Oscar Night in Review: Most Wonderful Things

also: worst & weirdest moments | fashion review
all Oscar 2009/10 season posts here

Time to wrap up Oscar coverage! I may or may not do a short fashion bit and we may or may not do a podcast ... running on fumes! Thanks for your abundant engaged comments in the worst/weirdest rundown and acting posts. Comments are like premium fuel... especially when the meter is on empty. But never fear. More fun daily movie stuff coming up. Don't go away just because the Oscars are over, y'hear?

13 Best Things About the 09/10 Oscars

13 Stanley Tucci's Eye Rolling. He looked totally embarrassed by his clip from The Lovely Bones which made us love him even more.

12 Contemporary Costume Design Shout-Out. Sure, sure, the world's most brilliant costumer designer Sandy Powell (more on her in a future post) came off like a huge diva with her slow saunter up to the stage and her "I already have two of these" intro. But we heartily appreciate the impromptu contemporary costuming dedication. Even people who love costume design (including me) don't recognize it enough. If I were giving out a contemporary costume design nomination this year I think I would have gone with...

• Hope Hanafin for (500) Days of Summer
• Sonia Grande for Broken Embraces
• April Napier for Julia *winner*
  
• Marina Draghici for Precious
• Catherine Marie Thomas for Whip It

They all did fine or intriguing or smart and sometimes inspired work.

11 Steve Martin. In concept the duo of Alec & Steve was a great idea. In reality only Steve Martin had the sea legs for this sort of improvised live comedy. He's been at it since the 60s, you know. He can even do it with an arrow through his head. I'd be happy to see him back but I'm really rooting for a Hugh Jackman return next year. (Last year's show = so much better)

10 Pedro & Quentin. I understand why the Oscar producers are nervous to have behind-the-scenes talent present awards (for fear of losing only half-interested non-movie buff viewers) but in the case of directors who are celebrities themselves -- at least to the extent that directors can become famous on a visual level -- this was a very welcome presenting duo. It's nice to see a non-acting director besides Steven Spielberg on stage.

9 Color. The ladies of Hollywood (or at least their stylists) really turned up the rainbow and after years and years of oceans of black gowns, it was so welcome.

8 Precious Beats the Odds. Though my vote would've probably gone to In the Loop, I was very happy to see Precious (my silver medalist) win screenplay. But the reason I put this in my top 12 is that I absolutely love it when a worthy win happens after a terrible clip choice. I always feel those clip reels have hidden agendas since they so often give one film or performance a great clip and give a competing film or performance a lousy unrepresentative example. I'm still haunted by the clip they chose to represent Nicole Kidman way back in the Moulin Rouge! year (the year she should have won given the nominee pool). So I felt like Precious's win was accidental revenge on the clip reel. I mean... really... the fried chicken sequence? That's what you chose to represent that emotionally textured script?!?

7 The Set. Pretty, right? Though it did feel a little Avatar tributey with so much shimmery blue. Although for the life of me I didn't understand the lampshade business. What were those occasional lampshade backdrops about? Are there any interior designers out there who can 'splain that set psychology?

6 Michael Giacchino's Speech. He writes good music... and good speech, too. Telling anyone listening that pursuing your creative passions is not a waste of time was totally inspiring. Devoting hours, months and years of your life to a creative pursuit is difficult and nerve-wracking and not often supported in our Most Money Wins cultural value system. Creativity and respect for artistic pursuits should always be encouraged. Everyone would be happier. Well done, Giacchino.

5 Quality Wins Out. The Hurt Locker, the best of the nominees, was triumphant. Maybe six Oscars was a bit much. We tend to like it when the Academy spreads the golden wealth. But it's always a relief when good films win big. And speaking of good... so many of the winners were deserving this year... especially over in Acting. So even if the show was rough and unfocused, the wins were (mostly) quality. But back to The Sexy Locker for a minute. It keeps earning the nickname we gave it. We already knew that Bigelow was the hottest non-acting 58 year old out there. And we already knew that her cast was delicious and cuddly. Then we learned through awards season that at least one of the producers as well as the screenwriter Mark Boal (Bigelow's boyfriend, right? Is this public knowledge?) were also lookers. And now we find out in the acceptance speeches that the brilliant editing team (and new Oscar winners) Bob Murawski and Chris Innis are a married couple? So much, uh, affection everywhere in that movie's production history, right?

