Another flag to interpret... perhaps...

When I grow up I want to become Cate Blanchett, and have the subtlety to think the carpet is already red, so I can just wear a black & white dress with green lining to make such a strong point. #cannes2024 pic.twitter.com/5OiJRBOZ5D

— Dr Zahira Jaser (@ZahiraJaser) May 21, 2024

"[U]ses of the 'gaze' today—be it the male gaze, the white gaze, the straight gaze, and so forth—seem more invested in matters of identity..."

"... than in the project of aesthetic analysis. They want to name who is doing the looking rather than how. (No wonder Cate Blanchett, in an interview for the 2015 live adaptation of 'Cinderella,' misheard a question about the “Disney villain gaze” as 'Disney villian gays.')"

Writes Lauren Michele Jackson in "The Invention of 'the Male Gaze'/In 1973, the film theorist Laura Mulvey used concepts from psychoanalysis to forge a feminist polemic and a lasting shorthand for gender dynamics onscreen" (The New Yorker).

The Mulvey essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," popularized the term "male gaze." We were expected to understand the process of looking as a process of projecting — the "gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly." 

Analyzing idiolects.

So much great stuff in that, including John Wayne not even trying to talk like Genghis Khan but just doing what I assume is the only reason they made that Genghis Khan movie, being John Wayne. Virtually everything else is actors doing a fantastic job, and Erik Singer (a dialogue coach) talks about exactly what they are doing. Personally, I dislike biopics, and I find accurate copying of speech patterns too distracting. I'd rather see documentary footage of the real person. That is, I find it impossible to put up with more than a half minute of Natalie Portman talking like Jackie Kennedy. But I like when the actor chooses some things to copy and then brings something new to understanding the famous person — like Cate Blanchett playing Bob Dylan.

AND: Here's more of Singer doing his thing (haven't watched this one yet):



IN THE COMMENTS: Ken B said:

Maybe it’s just me, but I thought Eisenberg was the best there. The others, no matter how accurate, sound like mimicry. He was playing a character and bringing out the arrogance, assorificery, and brilliance very naturally and convincingly.

I agree.

I singled out Blanchett, above, but while writing about what she did I was also thinking about how Eisenberg did Zuckerberg. It's an even better example of of what I'm talking about. Maybe I'll watch that movie ("Social Network"). I've seen so few of the movies Singer analyzes, because I don't like biopics and I love documentaries.

"Big dick energy does not care for your pathetic gender binary and will not pander to it."

"Chris Hemsworth wielding a ludicrously big hammer with arms the size of cows and yelling a lot? Feeble big dick energy. Cate Blanchett simply standing there smirking, but, like, only using her eyes somehow? Powerful, powerful big dick energy."

From "Big dick energy: what is it, who has it and should we really care?/It is a phrase that is ‘a thing’, according to the collective wisdom of the internet – but do you have BDE?" in The Guardian.

Modesty and traditional feminity.

It's the latest thing.

It's hard to fathom why a movie about Rathergate — with Robert Redford as Dan Rather — is being made.

Years ago, Redford played the role of another newsman, Bob Woodward, in "All the President's Men," the story of 2 dogged journalists who were wildly successful. They brought down a President and sparked an American love affair with "investigative journalism." What's become of that today? Maybe this new movie will seriously address what has happened to the profession that Bob Woodward (and his partner Carl Bernstein) made us see as heroic and centered on truth-seeking. In Rathergate, a once-illustrious network, centered on ruining a presidential candidate, faked a document.

The movie will be called "Truth." Ironically? I doubt it. "Truth" is a shortened form of "Truth And Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power," the memoir written by Mary Mapes, the CBS producer who lost her job over Rathergate. From the Amazon reviews of the book (to which I've added an explanatory link):

If the liars behind this failed attempt to get Kerry elected had just used an old typewriter it would have worked and the press may have been able to steal an election. Just think about that. Now there's going to be a movie based on this book?

Well, now... think about it. Mapes is going to be played by a great actress, Cate Blanchette. Conceivably, the Shakespearean complexities of the role will emerge. I'm picturing a grand, slow, torturous descent. Tragedy!

A typewriter! a typewriter! my network for a typewriter!

That's unlikely. And should there be a whole big motion picture made from this story when the ultimate motion picture of Rathergate has already been made? It is the tiniest possible picture in motion:

"Not that I doubt Dylan hasn’t come to believe she’s been molested, but if from the age of 7 a vulnerable child is taught by a strong mother to hate her father because he is a monster who abused her..."

