Supporting Actress Blog-a-thon, Class of 2010: Anne Hathaway in Valentine's Day

StinkyLulu, like Cher, is coming out of retirement for one last round of what could be called the Farewell Tour. Or, in his case, another installment of his popular annual Supporting Actress Blog-a-thon honoring the year's best actressing at the edges. This is one tradition I like to partake in every year, if only so I can talk about an undervalued performance that moved me in some way over the course of the year. In the past, I've discussed La Tisdale, La Tisdale again and Olivia Williams. This year, however, we're gonna tackle...

Anne Hathaway as Liz in Valentine's Day

The film, a multi-character romantic comedy following a multitude of couples in various stages of relationships on the most romantic day of the year, is not Nashville and director Garry Marshall is not Robert Altman, so there's not much in the way of a true "performance" in Hathaway's work here. Not that this should be taken as a slight against her or her work in the film. Sometimes, films only need an actor to give a radiant, charismatic star turn in order to be successful and Hathaway delivers just that in Valentine's Day as Topher Grace's new girlfriend with a naughty secret job.

Anne Hathaway's star persona has been built on two very different personalities. The first is the down home, realistic, everyday girl that we saw in films like Princess Diaries and The Devil Wears Prada. The second personality is the girl with a sarcastic, dark edge who combats other characters with a biting wit and deadpan delivery. Rachel Getting Married is, obviously, her best work in this realm of her persona, but this year's Love & Other Drugs and the underseen Havoc also provide wonderful insights into this aspect of Hathaway's persona. With these two tenets of her star persona already firmly entrenched in people's minds, Valentine's Day, in its own highly commercial way, offers a way of combining them into one performance.

When we first meet Hathaway's Liz, she's taking Polaroids of her new beau (Topher Grace) the morning after a wild sexual tryst. As is normal in romcoms of this nature, the two are a bit overly cutesy and romantic for my liking, but what the scene does best is show Hathaway as the naturally charming and beautiful woman she is. She doesn't need a gimmick in this opening scene to immediately grab the audience's attention; her realness is all that's necessary.


One look at the clock, however, sends Liz scurrying out of the apartment like a bat out of hell. Topher thinks it's something he has done but really it's for a completely unrelated reason: she's moonlighting as a phone sex operator and doesn't want him to find out about it. During these hilarious, uninterrupted monologues where she portrays both a hot and bothered Southern belle and a Russian dominatrix, Hathaway quickly taps into the darker, edgier side of her persona. The humor that results from these moments--and, trust me, I was practically howling each time she came on screen--is due to the fact that you don't expect the sweet-as-pie Liz to tell a client on the phone, in a thick Russian accent, "I'm going to spank your dirty, pig boy ass." Hathaway's multiple personas work extremely well on their own, but when combined they provide some of the only genuine laughs in an otherwise mediocre film.

In her final scene, after Topher Grace has discovered her secret and breaks up with her, we see him crawling back with a cutesy, only-in-the-movies apology. This being a Garry Marshall romantic comedy, Hathaway's Liz automatically takes him back. As clichéd as the whole moment is, it works solely because the two of them clearly work together. They are both simple, real people and in an increasingly tacky and over-the-top Los Angeles, people like them are harder to find. And if this isn't the face of a woman truly in love, I don't know what is:


Hathaway isn't really giving the sort of performance that wins Oscars in Valentine's Day, but it's a fine example of the Star Turn and one of the highlights of this mixed bag of a film. If anything, Anne Hathaway's performance here is proof that there is more to this woman than meets the eye. She's continuously showing us different facets of her persona and mixing them in such a way to different, interesting results. Little ole Annie is a class act and a talent that I'm sure will be continuing to intrigue us in the future.

For more supporting actress goodness, check out the Blog-a-thon Headquarters over at Stinkylulu's bog.

Supporting Actress Blog-a-thon, Class of 2009: Olivia Williams in An Education

For the past two editions of StinkyLulu's annual Supporting Actress Blog-a-thon, I've written about a lovely young actress named Ashley Tisdale and her exemplary work in the High School Musical trilogy. Not only have those posts made me the sort of unofficial go-to guy on anything La Tisdale related, but, and perhaps more importantly, she has introduced me into a wonderful, largely unexplored section of celebrity and media I've affectionately come to call the "tween subculture." I'm largely thankful for La Tisdale and all the joys she brought into my life, so much so that I briefly considered watching and writing about her only 2009 film, Aliens in the Attic, for this year's Blog-a-thon. Then I thought about it for a couple of seconds and realized that there was no way I was going to subject myself to that surefire piece of horse shit just for, what I'm sure is, a fabulous performance from La Tisdale. Anyways, to make a long story short, I had to come up with another performance to talk about and, for the longest time, I was stuck. Finally, about a week ago I saw this film and all of sudden the clouds cleared, a choir of angels sang a lovely chord and I just knew I had to talk about...

