The Screengrab : christina ricci

On This Day in Screengrab History: May 12, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 12 May 2009 20:30:00 GMT

As the Final Days draw nigh, nostalgia for the salad days of the Screengrab thickens like gravy left out on the kitchen counter overnight. I’m sorry to mention both salad and gravy in that previous sentence, but I didn’t have any lunch. The point is this: I’ve been leafing through the archives like a beloved old photo album, wistfully looking back at the days when your favorite Screengrabbers were skinny and had all their hair. No, I’m joking, of course – our archives don’t go back to 1983. But they do go back to May 12, 2008, a pivotal moment in cinematic history. Let’s take a closer look, shall we?

It was a more innocent time, when none of us had yet seen Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It hadn’t even leaked on the Internet – although a few reviews had, much to the consternation of Lucas & Co., as we learned from Phil Nugent in his pithy post Indiana Jones and the Internet Critics' Pre-emptive Strike: Ain't It Cool News Sandbags Spielberg and Co. “The initial ‘quick reaction’ was posted to Ain't It Cool News last Thursday evening by ‘ShogunMaster.’ The spoiler-heavy review reports that Harrison Ford ‘has a few lines that work and a million that don't’, trashes the other performers, laments the lack of tension or suspense…and sums up the proceedings with the judgement that this is ‘the Indiana Movie that you were dreading.’” ShogunMaster: a prophet before his time.

Our summer predictions were still looking good, as Andrew Osborne informed us in Speed Racer Bombs! Screengrab Two For Two! “Sad news for the Wachowski Brothers, Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci and Chim Chim the monkey, perhaps...but it does mean we here at the Screengrab currently have a perfect batting average with regard to our predictions for the Top 5 Hits and Misses of the 2008 Summer Movie Season.” Little did we know that Sex and the City lurked just ahead, waiting to sucker punch us with its Manolo Blahniks.

Andrew also lit up the blogosphere with his controversial rant CGI Must Die: 5 Reasons Why. So influential was this piece that CGI has almost completely vanished from the multiplex, aside from Star Trek, Watchmen, Wolverine, and all the other movies that have made any money this year. For my part, I endured the All-Night Mockbuster Marathon. Hard to believe it’s been a whole year since I last enjoyed this:

Finally, there was this cautionary post: Sequel to "Donnie Darko" Is on the Way, Much to the Dismay of the Creator of "Donnie Darko". Well, that sequel is no longer on the way. Exactly one year later – on this very day, May 12, 2009 – S. Darko is released on DVD. What does it all mean? I believe it means the Screengrab is a powerful force that should not be tampered with. But that’s just my opinion.

Morning Deal Report: Christina Ricci Gets Her Porn On

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 13:30:00 GMT

It doesn’t get much faster and, er, furiouser than this: the fourth Fast & Furious movie revved up an unbelievable $72.5 million over the weekend, the biggest box office take of the year so far. It’s also more than the previous installment, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, took in during its entire theatrical run. Monsters vs. Aliens hung in there with $33.5 million in the second spot, followed by a steep dropoff to The Haunting in Connecticut, at number three with $9.6 million.

Christina Ricci was born to be a star. But you knew that. You may not have known that Ricci has signed to star alongside Adam Sandler in the “porn-tinged comedy” Born to Be a Star. Per The Hollywood Reporter, “The story centers on a small-town nerd who stumbles upon a family secret: His quiet and demure parents were famous porn stars in the 1970s. This motivates him to leave Northern Iowa for Hollywood, hoping to follow in their footsteps and fulfill his destiny as the biggest adult-film star in the world. Ricci, the female lead, is the guy's innocent girlfriend.”

We’re no stranger to hangover sequels here at the Screengrab, but Warner Bros. is taking a chance on a follow-up to Todd Phillips’ The Hangover before it even reaches theaters in June. “In the comedy, groomsmen take the betrothed for a last fling in Las Vegas, then become so caught up in the revelry that they lose the groom,” Variety reports.