"... is it so inconceivable that after many years of this indoctrination the image of me Mia wanted to establish had taken root? Is it any wonder the experts at Yale had picked up the maternal coaching aspect 21 years ago? Even the venue where the fabricated molestation was supposed to have taken place was poorly chosen but interesting. Mia chose the attic of her country house, a place she should have realized I’d never go to because it is a tiny, cramped, enclosed spot where one can hardly stand up and I’m a major claustrophobe. The one or two times she asked me to come in there to look at something, I did, but quickly had to run out. Undoubtedly the attic idea came to her from the Dory Previn song, 'With My Daddy in the Attic.' It was on the same record as the song Dory Previn had written about Mia’s betraying their friendship by insidiously stealing her husband, André, 'Beware of Young Girls.' One must ask, did Dylan even write the letter or was it at least guided by her mother? Does the letter really benefit Dylan or does it simply advance her mother’s shabby agenda? That is to hurt me with a smear. There is even a lame attempt to do professional damage by trying to involve movie stars, which smells a lot more like Mia than Dylan."

One paragraph in the long "Woody Allen Speaks Out," published by the NYT last night. Read the whole thing. It's quite cohesive and devastating, these words of a man who lets loose after holding his tongue all these years while a woman who passionately hates him sent her words flying everywhere.

Woody Allen's argument builds in a series of paragraphs, and I'm not choosing the most persuasive one to highlight, just the one with a striking item of evidence that I'd never seen before, "With My Daddy in the Attic," right there on the album with the song Dory Previn wrote about Mia, "Beware of Young Girls."

The psychodrama of Woody and Mia is mind-bending. Both of them lavish pity on the children who got caught up in their vortex, each blaming the other for hurting the children, each claiming to be the one who has struggled all these years to save the children.

Woody must have known the structure of Mia's psychology very well. He used her tender fragility in so many of his movies. She was his muse during the height of his artistry. Then he did something — suddenly letting her see he'd transferred his sexual love for her to her daughter Soon-Yi — and there's no denying that part of the story and Woody's active role unleashing Mia's wrath. I could believe every word of Woody's story and still think: You knew her, you understood her so deeply, you connected to her through children, and you made her crazy and vengeful.

It's no great wonder that he kept quiet all these years and that he ends his speaking-out with a vow never to speak about it again. "Enough people have been hurt." Surely, that much is true.

And now back to the movies, the made-up stories, the actors and actresses pretending to wound each other deeply and to spiral into evil, vengeful rages. Have you seen "Blue Jasmine"? It's wonderful. Cate Blanchett in the lead role of the sensitive blonde who comes unhinged, the role that would always go to Mia, back in the days when she was Woody's muse and had a lock on every lead.

"I wish I could be with you tonight, but I find it impossible to sit through two hours of relentless adulation..."

"... especially for somebody else."

"Obviously not designed by a heterosexual man. It looks damaged and hideously asymmetrical."

Says Clyde, in the comments to the post about that very bizarre (and asymmetrical dress Cate Blanchett wore to the Paris premiere of "Blue Jasmine").

I say:

Heteros are bugs for symmetry and on guard for hideousness and damage? What evidence is there of that?

I see hetero men around all the time who don't seem to mind hideousness and damage.

Clyde says:

"Honestly, to whatever extent this is working, it’s working because it’s on Cate Blanchett."

"Except for maybe Tilda, we doubt anyone else could wear this without looking batshit insane or like they just walked away from some horrible, flaming industrial accident."

"12 Personal Finance Lessons, Broken Down, In Woody Allen's 'Blue Jasmine.'"

A nicely done piece in Forbes, which I arrived at after Googling "blue jasmine is a movie about handbags," because that's what I said at the end of the closing credits: "That movie was about handbags." In the middle of the movie, I nudged Meade and said: "I've never seen a movie with so many women so attached to their handbags."

The 2 main female characters were constantly carrying around big handbags. One of them was dancing at a party with a big, clunky bag hanging from her shoulder. There was a scene where the 2 women carried big bags while buying a smaller bag, and yet they continued to carry big bags after that. We saw the main character — Jasmine, played by Cate Blanchett — dig in her bag for money, throw her bag on a sofa in a tantrum, accidentally dump the contents of the bag on the street in a moment of hysteria.