Olivia Williams as Miss Stubbs in An Education

With only a handful of scenes and barely five minutes of screentime, Williams, as the Literature teacher to gifted but headstrong student Jenny (Carey Mulligan), gives perhaps 2009's best example of what StinkyLulu likes to call "actressing at the edges." She doesn't have a typical "Oscar scene" to lean on or what you would call a fully-explored character arc, yet she still gives probably the most realized and complete performance in the entire film.

Williams' Miss Stubbs, with her hair pulled straight back into a too-tight ponytail and thick, horn-rimmed glasses, is presented as the traditional, straight-laced British teacher we have seen in films for decades. She's not supposed to care about her students, their feelings or their personal lives outside of class; her job is to teach and that's that. At first, Miss Stubbs seems to follow that archetype quite well, but as the film progresses, we see her shed that image layer by layer. Miss Stubbs constantly struggles with the idea of seeing her students as actual people and has to resist interjecting herself in their situations. The second we see her, she is seen interrupting Jenny and her girlfriends discussing her blossoming relationship with the older David (Peter Sarsgaard). Desperately, Miss Stubbs changes the subject, but, through Williams and the quiet, subtle and suggestive looks she gives, we see how much it is affecting her to see one of her brightest pupils slowly slip into a frivolous life of uninhibited fun and pleasure.

After Jenny tries to "bribe" Miss Stubbs with a bottle of perfume after her much ballyhooed trip to Paris, Miss Stubbs decides to finally take a stand and confront her about the choices she is making. She tells Jenny that she is one of her most gifted students and what a shame it would be if she throws it all away at such a young age. Miss Stubbs honestly cares for Jenny's well-being; this becomes much more than the clichéd lecture she's supposed to give to students considering leaving school. What makes this scene so special is the way Williams says so much about her character while not doing much. Her face stays stoic throughout the entire scene, yet her eyes betray a deeply resonant sense of sorrow and pity when Jenny shoots her and her profession down in an angry response to Miss Stubbs's plea. But she isn't sad that Jenny has insulted her, or at least not completely. What really upsets her is that she hasn't gotten through to Jenny, her desperate pleas have fallen on deaf ears.

Like I stated before, Olivia Williams may not have had the most stand-out, attention-grabbing performance this year, but nothing else I have seen has effected me quite like her work here. It would be easy to dismiss her because of her limited screentime and superficially minor impact on the narrative--Lord knows I've done it, unfairly perhaps, to many a supporting actress. However, An Education, for me, would have suffered greatly if Williams' Miss Stubbs wasn't in the film. She becomes the only character to stand up to Jenny's bullheadedness who doesn't come off as a hypocritical joke; the fact that Jenny blatantly ignores her advice doesn't elicit an "You go girl!" but, rather, heartbreak that she is turning away from the one adult who truly cares for her and her future. In less capable hands, Miss Stubbs might have gotten lost in the shuffle, but with Olivia Williams we are given an education in actressing at the edges to be eternally grateful for.

For more Supporting Actress goodness, head on over to the Blog-a-thon Headquarters for countless other profiles on this year's batch of ladies.

Supporting Actress Blog-a-thon, Class of 2008: Ashley Tisdale in High School Musical 3: Senior Year

When I wrote my post for last year's blog-a-thon, I had a hard time coming up with an actress and performance that had moved me. After mulling it over for awhile, I finally decided to cheat a little and profile Ashley Tisdale and her exemplary work in the Disney TV movie High School Musical 2. At that point, my love for Ashley (yes, she was still Ashley back then) was nothing more than a mild-to-heavy adoration of her character's divalicious antics and the knowledge that she was someone to watch. Over the past year, this love has blossomed into a near obsession in which I now simply refer to her as "La Tisdale" (I do this in real life, too, and the sad/scary thing is that people still know who I'm talking about) and has culminated into a campaign to get her an Oscar nomination. So this year, when it was time to choose my entry for the Supporting Actress Class of 2008, it was an absolute no-brainer.

Ashley Tisdale as Sharpay Evans in High School Musical 3: Senior Year

If it doesn't seem like La Tisdale has as much to do in HSM3 as she did in HSM2, you'd probably be right. HSM3 is more concerned with the bland relationship between singing jock Troy (Zac Efron) and his annoying sweetheart Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens) than anything else, so that means all of the supporting characters are relegated to the sidelines even more than before. But that's no problem for La Tisdale, who often does her best work from the edges, upstaging the other hapless performers like nobody's business. When the entire cast is gathered together for the first time at the spring musical tryouts, no one in the cast besides Troy is given much to do, but La Tisdale knows how to focus the attention of a scene on her whenever the script blindly ignores her. Her comedic timing on such simple quips as her sarcastic "Yipee" when the rest of the Wildcats decide to join the play at Gabriella's insistence or "Genius," delivered with such eye-rolling deliciousness when Mrs. Darbus announces the subject of this year's spring musical, is light years ahead of anyone on the cast. Director Kenny Ortega hasn't had to deal with someone with this style of over-the-top, nearly drag queen-esque, comedic chops since Bette Midler in Hocus Pocus (a performer Tisdale is eerily reminiscent of) but, thankfully, he lets her perform with reckless abandon all over the film.