4 Tina Fey & Robert Downey Jr. The number of Hollywood jokes about writers being ugly social pariahs and actors being arrogant self-serving divas equal well unto infinity. But with the right delivery... just hilarious hilarious hilarious.

3 Firsts! Kathryn Bigelow becomes the first female director to win. They shoulda let Jane Campion burst that glass ceiling 17 years ago but yay for it finally happening. And when it's deserved, too (even better!). Though it was bad form to play "I am woman. hear me roar" as Bigelow exited the stage, particularly because she awesomely never played the vagina card in her entire campaign. Also kudos to Geoffrey Fletcher for becoming the first African American screenwriter to win. Firsts are so exciting.

2 Sandra Bullock's Speech. Though her Best Actress winning performance was, to me, the least among the nominees, it's not the first time the least has won this "most". See also: 2006, 2004, 1997, 1994, etcetera...) But there's just no faulting that gorgeous knockout speech. It began with humble but perceptive "I get it" comedy, swerved into heartfelt appreciation for her formidable competition (if it wasn't sincere, she's a better actress than we've ever given her credit for being), made time for personal but far from over-indulgent acknowledgements of her own loved ones and also honored the movie and role she was rewarded for. A+ on that speech, Sandy. What a gracious, smart, emotional finish to this super long awards season.

1...the best Best Actor / Best Actress Presentations in general. Last year when I first heard they were doing 5-wide presenter tributes to the acting nominees I thought it was insane. But it turned out to be a great show with that "twist" only adding to the who will speak to whom now, drama? This year, while the rest of the show crumbled around it, this 5-wide system got even better. I realize it takes up a lot of time, but damn it's good television. I couldn't have been happier during the Best Actor presentation, which began with a shocking reveal of two of my personal trinity, and kept getting more and more pleasurable. I never thought I'd live to see The Fabulous Baker Boys (one of my favorite films of all time, which lost every Oscar it was up for in 1989) celebrated at an Oscar event.


It was so surreal... like they had created the show just for me. Better still... as these intros progressed was the feeling that maybe millions of other people watching were having similar "this is for me!" personal experiences given the 20 movie stars and multiple movies getting face and anecdote time. There had to have been something for everyone there and it was complete heaven. My favorite bits...

1. Jeff Bridges tearing up watching Michelle Pfeiffer pay him tribute. They've been so supportive of each other over the years that it's a complete travesty and mystery to me that they never worked together again after Baker Boys.
   
2. Stanley Tucci's teasing Meryl Streep by sponsoring a drive to cap the number of acting nominations at 16 (Comedy revenge for Meryl Streep calling him "the dreadful Stanley Tucci" in her Golden Globes speech for Prada?)
3. Oprah Winfrey detailing the fairy tale journey of Gabby Sidibe and watching the young actress wipe away tears hearing her name next to Streeps
4. Vera Farmiga's weirdly cutesy flirtations "fantastically foxy Mr. Foxy Fox" and "he's just so dreeeeeeaaaamy" when addressing George Clooney
5. Colin Farrell giving us the mental image of he and Jeremy Renner spooning...

I have to stop now but I could keep going. You get the picture. Loved it. Maybe the Oscars were unusually rough this year, but why not focus on the positive as we wave this season goodbye?
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5 DVD Classics, A Giveaway

REVISED POST Do you ever watch Turner Classic Movies 31 Days of Oscar? It's a fine way to catch up on Oscar favorites that you missed or that you'd love to revisit. Their month-long golden celebration is going on right now.



They've offered us a great giveaway prize here at The Film Experience, allowing me to choose 5 Oscar nominated movies on DVD for one lucky reader. Sometimes I take a hateful amount of time in sending out prizes myself but this time that procrastination problem is alleviated since TCM is running the contest. So I have to follow their rules -- which means US entries only. There can be only one winner but two others will get a party-pack consolation prize.

To enter send me an email by Saturday Feb 20th with "5 dvds" in the subject line. Include your mailing address, full name and a gripe about a multiple nominee who has never won the prize, be they a cinematographer, costume designer, actor or whatever... I'll excerpt some of the gripes right here in one week when I announce the winner.

