Renee Zellweger as Judy Garland.

#JUDY starts principal photography in London today, starring Academy Award winner, Renée Zellweger as Judy Garland!#judygarland #reneezellweger #london #thetalkofthetown #jessiebuckley #finnwittrock #michaelgambon #rupertgoold #pathe #calamityfilms #bbcfilms #ingenious pic.twitter.com/VJAnMRuzKV

— Judy (@JudyGarlandFilm) March 19, 2018

It's impressive until you realize the problem that Tom and Lorenzo identify:

[I]t’s admirable Judy Drag, [but] it’s Judy circa 1962 drag; not Judy at the end of her life. To put it bluntly, she was a physical wreck of a person in her last months; devastated and depleted by a lifetime of abuse and addiction, looking decades older than her 47 years... This is just a promo shot and we have no doubt they’ll rough her up for the final scenes of the film, but we’re not quite as impressed as others seem to be....

Here's a picture of Judy in the relevant time period.

Does it bother you that Renee Zellweger doesn't look like Renee Zellweger anymore?

She's done something that has caused the most radical change in personal appearance since Jennifer Grey's nose job, and Jennifer Grey's nose job was clearly a nose job, so the puzzle was only about how much the nose affects the overall look of the face, not — as with Zellweger — about what was changed that caused such a radical overall change. But my question is in the post title. Possible answers:

1. No. You don't care. You don't care because you don't know this actress much or at all, and women in the business of making money through their faces are always doing one thing or another to their faces, and it really doesn't matter in the great scheme of things. What about Benghazi? What about ebola?

2. No. You don't care because Renee Zellweger made her mark as a young woman, edging out older women for the parts she got, and now the time has come for her to pay the price, to be edged out by someone younger. She's entering an entirely predictable phase, doing the various things that women do as they dig in their heels — their high heels — as time drags them over the finish line.

3. Yes. The woman always had a weird face, and I could always recognize her, which is not the way most actresses are in the movies these days. I can't enjoy movies too much when I can't tell the characters apart. Is that the same person that was in that other scene? I barely know. It's all so meaningless and generic. But Renee! Renee was somebody specific. Unmistakable. Now, she looks like every woman or maybe like that actress who used to be in a lot of things, maybe mostly as the main character's best friend, I can almost think of the name... damn... it's driving me crazy....

4. Yes. It's just terrible that women don't believe in the beauty of women as they age through the decades. Embrace the changes that come with age. Show us how that's done, if you have any character at all. Zellweger joins the chorus of celebrities who blare the message that only the young part of life has value and only unlined, unlived-in faces are worth our attention. And it doesn't even work, this plastic surgery and what-all. "There's nothing tragic about being fifty. Not unless you're trying to be twenty-five."

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.

Two top 10 lists.

What is true about the persons on the first list is the opposite for those on the second list. Try to guess what it is before clicking on the link.

The first list:

1. Johnny Depp
2. Matt Damon
3. George Clooney
4. Jack Nicholson
5. Rosario Dawson
6. John Travolta
7. Katherine Heigl
8. Jay Leno
9. Dakota Fanning
10. Russell Crowe

The second list:

1. Will Ferrell
2. Tobey Maguire
3. Joaquin Phoenix
4. William Shatner
5. Renée Zellweger
6. John Malkovich
7. Julie Andrews
8. Bruce Willis
9. Teri Hatcher
10. Scarlett Johansson

"I think it's an intense recreation of what happened that day and that might be disturbing for people."

Trailers for Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center" begin in theaters this weekend and the report is that the movie's producers have warned theater owners that some people might find the images upsetting.

Co-producer Stacey Sher told CBS News, "They wanted the theatre owners to know that people might inquire at the box office whether or not the trailer would be shown and then it would be their decision whether they wanted to see it or not." Michael Shamberg, another producer of the film, said, "I think it's an intense recreation of what happened that day and that might be disturbing for people."

Presumably, they're trying to drum up interest in their movie. You can watch the trailer here. Do you see disturbingly "intense," gritty realism or disturbingly saccharine melodrama? From the slow-moving, over-clean cops getting up the gumption to volunteer to rescue people to the woman smelling the extra-white sheets of her missing loved one to the trapped man scrawling "I [heart] U" on a scrap of paper it is old-fashioned, maudlin dreck. Appalling.

IN THE COMMENTS: Troy expresses puzzlement: "maudlin and sentimental don't seem [Stone's] style...." I offer this explanation:

I believe that in this case "maudlin and sentimental" is an expression of Stone's low opinion of the intelligence and sensibility of Americans. He's talking down to us and thinks 9/11 has turned us into simple-minded sentimentalists. He may also have that attitude that Americans were admirable right after 9/11, in the immediate pain of the events, when we concentrated on grief and helping victims, but that we subsequently lost our way (by fighting back). The sentimentalism thus essentially expresses opposition to the war on terrorism.