When Sharpay is given a chance to shine alone, La Tisdale relishes these moments and milks them for all they are worth. Her entrance alone, a moment that rivals some of the musical numbers in terms of heightened drama and epic scale, lets us know precisely who this character is without so much as uttering one syllable. The film actually helps her in some respects- the people in the hallway part like she's Moses and they're the Red Sea when Sharpay waltzes on by, men, struck by her beauty, faint when she walks by- but the attitude is all present in Tisdale's performance. Her body language says volumes; when she struts into the school we immediately know who has the power. That little twirl she adds at the end? Well, that's just the icing on the cake. And when she briefly smiles at some lucky fellow who walks by her in the hallway, it feels like she's God or Oprah, bestowing a gift upon the world. When Sharpay finally arrives at her locker, there are few brief shots that show her, still without saying anything, shaking a snow globe with her dog in it, trying on her tiara and looking at her reflection in the mirror. We realize here that this woman is a princess, someone in capable of being touched and if anyone is going to try to steal her throne, it's going to be a battle to death (appropriately enough, this is when we meet future nemesis Tiara, whom she kindly greats with, "What are you?").

Sharpay's musical numbers are, as always, among the best and the brightest of the film and her moments in HSM3 are no exception. "I Want It All" is the piece de resistance of the entire trilogy and it's due in part to La Tisdale's fearlessness and talent as a performer. She's never been much of a dancer- which she's even admitted in countless interviews- but I'll be damned if she doesn't pose and strut like a true pro (she could almost be a Pussycat Doll). Another thing that blew me away was how sexy she was- even for a film rated PG G. That silver leotard combined with the platinum blonde wig she sports during the end of the "I Want It All" number makes her look like one of the Mistresses of Murder's Row from Chicago. Tisdale uses this sexuality to her advantage, providing a whole new insight into Sharpay: if this musical number is a representation of what she wants her future to be, then we're in for a treat once she gets to Broadway.

My favorite moment of the La Tisdale's performance is the moment after we think she has been defeated once and for all. Throughout the first two films, countless times we've seen Sharpay fall and then claw her way back in by the end. This time, however, things are a little different. Her former assistant, Tiara, has finally shown her true colors and has just revealed that she has stolen Sharpay's spot in the show. Sharpay is distraught and it looks like her previous disastrous performance may have been her last. We cut from her for another musical number and then cut back to her, rejected and alone in her dressing room. Suddenly, however, that familiar spark re-emerges in Sharpay's eyes and she rises like a Phoenix from the ashes, ready to take her rightful place back on stage. Thanks to Tisdale's performance, we actually cheer the harsh and manipulative person on and want to see her succeed (in what other Disney film can you say that about the villian?). And her performance once she gets on stage? Flawless. That entrance is divalicious in the extreme and that move she makes when she takes center stage on the line "It's gonna be my night!" flashes to my mind whenever I hear the song.

La Tisdale's triumph here in HSM3 is exactly what true "actressing at the edges" is all about. Here we have a talented woman triumphing against a script that doesn't have time for her and neglects her for a less interesting romance plot with lightning quick comedic timing, a pitch perfect character development and the ability to bring out the best in her castmates (even ones as dire as Vanessa Hudgens) while highlighting her own abilities as an actress. I don't know how she does it- especially considering her age and the source material- but I'm eternally grateful to Ashley Tisdale for having the talent and determination to turn the one-dimensional Sharpay into a fully-inhabited character; without her, I'm nothing.

For more Supporting Actress goodness, head on over to the Blog-a-thon Headquarters at StinkyLulu to read more profiles on countless other performers.

The Supporting Actress Blog-a-thon is Coming

This Sunday, over at StinkyLulu, the third annual Supporting Actress Blog-a-thon (details here) is taking place. I will be participating, of course, and I really hope that all you do too. If you want an idea of how this all works, check out the Class of 2007 and my entry from last year. See you there!

Endings Blog-a-thon: Billy Elliot's Completely Sucky Ending

We all know that a fantastic ending to a film can either make a medicore film great (Charlton Heston yelling "Soylent Green is people!" at the end of Soylent Green) or turn a great film into a classic (Gloria Swanson descending the stairs of her decaying Hollywood mansion and into madness in Sunset Boulevard, pictured left). The examples of these are numerous and I'm sure many will be thoroughly covered over at Valley Dreamin's Endings Blog-a-thon. What I'm going to talk about is a great film that is nearly ruined by an ending so shitty that I grumbled to everyone for the next week or so about how much I hated it. The film? Stephen Daldry's Billy Elliot.