Related:
Christina Ricci: Should I Be Concerned?
Christina Ricci's Happy Meal

Smells Like Indie Spirit: Our Favorite Sundance Films Of All Time (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 21:30:00 GMT

BUFFALO 66 (1998)

At some point in the recent past, we here at the Screengrab compiled a list of our guiltiest pleasures, and one of mine was The Brown Bunny, which I pretty much only wanted to see because of the notorious...uh...love scene between director/star Vincent Gallo and his co-star (and former paramour) Chloe Sevigny. Such a prurient interest is sad on two levels: first, that a grown, married man would rent a movie just to watch a quasi-famous actress get busy with an allegedly prosthetic schwanzstucker...but secondly that Gallo’s sophomore directorial effort would have so little else going for it after the flat-out brilliance of Buffalo 66. Starring as an ex-con loser who kidnaps a bored teen (Christina Ricci) in hopes of passing her off as his wife in a doomed effort to impress his hateful parents (Ben Gazzara and Anjelica Huston), Gallo's Billy Brown is all jittery desperation and hostile self-loathing...yet somehow, by the end of the movie, you’re rooting for both the character and the director, while the grim, hellish landscape of upstate New York in winter (a perfect reflection of the protagonist’s stunted isolation) has somehow blossomed with unexpected hope.

YOU CAN COUNT ON ME (2000)

Sundance, like most film festivals, has never lacked for sensitive dramatic films about dysfunctional families. This entry, which marked the film directing debut of playwright Kenneth Lonergan, stood out enough to count as a redemption of the genre. It also upped the profile of its star, Laura Linney, and all but launched the career, after some ten mostly uneventful years in movies, of Mark Ruffalo. The film won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2000 festival, and Lonergan (who himself picked up the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award) finally follows it up later this year when his second feature, Margaret, starring Anna Pacquin and Ruffalo, arrives in theaters.

AMERICAN PSYCHO (2001)

In the wake of The Blair Witch Project, Sundance slowly fell victim to that most dreaded of industry catchwords: “Buzz.” And as the fest’s spotty post-1999 reputation confirms, the most troublesome thing about encouraging and promoting buzz is that, when the buzzed-about don’t live up to their advanced billing, it’s the festival itself that suffers. Few films have ever arrived at Sundance with more early-bird hype than did Mary Harron’s American Psycho in 2001, given that, as an adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ infamous serial killer tome, its mixture of tongue-in-cheek ‘80s details and brutal violence, all wrapped up in a Kubrickian chill, seemed to make it, in the minds of many prognosticators, an “edgy” film with Fight Club-ish cult-fave potential. Such similarities, it turned out, were superficial at best. Still, American Psycho remains, eight years on, one of the few to match its lofty Sundance expectations, thanks to Christian Bale’s pitch-perfect personification of yuppiedom as a lethal mental affliction, Harron’s eerily composed, sterile direction, and a superlative murder scene set to the ominous sound of Huey Lewis and the News.

DONNIE DARKO (2001)

Every once in a blue moon, Sundance provides a platform for a truly exciting new voice, and in 2001, that was Richard Kelly, whose Donnie Darko received enthusiastic critical and audience response upon its premiere. Kelly hailed from a film-geek background but, with his debut, refused to simply indulge in name-check homages and cheesy nostalgia, instead creating an authentic sense of his ‘80s time period and suburban milieu (and the discomfort liberals felt during Michael Dukakis’ failed ’88 presidential bid), all while offering up one giant head-scratcher of a sci-fi saga involving time travel, Tears for Fears’ “Mad World,” and a menacing, knife-wielding giant rabbit who foretells news of the coming apocalypse to Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal). As assured as it is beguiling, Donnie Darko, like Christopher Nolan’s Memento (which preceded it by a year), is a genre piece that rewards and, in certain respects, requires repeat viewings to unlock its twisted chronological mysteries, something that can’t, unfortunately, be said of Kelly’s follow-up Southland Tales. Me, I say come for the mystery, stay for the entrancing atmosphere of doomed-teen-romanticism.

