Anne Hathaway

Not all actresses have talent.

Some land on the cover of Vogue with dress and smile alone. Large breasts. A publicist.

Sure, a stereotype but true—and hard to overcome. Attractive people get the better job, make more money, live it up.

Ever notice how often the hero of a film is handsome and the villain ugly?

Still, good looks in Hollywood doesn’t translate to respect necessarily. Sometimes it’s a problem. Many aren’t taken seriously—just written off as marketing ploys to win at the box office. But there are others…

Anne Hathaway could have retired on a picture deal with Disney. Her beauty, girlish charm and modest smile is a perfect fit with the company. A life-long relationship probably danced in the dreams of company big shots. But then she got naked in “Havoc”, playing a character different  from her wholesome, family image.

Was she a spoiled Hollywood actress whose pretension outweighed her ability? A stomping teenager? Maybe ungrateful?

Turns out she just likes to act. And does it well.

For proof, go watch “Rachel Getting Married,” a family-in-crisis film so poignant and universal that it should run on muted-repeat behind the podium of an AA meeting. Here, she plays an alienated youth fresh out of rehab, recovering from parental neglect as much as drugs.

Of course, she’s beautiful. But she’s more than that. She transcended it and became…what? An artist? Maybe, but that’s better served for off-Broadway acts struggling to pay rent. So, what? How about something more scarce. More elegant. How about credible?

Questionable Jobs in Entertainment: Best Boy Grip

What’s a “best boy grip”? 

Ever ask yourself that question at the end of the movie when the credits play and that dubious title rolls up and off screen?

I wanna run wires when I grow up!

There’s too little time to think. The guy has some Eastern European last name. A fat guy stands up and blocks the screen, you’re girlfriend wants to leave, and you forget to look it up later.

Well, it happened the other night and I actually remembered to look it up.

The word has two root words combined to make a title: “best boy” and grip”. 

“Best boy” is an old title a master would bestow upon their most skilled apprentice. “Grips” are technicians.

So, aside from an errand boy who flies across set with an arm thrown out dressed up in a Super Hero’s outfit like a twelve year on a caffeine binge, “best boy grips” are nothing more than the assistant to the head lighting and rigging technicians, either a “gaffer” or a “key grip”.

So in other words, they’re not as cool as we had hoped.

How to Steal A Movie

Downloading movies off the internet is illegal. Horrible even. Next to smoking crack or burning a bible, nothing is worse.

But Immanuel Kant once thought morality should be tested. So why not. 

 www.ovguide.com

Ghostbusters, Again

I ain't afraid of no flop

Newsflash: Hollywood’s out of ideas. (Wait, old news there).

The newest evidence:  Sony’s announcement they plan to re-boot the Ghostbusters series.

Word has it Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray and Ernie Hudson will be back (but not in lead roles, sadly).

The good news is the writer’s from “Office Space” will ink the script.

Indiana Jones and The Art of Suspended Disbelief

Suspended disbelief: “the willingness of an audience to accept as true the premise of a work of fiction, even if it is fantastic or improbable.”

The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Back to the Future movies all made it work—filmmakers established the “improbable” framework early and we responded by accepting the bearded wizards, warp speeds, and flux capacitors.

The Indiana Jones series made it work too.

In The Temple of Doom, we travel to India and we’re introduced to the legend of the Sankara Stones. It’s fantastical but it’s only a backdrop to the real story–the kidnapped children and Jones’ effort to rescue them, doing so with all of his well-established gun-totting, balls-to-the-wall skill.

Then in The Lost Crusade, we’re looking for a true historical artifact–the Holy Grail. And when Indiana reaches the grail (protected inside the Cannon of the Crescent Moon), Indiana is forced to pass through booby traps. Not fantastical booby traps, mind you. But mechanically creative, ingeniously plausible, booby traps. Even the invisible bridge is buyable–it’s visible, just not from his angle.

Sure, there are sci-fi elements in the Indiana Jones trilogy but they’re always plausible in the fantastical framework of the movie–in other words, we don’t get curve balls in Act III because the filmmakers got stoned and said “hey, this would be cool”.

The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is another story.

First, there’s the refrigerator death-ride that Indiana somehow falls out of unharmed. Fun ride, but no coma?

Then there’s the army of meat-eating CGI red ants, who are intelligent enough and strong enough to follow and carry a full grown adult male into an ant hole.

There’s little things too.

For instance, “Mutt” Williams, the drop-out bastard child of Indiana, throws off his 50′s leather jacket and turns into Chuck Norris halfway through the movie. The kid’s 16 and from the Midwest. The closest he’s come to a sword fight is popping open his switch blade on jocks in a diner. Yet, in one action sequence, he straddles two cars at high speed and, with perfect balance, wields a sword competently enough to out-duel a sword fighting expert. (Seriously, no bumps on the road?)

Then later, inspired by swinging tree monkeys, Mutt catches up to the 40 mile-an-hour car chase by what? Flying through the air (a la Tarzan) some 4,000 feet above ground on Amazonian-sized vines in symphonic harmony with CGI monkeys yapping at his heels.

Then, the final scene inside the church…

What do you know–a gust of wind blows open the chapel door, catches Jones’ iconic fedora and floats it lovingly to feet of Mutt Jones, all with some cheesy melt-your-heart music playing shamelessly in the background. It was a kind of “passing of the torch” Disney moment that really just solidified how badly the runner dropped it and why his feet are burning.

The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull asked the audience to suspend too much disbelief. To buy everything, whatever the fancy. Instead it became the perfect example of disjointed fantasy. And just bad writing.

Facebook: The Movie?

Nothing says “summer blockbuster” like a movie about a nerdy college kid building a website, especially if that movie is of boy-genius, Mark Zuckerburg and his wonder-child, Facebook.

Apparently, Sony Picture’s agrees.

Word has it the studio has optioned the rights to ”Bringing Down the House”, an upcoming tell-all book that follows Facebook’s trajectory from Harvard dorm room project to $15 billion internet company and Zuckerman’s makeover from pimpled-face undergrad to world’s youngest billionaire, and has pegged Aaron Sorkin to write the screenplay.

“I honestly don’t know how this works,” says Sorkin, creator of The West Wing and screenwriter of A Few Good Men, about his own recently-opened Facebook page, “which is why I’m here”. 

If art imitates life, Facebook: the movie will presumably not lack drama.

After Zuckerman unveiled the website in 2004, he was slapped with a lawsuit from classmates at Harvard, claiming Zuckerman stole their idea. The case was eventually settled out of court, but another lawsuit, claiming similar accusations, was filed again in March. 

Facebook is currently the 6th most trafficked and 5th most valuable website in the US., with over 130 million users and $150 million in revenues annually.