I opted to make the big prize a bittersweet reflection of Oscar glory and how hard it is to achieve, even if you get close. Four of the films are selected because they're a) awesome b) received multiple nominations c) lost all of them and d) starred awesome women who went competitive Oscarless in their careers. So next time you're upset about the Oscar-free status of modern ladies who are running out of time to take the prize (Julianne Moore, Glenn Close, Sigourney Weaver) just remember that Oscar has a way of ignoring the most consistently brilliant performers in order to reflect any given year's "hot buzz" -- it's been happening since forever. (If you ask me it's much harder to win an acting Oscar if you're consistently brilliant than if you have one great performance in you.)

The giveaway pack includes:

• The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) * sorry. This was not available on DVD in the US format. I had to replace it.
• Double Indemnity (1944)
  Was nominated for seven Oscars and lost all of them. Critical darling Barbara Stanwyck (4 noms/0 wins) does femme fatale duty in this classic noir. This is also the movie that inspired Body Heat (1981) which brought the world Kathleen Turner, another spectacular actress who never won an Oscar.
  
• A Star is Born (1954)
  Was nominated for six Oscars and lost all of them. Judy Garland's (2 noms/0 wins) classic performance is about hundred times more impressive than the deglamming performance that took the gold prize away. Speaking of things that got away... "The Man That Got Away" is pure emotional / musical bliss.
  
• The Umbrellas of Cherbourgh (1964)
  Was nominated for five Oscars -- in two separate years! -- and lost all of them. The Belle Toujours of Cinema, Catherine Deneuve (1 nom / 0 wins) is still Oscarless.
  
• The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989)
  Was nominated for four Oscars and lost all of them. "Susie Diamond" is the performance that put Michelle Pfeiffer (3 noms / 0 wins) in the pantheon.
• They Shoot Horses Don't They (1969)
  This harrowing excellent drama is the exception to the rules in this contest. It did not go home Oscarless, winning 1 statue (Best Supporting Actor, Gig Young). But here's the "biggest loser" kicker. It was nominated for 9 statues and not Best Picture, making it the most nominated film ever to have hold that dubious distinction. Also Jane Fonda herself did not go Oscarless. She won two statues later on (Coming Home and Klute) both well deserved.
  

Can't wait to hear which Oscar-free person makes you craziest. Good luck!

Crazy Heart and Chemical Reactions

Yesterday In Contention began poking at the Best Actor buzz on Jeff Bridges who plays an alcoholic singer in Crazy Heart. Let's all poke away together. Currently Fox Searchlight is looking at Spring 2010 instead of an Oscar run. One assumes they'll change their minds soon.

Bridges is enormously overdue for Oscar love. He's considered by many to be one of the great American actors but it's easy to understand why he hasn't ever come close to winning the big one. He's effortless onscreen or appears to be which amounts to the same thing. Other actors huff and puff away to achieve greatness but Bridges just seems to stroll right up to it, casually running his fingers through his hair. While this doesn't make his work any less than wonderful it does make it more invisible when it comes time for the industry back-patting. We saw this recently with The Door in the Floor in which he was just superb as a selfish womanizing author (my vote for Best Actor of 2004). He received not one nomination for his work... only a career tribute trophy from the National Board of Review.

Awards voters want to see actors huffing and puffing towards greatness. Marion Cotillard, Kate Winslet, Sean Penn and Daniel Day-Lewis, the most recent lead acting winners, are fine examples of how much sturm und drang voters typically expect to see and want to reward. Whether or not one thinks they individually achieved greatness in their respective performances one can't really argue that they weren't all obviously striving for it. When it comes to Oscar, never always let them see you sweat.

Here's Bridges filming a Crazy Heart scene onstage with Colin Farrell.

I love that he's doing his own singing. And provided the performance is as good as its backers are saying "performance of a lifetime" (It might be true but they have to gush... it's part of the job) it'd be especially gratifying to see Bridges honored for a musical performance. It'd be a nice way for us all to collectively pretend that his excellent work on The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989) is finally being recognized twenty years after the fact.

And though I know you know where I'm going with this I have to go there anyway. It's completely insane that Michelle Pfeiffer and Bridges never worked together again after that piece of magic in 1989. They're obviously still fond of each other: Pfeiffer referenced his greatness, unprompted, at the press day for Chéri (she wasn't even talking about Baker Boys) and Bridges showed up for her star unveiling for the Walk of Fame in 2007. Yet an onscreen reunion never happened. That's poor career planning on the part of the actors and/or their management. It's their loss and ours.