SUPER TROOPERS (2001)

Broken Lizard, the comedy troupe behind Super Troopers, Club Dread (2004) and Beerfest (2006), is a decidedly hit-or-miss outfit, inspired one moment and flat the next. That description certainly applies to their debut about a group of misfit-slacker state troopers, which first screened at Sundance 2001 and amounts to a series of gags that range from the brilliant to the dreary. If the latter slightly outnumber the former, however, they don’t overshadow them, thanks in part to some inspired casting – how Broken Lizard convinced serious thesp Brian Cox to participate in such inanity remains baffling – that energizes the film’s humor. But moreover, Super Troopers thrives thanks to its pièce-de-résistance involving a couple of troopers pulling over a speeding car in which the backseat teenage passenger, in an effort to avoid arrest and prosecution, has engulfed a giant bag of marijuana. The bizarre incident that follows is dim-witted goofiness of a virtuosic variety, delivering a hilarious high so powerful that it carries one through quite a bit of ensuing patchiness.

Click Here For Part One, Three, Four & Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Nick Schager

DVD Digest for July 15, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week, a comedic visionary gets the Criterion treatment, Jack goes nuts on Blu-Ray, and the unholy pairing of Martin Lawrence and Donny Osmond hits DVD.

DVD of the Week: Jacques Tati was one of the greatest comic filmmakers ever to man a camera, a brilliant visual filmmaker whose skill at engineering gags was only matched by that of Buster Keaton. Criterion has previously released Tati’s classics M. Hulot’s Holiday, Mon Oncle, and Play Time, and now they’ve made available a snazzy new edition of Tati’s final theatrical feature Trafic. In Trafic- also the final onscreen appearance of Tati’s signature character Monsieur Hulot- Tati takes on car culture, as Hulot takes to the highways in a souped-up camper and encounters all sort of automotive mishaps and outrageous technology. Compared to the almost impossibly ambitious Play Time, Trafic’s humor is quirkier, but Tati’s sense of timing and gentle humanism are as present as they ever were. The DVD also includes the two-hour documentary In the Footsteps of Monsieur Hulot from 1989, as well as a number of interviews with the filmmaker and a new essay from critic Jonathan Romney. Trafic may not be as well-known as many of Tati’s beloved classics, but it’s nonetheless an important title in his filmography, definitely worthy of the attention Criterion has lavished on it for this release.

This week’s recent releases on DVD include: College Road Trip (Disney, also Blu-Ray), the aforementioned Lawrence/Osmond vehicle; Jason Statham in the true-crime inspired The Bank Job (Lionsgate, also Blu-Ray); Step Up 2 the Streets (Disney, also Blu-Ray), a sequel no one actually asked for; Aaron Eckhart in Meet Bill (First Look); the Christina Ricci-starring fractured fairy tale Penelope (Summit Entertainment); and the Brazilian Oscar submission The Year My Parents Went on Vacation (WEA). In addition, this week brings a trio of horror releases- Asylum (MGM), Shutter (Fox, also Blu-Ray), and the omnibus film Trapped Ashes (Lionsgate), whose participants included Ken Russell, Monte Hellman, and Joe Dante.

TV-on-DVD releases this week include Birds of Prey: The Complete Series (Warner) and Saving Grace: Season 1 (Fox).

Finally, the week’s sole Blu-Ray only release is One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Warner).

Speed Racer Bombs! Screengrab Two For Two!

Andrew Osborne — Mon, 12 May 2008 15:00:00 GMT

So, according to Perez Hilton, the $100 million jalopy Speed Racer is the "first bomb of the 'summer' box office season," with a dismal $20 million take over the weekend...and some insiders are voicing doubts that it grossed even that much.

Woo-hoo! Sad news for the Wachowski Brothers, Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci and Chim Chim the monkey, perhaps...but it does mean we here at the Screengrab currently have a perfect batting average with regard to our predictions for the Top 5 Hits and Misses of the 2008 Summer Movie Season.

Speed Racer was #4 on our "Miss" list, and the gazillion-dollar grossing Iron Man was #4 on our "Hit" List. The only dark cloud on our prediction horizon is the recent bad buzz about our #3 "Hit" pick.