That darned bag — Hermes — should get a nomination for Best Performance in a Supporting Role.

But importantly — spoiler alert — when Jasmine leaves the apartment in the final scene, after she takes the shower, she walks out to go wandering the streets talking to herself, she has no handbag. That's how you know she's really crazy now. She was pretty much crazy from the first scene, but she had her handbag every step of the way. And now: No handbag!

And you, President Obama, a law professor!

So, the Supreme Court came out with a big free-speech decision yesterday, and President Obama's response was that he needs "to develop a forceful response to this decision. The public interest requires nothing less." I've already used that quote as part of the discussion in the earlier post "On the day that the Supreme Court struck down a U.S. statute as a violation of free speech, Hillary Clinton was promoting free speech on the internet," but I want to break out a very particular question for discussion.

The President was a law professor — technically, a "senior lecturer" at the University of Chicago Law School — for 12 years. Why would a law professor oppose a Supreme Court decision on a matter of constitutional law and not respect the authority of the Court and honor our system of separation of powers?

Now, I've been a law professor and I've been with the professors for more than twice 12 years, and I have my answer to that question. I'll tell you that in a little while. I'll just watch this movie clip....



ADDED: A day has passed, and you've chewed over the question. Now, I'll give my answer. It is exactly what I, a law professor, would expect to hear from another law professor! The odd thing is that Obama, a politician, didn't stop himself from saying the kind of thing lawprofs say to each other.

Non-lawprof Americans tend to think that the Constitution really means something and that that the Supreme Court has a special role and expertise in saying what it means, that a 5-4 decision is something more than just a vote on what 9 power-wielders would like the law to be.

I would expect a politician to tend to the voters' feelings. Obama should have said that he would like to explore ways to write a new statute that will respect the rights the Court has articulated and still serve the good and proper goals that the defective statute was meant to serve. With some sugar about how rights are important.

The Oscar recall voting.

Entertainment Weekly set up recall votes for 30 Oscar contests — the 6 major categories from 5 past years at 5 year intervals (2003, 1998, 1993, 1988, and 1983). I'm sure the voting — by Hollywood insiders — was strongly influenced by the fact of the past win, so I'm not surprised that only 7 old winners lost the recall vote. One Best Picture Oscar was revoked: "Shakespeare in Love" lost to "Saving Private Ryan." The actor losers are James Coburn (to Geoffrey Rush), Tommy Lee Jones (to Ralph Fiennes), Geena Davis (to Frances McDormand), Gwyneth Paltrow (to Cate Blanchett) Renee Zellweger (to Shohreh Aghdashloo), and, naturally, Roberto Benigni (to Edward Norton).

By the way, I was a big Shohreh Aghdashloo supporter for the 2003 Oscar. Her movie, "The House of Sand and Fog," was the first movie I ever blogged, on the second day in the life of this blog, and I remember feeling that I was inventing a way to blog a movie — which is decidedly not the same as reviewing a movie — first here:

... The movie we'd come to see, though, was "House of Sand and Fog," which had a good script, the kind of story that works so well in a movie, where some little thing happens in the beginning, then one thing leads to another, with all sorts of extravagant consequences. At some point you have to just let go of the thought "Jennifer Connelly should have opened her mail" and follow the characters.

... and then, the next day, in a post about candy:

“House of Sand and Fog” introduces a character by having him take a bite out of a Snickers bar and then subtract its cost in his account book. That movie may be the melodrama equivalent of “The Odd Couple”: One keeps account of a candy bar, the other never opens the mail. Both are trying to live in the same place. Hijinks/tragedy ensues.

Sorry to go off on a wave of nostalgia about the early days of this blog, but next Wednesday is its 5th anniversary. It will be 5 years straight — not one day missed. But back to the present: The Golden Globes are handed out tomorrow. And I mean to live-blog the big show.

To all my commenters, the best commenters in the blogosphere.

Yesterday, the day I saw "The Curious Life of Benjamin Button" and wrote that post, I conked out early.