I know I was probably the last person on the planet to see this movie a few months ago, so I'm sure that everyone is quite familiar with the central plot: a boy defies his working class background and macho father and brother by enrolling in a ballet class run by a gruff, no bullshit teacher. As with most films about people overcoming class boundaries (and since it is, to a certain extent, an inspirational teacher drama), I was quite taken with Billy Elliot. The film could have been total cheeseball inspiration but, thanks to Daldry and star Jamie Bell, it is anything but that. I was also extremely taken with the unusual relationship between Billy and his little gay friend Michael (which I briefly mentioned here); the part when Billy leaves Michael to head off to school broke my heart. If Billy Elliot had ended here, I would have loved the film a lot more. I was ready to give it an A-, but then that thing Daldry's calls an ending came on and I instantly downgraded it to a B.

First, let me describe the ending in case your memory's a little fuzzy. Billy's father and brother are rushing from the London subway to catch Billy in his big ballet production. They reach it in the nick of time and are settling into their seats when the brother realizes that they're sitting next to Michael (and someone were supposed to assume is his boyfriend?). They talk uncomfortably for a couple of seconds, Michael says something about "not missing this for the world" and then it cuts to backstage with a grown up Billy getting prepared to leap out on stage. And then it ends. Now let's analyze all of the ways this ending bites the big one.

• Where is Mrs. Wilkinson (Dame Julie Walters)? This is actually my biggest annoyance with this ending. Essentially, Billy Elliot is an inspirational teacher drama and, although I can accept the fact that it's trying to ignore the clichés of the subgenre, but sometimes we need those clichés. They're there for a reason and when we don't get them, we feel cheated. At the end of every inspirational teacher drama, we have to get the scene where the teacher sees that all of her hard work and sacrifice has paid off when the pupil realizes their dream. Without this moment, the rest of the film has basically been for nothing.
• We don't get the reaction shots from Billy's father, brother and Michael The film completely stops as soon as Billy takes the stage, so that doesn't give anytime to see what the three characters react to how amazing of a dancer Billy has become. Damnit, I just need to see the father tear up or something. Is that too much to ask Stephen Daldry?
• The inclusion of Michael This choice left me completely puzzled. Why would you include Michael in the scene and not Mrs. Wilkinson? His fond farewell to Billy just a few minutes ago- complete with a touching kiss- was perfect, non? Does he really need to be there at the performance? Anything Daldry is going to show would never live up to this earlier scene and what he does end up showing doesn't work at all. I can see that he's trying to show how Michael has grown up and become who he wanted to be, all thanks to Billy's courage, but it just seems totally unneccessary at this point. In all honesty, who cares about Michael's transformation; we want Billy.
• The awkward interaction between Billy's family and Michael Seriously, do Billy's father and brother think their going to catch the gay virus by having a simple conversation with Michael? Was it really that shocking to see him dressed up like Boy George and with another man? I mean, Michael was as flaming as a kid could be in a small, working class English village.

What makes this ending all the more horrible is the fact that they had the perfect ending beforehand and completely ruined it. The shots of Billy's family and Mrs. Wilkinson, stuck in their exact same situations with little chance of escaping, juxtaposed with Billy first arriving at the ballet academy, finally escaping his working class surroundings, subtly hit the message home. Add to that Michael and Billy's goodbye and it became absolutely perfect. This "real" ending feels tacked on and makes little sense in the context of the film or the subgenre.

For more wonderful entries on the endings on a multitude of different films, check out the main page of J.D.'s Endings Blog-a-thon over at Valley Dreamin'

My Best Post Blog-a-thon: What the Christ do Victoria Beckham, The Brothers Jonas and Jean-Pierre Léaud Have in Common?

He Shot Cyrus is hosting the My Best Post Blog-a-thon in which bloggers are invited to share their best or favorite post to entice other readers who may be unfamiliar with their blogs. It's an ingenious idea and when I was invited, I immediately accepted. Being indecisive, however, I had a real problem deciding what was my "best" post. I narrowed it down to three and I'm afraid that's as low as I can go. I feel that these best represent my abilities as a writer and what I try to do with Rants of a Diva: slightly serious but always silly and sarcastic. So, in no particular order, here are my three favorite posts:

Rants on Stolen Kisses
Unlike most of America, I've never succumbed to sequelitis...that is, until Francois Truffaut's sequel to The 400 Blows.

Random Top 10: Victoria Beckham Quotes from Spice World
I'm one of the few who still love Spice World and this is a silly look at one of the most underrated performances of the 90's.

Rants on Camp Rock
I love ripping a new one on terrible movies and Camp Rock is one of the worst of the year.