Considering the disappointments of Temple of Doom and The Last Crusade, my own expectations of Crystal Skull are already, shall we say, pretty well managed...but it remains to be seen whether or not the bad buzz translates to disappointing box office when Indiana Jones premieres on May 22.

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: May 3-9, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 09 May 2008 21:30:00 GMT

This was the week that was at the Screengrab:

We offered free career advice to the 21st century Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw, Scarlett Johansson and Ryan Reynolds.

We watched Nicolas Cage, Michael J. Fox and Bruce Willis debase themselves in the Five Most Embarrassing Celebrity Commercials.

We compared two versions of The Thomas Crown Affair, two versions of Lolita, and the two faces of Aaron Eckhart.

We climbed The Towering Inferno and floated down the Apocalypse Now river.

We saw a naked Bo Derek drenched in honey and milk in Bolero, the latest entry in the Unwatchable series of 100 worst movies ever.

We expressed concern for Christina Ricci, hailed Jonathan Pryce and looked forward to seeing Bardot’s ass in high definition.

We told you about the 12 Greatest Movies Based on TV Shows and you told us we forgot about Serenity. Sorry about that.

And finally, we got sweet, sweet revenge.

What a week, no?

Christina Ricci: Should I Be Concerned?

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 08 May 2008 17:00:00 GMT

I never saw Mermaids or The Hard Way, so my first impression of Christina Ricci was her mordant embodiment of little Wednesday in The Addams Family movies, marking her instantly as a Goth-y cool successor to the Winona Ryder of Beetlejuice and Heathers.

In the great high school of the entertainment industry, Ricci always seemed like one of the rebel kids in the corner, making wry wisecracks about the vapid popular girls, dating hipster misfits like Adam Goldberg and charting a course through an impressive array of cult classics, interesting flops and mainstream hits as a smart, sexy actress with indie cred to burn.

And then, I watched her Tuesday night appearance on Leno.

Now, I understand it must be hard living your entire life in the spotlight, surrounded by the beautiful people of Hollywood while constantly reading about yourself as an “offbeat beauty.” She’s often complained of her giant forehead, she’s battled anorexia and, as I only just read here on the Screengrab, she disliked her appearance so much at one point “that she covered all the mirrors in her house,” shades of her pig-snouted character in Penelope.

So, yes, I know enough about basic female psychology to understand that sometimes even the rebel chick in the corner may secretly yearn to be one of the popular girls, and there’s nothing wrong with going cheerleader blonde and playing up your glamorous side...

...but, egad, Christina, please don’t turn into just another Beverly Hills bobble-head! I mean, maybe her screen persona has always been more interesting than her talk show persona, but I had to go back and re-watch the Leno appearance to see if her interview about her shoe closet and her O.C.D. luggage-packing habits was really as vapid and boring as I remembered. (It was.)

And Christ a’mighty, that Speed Racer clip they screened was horrible, and Christina was horrible in it. I mean, we're talking Sci-Fi Channel original movie horrible. Sure, I know it’s a children’s flick and the visuals POP! But the preview of Christina’s Trixie making goo-goo eyes at Emile Hirsch’s tree-sappy Speed Racer made me yearn for the electrifying screen presence of Jessica Simpson as Daisy Duke.

Here’s hoping for better when XtinaRic teams with charisma powerhouse...egad...Orlando Bloom in New York, I Love You.

Christina Ricci’s Happy Meal

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 01 May 2008 16:00:00 GMT

When last you saw Christina Ricci on the screen, she was either sporting a pig snout (Penelope) or chained to a radiator in her panties (Black Snake Moan). She’s made a career of playing “dark, damaged young women,” but as Robert Downey, Jr. might say, she’s about to have her first opportunity to appear on a Slurpee cup. “What's really funny is that people for years had been saying to me, ‘You know, they're going to make a Speed Racer movie and you should totally play Trixie’,” Ricci says in a revealing interview with The Telegraph. “And I do look a little bit anime when I have dark hair with my white skin.”

