Josh & Kate @ the Beach

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JA from MNPP here. While doing research for my post at MNPP this morning in honor of Josh Hartnett's 30th birthday today (research = looking at pretty pictures of a pretty man), I stumbled upon an entire series of promo shots of Mr. Hartnett and Kate Beckinsale for Michael Bay's homage-to-shiny-people-and-the-shiny-bombs-that-blow-them-up Pearl Harbor, and couldn't resist taking my opportunity while at the helm of TFE to dedicate a post to it. I mean... if there's one thing The Film Experience lacks, it's attention paid to Pearl Harbor, otherwise known as "The Thinking-Person's Titanic."

Wow, typing out that sentence made me throw up in my mouth a little.

In all honesty, there have been a few times that I've stumbled across PH on television and found myself drawn into its swirl of pretty commercial surfaces. I find it's more entertaining if you pretend it's really a love story between Hartnett and Ben Affleck. Also, you should be very, very drunk.

Time capsule: I would choose 2001 as the one of these to do, wouldn't I? Well, that happened. In entertainment, at the tail-end of the year Peter Jackson would introduce us to Middle Earth and Chris Columbus would take us inside Hogwarts for the first time. In music, Beyonce & Co. introduced the word "bootylicious" into the vernacular, while Christina Aguilera & Co. dressed like crazed Muppets who'd devoured a cosmetics counter in the "Lady Marmalade" video.
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a private msg 2 Josh Hartnett

Josh,

The bangs!

Please keep them.

xoxox

Now Playing: 4th Leftovers, Del Toro's Menagerie and Roman Polanski?

L I M I T E D
<--- August assembles an interesting cast, Josh Hartnett, David Bowie, Robin Tunney, Naomie Harris and Rip Torn to tell the story of a dot com entrepeneur (Hartnett) in crisis
Death Defying Acts -This Harry Houdini bio actually got made after all? I'd lost track. Guy Pearce & Catherine Zeta-Jones
Garden Party Elusive Vinessa Shaw and the O.C.'s Willa Holland headline this sexual LA ensemble piece
Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired I'm totally confused about this documentary. I liked it a lot. It showed on cable and now it's in theaters? Oh for wacky distribution.
The Stone Angel Ellen Burstyn remembers her past as a feisty young woman (played by Christine Horne). Based on the bestseller.

Roman Polanski Wanted and Desired & Death Defying Acts

W I D E
Hellboy II: The Golden Army Guillermo Del Toro brings his menagerie of comic book adapted beasties back. Will his recent Pan's Labyrinth breakthrough bring in a larger audience for the second round?
Journey to the Center of the Earth in 3-D! My BFF turned to me after this trailer played the other day and said "All the movie stars in our age range are starting to play Dads with teenage kids. We're old" Um, yeah, thanks for the reminder. Why don't you drop my popcorn and knock my drink into my lap now while you're at it.
Meet Dave Eddie Murphy has tiny aliens steering him. He's a spaceship. Har-dee-har-har.

L E F T - O V E R S
Hancock Will Smith, superpowered. That's all audiences needed to know over the holidays.
Holding Trevor -a gay romance starring multi-talented Jay Brannan (of Shortbus fame) and other cuties.
Kabluey -an indie comedy from Scott Prendergast. Co-starring Lisa Kudrow and Christine "Marcia! Marcia! Marcia!" Taylor
Diminished Capacity an actor friendly comedy featuring Alan Alda, Virginia Madsen, Lois Smith, Dylan Baker and Bobby Cannavale
The Wackness -the buzzy weed-loving indie comedy with an eclectic cast including Ben Kingsley, Famke Janssen, Olivia Thirlby, Method Man and Mary-Kate Olsen
Tell No One - A French thriller with fine cast: Francois Cluzet, Marie-Josee Croze, Francois Berléand and Kristin Scott Thomas (yay!)

Seeing anything this weekend? Seen any of these already? Tell everyone your plans. It's all about oversharing.

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Young Linkywood

Don't trust anyone over 30!