Electric chemistry in the movies is so tricky to find, one wonders why we don't see more regular pairings of actors who've already proved that they have it (outside of franchises I mean, where they're locked into it contractually). For every Maggie Cheung & Tony Leung Chiu Wai out there who have captured their paired lightning in a bottle multiple times, there are screen couples like Pfeiffer & Bridge, Sarandon & Davis and Spacey & Bening who have not or screen couples like Emma Thompson & Anthony Hopkins (sensationally good together both times) or Douglas & Turner that gave up too soon. What gives?

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Hump Day Hottie: 30 Years of Michelle Pfeiffer

Next Tuesday, November 25th marks the 30th anniversary of the very first filmed appearance of the legendary Michelle Pfeiffer. She had one line on a Fantasy Island episode... "Who is he Niobe?" To celebrate this landmark, Fran @ The Face (a great great pfan site) has compiled this video celebration.


Watch Michelle Pfeiffer, 30 Years of Career in Celebrity Videos | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

The first two minutes are montage but after that, it becomes a true event: a chronological completist stroll through her entire career (including TV appearances and voicework). It's 11 minutes and 47 seconds of Heaven... or my idea of heaven at any rate. One of my favorite things about the video is the thrill of watching the goddess get more and more beautiful as the years rush by. I also appreciate that the music changes just exactly when it should --round about 1987/1988 when her career went supernova (it was the combo of Witches of Eastwick / Married to the Mob / Dangerous Liaisons / Tequila Sunrise). This is my new favorite video. My cold dead heart nearly started beating again, my dry eyes nearly welled up -- so many memories rushing back along with reminder that I'll just never love another actress more ...and y'all know how big a statement that is given my, um, actressexual tendencies. Pfeiffer was with me as I took my first irreversible steps into cinephilia. She still sends me.

Here are my 10 arguably favorite pictures of Michelle Pfeiffer (yes I argue with myself about such things --you know it's so hard to choose)

Clockwise from top left: Photoshoot to promote Dangerous Minds (1995) -I heart the dangling "superstar", Herb Ritts imagined Pfeiffer as drag king in 1991, and finally: Actor/Photographer Jeff Bridges catches an candid moment on the set of Fabulous Baker Boys (probably 1988, she quit smoking not long thereafter) --I once nearly dropped... well way too much $ at a gallery for a breathtaking Bridges original of Pfeiffer atop the piano. If I were a rich man...


Left to right: by Rankin for Esquire in 2007 to celebrate her comeback, photographed by Davis Factor for Movieline in 2002... so atypically casual in denim.


Left to right: In 1990 by Jean Pagliuso when Russia House was coming out. That headshot is classic Pfeiffer. I'm not sure where I got the middle picture or who took it but it's one I've been obsessed with for a good while. Michael Thompson shot the actress for W in 1999... no one does ethereal miserabilism as well as she.


Left to right: Pfeiffer in Life magazine in 1986 by Co Rentmeester, Pfeiffer by Herb Ritts again in 1989 as she entered the pantheon of all time great silver screen beauties with the release of The Fabulous Baker Boys. It's never going to stop being frustrating that she lost the golden boy while everything in her career was screaming golden... even the photo shoots.
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Monologue Mondays -"Susie Diamond"

I may start doing this regularly. Great and/or interesting monologues to start the week off daydreaming 'bout the movies. Let me know what you think. We begin with La Pfeiffer. Surprise.

You know, I saw you guys once. You and Frank. At the Roosevelt. Soap convention.

Yeah, they got a convention for everything. This guy was some big roller in suds. At least he was clean. Some of the guys I met through the service, you wouldn't believe. The older ones, they were okay. Nice. Polite. Pulled the chair out for you. But the younger ones...

It wasn't so bad, though. I'd get a nice piece of steak, flowers, sometimes even a gift. Usually whatever the guy was into. Got a set of socket wrenches once. Believe it? The guy looked like he'd just given me four dozen roses.

But I stayed at the Hartford once. You should see the rooms. All satin and velvet. And the bed. Royal blue, trimmed in lace clean as snow. Hard to believe sleeping in a room like that don't change your life. But it don't. The bed may be magic, but the mirror isn't. You wake up the same old Susie.

"Susie Diamond" as played by Michelle Pfeiffer in The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989). Written and directed by Steve Kloves . Mr. Kloves made one great film --this one right here with a radiant award-winning Pfeiffer and the best collaboration of those Fabulous Bridges Boys --then followed it up with a solid sophomore effort Flesh and Bone (1993), which featured Meg Ryan stretching, Dennis Quaid scowling, and Gwyneth Paltrow stealing the show (in what is still one of her best performances). Unfortunately, Kloves hasn't directed since though I'm sure he's handsomely paid for those Harry Potter adaptations.