Movies About Movies Blog-a-thon: The Opening Scene of Day for Night

Movies about the filmmaking process is one of my favorite subgenres of film. Even when they are bad, I'm always fascinated by the process of getting a story filmed and all the things that can get fucked up between the sheet and the celluloid. I love the bitterness of Sunset Boulevard and its portrayal of the Hollywood Dream gone terribly wrong; Singin' in the Rain showed just how awkward the conversion to talkies were and poked fun at the stiffness of the early ones; Sullivan's Travels set out to prove that comedies are just as important to audiences as serious, high-minded drama; Sherlock, Jr. showed that, even by 1924, people were living vicariously through film. The film I chose to talk about, however, is basically a love letter to the filmmaking process and how even when it kicks you in the ass, you would do anything for it: François Truffaut's Day for Night.

There are so many layers and so many things that can be discussed from this film, that I decided to make it easy on myself and discuss one small section of Day for Night. A nearly impossible task, mind you, but I've narrowed it down to the brilliant opening sequence. It is very short, only about a minute or so, but it comments on so much about the nature of film and sets up the rest of Day for Night and the rest of its film-within-a-film Meet Pamela.

The film's opening credits. I love how the sound waves are shown in these frames as a way to prove that Truffaut is the ultimate film nerd (even more so than Tarantino and Kevin Smith) and will stop at nothing to immerse us into what's rattling around in his brilliant mind.

The first shot. Day for Night starts off with a long take of a bunch of random people doing ordinary, everyday things in some random town. It's quite a nice shot and everything, but what exactly is Truffaut doing? This is supposed to be a film about the movies, not about nameless people living a normal life. The first 45 seconds leave you confused until....

...you breathe a sigh of relief because you finally recognize someone: Jean-Pierre Léaud! Now that we've seen our star, Day for Night is finally going to get off the ground and go on with the story. Or so we think. The camera follows Léaud for a few seconds but then drops him to go back to capturing the crowd for awhile longer. Then we get our first cut...

Léaud is back, now standing head to head with some guy we don't know the identity of. No words are spoken between them. Then...

SLAP! And, in sync, with the sound cue from Léaud's slap, we cut to...

Truffaut himself yelling "Cut!" In case you're as confused as I was during the first time I saw Day for Night, the film immediately cuts to....

A zoom out from the previous scene showing us that everything shown to us previously was all only a movie. It's the perfect sort of reality-bending trick than can only work in the movies.

Truffaut's point in using this as his opening is to lull the audience into a false sense of reality. From the opening shot, we think we're going to be watching one type of movie and just as we're starting to put things together and try to understand what's being presented, it's all being pulled out from underneath us with a little "gotcha!" from Truffaut.

I think it's also interesting that this opening is a further example of Truffaut's thesis that the cinema is more important than life. In real life, this scene would be nothing special, something we see every day on the street. But, in the context of Day for Night, it's immensely more fascinating because we are trying to put all of these clues together to try to make some kind of story out of the visuals. And, admit it, who doesn't find the moments after Truffaut yells "Cut," when he shows what is going on behind the scenes and the extraordinary amount of work it takes to make such an innocuous scene an exhilarating rush of deeply involving?

I could go on and on for days intellectualizing Day for Night, but I think it's quite wise to stop right here. If you haven't seen this gem of a movie, what the hell are you waiting for? Go out and see it so we can discuss it.

For other entries into Goatdog's Movie about Movies Blog-a-thon, head over here to the headquarters and check them out. I haven't read them all yet, but the ones I have clicked on have all been fascinating and quite diverse. Enjoy!

Rug Rats Blog-a-thon: Phillip Alford in To Kill a Mockingbird

When Michael at My Stuff and Cr*p called for a Rug Rats Blog-a-thon about a month ago, I was immediately intrigued and signed up on the spot. The problem came later when trying to decide what performance to talk about. Normally, I hate children and especially child actors. They're usually so overly instructed and forced that all the spontaneity that comes with good acting is eradicated. It's so rare to find a child actor who can just act natural without a bunch of tricks that when it does come around it's worth celebrating (this is why I'm so completely in love with Abigail Breslin and can't stand Dakota Fanning-- there's no way in hell Fanning can be "normal" or childlike). I eventually ran across a list I had made about a year or so ago of 8 child performances that I loved. It included some of the usual standbys-- Leaud in 400 Blows, Osment in The Sixth Sense, O'Neal in Paper Moon, Breslin in Little Miss Sunshine, Duke in The Miracle Worker, Taylor in National Velvet, McCormack in The Bad Seed-- but the one I chose was a performance that even in 1962, a year when youngins Duke and Mary Badham both got Best Supporting Actress nominations and his film To Kill a Mockingbird was a huge hit, didn't get him any notice whatsoever...