Topless Robot thinks Channing Tatum looks nothing like G.I. Joe
<--- WIMB Yummy Amanda Seyfried in Vogue
Bad and the Ugly Milo and Hayden on the set of Heroes 3rd season. I hate to be a jerk but the producers know that just giving them new hairdos won't make that show any better, right? Right?
Miami Herald Anne Hathaway is learning to play the banjo (?!)
Towleroad Josh Hartnett is now hawking cologne. Will Scarjo make Ryan wear it?
ModFab celebrates Jay Brannan (Shortbus)'s CD

NewNowNext Provincetown Film Festival swoons over Gael Garcia Bernal
---> Pop Seoul Seems that Rain (Speed Racer ...and currently filming Ninja Assassin) has to make nice with his hometown fans after deserting them for Hollywood.
Gossip Girls Kirsten Dunst hits the Coldplay concert in NYC. She's also been speaking out about her depression battles. Get well soon. (y'all know I love her and I need more crazy/beautifuls, Marie-Antoinettes and Virgin Suicies)
Guardian examines the public hostility often directed at Keira Knightley. Interesting piece.

The Black Dahlia

I once read in a magazine that the perception of beauty on the part of the beholder is largely dependent upon the visual symmetry in what they're beholding. If I'm remembering it correctly, the article cited Denzel Washington (among a few other famous faces) as a face in nearly perfect balance and, thus, considered exceptionally attractive. Now the vast majority of people, civilian and celebrity alike, do not have completely symmetrical faces. But this doesn't mean they aren't beautiful. It's just that their beauty is less commonly agreed upon. It's lopsided, if you will.

Every time I've attempted to write about The Black Dahlia, "lopsided" kept forcing its way into the text. For all of this word's maddening insistence on being part of the write-up, it remains an infuriatingly vague descriptor unless it's tacked on to every other remark. And so it shall be.

The Black Dahlia gets my vote for "Best Confounding Picture" of the year. It's certainly not the "Best Picture" in a more general sense. It's difficult to watch and even more difficult to write about. But for moviegoers who thrive on searching conversations after screenings, for those who want to eke out more complicated ideas about what they've just watched, it's a must-see. For moviegoers who are content to react with directional thumbs: move along. This is not the movie you're looking for.


The asymmetry of The Black Dahlia  isn't immediately noticeable.  Like the famous book upon which it's based, the film begins with a veritable orgy of back-story –it's expositional and plotty enough for three or four movies. Given how long we wait for any mention of the Dahlia herself, we have every reason to suspect that the movie will continue to feed us information at this breakneck speed, faster than we can process all the character names and motivations. Put in its very simplest form this movie is about two cops investigating the murder of a young unemployed actress.  But the plot isn't simple at all. As soon as all of the characters are introduced, the movie seems to stop and any forward momentum in plotting is based entirely on backtracking. Either I couldn't entirely follow it (possible) or, aside from a couple of key sequences, most all of the important story details take place offscreen or in an unfilmed prequel.

In other words, if you graphed the plot out the Dahlia narrative wouldn't look like a bell curve but would resemble a longtail theory.

Lopsided.

And there's still more of an imbalancing act to come. The most noticeable is found in the casting and reflected in the resultant ensemble work. The performances are all over the map. You don't notice this at first since the cops, one hotheaded (Aaron Eckhart), and one cool and careful (Josh Hartnett), are meant to balance each other out. Both actors are serviceable enough to sell their roles without getting in the way of DePalma's primary concern: the women.

All of the female characters within The Black Dahlia are either brutal or brutalized but the actresses playing them create a skewed portrait. There is a true seesaw of quality in plain view. Both Scarlett Johansson and Hilary Swank are miscast and inept, albeit in different ways. The first performance is a gaping abyss of nothing (Johansson looks lost and is too young for her role) and the second is filled with ACTING! but they're both cringeworthy in their shakier moments. On the other hand, Fiona Shaw and Mia Kirshner have rarely been so well employed. They fare much better.

Shaw plays an eccentric and wealthy mother (to Swank's Dahlia wannabe) and her performance is positively unhinged. She is so forceful in her tiny window of opportunity that she feels like something of a co-director: she's either completely keyed in to the more gonzo instincts of the divisive auteur behind the camera or she's interpreted her part so forcefully that you're left to piece the entire movie back together once she's ripped it to shreds. Mia Kirshner is also mesmerizing. She makes the most of this sad victim. Appearing only in flashback, she is the ghost that haunts the rest of the movie, even when she's not onscreen. She gives The Black Dahlia it's only deep emotion: despair.