Monologue Mondays -"Susie Diamond"

I may start doing this regularly. Great and/or interesting monologues to start the week off daydreaming 'bout the movies. Let me know what you think. We begin with La Pfeiffer. Surprise.

You know, I saw you guys once. You and Frank. At the Roosevelt. Soap convention.

Yeah, they got a convention for everything. This guy was some big roller in suds. At least he was clean. Some of the guys I met through the service, you wouldn't believe. The older ones, they were okay. Nice. Polite. Pulled the chair out for you. But the younger ones...

It wasn't so bad, though. I'd get a nice piece of steak, flowers, sometimes even a gift. Usually whatever the guy was into. Got a set of socket wrenches once. Believe it? The guy looked like he'd just given me four dozen roses.

But I stayed at the Hartford once. You should see the rooms. All satin and velvet. And the bed. Royal blue, trimmed in lace clean as snow. Hard to believe sleeping in a room like that don't change your life. But it don't. The bed may be magic, but the mirror isn't. You wake up the same old Susie.

"Susie Diamond" as played by Michelle Pfeiffer in The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989). Written and directed by Steve Kloves . Mr. Kloves made one great film --this one right here with a radiant award-winning Pfeiffer and the best collaboration of those Fabulous Bridges Boys --then followed it up with a solid sophomore effort Flesh and Bone (1993), which featured Meg Ryan stretching, Dennis Quaid scowling, and Gwyneth Paltrow stealing the show (in what is still one of her best performances). Unfortunately, Kloves hasn't directed since though I'm sure he's handsomely paid for those Harry Potter adaptations.

Pfeiffer Forever

Michelle Pfeiffer Blog-a-Thon Headquarters

Scroll down for my article and a list of all 37 participating blogs
or return to the mainpage for the new daily postings
If you don't want to miss anything, please subscribe

Libby Gelman Waxner, the humor columnist for Premiere once remarked that Michelle Pfeiffer was 'what God had in mind for humanity before the blueprints got all dusty and smudged in the glove compartment'. I've come to cherish such old school hosannas to her cinematic grandeur like they were ancient scripture. Since we don't see much of her these days, her name spoken aloud often registers as a surprise. I hear the name with its own exclamation point. In last year's brilliant Werner Herzog documentary Grizzly Man there's a scene in which Timothy Treadwell, the film's "star" of sorts, talks about the bears and their mating rituals. He calls the most desired female 'the Michelle Pfeiffer of grizzly bears.' For such a supposedly ideal human specimen, this was not the first time Pfeiffer was mistaken for an animal.

The Ferocity of Pfeiffer

This not-quite-human effect started with Ladyhawke in 1985. Prior to that she ran the risk of being an interchangeable member of Hollywood's blonde beauty pack (infinite in number they are). There was the gum chomping Pink Lady of Grease 2 and the angry icy Elvira from Scarface but she was still just an actress... merely human. She was not yet "PFEIFFER" the star. It would take this mystical role in Ladyhawke as Isabeau, a woman who was also a bird, and simple aging to make her beauty truly alien. Once the softness of youth faded you imagine her onscreen lovers could cut themselves on the browline or cheekbone. The features slowly starting revealing their exquisite if angular architecture. She is rumored to have landed the Isabeau part after a comedic audition in which she imitated our feathered friends. But Catwoman aside, it's not usually a laughing matter when Pfeiffer lets her inner animal roar.

It wasn't even a laughing matter in Ladyhawke. The comedy was delivered by the headlining star Matthew Broderick (intentionally) and its anachronistic synthesized rock score (unintentionally). Pfeiffer's work was all serious "I am sorrow" suffering. She doesn't go for laughs, she goes for the jugular. Not just as an actor but as a budding star. They say that many great stars understand intuitively their rapport with the camera. She must have known then, when she turned to the camera in the moonlight that black hood framing her otherworldly beauty, what a gift the film and the character were to her. Beautiful. Tragic. Not entirely human. The studio would wisely lift the image for the movie's poster. Broderick was the marketable star but Pfeiffer as a legendary face was the great takeaway of the film.

