Letters to the Editor
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Nicole Kidman
Nicole Kidman is about as good at acting as Tom Cruise is. Oh, SNAP!
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Not in New England
I haven't seen the movie yet, but I'm pretty sure the movie takes place, and was shot, in the Hamptons.
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Julie Christie...
is an excellent example of a female actor whose natural aging reflects great beauty.
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Ye gods, I thought that was Lauren Graham...
I saw the pix for MATW before I knew who was in it, and Kidman looks amazingly like LG.
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In praise of Edie Falco
I've been watching reruns of the Sopranos lately, and have realized that its most compelling aspect to me is the amazing, apparently infinite range of facial expression of James Gandolfini and Edie Falco. Botoxification aside, there are so terribly few actors around who can communicate the underpinnings of an entire life through sheer facial muscle work. It's true talent, and truly precious. (Falco was on 30 Rock tonight; what a joy to see her again.)
I'm hopeful that facial mutilation will go out of style really soon, because it is a crashing bore to watch!
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The more I see..
these women who are around my age with not one line on their faces the more I appreciate my lines. Yes, I have smiled, laughed, cried, frowned, been confused and oh have I ever been angry and my face showed it every time. I wear a map of the emotional journeys I have been on in my life. Sure, some genetics and some bad and good choices effected how the map looks but even that tells its own story, indeed. Actually I am lucky that even though I had to grow old naturally I'm told I don't look my age often and I am sure its all about my attitude more than how my actual face looks. Frankly, Kidman has often seemed frozen to me and now her face is as well. The film sounds just as stiff and self absorbed as Kidman has seemed to me for a while. Hey, in fact, she often is like that sofa in the film. Over obvious attempts to seem thoughtful and wise when really...not so much. I was, however greatly amused and thoroughly entertained by Stephanie Zacharek's review of the film. Wonderfully provocative writing that conjured up the images and the ideas in ways I can tell the film sadly missed. Well done!
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The Hall of the Ouse of Fusher
So you didn't like it, then? I suspect if I see this, my reaction to it will be similar to my reaction to "The Squid and the Whale." Everybody was saying how fantastic it was, and then when I saw it, it was this very modest, disturbing, depressing thing that reminded me of some of my worst feelings in junior high.
To sum: Dad's a humiliated sad cuckold who's nonetheless unswervingly arrogant, mom's a success-driven free spirit with a psychosexual mean streak and some flatulence, the main character is a plagiarizer plagued by father's bad advice and a tendency to sabotage his own sexual fulfillment, and little brother's a public semen-smearer. What a wacky bunch.
"The Squid and the Whale" didn't show any of them overcoming their problems; instead it showed them suffering through them until finally realizing that there was no end in sight. If anything the movie was realistic, because the kinds of pain that are wallowed in by parents and then absorbed by children do not go away easily.
If "Margot at the Wedding" is to be worth watching, I would hope it would take this sort of insight and detail a few steps farther, possibly even allowing some characters to redeem themselves, or change, or move on. I hate to believe that everybody's doomed. It's nice when a character occasionally transcends himself or herself. (Like in Hal Hartley's "The Unbelievable Truth" when eternal fuck-up Adrienne Shelley finally sees what she's doing to herself.)
Then again if Noah Baumbach's talent is in delineating the weird ways people take out their problems on each other, I hope he'll dig in his heels and do it well.
I haven't seen the film, obviously, but I hope Stephanie Zacharek is not overstating the case that the depiction of the neighbors is just a smug way to show that the main characters have value in comparison. I can think of other reasons a writer would build in such a parallel or contrast. From the way Zacharek describes it, it sounds like Baumbach was painting a picture full of various types of ugliness.
Anyway, if I do see "Margot at the Wedding" I'll be happy if nobody smears semen on a high-school locker or pulls a snotty peanut out of his nose. (I ain't rushing out to see "Squid and the Whale" again any time soon.)
As for Nicole Kidman's face, are you sure she's had Botox, Zacharek? I have heard others say that. Yeah, I know you didn't actually say that but danced around implying it, but what else could it be? Is it possible that Kidman got some water in her motherboard and short-circuited a few transistors? Or maybe she's using the same herbal moisturizer that Renee Zellweger does after getting a bee sting?
If Kidman says she's all-natural, why not take it at "face" value? Haw....haw... Personally I wish stars wouldn't do that. An aging face gives you that many more wrinkles to act with. I can understand getting hair plugs if you're Ben "can I has akshun heer-o role pleze?" Affleck and your hairline is stampeding backwards. But not if you're gorgeous.
Anyway, when did these actors all start aging? That must mean I am getting old too. That can't possibly be!
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Beowulf at the Wedding?
Nicole Kidman's beautiful but masklike face almost looks like a product of motion capture. Maybe she should have just played Grendel's mom and been done with it.
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If a woman has a gorgreous face
then men could care less if she can furrow her brow.
Three cheers for plastic surgery.
Keep our women beautiful!
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What is really painful
What´s really painful is read a senior writer writing a review whose headline is based on a speculation about a personal matter of an actor. No wonder Mrs Zacharek couldn´t feel anything. Shallow as she proves she is, she appeals to a tabloid headline, begging, desperately, for attention.