Like Downey, she has put some personal darkness behind her as well. “Today she looks fighting fit - her skin is clear, her huge hazel eyes are bright, and she is slender but not scarily so. It's a far cry from the well-publicised extremes of her troubled youth when she cut herself and battled with anorexia. At one point she shrank to six stone and so disliked her appearance that she covered all the mirrors in her house.”

Not that Ricci is entirely without worries. As the interview begins, she frets that the paparazzi may have caught her in a compromising position. “I stopped at the pharmacy on the way here and I wasn't very careful getting out of my car. I just didn't think. But this dress is so short… I'm pretty certain there's going to be some crotch shots. At least,” she sighs, “I was wearing underwear.”

At Least I Was Wearing Underwear – it sounds like the perfect name for Ricci’s autobiography. She wore underwear and not much else for her role in Black Snake Moan, which she considers to be her best work to date, even if she wasn’t crazy about the ad campaign. “I thought I was getting into a part where I could really show the gritty reality of someone who had post-traumatic stress syndrome - what we call rape trauma syndrome…then it's sold in this exploitative, objectifying manner, so that I look like I'm part of some 1970s porn, when I'm making a movie about what happens to a f-ing rape victim.”

Ricci can at least be thankful that the image never appeared on a Slurpee cup.

DVD Digest for March 18, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week, a memorable trio of new Criterions shares a release date with three of the most critically lambasted films of 2007. Who will prevail?

DVD of the Week: In the past decade, the suburban-dysfunction genre has had a lot to answer for, not least the seemingly endless string of glib American Beauty clones full of easy laughs and cheap stabs at profundity. But The Ice Storm shouldn't be held accountable for this- an uncommonly sensitive take on similar material, Ang Lee's adaptation of Rick Moody's novel ventures into uncomfortable corners of the bourgeois lifestyle without softening them with irony. Lee's film also boasted a cast that if anything is more impressive now than it was then, given the subsequent careers of then-newcomers Tobey Maguire and Katie Holmes, as well as former child stars Elijah Wood and Christina Ricci. Criterion's new two-disc set features commentary from Lee and writer/producer James Schamus, interviews with Moody and many of the film's stars, and much more, plus it promises to make Frederick Elmes' cold, wet cinematography look particularly gorgeous. It's the perfect opportunity to revisit a film that warrants a second look.

Also this week, Criterion brings us two films that are new to DVD, Alberto Lattuada's Mafioso and Hiroshi Teshigahara's documentary Antonio Gaudi. Not having seen either of these films I can't pass judgment on them, but I'm glad Criterion has seen fit to give them the best treatment possible, particularly Teshigahara's film, the latest effort on their part to celebrate his often-overlooked career.

Recent releases coming to DVD include: Joe Wright's Oscar-nominated Atonement (Universal), the kid-friendly princess comedy Enchanted (Disney, also Blu-Ray), the surprisingly good I Am Legend (Warner, also Blu-Ray), Fox's failed attempt at a Potter-like franchise The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising, and the aforementioned trio of critically-drubbed films, Love in the Time of Cholera (New Line), Revolver (Sony), and Southland Tales.

New TV on DVD includes Volume 1 of the 2007 reboot of The Bionic Woman (Universal) and Season 8 of Married... with Children (Sony). That's a strange juxtaposition of flashy action and soundstage-bound low comedy, but then when it comes to television, you can't have one without the other.

Also of note is MGM's trio of new DVD editions of baseball-themed movies to get viewers geared up for Opening Day: Bull Durham, Eight Men Out, and Pride of the Yankees. Indeed, these new editions appear to be geared more toward baseball fans than movie lovers, as they're chock full of baseball-themed extras, particularly the Curt Schilling-heavy Pride of the Yankees platter.

Finally, we bring you yet another edition of the ever popular Huddleston Corner. This week, we're offering shout-outs to two new HD-DVD releases, Atonement (Universal) and Justice League: The New Frontier (Warner). However, Mr. Huddleston would like to inform you that he doesn't know how many more condolences he has left in him, and he hopes that the bums companies who are still stuck on HD-DVD will get their acts together soon.

