Birthday Suits: Hamlets & Hydes

Today's Cinematic Birthdays 11/13

1312 Edward III (of Windsor), not the gay one who gets more cinematic treatment (including Derek Jarman's fascinating take), but his son. This is the one Shakespeare wrote a play about and the one who Mel Gibson implied to be the bastard son of Braveheart William Wallace, thereby giving the finger to history unless Wallace's sperm could survive years past his death. That Gibson's sperm could magically endure beyond the grave is far more likely. He already has eight children.

1833 Edwin Thomas Booth, famous influential thespian and the 19th century's most prominent Hamlet. He's been portrayed onscreen and stage by famous thespians like Richard Burton and Frank Langella, usually in stories connected to his estranged brother's assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Will someone play him in the Spielberg helmed Lincoln film?

Oskar, Steve and Whoopi

1897 Gertrude Omstead, one of many silent film actresses who moved on once sound hit the movies.
1922 Oskar Werner, the most famous stage Hamlet of the 50s? If you don't count 40s holdover Sir Laurence Olivier. Werner had an erratic relationship with Hollywood and a difficult relationship with François Truffaut. Today he's best remembered for his 60s films including Ship of Fools (Oscar nomination) and Jules and Jim (as Jules)
1938 Jean Seberg "New York Herald Tribune. New York Herald Tribune"
1947 Joe Mantegna for some reason when I think of him I always think of watching him try to keep up with Mia Farrow's personality shifts in Alice (1990)

1955 Whoopi Goldberg aside from cameos or voice performance, she basically dumped the movies at the turn of the millenium. Do you miss her or are you fine with The View?
1967 Steve Zahn MVP of many a supporting movie cast. Recently had quite wonderful chemistry with Amy Adams in Sunshine Cleaning. They should work together again.
1969 Gerard Butler ...
1981 Shawn Yue the young version of Tony Leung Chiu Wai in those Infernal Affairs movies (that inspired The Departed). Hey, if this 28 year old actor can grow up to be half (nay, a third) as awesome as Tony Leung Chiu Wai we should all be very very grateful.

Finally, a big cinematic thank you to Robert Louis Stevenson on his 159th anniversary. If he'd only ever written The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr Hyde the cinema would owe him a great debt. It's impossible to even measure its influence, particularly on conflicted movie monsters and superheroes. The novella was adapted five whole times before sound even hit the movies. The first sound adaptation won Fredric March the Oscar as the famous doctor at war with his internal demon. He's one of only a handful of actors who've won the Oscar for a horror role. Actors who've portrayed the good/evil doctor since include everyone from John Malkovich to Udo Kier to Kirk Douglas to Leonard Nimoy. It's been awhile since Hollywood has tackled the story in a big budget way. The story has been mostly relegated to dvd or telefilms since Mary Reilly (starring John Malkovich and Julia Roberts) flopped in the mid90s. If The Wolf Man is a success next year I suspect a lot of the horror classics might see new prestige treatments onscreen.

Stevenson also wrote Treasure Island and Black Arrow which have also been adapted multiple times. Have you read any of these classics or just absorbed them through pop culture?

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Tuesday Top Ten: Bite Me!

It's Halloween Week! Though a horror movie wuss I be there's one movie monster who I'll always give it up for, the vampire. Herewith: the film & television vampires who I would find most difficult to resist. (I've restricted myself to the past 30 years because there are too many I haven't seen from earlier... like those Hammer Horror films Matt was just talking 'bout). Should these 10 suckers ever come knocking, I shan't be wearing a cross, turtleneck or smelling of garlic.

I've already discussed Seline in Underworld and that hot Mexican in From Dusk til Dawn so I'm skipping them here.

10 Dracula (Gerard Butler) in Dracula 2000 (2000)
There are abundant lists of "best/sexiest vamps" on the net, but most of them go off in directions I can't support [cough Twilight... must everything be about page views? They twinkle. In the sun. Ugh]. But The Daily Beast makes a good point in favor of Gerard Butler: Ceiling Sex.

09 Lady Sylvia Marsh (Amanda Donohoe) in The Lair of the White Worm (1988)
Anyone remember Donohoe? I had a friend who was obsessed with her in the late 80s. And I like vampires to be as interested in their own cruel beauty and fashion choices as they are into their dietary choices. Plus: Ken Russell makes indescribably weird movies. Or at least he used to.