The Isabeau performance isn't avian in shape the way her later correlative woman/animal work was in Batman Returns, when she gave in completely to the stylization. But a nonhuman or animalistic detail finds its way into many performances. Is it the way her tongue sometimes lifts tantalizingly up, too visible in her mouth --not a cheap come hither, lip-licking starlet movement but just something her mouth does, opening with anticipation. Perhaps she's waiting to be fed? But mostly I see the animal in her eyes. Watch any given film and you'll see it. They move too quickly surveying danger or registering movement or, more distinctly, they refuse to move at all. It's in those killer shots where she holds her gaze a beat or two too long on a co-star that you begin to wonder. What is the person is to her? Friend? Lover? (gulp) Prey?

All of these fascinating alien or animal intensities are in full bloom in White Oleander (2002), which I consider among her very strongest work. In an excellent review in Salon, Stephanie Zacharek wrote:

"Ingrid, as Pfeiffer plays her, has both the look and composure of a self-possessed lizard: Her eyes, which we normally know to be a dazzling blue, are icy and cold here, and you could probably count the number of times she blinks during the whole movie."

I haven't counted Stephanie, but I trust that the number is very small. If Pfeiffer had been any less beautiful as a woman, her intensity as an actor would have scared audiences away long ago.

Bird. Deer. Reptile. Wolf. Cat

Comparing Pfeiffer to a reptile was not my idea but I was glad to hear someone else bear witness to her animal within. Back in Ladyhawke Rutger Hauer's man/wolf initally reads as the more imposing creature but it's Pfeiffer's woman/bird that gets scarier with the running time. See that unwaveringly ferocious contempt with which Isabeau locks her gaze on the bishop late in the film. One senses immediately that were this the bird and not the woman standing before him, he would already be missing his eyes.

From her breakthrough days as a cursed bird Pfeiffer's animal instints continue. You could claim the next incarnation as that startled frozen deer in Dangerous Liaisons but for this movie watcher, it's in the area of predator not prey where Pfeiffer comes alive. There's an extra kick to her work as Isabeau and Ingrid and Catwoman or any of her angry but more recognizably human characters that you don't get her in lighter or passive fare. It's her savagery peaking through. Maybe she played the wrong role in Liaisons. It's amazing when you stop to look over Pfeiffer's gallery of characters, that Merteuil and Valmont even made it to the final reel, let alone devoured her.

I get angry whenever watching Wolf that the film is tricked up with special effects to convey the lycanthrophe within. When that film's trailer first appeared in 1994 the marketing hook was all about winkily joking with the audience about the familiarity of Jack Nicholson as a beast, a tactic that also worked wonders back when the two stars first teamed for The Witches of Eastwick. In the trailer Pfeiffer is merely seen slumbering enticingly in a nightgown. I never bought that Sleeping Beauty routine for a second. I knew the film would contain more than one beast. And sure enough, there she was in the film haughty, hostile, bitter and even in the throes of passion, no schoolgirl pushover. At the end of that film after her character Laura has been bitten by a werewolf and her course is set, they throw yellow contacts on this goddesses baby blues. It's a redundant move. You've always been able to see the beast within.

It's for all of these reasons perhaps that Catwoman is so identifiable as a career peak. Never mind that that part was not originally hers (Annette Bening backed out when she became pregnant), it's a perfect fusion of actress and material and timing. She's fully in command of all of the tools in the actors arsenal, careful character modulation, comedic timing, physical and vocal control, ferocious nerve (try doing this without looking foolish. I dare you), and playful stylizations perfectly attuned to the director's sensibility. It's a great work of performance art. Everyone remembers those clever quips, her overt cat gestures (the licking. ohhhh the licking), and her hilarious throwaway "meow." I have one special favorite moment I find too delicious. Catwoman is having a conversation with the Penguin and she's circling a bird cage in his lair. Her laser focus hypnotically shifts from Penguin to the tiny bird and it's like there is no actress at all. Only this cat, this meal, this teasing game in her head.

She's a killer.