The Ten Greatest Prosthetics in Movie History, Part 2

Peter Smith — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 21:00:00 GMT

Nicole Kidman's Nose in THE HOURS (2002)

Can a fake nose win an Oscar? Some might say it already did, when Nicole Kidman's turn as Virginia Woolf in The Hours was awarded the golden statue for Best Actress. We've got nothing against Kidman's performance in that film, but judging by the reams of press that her lightly reoriented schnozz got at the time, you'd think that it was the nose that was wearing Kidman, instead of the other way around. Of course, this was yet another award in a long series of Best Actress Oscars that went to Beautiful Women Doing Unglamorous Things — whether it was playing a tarted-up legal secretary (Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich), having sex with Billy Bob Thornton (Halle Berry in Monster's Ball) or looking like a burn victim (Charlize Theron in Monster). Which is, really, the only way we can explain Kidman's decision to use such a subtle prosthetic in the first place; it's not like the American moviegoing public had any idea what Virginia Woolf looked like in the first place.

Jeff Goldblum's Jaw, Cheeks, Eyes, His Very Fucking Being, in THE FLY (1986)

Some of us were prohibited from watching more than two hours of TV a week as children. Luckily, some of us were also latch-key kids, so naturally, whenever no one was home, we gorged, often on both food and shlocky afternoon TV movies. And those of us who were unlucky enough to see The Fly at this time didn't quite grasp the extent of our mistake until it was too late. There you are, happily eating your delivery pizza, and in the middle of a big, meaty bite, you're confronted by the spectacle of one of Brundlefly's eyes falling off, like an egg yolk dripping into batter. You assume that's the most disgusting scene they're gonna throw at you. Again, big mistake. Jeff Goldblum's Brundlefly is possibly the single most hideous, repugnant creature ever seen on film — worse than the Alien mother, worse than any other close competitor. Every negative trait of Jeff Goldblum's physiognomy is brought into stark relief onto an insect face; when it decays, we dare you to keep eating. We certainly didn't.

Penelope Cruz's Ass, VOLVER (2006)

Since her Hollywood debut, Cruz has been the poster child for foreign-born performers who aren't half as compelling in English as they are in their native tongue. Which is why her reunion with Pedro Almodovar was a cause for celebration — not only would she be working in Spanish again, but she was collaborating with a filmmaker who always brought out the best in her. But strangely enough, much of the buzz around Penelope's role in 2006's Volver focused less on the performance than around the generous fake derrière she strapped on for the role. According to Almodovar, the padded rump was necessary for the character, an earthy, hard-working mother in the Anna Magnani tradition, and this makes sense, since Penelope Cruz is lovely, but talk about bun cakes — she ain't got 'em. But then a funny thing happened. Instead of drawing undue attention to Penelope's prodigious prosthetic posterior, the hype allowed moviegoers to grow accustomed to the sight of the suddenly callipygian Cruz, much in the same way Alejandro Amenabar leaked stills of a heavily made-up Javier Bardem to the Spanish press so the public would get used to his appearance in The Sea Inside. The gimmick paid off in the end, as Cruz's full-bodied (sorry) performance made the rockin' world go 'round, garnering her unprecedented critical praise and a rare (for a foreign-language performer) Best Actress Oscar nomination. In fact, after the success of Volver, the only question that remains for Penelope Cruz's career is: how can she leave this behind?

Vincent Gallo's Penis in THE BROWN BUNNY (2003)

When people actually got around to seeing Vincent Gallo's The Brown Bunny rather than just making fun of it (which isn't to say that they stopped making fun of it afterwards, or that many people actually got around to seeing it), the scene that generated the most buzz was what is delicately referred to as "the blowjob", where Gallo's lodge pole is climbed by Chloe Sevigny, for whom one has never felt more pity. The scene's verite qualities and (literally) naked emotional power are what most people talked about, although we think they were just grateful that something was actually happening in the movie after endless shots of Gallo driving aimlessly across country. Gallo, who tends to be pretty sensitive about things like this, has always claimed that the hog in question belongs to him; French director Claire Denis, on the contrary, claims that it is an artificial wang, and that, worse yet, it isn't even Vince's artificial wang — she says he stole it off the set of her 2001 film Trouble Every Day, in which he had a large part, but not that large part. In the absence of, er, concrete evidence from Gallo, we're going to go with Claire Denis' version of events; we figure that since she's not on record as hoping Roger Ebert gets cancer for giving one of her films a bad review, she's got the moral high ground.