UPDATE: Chris simulblogs the trailer. A taste:

"Okay, listen up. We've got to evacuate the tower." The police stand still; there is a moment of them silently looking at him and pouting. Finally, one officer breaks the silence, saying, "I got it, Sarge." He then steps forward--much like the scene in Jerry Maguire, where the office sits in silence after Tom Cruise's speech, and Renee Zellweger eventually gets up, and says, "I will go with you!"

Making small talk.

NPR has a piece about how to make small talk at an office party. Actually, I think if you hate small talk, the author they have effusing about small talk will probably just make you feel more negative about having to make small talk -- and she tells you right off that having a negative attitude will totally wreck your ability to make small talk. Anyway, the segment begins with some nice clips from "The Office." And, beware, it ends with some excruciating singing from Renee Zellweger, singing at an office party in "Bridget Jones's Diary." It's supposed to be hilarious but it's trying way too hard to be hilarious, as though they really don't trust us at all to recognize bad singing.

"Fraud."

That's "legal language and not a reflection of Kenny's character."

Yeah, fair enough. Leave poor Renee Zellweger alone. On the other hand, you begged for our attention when you posed in that wedding dress on the beach. You used us when you wanted the good publicity. Ooh, look at me. I'm a bride!

Stingy actors!

I see that Sandra Bullock has donated $1 million for tsunami relief. So Julia Roberts, Cameron Diaz, Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, Drew Barrymore, Halle Berry, Angelina Jolie, Renee Zellweger, and Jennifer Lopez: you're going to have to give one million ... or you're stingy!

"The 'Performance of Her Career' Is Now an Academy Award Winner." So reads the new, post-Oscars ad for Cold Mountain, which features a photo of Renée Zellweger in her ceremonial swaddling clothes, clutching the little statue. I was going to criticize the writing: in trying to use that quote, "performance of her career," they ended up having the wrong subject to the sentence, "performance" instead of "Renée Zellweger."

But the award really is for "Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role." Sean Penn had the line in his thank you speech, "There are no best actors." But there are no Best Actor Oscars. That's just shorthand. The Oscar he held in his hands was for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading role. So to be accurate, the actors ought to say:

"I'm happy to accept this award on behalf of my performance, which is unable to be here tonight and in any event, incapable of holding a statuette."

Hmm... did you know that last year, when Renée Zellweger lost the Oscar... I mean, when her performance lost the Oscar .... she went home early, climbed in through the window, gave her dog a bath, and spent the night scrubbing the floor. Sounds like something Joan Crawford would do.

Oh, and the dog's name is Dylan, so presumably, it's black, it's a pedantic mongrel, it's got his bone in the alley, it licks her face when she sleeps, it's collar's from India, it means more to her than a dead lion, and it's barking and running free.

The dreadful Oscars show. The Oscars show was even duller than the SAG Awards. Was there even a single surprise? Billy Crystal's return reminded me of some of the sad returns Lucille Ball made to TV in her waning years: she was doing the same sorts of things that used to be so funny, but now it just seemed wrong for her to strain herself to do it. Crystal seemed to want to throw out lines about current movie happenings, but how much comic traction can you really get out of "The Passion of the Christ"? Everyone seemed afraid of offending, as if they were all massively overshadowed by Janet Jackson's epic breast. Only Errol Morris said anything with any political sting, and his speech revealed that his true outrage really lay more in the area of the way the Academy has been slighting him all these years. (Of course, he was right about that, but it wasn't all that lovely for him to be the one saying it.) Tim Robbins restricted his politics to concern about child abuse, and Sean Penn only made an oblique reference to WMD. Nearly everyone just thanked people endlessly, tediously. Then more time had to be wasted, lamely, by having Jack Black and Will Ferrell sing about how the thank you speeches are boring. And, oh, the songs, those songs-non-songs that extend the already horrible longueurs of the show's midsection.

I had to read about Sean Penn's statement, because I bailed out before he appeared, somewhere in the show's fourth hour, when I calculated all the awards that had yet to be given, and how long I would need to wait for the big four awards. The show was quite simply torture--impossibility of making "The Passion" quips noted--the least entertaining Oscars show in memory. I enjoyed some of the early red carpet stuff: Jennifer Garner had a lovely tangerine dress and Renee Zellweger looked painfully swaddled in white cardboardish cloth. But it was pretty much downhill from there.