Phillip Alford as Jem Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird

When I read To Kill a Mockingbird back in 9th grade, my favorite character of the whole novel was Jem, the oldest child of crusading lawyer Atticus Finch and brother to narrator Scout. I always felt that, since he was around the same age that I was when I read the novel, his transformation from simple kid to beginning to understand the importance of what's right and wrong was more interesting and more complete than Scout's since she's a lot younger. We watched the 1962 movie version in my English class soon after finishing the novel and imagine my surprise when my favorite character was portrayed so exquisitely by this kid. And with each subsequent viewing, Phillip Alford's performance just gets better and better.

Even in the first couple of scenes, when Alford's Jem takes the leadership role when playing with Scout (Mary Badham) and Dill (John Megna), you can see him acting with the least bit of pretense as possible. He acts and talks like any normal kid would and especially refreshing when contrasting him with Badham's shrilliness and Megna's cluelessness here.

Alford's greatest asset, and what suits him so particularly well in this role, is the way he observes everyone and everything around him and absorbs it all in. His first brilliant moment comes when a "mad" dog (i.e. rabies-infested) is discovered wandering the street and Atticus, whom, up until this point, both Jem and Scout think is just a boring lawyer with no "cool" talents, shoots the dog in one shot from about 75 feet away. Standing at the door, watching with wide-eyed wonder, I was impressed with Alford's ability to convey so much in those fleeting seconds without overselling it. I especially love his "Yes, sir" after Atticus tells him not to go near the dead dog-- it could have been a throw away line, but Alford's delivery beautifully shows the wonderment of Jem's discovery about his father.

There's another great moment when Jem is sitting on the front porch, waiting for his father to come back from driving the family's maid home for the night, and all of a sudden the sounds of the night start to scare the living shit out of him. Once again, his eyes convey nearly everything, but it's also the way he shifts in chair uncomfortably and runs down the street calling for his father that are equally terrifying. Not only is it one of the scariest scenes involving a child I've ever seen, but it also ranks with Lilian Gish's breakdown in The Wind as one of the scariest non-horror scenes ever.

The overall beauty of Alford's performance is the way he transitions from simple 10 year old boy to a 12 year old who is learning from his father what it means to be a good and just person. It's remarkable the way Alford is able to "become" Peck's Atticus, much in the same way a son would normally emulate his father as he gets older. His scenes towards the end, when he stands up for his father against the lynching mob or the way he helps Scout walk home after the pageant in her ham costume, feel more and more like Alford's Jem is starting to bridge the gap between child and adult.

Watching this performance again for the first time in a couple of years, I felt a mixture of anger and sadness. It pisses me off that a performance this incredible was denied an Oscar nomination for reason that I'll probably never understand. It makes me sad that Phillip Alford gave up acting 10 years later after only a couple of TV dramas and one other film-- the James Stewart western Shenandoah. I realize that his heart was probably never really in it, but Alford had the talent to be a big star. If he was this good at 14, just think of the things he could have accomplished as he matured.



For more child acting loving, check out the Rug Rats Blog-a-thon Main Page for more great reads.

Supporting Actress Blog-a-thon: Ashley Tisdale in "High School Musical 2"

For my entry in StinkyLulu's 2007 Supporting Actress Blog-a-thon, I chose a performance that you couldn't see at your local megaplex this year. Instead, this lovely young woman was actressing from the edges in the biggest cable event ever: High School Musical 2. You may have heard of it. That guy from Hairspray was in it and that chick who took naked pictures of herself was there too. But the one woman who stole the whole damn show was...

Ashley Tisdale as Sharpay Evans in High School Musical 2

Before I begin, let me just say that this post is in no way a defense of the travesty that is High School Musical 2. The first one was crappy as it is, but had a teensy bit of charm to make up for it. For the second one, it seems no one gave a shit anymore and decided to ride this cash cow for all it was worth. The choreography was stiff, the sound quality of the songs were dreadful (there was no attempt at all to make the voices sound like they weren't done in a studio), most of the songs could have been interchanged with ones from the original (I didn't like "We're All in This Together" the first time, why would I want to hear it reincarnated as "All For One"?) and the story was so contradictory and contrived it's not even funny (Zac Efron's Troy literally says at one point "I don't care about my future, I only care about what my friends think"...what kind of message is this for the tweens watching this?)

The one person to emerge from this car wreck unscathed was Ashley Tisdale. She's the only person in the cast, I think, who understands the whole point of the High School Musical series- she doesn't take herself too seriously and lets loose with reckless abandon all over the film. Tisdale steals every scene she's in with nothing more than a huge attitude, big sunglasses and a mission to land Zac Efron's Troy. If you thought she chewed the scenery in the original, in High School Musical 2 Tisdale doesn't chew the scenery, she devours it, ripping it apart like a savage animal and merely leaving scraps for her fellow castmates.

Now, anyone who reads my site knows about my obsession/fetish with divas. I can't get enough of them no matter how hard I try and Tisdale's Sharpay is easily becoming one of my favorites. One of the finest moments of her performance is, after discovering that her brother Ryan is working with the East High kids on a routine that might beat her in the annual country club talent show, Tisdale, with her lapdog in tote, looks over at the drummer, says "Give me a beat" and struts out of the room to her own exit music. I nearly died when I saw this because having exit music everytime I leave the room is one of my diva wet dreams.

