchange:

Shangela: You better get that Oscar, bitch.
Mimi Imfurst: I'm bringing Meryl Streep Realness. You gotta get ugly to win the gold.

As quotes go it's no "I was giving Michelle Pfeiffer bitch" uttered magnificently in season 2 by Raven (It's all downhill from Raven. Sigh). Meryl Streep Realness and the tried and trued De-Glam Oscar trick both make sense on their own but putting them together is like talking in gibberish. Streep has never had to downplay her beauty for Oscar's attention. In fact, her Best Actress Oscar went to arguably one of her most glamorous performances in Sophie's Choice. Yes, yes, she also deglams within the same film in flashbacks. But that's Meryl; she does it all. Except for maybe camp.

Okay, okay. That's not exactly true.

Mimi ended up going for full Leigh Bowery Artifice, Meryl Streep Realness never entering the picture.

But the queens weren't done paying homage/defaming the prestige screen divas. Later Stacy Lane Matthew's performance as "Lady Tata" in the sci-fi trailers prompted comparisons to none other than Dame Judi Dench.

Stacy: Honey, I don't know who in the hell I was.
Shangela: Girl, you were some British bitch.
Mimi: You were Judi Dench giving us Shakespeare.
Shangela: Where in the hell did you get that accent Miss Back Swamp North Carolina? Next thing you turn around you're a British bitch.
Stacy: Bitch, I was thinking Julia Child.

[Ahem]. Speaking of Streep Realness/Camp.

For reasons that are still unclear Lily Tomlin was a guest judge. (Sci-fi plus Lily? Why?) Strangely, she didn't say much and only made one funny.

If you were starring in "Drag Queens From Outer Space," which legendary actress would you be using for inspiration? Would you be okay with Lily Tomlin judging you?

RuPaul's Drag Race is available to watch online. If you dare.

Whither Mad Men?

Perhaps it's premature to worry that 2011 will hold no new episodes of Mad Men but I am hearitly enjoying the outcry that followed Matthew Weiner's recent statement that he has no idea when they're going back to work of even if Lionsgate and AMC will work it out financially. Even Anderson Cooper is bitching on CNN. Staying off the air too long can seriously damage a series. People do move on. Even from something as wondrous as Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.

Money changes everything.

(What are you watching on the small screen these days? I'm totally obsessed with Downton Abbey)

Pippi Long Linkings

Some links and/or movie news for your perusal

• Playbill Greenday's "American Idiot," once an album then a Broadway stage musical could eventually be coming to the screen.
• Deadline Hollywood Daniel Craig will be back as James Bond (whew) in November 2012. No title yet though we're betting it'll easy trump "Quantum of Solace". Sam Mendes is directing. 
• Cinema Blend Katey shares the news that Debra Granik (Winter's Bone) wants to bring Pippi Longstocking back to the screen. How peculiar/fun!
• The House Next Door takes an interesting Baltimore-specific look at both Hairspray (1988) and Hairspray (2007).
• Gold Derby rounds up the Golden Globe predictions from the experts, including moi. Can you believe it's this weekend?
• My New Plaid Pants obsesses over new HBO Game of Thrones pics. I keep hearing that George R R Martin loses the thread of his story a little bit on the 3rd book (and that there's no book 4) but I tell you. I'm already on book 3 but I think he lost the thread on book 2. It took forever and when it was all over it's kind of like "so, what happened?" everyone is still at war with each other and no closer to resolution on any of their stories. The end. You know, long arcs are fine. But you have to stagger them a bit so that SOMETHING happens. I mean a lot of things happened but few that advanced the big arc. It was a bit like how I felt at the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One only less angry because Martin's writing is so beautifully assured. My how he can paragraph.
• i09 on the American cast of new Being Human series (based on the British series of the same name). Normally I oppose remakes but there's no reason why this couldn't be better since (spoiler alert: NOTHING HAPPENS in Being Human either). It's turning into a theme today. Seriously, where were the stakes in Being Human? It was just a whole lot of supernatural moping.

Finally, as you may have heard, Michelle Pfeiffer is getting back to work in 2011. The goddess is currently filming the Valentine's Day sequel New Year's Eve which opens this December and now she's confirmed for Alex Kurtzman's Welcome to People (2012) where she'll play the mother of Chris Pine, a man who must deliver his deceased dad's fortune to a long lost sister (or some such. I'm no good with plots.) Now, I know we're all getting older every day and I know that my favorite movie star is 52 BUT her own children Claudia Rose and John Henry are 17 and Michelle is not old enough to play a 30 year old's mother. Well, yes, she technically is but I don't have to like it. Please to remember that her last onscreen lover Rupert Friend is only a year older than Chris Pine.

Given the cinematic year the world's 50-to-60something actresses just had (I'm talking about Tilda Swinton, Isabelle Huppert, Julianne Moore, Annette Bening, Kim Hye-Ja, Barbara Hershey, Helen Mirren, Jacki Weaver, Melissa Leo and Lesley Manville who all starred or co-starred in complex roles in successful films) I think Pfeiffer is totally slacking. Pick it up lady. Challenge yo'self.