In the already famous moment that announces the Dahlia's entrace into the larger film narrative, the camera is high above the ground looking down at some city blocks where two stories are, we realize, unfolding simultaneously. At the top of the screen a woman sees something in a field and begins to scream and run from her awful discovery. It's a genius sequence, instantly repellent and also begging to be seen: in other words, the true crime genre in a nutshell. As the terrified witness runs from the ghastly vision the camera follows and then abandons her, eventually returning us to the original story, this new crime already haunting the audience though it hasn't yet spooked our protagonists. But it's also far too emblematic of the overall problem with this film. Though Kirshner plays the title character, her story is all on the fringe of a beautifully visualized but otherwise misjudged and overpopulated noir. One wishes that the movie had been less faithful to the book. If more of the densely plotted first half had been jettisoned or streamlined, perhaps the good stuff in this movie...the great stuff about a troubled actress and her gruesome demise, the material that has clearly inspired both the director and his key actress could have cut deeper. This murder leaves a horrifying imprint but it's rather like a ghost image itself. You can't quite see it.

It's fascinating but frustrating that the film ends with the line like "come inside" when so much of what you're seeing is obscured and inpenetrable. Huge chunks of The Black Dahlia seem entirely disposable but there are moments that refuse to be shrugged off. They plead with you to look closely at this not quite beautiful thing.


B-
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A History of... Scarlett Johansson

Scarlett Johansson week continues. Since I'm all about your maximum reading pleasure I'd suggest soundtrack accompaniment for this post. "More Than This" by Bill Murray, the hidden track on the Lost in Translation soundtrack or, better yet, pop in Björk's "Army of Me"

Enjoy

1984 Scarlett Marie Johansson springs full grown from the head of her mother Melanie in New York City. Says a hoarse "hey" to twin brother Hunter three minutes later, lights a cigarette and watches a Lauren Bacall flick. Surprisingly patient, Scarlett waits ten more years before launching her attack on Hollywood.

1994 She makes her film debut in the legendary bad movie North starring a then 13 year-old Elijah Wood. He's already a pro with eight movies under his belt. Scarlett takes notes.

1998 She gets her first lead role at 14 in The Horse Whisperer. Nobody looks at the horse. Robert Redford, Kristin Scott Thomas, Dianne Weist, Sam Neill, and Kate Bosworth co-star. Nobody looks at them either.

2001 Ghost World premieres to hosannas from hundreds of critics and small pockets of obsessed geeks. Thora Birch is the star but it's Scarlett with her wise observant face and mellow vibe (among other assets) who hypnotizes. She gains the career momentum from the comic adaptation.

2002 Scarlett turns 18. Critics and geeks rejoice.

2003 Making her entrance ass first in pink panties, Scarlett ascends to the top of the Young Hollywood ladder with Lost in Translation. Two months later Girl with a Pearl Earring seals the deal on her new serious actress status and carnal appeal --she even makes mouthbreathing sexy.

2005 Ever the gambler, the new star makes two risky moves that payoff. She plays new muse for lost-it auteur Woody Allen improbably inspiring his biggest hit in 20 years, Match Point. She also takes a starring role as an escaped clone in the first flop from the King of Bad Movies, Michael Bay. It's a sci-fi actioner called The Island. Never one to waste an opportunity she studies cloning on the set and begins to replicate.

2006 Bouyed by a new clone army, Scarletts Johansson begins working 360 hour workweeks. Hollywood executives can't get enough with three movies in theaters (Scoop, The Prestige, The Black Dahlia), two lucrative commercial contracts underway (L'Oreal and Reebok), and five more movies in the pipeline for 2007.

2007 Trouble in Johanssonville. Scarlett2 complains of corns from endless Reebok photoshoots. Scarlett3's hair feels like straw after the L'Oreal commercials. Scarlett4 is sick of giving it up for Josh Hartnett --'the man is a sex addict!' and feels gropings from Isaac Mizrahi and ogling by studio executives contribute to a hostile work environment. Rejecting Scarlett's promises of shared Golden Globe swag, the Scarletts unionize. The original Ms. Johansson, never anything less than razor sharp, cuts down dramatically on overall production as payroll costs escalate. One film a year --two max. And definitely less nookie for Josh.

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While you're here see the full blog for the rest of "Scarlett Johansson Week", vote in the current "Scarlett fever" poll, see where Scarlett placed in the "Actress of the Aughts" countdown or read the previous History Angelina Jolie

tags: Scarlett Johansson, movies, cinema, Josh Hartnett, cloning, gossip, clone, film, reebok, Golden Globes, Woody Allen

Josh Hartnett's Tragic Audition For Fight Club

But he can't talk about it... (that's the first rule)


From the looks of things Lucy Liu definitely wants to talk about it.

[Actually this image is from the upcoming Lucky Number Slevin --thanks Billy.]