Oh, I don't know if it was from the movie or from the pizza and one glass of wine I had afterward or just from being somewhat old. Most of the people in the movie audience were old, so old, that when Cate Blanchett reassured the getting-younger Benjamin by saying that we all wear diapers in the end, and the chuckle from the audience was unnervingly warm, I had to speculate that there was a high Depends-to-butt ratio in the theater at that very moment. And who knows? Perhaps young soda-swillers wear Depends to the movies, especially to 3-hour extravaganzas like "Benjamin Button." Especially with all that water imagery:

[W]ater is often seen as a symbol for birth/re-birth, and [I] thought they used it well. Spoilers: The dad nearly throws Pitt in the water in the beginning, Pitt takes the dad to sit by the water, Tilda Swinton swims the English Channel, all of the work Pitt does on the boat and the sailing, Daisy takes up swimming after her injury, Hurricane Katrina...anything else?)

And Benjamin fighting the Nazis at sea. Or should I say Ben or Ben-yah-meen?

Here's a weird-ass quirk of mine: For years now, anywhere and everywhere I see the name "Benjamin" used in a narrative (especially a grand, old one) I substitute plain old "Ben." Amazing, how well that works and the perspective it brings.

I studied Arabic one summer during college, and there was a white guy in the program named Benjamin who insisted we all call him Ben-yah-meen. That experience, I think, has much the same effect on Benjamin perspective.

The quote in that first block is from Zachary Paul Sire in the comments. The 2 in the second block are from reader_iam and Freeman Hunt.

See? This post is a tribute to all the commenters who kept an interesting conversation going all night on that thread that I conked out after writing. In the morning, it's my habit to reach for my iPhone before so much as sitting up in bed. Supine, I check the news, mostly to assure myself that nothing terrible happened during the hours when I wasn't paying attention. (The Yellowstone caldera has not exploded, despite the recent, strange swarm of earthquakes.) Then, I read blog comments for a while. Last night's post had accumulated 73 comments. The second one was from me, right before I fell asleep. I was responding to the first comment, from Zachary Paul Sire, who wanted to know if I liked the movie, a matter I'd considered beside the point of the post. I answered:

It was okay. It would have been much better if it were tightened up... and livened up. Like many high-budget, high-aspiration movies of today, it was embalmed. Its "I have always loved you" theme was very conventional, and I never felt much real passion between the 2 lead actors. And neither of them ever said anything clever. But there were some excellent special effects in aging and youthening Pitt and Blanchett, and there were some nice moments. Where to cut? You can cut all whole old dying woman and her daughter scenes, as far as I'm concerned. Reminded me of "Titanic," bringing in an old, old woman to tell the story of her big love to her daughter.

71 comments ensued. I can't reprint them all. But I intend to frontpage much more than usual this morning.

Chuck b. said:

I always enjoy the Althousian disdain for sentimentality (or is it a midwesterner's disdain? or maybe it's just very lawyerly), although I myself enjoy many sentimental films.

Actually, I'm not very good at recognizing sentimentality when I see it. I just let myself get played.

... although I don't cry as much during commercials and sentimental television things as much as Althouse does. Actually, that's interesting. A'house report tearage not infrequently. Does that have something to do with her negative reactions toward...ineffective sentimentality?

Am I midwestern? The most midwestern thing about me is that my mother grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Second is: I went to college at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Third: I've taught at the University of Wisconsin Law School in Madison, Wisconsin since 1984 (since I was 33 years old). So: 1. My formative years were not spent in the midwest, and 2. My time in the midwest has entirely been in these 2 university towns that don't really represent the region.

As for crying and sentimentality... 1. I might cry about something sentimental the way I might sneeze in the presence of dusty black pepper. It doesn't mean I admire the cause of the reflex. Quite the opposite. 2. I am cold to some emotional manipulations and susceptible to others. I might get judgmental and resist everything, but I might indulge and enjoy the easily won emotions of sentimentality. There is some good sentimentality. "The Bill Cosby Show" always made me cry. (And I do mean "The Bill Cosby Show," not "The Cosby Show," which I never watched.) 3. There are some things I regard as real art. I keep these separate, whether they provoke crying or not. The Kubrick movie "Lolita" caused me to cry profusely, but only after it was over, when I was trying to talk about it. That meant something.

Palladian said:

["Ben Button" s]ounds like a miserable Oscar-bait remake of "Big".

"Big" was much more fun, but like "Big," it gave us a chance to see an adult woman in love with a little boy — without all that nasty guilt that comes from awareness that we are witnessing pedophilia. Unlike "Big," it gave us a chance to see an old man in love with a little girl. Ah, but he's only 7! He's her age. And when an old woman tells him he should be ashamed of himself, we sympathize with the old man. I mean the little boy. And I bet pedophiliac old men believe that at heart they too are little boys.

