Letters to the Editor
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I don't see it
From the two photographs I saw (Kidman as Margot, and the Marie Claire article), Nicole Kidman's face looks...completely natural. Untouched by cosmetic surgery. Even a tiny jowl made an appearance! Maybe you could see more detail when you watched Baumbach's film, but still...
Some people just don't age as quickly as others. Myself included. It's no big deal; we're not 'blessed' or any luckier than anyone else, unless we're movie stars. THEN it comes in handy.
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...Nicole Kidman's face.
Best dek EVER!
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Dear Stephanie Zacharek
It is bourgeois to dust.
And you are so bourgeois, in your tediously obvious reactionary populism. I'm sorry you were so stung by the death of irony on September 11th. I'm sorry for the cruelty of the joke that postmodernism and poststructuralism are not synonymous and that you received a Master's degree on the subject without recognizing the distinction.
Noah Baumbach is smarter than you are, and has made a movie you don't understand. While it's understandable that you would bridle at that (most people do), perhaps you should forgo the film criticism and just stick to watching baseball on television, since you seem to prefer it so.
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To any one who doubts that Nicole Kidman has had significant work done...
compare...
Nicole Kidman circa 1988 in the movie dead calm:
http://www.independentcritics.com/images/dead%20calm%20SPLASH.jpg
Nicold Kidman now:
http://www.aceshowbiz.com/images/events/NTR-000041.jpg
Most notably, her upper lip has been extended and plumped, likely through collagen injections. Her nose has been shaped and slimmed slightly at the tip, and her eyebrows and forehead have been pulled back, leading to that permanently arched, tight, doe-eyed look. Plus her naturally curly red afro has been replaced with straight blond tresses. I don't think it's taboo or tasteless to mention these things. Unnatural beauty is not the same as natural beauty, and it's good to know that not every Hollywood starlet was born with plump, pouty lips, a button nose, and straight blond hair.
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Different Nose Certainly
Rent a great movie, Dead Calm. Take a look at Nicole's nose 15 years ago. A lot has gone missing.
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Who needs sexists when you've got other women?
I think this review would have been witty and servicable without descending into an attack Nicole Kidman's face.
By doing this Zacharek scrapes double bottom: first reinforcing the stereotype of female writer who can't get through a review without gleefully descending into gossip, then trying to pass an ornately catty brow furrow joke as some dignified rumination on Hollywood. It's just the usual creepy, sexist obsession with tearing into the age and bodies of women, with a healthy dose of the idea female celebrities are all vain liars who "mutilate" themselves.
Does Zacharek have any proof Kidman is lying? Could it be she's a stiff actress? She's 39, not a crone - at that age good skin is still possible and the illusion of unlined skin can involve heavy makeup and choosing fewer expressions as much as surgery.
If some guy - gay or straight - ripped on an actresses looks an acted like it wasn't a cheap shot, they'd get called on ot. So come on Stephanie, if you want to get TMZ in your movie review, drop the mask of thoughtful concern - it's more phoney than botox.
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Salon, please hire new film critics.
This is not intended to be vitriolic or angry or bitchy, it's simply a real complaint from a devoted reader who LOVES Salon and has read it every day for over four years now. I've always loved everything about the site, save for the film reviews (I'm not crazy about Andrew O'Hehir either). It's almost amazing how consistently Ms. Zacharek (and Andrew O'Hehir) misses the boat on woderful films and falls all over herself for dreck. A great deal of the time, if I'm on the fence about a movie I think I might really like, I'll check Salon, and if Ms. Zacharek hated it, I know I'll love it. But it isn't a simple divergence in taste that makes me dislike her reviews so much; I of course don't expect to agree with any critic on everything. it's her habit of often focusing on petty, superficial details and her, as on other letter writer put it well "post 9/11 populism" and disdain for what she often wrongly perceives as "pretension." Now, I haven't catalogued my reactions to her reviews over the years, so I can only specifically give a few points on this one:
1. I'm quite familiar with this movie, having tangentially worked on an advertising campaign for it. (I'm in no way connected to the production or the filmmakers though, and believe me, I definitely don't ALWAYS like the movies I work on.) I've seen it probably three or four times. I'm astonished by Ms. Zacharek's "certainty" that Mr. Baumbach wants us to feel sympathy for these characters, when I would say that the defining characteristic of the film is how bravely he completely refrains from ever trying to show us a "softer side" or give us an obvious, easy emotional in to the characters.
2. I always viewed the portrayal of the Voglers as impressionistic; kind of showing us the way they're viewed threw Margot's eyes. To her, regular working class people appear as near monsters, something out of Deliverance or the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And I did find this to be funny and a flaw in Kidman's character.
3. I find Ms. Zacharek's many swipes at Mr. Baumbach for being pretentious to be unfounded and unnecessarily nasty, especially in her humorlessly snarky paragraph about the filmmakers' cinematic posing to avoid looking like they're posing. I suppose the only person who is "purely" being what they are here is Ms. Zacharek, who sees right through all of these posturing shenanigans as the erudite but down to earth populist that she is. (This kind of juvenile, meritless unpleasantness is also what turned me off of Mr. O'Hehir. I remember in a review of Terry Gilliam's "Tideland", an admittedly messy trainwreck of a film I didn't necessarily like, O'Hehir nastily called Gilliam out with a "Ooh. I get it okay. You're being edgy!" It's almost as if Salon's film critics take every movie they don't like as a personal slight at them.)
4. And worst of all, is Ms. Zacharek's devotion of the summation of her review to a critique of Ms. Kidman's face and her supposed botox or plastic surgery. First of all, like I said, I've seen this movie A LOT, and I didn't notice any of what Ms. Zacharek talks about. Secondly, while I know some may say it's legitimate to the critique of the film, as it affects the way the character looks, that argument doesn't hold water. Nicole Kidman is fantastic in this movie, and is somehow both icy and beautifully expressive at the same time. I found her face having no trouble to convey the thoughts, feelings, cruelty, humanity and obliviousness of this very complex character. I know Ms. Zacharek expressed sadness that women can't grow old gracefully in Hollywood, and I agree. But I don't think it's a foregone conclusion Ms. Kidman's had work done, and I personally find it sad (but not surprising) that Ms. Zacharek, in a review of what is, if not a perfect film, at the very least a truly original and challenging one, feels the need to focus on the looks of the female lead.
Now, as for who I'd like to see Salon look to for their future film criticism, might I suggest anyone from the truly fantastic stable of writers' at the udnerappreciated Onion AV Club. All of them are insightful, funny, pithy, and wonderful writers who, even if you don't agree with their conclusion, deliver a dead-on summation of a film and its merits. It's pretty much the exact opposite of Salon's film criticism.