08 Armand (Antonio Banderas) in Interview with the Vampire (1994)
He really shouldn't be on this list since I hate the way they handle his character in the movie and I hate the wig, too. Mostly I just put him here to get back at all of the idiot strangers sitting in that multiplex with me in Utah, circa 1994. They ruined so many movies when I lived there. The conservative audience was super vocally terrified that Louis and Armand were going to kiss in their big invitation/refusal scene. Stupidly, in complete disregard for the tone of Rice's vampire chronicles, they didn't. The homophobic audience was hugely relieved but Armand was not. That Louis, such a fang tease. Now Armand will have to find solace elsewhere (<-- that link is NSFW but I laughed my ass off when I saw it so I had to share.)

07 The Count (Jerry Nelson) in Sesame Street (1972-present)
Ever since a certain episode of 30Rock last season, I've found it difficult not to envision people as muppets (was anything more hilarious last season than Liz Lemon's muppet walk?)...even myself. Plus felt fangs would tickle more than hurt and I'm not so much into pain.




06 PLACE HOLDER
I think with the reinvigoration of the vampire genre, more competitors for this list will soon emerge. I'm particular fascinated by the idea of Julie Delpy and Tilda Swinton in those competing Countess Bathory movies. Watching either of them bathing in virgin blood would be quite arrestingly cinematic, would it not? Delpy's movie must have been finished ages ago. What's going on there? Why haven't we seen it? It can't be as bad as her last journey into the supernatural.

05 Lucy Westenra (Sadie Frost) in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)
Still one of the most spectacularly creepy vampires the cinema ever dreamt up. Thank you Francis Ford Coppola. She's game for anything with a pulse: demonic wolf men, crying babies, Winona Ryder. In fact, her appetite would make even the oldest vampires blush... and she's barely been turned. She's also on the list because her walk is more mesmerizing than most vampire's magical stare-downs. Bonus points: the actress slept with Jude Law for many years and who needs six degrees of separation when you can narrow that down to one?

04 Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgård) in True Blood (2008-present)
I'm still pissed they're not letting him play Thor. Casting fail.

03 Spike (James Marsters) in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (-1996)
I know a lot of people hate the way Spike took over the best television show of all time towards the end and I kind of did, too. But remember that episode when Buffy and Spike were having so much sex that the house collapsed in on them? So Much Sex. That wasn't the usual suspend-your-disbelief supernatural extraganza episode. That was a documentary about what it's like to have sex with James Marsters. I'm guessing.


02 Miriam (Catherine Deneuve) in The Hunger (1983)
I'm always horrified when she doesn't make best vampire lists in favor of sparkle-in-the-sunlight bloodless mouth breathers like Robert Pattison. Deneuve forever (which is what you get if you hook up with her as David Bowie and Susan Sarandon discovered)!

Also, to the best of my knowledge, Catherine Deneuve is the only actual immortal to have ever played a fictional immortal onscreen. Points for that.

01 Louis (Brad Pitt) in Interview with the Vampire (1994)
Sure, he'd be all tortured about it but it's not like guilt-ridden sex (aka all vampiric activity) is never hot. Plus, you already know how I feel about Brad Pitt and his little death.

Which vampires would you invite in?
Even if you're not into the bloodsuckers, play along in the comment. You need to get in the mood for Halloween.
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Inappropriate Hump Day Hotness: 300, Gay Panic and Rodrigo Santoro

Those of you who loved 300 (now out on DVD) are like the depicted Persian army: legion. As someone who (nearly) hated the movie, I'm placed in the odd position of well... being on the audience favored side: a member of the miniscule Spartan army. Like those weirdly glorified losers I find myself martyred for a cause. Well, mine is more of a belief really.

That belief: this movie is stoopid.

I saw 300 a few weeks after it exploded with audiences because I was waiting to catch it on iMax. [I'll readily admit that this delay in viewing is problematic --ever noticed how movies everyone loves are usually greeted a month or two later with a rash of "it ain't all that!" pontificating... are these sincere reactions or very human balance corrective responses --overemphatic objection? Perhaps we should discuss in another post -ed. ] I spent most of the movie trying not to laugh. To this movie lover it played like self parody only without jokes. Unless you count that recurrrent gay panic gag but that got old fast: repeated scenes of drooling muscle worship mixed with demonization of the stereotypically feminine in men. The movie reminded me of those M4M personal ads that used to irk me and my activist friends in college: "straight acting: no femmes!"