Some of Tisdale's most winning moments come in the musical numbers, which is almost a miracle given the quality of the songs. Her first solo is the number "Fabulous," in which she laments about everything she needs to survive and why people aren't accommodating her every need. There is this tiny little moment during the song where she coos to her brother Ryan and three of her cronies "I need, I need" while drawing them in and then quickly shunning them out, toying with them like the chess pieces they are in the quest to fulfill her needs.

Troy and Gabriella sing the orignal, lame ballad version of "You Are the Music in Me" that I swore was that "Soaring, flying" song from the first film. Sharpay later decides that she needs Troy instead of her usual partner Ryan in the talent show, commandeers the song and makes it her own. He tells her to go easy on him, since he's not used to performing in public, so of course fireworks explode all around them, the music blasts from the live band and three backup singers chime in behind them. The song is supposed to be a duet, but Sharpay, in true diva fashion, manages to upstage Troy; there's no way she's letting a pesky boy get in the way of her shining moment (even if it is the boy she wants).

Since Sharpay is the so-called "bad girl" in High School Musical 2, she has to get her come-uppance. It happens right before her and Troy are supposed to head on stage for the talent show and he decides he doesn't want to do it with her anymore because "his friends are more important." What follows is probably Tisdale's finest moment in the film. Instead of having a massive meltdown, screaming and throwing things like you would expect, she quiets down for the first time and we see the vulnerability behind Sharpay's mask. She needs to perform and be the best in order to carry on, so when this falls apart, she doesn't know what to do. It's a beautiful moment on par with Meryl Streep's and Rachel McAdams' "come-uppances" in The Devil Wears Prada and Mean Girls, respectively.

Ashley Tisdale's achievement in High School Musical 2 is not something to just be dismissed as "over the top" or "good, for a kids movie." It's an ingenious performance that even her castmates try to steal a part of. In the beginning of the film, Vanessa Hudgens's Gabriella approaches Sharpay and tries to out-Sharpay Sharpay by imitating her hilarious vocal warm ups from the first film and then making this really strange war cry to scare her. Tisdale, ever the opportunist, steals the scene back from the lesser Hudgens with her reaction: backing into the locker and making this face that's a mixture between "Evaporate smart person" and "Please don't eat me!" It's moments like these where Ashley Tisdale really proves her worth.

Montgomery Clift Blog-a-thon: The First Time I Fell in Love With Monty

Sure, the first time I saw a Monty Clift movie (1951's A Place in the Sun) I wasn't so impressed. I don't know if it's because I didn't understand Clift as an actor yet or I just couldn't get over how God-awful that film is, but, suffice to say, we didn't get off on the right foot. I wasn't until a while later when I saw, of all films, Fred Zinnemann's post-WWII Berlin film The Search, that I understood what all the fuss was about.

The film is a merely standard Hollywood outing- a WWII Czech orphan is taken in by an American private Berlin and eventually he starts growing attached to the boy- that makes me gag just thinking about it. But there's something about this film that works and it's all Monty. Steve Stevenson is far from the juiciest role Clift's ever gotten, but the magic is in the chemistry he creates with the little boy Karel (played by non-actor Ivan Jandl). He grows so attached to Karel that he takes him everywhere with him, teaches him English and even fights to be allowed to take him back to America with him. Monty gives such an emotional performance that it's hard to not be a little sad for him at the ending when circumstances prevent him from bringing Karel back with him (I'm not going to give away the ending if you haven't seen it ;) ).


If I had been allowed to vote at the 1948 Oscars, Clift would have won hands down for this performance. Sure, the ultimate winner Laurence Olivier (in Hamlet no less) is a fine choice, but I think Clift had the biggest challenge-- turning the cliched into something beautiful. He doesn't even get upstaged by Jandl, who, as most child actors are, notorious scene stealers.

I don't care what anyone says because The Search will always be the movie I think of when I think of Monty Clift. Perhaps he has given better performances in From Here to Eternity, The Heiress and Wild River, but there's something haunting in this film that I will never forget.

William Wyler Blog-a-thon: Babs is One Funny Girl

Director William Wyler is often quietly forgotten when one discusses the great directors of the Golden Age. The genre-lovers shun him because, unlike Hitchcock and John Ford, he worked in many different genres throughout his career and the auteur theorists disregard him because, unlike Howard Hawks who also worked in different genres, he never really developed a visual style that connects his films. This isn't a bad thing because, Wyler, instead, focused on the actors and actresses in his films and on helping them deliver the greatest performances they could. His technique often involved simply telling the actor "Again" and then reshooting the scene, but it worked nonetheless: 36 of the actors and actresses in his films earned Oscar nominations and 14 of them won the award...an impressive feat unlikely to be broken anytime in the near future.