And Brad Pit and Cate Blanchett? Can there be two more overexposed, boring actors on the planet?

Zachary Paul Sire said:

I love Cate Blanchett (anyone seen "Notes On A Scandal"? Now that's a good movie)...but Brad Pitt has never, ever been interesting to me. I can't think of one movie he's been in that I've enjoyed. Maybe "12 Monkeys," but that's because he was a supporting character. He and Cate, like Althouse said, had absolutely no passion or believability. Lifeless. Boring.

I love Brad in "12 Monkeys." Also in "Fight Club." In fact, I have a lot of respect for Brad Pitt. He picks some artistic projects, and he doesn't just rely on his pretty face — though perhaps he uglifies himself in part for the purpose of sending the message that he is so gorgeous that even uglified he's divine. In "Ben Button," he puts on that old age makeup, but then he emerges from it, so that Brad Pittifulness seems astoundingly new again. He then gets to progress to his "Thelma and Louise" level of insane male beauty. There's a scene in "Button" where he returns to the (old) Cate Blanchett in this form and she exclaims "You're perfect!" and I wanted her to say "Oh my God! You're Brad Pitt!"

Titus said:

For the most part I hate almost every movie that comes out because I find them too boring and too much made for "normal America". I also hate sitting in a movie theater for two hours with other people....

On a seperate [sic] note I have a fear of the dentist. I am only able to go once a year because I literally freak out 24 hours before I go. I have to be sedated, gased and anything else to go. I go every year in January but I now have a toothache so I have to go tomorrow and I am freaking out....

The only good news about going to the dentist tomorrow is he gives me good drugs.

He is a big liberal. His wife works at the front desk and his dog runs around the office.

My dentist is a straight queen. Every time I go in there he shows me one of his new Yoga poses that he has just conquered.

Chuck b. said...

"My dentist is a straight queen."

I loathe heterosexual gay men. What's the phobicity for that?

My dentist is a feisty latina and I am devoted to her. As a regular flosser and non-drinker of sugary beverages, my teeth are always clean and my gums are "tight". I love it when she tells me my gums are tight. Noone else tells me that.

Beth — who lives in New Orleans, the city featured in the movie but not the Fitzgerald story — said:

The more days I am from having seen ["Ben Button"], the more little "hey, that didn't add up" moments I think of. I too could have done without the entire mother/daughter hospital plot. I kept dreading possible outcomes, and that was a distraction.

And no, there's no real chemistry between the leads. There were much more appealing relationships -- b/w Benjamin and the folks in the home, mainly. And the tugboat captain was a favorite of mine.

But I am a partisan for it still; there are lots of movies shot in New Orleans, and this one made such wonderful use of places I love. The bandstand where Daisy does her nighttime dance is one where my friends and I would perform late at night, running wild in the park as teens. Lanaux House, the setting for the Button household, was also the setting for the nasty Gallier sibling household in the 1982 version of Cat People. Overall, I just loved our streets and houses and streetcars and greenery. It all looked so good.

Chuck b. said:

I was in N'awlins once for a week, drunk the whole time. I ate every meal at Paul Prudhomme's place (spelling?!) and marvelled at the cockroaches on the sidewalk that came out when the sun went down. I walked all the way back to my hotel stepping on one cockroach after another, like stepping stones. God, what a great town.

Palladian said:

I cry at the end of "It's A Wonderful Life"....

"It's A Wonderful Life" is a perfect movie. I know that some people think it's commie propaganda and that some douchebag at the New York Times (natch) trashed it this year, but still. Brilliantly detailed, perfect performances. Sob, sob.

Zachary Paul Sire said:

I've actually never watched the entire "It's A Wonderful Life" from beginning to end. I've also never watched an entire episode of "The Simpsons" from beginning to end. Some things just don't appeal to me.

Chuck b. said...

I've never seen It's a Wonderful Life, even a little bit of it.

LoafingOaf said:

I'm also sorry I don't find life so wonderful. Will the movie change my mind? I still smile through most days, though. Life is depressing but you may as well life at it.

Sometimes I come to Althouse blog and the prof's life seems so perfect, and I've never been able to detect any terrible, or even messy, things going on beneath the surface. She's even chummy with her ex, and her sons seem way too well-adjusted. Does she keep it hidden, or is she for real? She seems so "together" I feel if I browse her blog enough it will rub off on me a little. But I do wanna determine whether she just keeps it hidden or if her having her shit so "together" is for real.

