donnah, I thought the first, second, and possibly even third fishtail number were pretty, but they became much of a too-muchness very early on for me. SJP should sue the sylist who put her in the Zaphod Beeblebrox hairstyle and wrapped a WWE championship belt around her chest, and even usually reliable and gorgeous Charlize Theron wore a dress with a rolled-napkin-thing over each breast. When will people learn never to wear dresses with a thing over each breast?
Kate Winslet, whom I love, was utterly washed out in a dress too timid even to be taupe, and Sandra Bullock is unfortunately as sewn into her feisty-girl-next-door-act as she was into her pretty and mercifully unpleated, ruffled, or gathered, dress. I think of her as the anti-Winslet; after one blockbuster, Kate turned her back on the short-lived career of the enforced Hollywood thriller-babe, and did smaller films which interested her. And her career lives, unlike those of Cameron’s usual thriller-babes, whose botoxed corpses haunt the Hollywood hills, hawking tell-alls about their relationships with him.
Fellow Cameron escapee Kathryn Bigelow was stunning from beginning to end, and not only is it delicious that she defeated the Blue People, but she defeated one of the worst egomaniacs ever to think that because he can turn out two hundred minutes of dialogue, that makes him a writer. Ever since he had a gunfight/chase scene on the Titanic, because in his fine judgement the Titanic sinking wasn’t exciting enough, I’ve loathed him. The best line in Titanic, btw, was improvised by the actor playing Ismay: “Freud? Who is that? Is he a passenger?”
The beaded-fringe curtain I liked, but making gowned starlets negotiate plexiglas staircases is just mean, and aside from the welcome and graceful presence of one of marindenver’s daughter’s friends in the dance numbers, the concept of portraying each movie through break-dance-ballet was bound to go screamingly wrong, and did. “The Hurt Locker” might have lent itself to being represented in dance somehow, but sending the principal of your corpse-de-bally down a giant, artsy, playground slide isn’t it.