Gwyneth Paltrow's Body in SHALLOW HAL (2001)

Hollywood's relationship with the overweight isn't exactly a history of sensitivity and kindness. Particularly where women are concerned, the mere suggestion of being a few pounds beyond anorexic means you're virtually unemployable; and in a city where people like Christina Ricci, Drew Barrymore and Britney Spears can be attacked in the press for being fat, roles for actual human women, let alone fat women, are few and far between. When the Farrelly brothers decided to make a movie about a shallow womanizer who falls in love with a 300-pound woman to prove that he can see 'inner beauty,' they had a casting decision to make: hire two people to play Rosemary Shanahan — one a beautiful, thin Hollywood blonde, to portray Hal's perception of her, and one a genuine 300-pound actress to portray the 'real' character — or just stick Gwyneth Paltrow in a fat suit? (It didn't help the whole unpleasant aftertaste of the movie that its male lead was Jack Black, an actor who gets romantic leads despite his own flabby physique; no actress with a body like Black's would ever nail down a leading-lady part.) Perhaps it's too much to expect anything like insight from filmmakers whose reputation is built on the gross-out comedy, but the fat suit is already a ethical minefield (representing, as it does, a sort of physical proof of Hollywood's allergy to hiring anyone genuinely overweight to appear in a prominent role) without filling it with an actress who probably weighed 110 pounds soaking wet when she was filming the role.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Willem Dafoe's Teeth in WILD AT HEART (1990)

The whole world seems to be rotting in David Lynch's nightmare road movie, and nowhere is this clearer than in the misbegotten mouth of white-trash villain Bobby Peru, played by Willem Dafoe in full-moon mode. Unholy, irredeemable, and defiantly unflossed, Bobby Peru is meant to be the ultimate dark void awaiting the young lovers at the end of their road to nowhere, and no Satanic movie character ever displayed a less welcoming smile. Perverse to the end, the still-smiling Bobby finally slides a shotgun beneath his chin and blows his own head off, after which the part of his body above the gum line must have felt a certain amount of relief.

Goldie Hawn's Fat in DEATH BECOMES HER (1992)

In this special-effects comedy, Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep play lifelong rivals who achieve "undead" immortality and spend the rest of the movie blowing holes in each other, twisting each other's necks into pretzels, knocking their heads into their chest cavities, and generally behaving as if Chuck Jones were their stunt coordinator. But the most effective physical mutation in the picture may come when Hawn slips into an old-fashioned fat suit and layers of latex makeup to depict her character's depressive obesity after Streep has waltzed off with her fiancee. Nothing in the movie is funnier than Hawn's expression of malicious satisfaction, with her features sunk deep in the mass of her cream puff head, as she imagines raining destruction down on her gal pal. At the time, Hawn was forty-six years old and had spent a quarter of a century doing her damndest to hang onto the body and mannerisms of a teenage girl. Maybe she felt wickedly giddy at even pretending to have let herself go.

Dennis Hopper's False Leg in RIVER'S EDGE (1987)

Dennis Hopper, fresh from his comeback in Blue Velvet, lays claim to the being the counterculture's answer to Walter Brennan in this generation-gap study of alienated youth. John Heard made a good grab for the position in Cutter's Way, where he staggered around pretending to be one-legged and wore an eye patch to boot, but that was nothing compared to what you get when you equip Hopper with an artificial leg, an inflatable sex doll, and the name "Feck", and sit back to watch him rock. When Hopper, who deals dope to the local teenagers, sits down to remove his false leg, it symbolizes the loss of his own youthful innocence and the disconnect between the older characters and the young people, which is fed by their use of his own product. Or something like that. And did we mention that his character's name is Feck!?

— Paul Clark, Bilge Ebiri, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce, Vadim Rizov