So as a surprise counterattack to all that 'all-man!' fetishizing that's going on in Zach Snyder's strange movie, I thought I should drool on the demonized drag queen Xerxes also known as Rodrigo Santoro instead of the other one, King Leonidas played by Gerard Butler. (Last time I tried to make him a hottie, it didn't go so well).

Anyway... this movie bugs. 300 wants you to lick Butler's bulging muscles but it wants you to be grossed out knowing that Xerxes wants Butler to lick his.

Potato, potahto, Tomato, tomahto...


Both Butler and Santoro are exceedingly attractive men in real life and in their reel lives here. Look, you can put Rodrigo Santoro under several pounds of flamboyant jewelry and makeup. You can press on the false lashes and nails but he's still Rodrigo Santoro.

And Rodrigo Santoro looks like this...


Of course that's a shot from Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle rather than 300 but the former movie is more fun ... or at least it's more honest about how badly it wants Rodrigo Santoro. It even gives you the type of cheesysleazy camera work usually reserved for ogling actress goodies...


If this same shot were used on Scarlett Johansson, it might win its DP an Oscar nod.

I don't watch Lost but I understand that today's sex object has blessed that television serial with his hotness too. Apart from RS's strange willingness to do questionably negative drag roles (see also Carandiru --which I haven't: thus the word questionably) I generally like him. I dig the way he ignores Cameron Diaz' crude innuendo in Charlies Angels (c'mon Cameron, wise up! He's too pretty to understand words). I liked the way he ran sweaty and frantic through Behind the Sun.

But you know what makes me love him most? The Lovely Laura Linney's reaction to snogging him in the romantic comedy Love, Actually.


If you make Laura Linney that giddy, you're all right by me.
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We Can't Wait #14 "300"

Butler readies his army for battle. Haven't you heard? Swank is his next co-star.

Readers I didn't even need to ask my very smart 'we can't wait' pals why they so desperately await this movie. The answer was perfectly obvious...


History! I mean, who doesn't want to see it? Duh.
And what better way is there to learn about ancient Sparta and the Persians?


They should teach this stuff in schools.


You can see the trailer here. Zach Snyder is the man behind the wheel here and you may recall that he directed that superb remake of Dawn of the Dead a couple of years ago. Remember how dense and literate that was? This time he's adapting a wordy Frank Miller novel, so hit the books before seeing 300 on March 9th. The more you know going in the less likely you'll be confused by all those long talky political sequences.



UPDATE: New vlog footage with Gerard Butler for more 300 action. [src]

previously on "we can't wait"
#15 Hot Fuzz
#16 Stardust
#17 The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
#18 Spider-Man 3
#19 Rendition
#20 The Bourne Ultimatum
Intro -films that didn't make the list

P.S. I Hate Her

There was no "Hump Day Hottie" yesterday. As I was casting about for a suitable humpee, my mind wandered to the fine beefcake of Gerard Butler since that pic of him from the upcoming 300, dressed undressed in full warrior drag, has been popping up repeatedly online. I hesitated for a moment (considering the wretchedness of The Phantom of the Opera) and in that moment I was lost. My traitorous mind jumped to my arch enemy, Hilary Swank!

She ruins everything.

My mind made the leap because Ms. Skank had recently signed to star opposite Mr. Butler in a film called P.S. I Love You. It's about a husband (Butler) who dies but leaves his wife (Swank) move-on-with-your-life grieving instructions. The premise sounds terribly sentimental but it is written by Richard Lagravenese. And I gotta tell you, that man can write. What's more, that man can write really memorable female characters (cases in point: The Fisher King, The Ref, The Bridges of Madison County, Living Out Loud). Not only is she starring in P.S.... she's also already finished work on LaGravenese' other new film, Freedom Writers. So now Hilary has herself (possibly) two new great roles for which she can be wildly overpraised when they arrive in theaters.

I'll never be rid of her.


So as I was trying to forget about this ubiquitous she-devil, she starts hitting the gossip circuit again, too. Seems she was cheating on Chad and has since been outed. Her sins continue to pile up: robbing better actresses of Oscars, breaching her husbands anonymity in recovery, and now fornication with her agent (!) --to quote Addams Family Values: "I'll kill myself... the help?" --When will this girl stop? She can run but she can't hide from the fiery pits of hell!

Now, if you'll excuse me. Gerard has just woken up from a sweaty Swank filled nightmare. I really need to be there to comfort him. What? Don't judge.

tags: Gerard Butler, movies, gossip,celebrities, Hilary Swank, Oscars, Academy Awards, 300