Funny Girl is one of Wyler's last films and, although it isn't on par with earlier masterpieces such as Dodsworth, The Letter and The Heiress, it's a personal favorite of mine and one hell of a good time. One reason for this love is the fabulous, star making performance Wyler coaxed out of film newcomer Barbra Streisand, who had originated the role of Fanny Brice in the Broadway production. Everyone figured she would be good, but no one expected the tour-de-force she delivers in Funny Girl. She's uses all of her "36 expressions" to good use, going from loud and boisterous to subdued and contemplative at the drop of a hat...all while toning down the stage performance she knew like the back of her hand for the cameras.

Babs' introduction to the film medium is through the often-quoted line "Hello, gorgeous"...and it was then that a gay icon was born.

One of the reasons I love Babs is because she's a diva bitch, she acknowledges it and basically tells everyone to suck it. Even if sometimes she turns into Ultra-Liberal, protector of the oppressed and the Earth, she has the talent to back all of these nutty antics up. Even on Funny Girl, she clashed with Wyler and other actors on set. When these actors complained to Wyler about her telling them what to do and how to act, he responded, tongue firmly in cheek, "You'll have to forgive Barbra; this is the first picture she's ever directed." Even if they argued all throughout the course of the film, it is in this Wyler/Streisand collaboration that leads to Funny Girl being such a fun movie...and for leading Streisand to her first (and only) acting Oscar in 1968.

Slapstick Blog-a-thon: Jane Fonda and Wanda Sykes in "Monster in Law"

While I could have picked something from either Chaplin or Keaton (undeniably the supreme masters of slapstick and practically gods in my eyes), I decided to do something contemporary for this Blog-a-thon. The first movie that popped out at me was Robert Luketic's 2005 Jane Fonda/J. Lo comedy Monster in Law. While a lot of people hated this movie, I thought it was one of the freshest, funniest romantic comedies to come along in ages. Plus, it's got some of the funniest slapstick that still looks fresh even after multiple viewings (I laughed super hard even while trying to get these frames). Just take a look at this scene: it's the rehearsal dinner for Charli (J. LO) and Kevin's (Michael Vartan) wedding and Viola (Jane Fonda) and Charli have been fighting all night. Frustrated, and not willing to lose, Viola finally runs into the kitchen to put nuts in the gravy (which Charli is allergic to). Ruby (Wanda Sykes) runs in to try to stop her.






Ruby eventually talks Viola out of it, but it is too late because one of the other guests has brought out the tainted gravy and Charli is already eating it.




Eventually, Ruby and Viola realize they have to hide the evidence, so, in a moment obviously inspired by the Chocolate Factory episode of I Love Lucy, they start shoving the nuts anywhere they can.

Action Heroine Blog-a-thon: The Divaliciousness of Gogo in "Kill Bill Volume 1"

(This is part of the Action Heroine Blog-a-thon over at The Film Experience)


I’m not a huge fan of action films, but one of the few that I absolutely adore is Kill Bill Volume 1 (Volume 2 is also another of my favorites). The Bride is, understandably, a cult icon in the making, but the one character who briefly steals the spotlight from her is O-Ren Ishii’s personal bodyguard Gogo played by Chiaki Kuriyama. Although Gogo is merely a speed bump on The Bride’s road to revenge, Kuriyama’s take on the role is amazingly entertaining and divariffic on so many levels. She’s not a diva in the ordinary Bette Davis/Joan Crawford vein (instead of a verbal insult or a slap to the face, her weapon of choice is a ball and chain) instead, she provides a new take on a old favorite. So, without further ado, here are four reasons why I find Gogo to be such a role model for divas everywhere:

1. She takes pleasure in other people’s pain- The only time we see Gogo give a genuine smile is when O-Ren Ishii decapitated Tanaka for insulting her Chinese-Japanese-American heritage. Like Gogo, real divas find this sort of thing uproariously funny.

2. She’ll cut you and not give a shit (like Dame Judi Dench)- Just ask that guy in the bar she penetrates with her sword. I’m sure she wasn’t crying her eyes out or regretting what she had done afterwards.

3. She knows how to make an entrance- Just watch her ascension on the staircase before her and The Bride battle- it’s almost as if she’s Margo Channing incarnate. That sarcastic smile and "Hi" she greets The Bride with, her schoolgirl giggle when The Bride suggests she give up and not defend O-Ren, the dramatic way she lets her ball and chain fall on the floor to divert our attention to it.

4. She effectively steals the spotlight from The Bride- For those couple of minutes during the battle scene between her and Gogo, my attention is diverted almost exclusively to what she is doing. I don’t know what it is about her that grabs my attention like that (maybe it’s the way she manhandles The Bride, the main diva of the film, and almost suffocates her to death), but it is definitely a must for any diva.