You should read what they say about me on those other blogs — where I'm a decrepit, crazy drunk. Obviously, I control the message here. But, in fact, I don't lie about myself. Even though some of my antagonists think I'm outrageously self-absorbed, I rarely reveal anything about my real-world life. Haven't you noticed? My topic selection and various opinions and attitudes may seem idiosyncratic and distinctive enough to give the impression of a window into my life. And my photographs, by physical necessity, show my point of view. But I'm not telling you about any sorrows and struggles that may afflict me. Yes, I have a job that immensely benefits me, but it is exceedingly rare for me to write about my colleagues or students. If they were giving me trouble, you wouldn't know. I'm very lucky to have 2 sons — but I'm not going to say anything bad about them, and I mostly don't write about them. And you see my occasional chumminess with my ex-husband, but we separated more than 20 years ago. You have no evidence at all of any post-1987 love affairs that I may have had and how I may have suffered.

LoafingOaf said:

Oh, well, at least Sarah Palin's life and family turned out to be a mess.

Beth said:

LoafingOaf, I'm just making a guess here, so cut me some slack if I'm offbase.

You might find life a little less depressing if you cut back on the hating, just a bit. Take Palin, for example. She's not running for anything right now. She lost. Why bother looking for a Palin thread anywhere? I know, I know; there are scores of conservatives who can't get through a day without hating on Algore or blaming Bill Clinton for today's crappy economy or holding out for Obama's super-secret African birth certificate -- but they're not good examples for you to follow.

I'm not saying you should be Mary Sunshine, but a small adjustments might be in order. If you just keep your targets of anger current, you'll cut back on a lot of unnecessary bile. And that will increase the room for a bit of wonder in your life.

See how we help each other here?

Chickenlittle said:

She's even chummy with her ex, and her sons seem way too well-adjusted. Does she keep it hidden, or is she for real?

My ex-girlfriend is chummy with my wife. She's coming to visit next weekend--with her husband. We all laugh and joke about the past.

My point is that you can choose to get past horrible hurts in the past--or not. It all depends on the parties involved (and their will to party)

Palladian said:

"Oh, well, at least Sarah Palin's life and family turned out to be a mess."

A mess? She was nominee for vice-president. She has a beautiful family. If you want a mess you should look to yourself and figure out why this woman drove you crazy, why this woman turned you from an interesting commenter to a bitter, twisted loser. Take Beth's advice, Mr Sullivan, and chill out.

Reader_iam, quoting me in the original "Ben Button" post, said:

the old story is crisp and unsentimental

Indeed.

Finally, some love for Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald.

And that's the end of the line in this paean to commenters.

Happy New Year, everybody. Let's sing "Auld Lang Syne":

Are Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swinton "even allowed to be in the same movie?"

"Doesn't this... mess with the talented, very pale actress space-time continuum?"

***

You know, I have a big problem with actresses these days looking too much alike. In an age of plastic surgery, there's a standardized insipid beauty that wrecks a lot of movies and can be downright confusing. But Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swinton don't represent that problem at all. They carry on the old tradition of highly distinctive beauty. Yet, even within that tradition, there can be too close a resemblance.

And then there's that wonderful "Coffee and Cigarettes" scene where Cate Blanchett plays 2 different women who look and act entirely different. Snippet:

Golden Globe nominations.

Here. Any opinions? I especially like the recognition for Ricky Gervais and "Extras." I find it weird that all "The Sopranos" got was a nomination for Edie Falco. It's as if it's a conscious strategy to force all "Sopranos" support to go to her. I like the nomination of Julie Christie for "Away From Her," but I haven't seen enough of the movies to know who was really the best actress of the year. I see Cate Blanchett got nominated in two categories — and plan to catch "I'm Not There," the one where she plays Bob Dylan, very soon if not today. And this is giving me some other good ideas for movies to see while I'm in Madison, with easy access to many nice theaters. "No Country for Old Men." "Atonement." What else?

Orgasmic moments in film/film reviewing.

Manohla Dargis describes a scene in the new movie "Elizabeth: The Golden Age":

Declaiming from atop her white horse, her legs now conspicuously parted as she straddles the jittery, stamping animal, she invokes God and country, blood and honor, life and death, bringing to mind at once Joan of Arc, Henry V, Winston Churchill and Tony Blair in one gaspingly unbelievable, cinematically climactic moment. The queenly body quakes as history and fantasy explode.

