Sunday, February 11, 2007

Great Performers, NY Times Division

The New York Times Sunday Magazine has their annual portfolio of celebrity portraits up. These aren't the stunningly odd creations of last year's batch --there was a lot of writing on faces in that one. There's less of an element of surprise in the photos (fairly traditional portraiture, sometimes even dully so) so the surprise comes in their choice of subjects: Vin Diesel (Find Me Guilty), Abbie Cornish (Sommersault), and Paul Dano (Little Miss Sunshine) alongside kudo fixtures like Helen Mirren (The Queen) and Leonardo DiCaprio (The Departed). At least they chose the right film for Leo, even if their taste elsewhere is questionable. Ivana Bacquero (Pan's Labyrinth) is unarguably a photogenic child but a great actress? Like Audrey Tatou in Amélie, she's a beautiful face around which the film's true strength, the visuals, orbit. But calling it a "great" performance. That's stretching it till it snaps.


If you click on that link above and hit the slideshow you can see all the photos but I've included my three favorite portraits here: Annette Bening all simple elegance with her trademark twinkle, Ryan Gosling looking old school dapper, and Rinko Kikuchi reminding me of a Björk video or CD cover or something... or maybe an old photo of Vanessa Redgrave? Bet you didn't expect to hear those two names compared. But, ahhh, that's the associative triumph of weird ass collections like this one.

tags: Annette Bening, Ryan Gosling, Helen Mirren, Leonardo DiCaprio,movies, portraits, photography, cinema, New York Times

6 comments:

NATHANIEL R said...

really? that might be my least favorite. she looks so plainly depressed or something.

maybe i'll give it another look.

Anonymous said...

Christian Bale in his photo looks like Tom Cruise, and I am not saying that as a compliment.

Like Sascha and Leonardo and cate's portraits the best

Anonymous said...

The Penelope Cruz portrait, along with Ken Watanabe and Eddie Murphy, is by Andres Serrano - well known artist who became notorious during the late 80s "culture wars" due to his photo "Piss Christ". His work often involves bodily fluids and he's also done a series of photos of corpses. And that's your art historical tidbit du jour, kids.

Lyn said...

Abbie Cornish's publicist really is working overtime. She's popping up in all sorts of contexts where clearly, she's the least high profile of the subjects . . .

Anonymous said...

Brad Pitt looks like my lesbian boss in his Times photo. (By the way, what was so special about his 'Babel' performance again?)

Wither thou, Meryl Streep?

Glenn Dunks said...

I love the Maggie Cheung photo. Abbie looks gorgeous, but actually sorta looks like Keri Russell.

The colour ones all look sorta boring. Most of them look like they took one photo and then left. I do like the Cruz one. It looks more spontaneous (as if she didn't know it was being taken) and earthy.