This movie is getting a lot of bad reviews, possibly from people who don't get or don't appreciate what it's trying to do. Let's check in with Steven D. Greydanus of Decent Films Guide:

A lurid sort of Christopher Hitchens vision of history pervades Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Shekhar Kapur’s sequel to his 1998 art-house hit Elizabeth.

Christopher Hitchens? He's everywhere. (Omnipresent.)

The earlier film, which made a star of Cate Blanchett as the eponymous Virgin Queen, celebrated the triumph of bright, happy Elizabethan Protestantism over the dark, unwholesome Catholic world of Bloody Mary. Even so, that film’s church-bashing was tame compared that of this sequel, in which everything bad, evil and corrupt in the world ultimately is ultimately the bitter fruit of Religion. And by Religion, I mean Catholicism....

In attacking England, Philip [II of Spain] is convinced that he’s on a mission from God: “England is enslaved to the devil,” he declares. “We must set her free.” Certain that God is on his side as he leads his nation into a holy war that becomes a debacle, Philip couldn’t be a blacker, nuttier Hollywood villain if his middle initial were W.

Wait. Isn't Spain al Qaeda?

Other flirtations with topicality in this pre-election year include assassins and conspirators praying secretly in a foreign language while plotting their murderous attacks, and the Machiavellian Sir Francis Walsingham (returning Geoffrey Rush) torturing a captured conspirator during an interrogation. (Tom Hollander, who costarred with Rush in the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels, is running around somewhere in this picture, an odd juxtaposition in another film that ends with a sea battle with cannons.)

The film does go on to concede that the Spanish have other grievances against the English besides religion, such as the Queen’s tolerant stance on English pirates like Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen) raiding Spanish ships.

Sex, religion, politics, pirates... Let's go to the movies!

"He wouldn't come near me. He was utterly repulsed by it."

Said Cate Blanchett about how her husband reacted to her when she was in costume for her role as Bob Dylan in "I'm Not There":

Actress CATE BLANCHETT terrified her husband while filming BOB DYLAN biopic I'M NOT THERE - because he was "repulsed" at the sight of her disguised as a man. The Elizabeth star appears in drag in the new movie - for which she was named best actress at the Venice Film Festival earlier this month (Sep07) - but her spouse Andrew Upton hated seeing his usually feminine wife in character as the male singer/songwriter. She says, "He wouldn't come near me. He was utterly repulsed by it." And Blanchett admits she was prepared to go to great lengths to portray a man. She explains, "My friend put a sock down my pants and that kind of helped my walk."

My reactions:

1. What kind of repressed, no-fun husband is terrified and repulsed to see his wife in men's clothing? Even if he is into her femininity, disguising it should be intriguing. Is he horrified -- rather than fascinated -- by this:



2. But wait. Was he repulsed because she was dressed as "a man" or because she was dressed as the man who is Bob Dylan?

3. About that sock.... This puts a whole new interpretation on the title of one of my favorite songs "Walk Like a Man." I went over to YouTube to get a video of The Four Seasons -- you know I love them -- performing the original version. It's not there. It's just pure serendipity that when you search for "Walk Like a Man" on YouTube, you get this:

Cate Blanchett plays Bob Dylan.

The movie is "I'm Not There" -- directed by the great Todd Haynes. Here's the viral video:



The portrayal is very "Don't Look Back"-style Bob. You know:



I love that Bob.

Hey! Love that Bob! Remember "Love that Bob":

"She walks, talks, sings, smells like Bob Dylan."

Heath Ledger raves about Cate Blanchett's "incredible transformation" into the character of Bob Dylan, whom she plays in the new movie "I'm Not There." Cate is one of a bunch of actors -- Ledger, included -- who play Dylan in the film. But Cate's the best -- "beyond astounding."

I can believe that. If you assemble a lot of actors in a film that's kind of a big acting competition, she wins. I observed this in "Coffee and Cigarettes":

When a movie is broken into a series of vignettes as this one is, critics usually can't resist saying which vignette is the best and grousing that some vignettes are better than others. With an ordinary movie, it doesn't seem worth saying that some scenes are better than others! But with each vignette, you get a new set of two or three actors, so it's hard not to single out, for example, Cate Blanchett. Patty Duke style, she plays two cousins who have the same face, but different hair, clothes, mannerisms, attitudes.

She was utterly fascinating and brilliant.