Pfans Make Me Hot
Your Blog-a-Thon Participants (Listed in Alpha Order)

As Little As Possible "...A Galaxy Pfar Pfar Away"
Auteur Lust "Cinema's Own Forbidden Fruit"
Being Boring "My Sexual Awakening (in Black Vinyl)"
Cinephilia "My (Sex) Life with Michelle Pfeiffer"
Coffee Coffee and More Coffee on Ladyhawke
Cutting Room "What Lies Within (Great Talent)"
film ick on What Lies Beneath
The Flick Filosopher on Catwoman's "gyno-power"
The Gilded Moose "BREAKING: Pfeiffer Pissed"
Girish on The Fabulous Baker Boys
Glitterati Gossip "Truly Timeless"
Mainly Movies "Susie Diamond is Forever"
Many Rantings of John on One Fine Day
ModFab "Pfeiffer's Fabulous Five"
Movies Madness "Pfor Ever and Always"
Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man on Batman Returns
My New Plaid Pants "Mistress of the Dark"
Nicks Flick Picks on A Thousand Acres
Noel Vera on Batman Returns
nOvaslim "Haute Poosee"
O.P.A.L. on her fandom
Oh My Trill "My Life Without Michelle"
!! omg blog !! "Catscratch Fever"
Oscar and the City Two memories of Pfeiffer
Pfangirl "Diary of a Lapsed Pfan"
Popbytes "Pfeiffer is an Amazon Woman"
Pop on the Rocks "Pfeiffer of the Opera"
Queer Beacon on White Oleander
Queering the Apparatus "Ohhhhh Witchy Woman"
Sarcasm w/ Light Cream Sauce on Witches... & Tequila Sunrise
Scene Stealer Top Five Performances
six things "Six Degrees of Michelle Pfeiffer"
A Socialite's Life on Michelle's comeback
Stale Popcorn Michelle in costumed glory
Stinky Lulu on Grease 2
That Round-Headed Boy "Michelle Pfeiffer's Short Stuff"
The World of Ramification Hottie of the Week



If you're just joining us... check out the blog entire. It's not all Pfeiffer all the time. [This is not a perfect world -ed]. It's just all Pfeiffer this week (the great one's birthday is tomorrow, woohoo) and whenever the topic blissfully comes up

If you need regular heavy doses of Pfeiffer here are the best websites on the net: Official Pfeiffer Admiration Location (updated frequently) * Michelle Pfeiffer: The Face * Bond's Michelle Pfeiffer Page * Noelle's Michelle Pfeiffer Page (dormant but extensive) * Pfandom (this is my own. Not regularly updated as it was pre-blog) *

UPDATE: If you liked this blog-a-thon check out the two others the film experience has hosted since: Vampires (October 2006) and Action Heroines (June 2007)

tags: Michelle Pfeiffer, catwoman, movies, cinema, celebrities

Pfeiffer Forever

Michelle Pfeiffer Blog-a-Thon Headquarters

Scroll down for my article and a list of all 37 participating blogs
or return to the mainpage for the new daily postings
If you don't want to miss anything, please subscribe

Libby Gelman Waxner, the humor columnist for Premiere once remarked that Michelle Pfeiffer was 'what God had in mind for humanity before the blueprints got all dusty and smudged in the glove compartment'. I've come to cherish such old school hosannas to her cinematic grandeur like they were ancient scripture. Since we don't see much of her these days, her name spoken aloud often registers as a surprise. I hear the name with its own exclamation point. In last year's brilliant Werner Herzog documentary Grizzly Man there's a scene in which Timothy Treadwell, the film's "star" of sorts, talks about the bears and their mating rituals. He calls the most desired female 'the Michelle Pfeiffer of grizzly bears.' For such a supposedly ideal human specimen, this was not the first time Pfeiffer was mistaken for an animal.

The Ferocity of Pfeiffer

This not-quite-human effect started with Ladyhawke in 1985. Prior to that she ran the risk of being an interchangeable member of Hollywood's blonde beauty pack (infinite in number they are). There was the gum chomping Pink Lady of Grease 2 and the angry icy Elvira from Scarface but she was still just an actress... merely human. She was not yet "PFEIFFER" the star. It would take this mystical role in Ladyhawke as Isabeau, a woman who was also a bird, and simple aging to make her beauty truly alien. Once the softness of youth faded you imagine her onscreen lovers could cut themselves on the browline or cheekbone. The features slowly starting revealing their exquisite if angular architecture. She is rumored to have landed the Isabeau part after a comedic audition in which she imitated our feathered friends. But Catwoman aside, it's not usually a laughing matter when Pfeiffer lets her inner animal roar.

It wasn't even a laughing matter in Ladyhawke. The comedy was delivered by the headlining star Matthew Broderick (intentionally) and its anachronistic synthesized rock score (unintentionally). Pfeiffer's work was all serious "I am sorrow" suffering. She doesn't go for laughs, she goes for the jugular. Not just as an actor but as a budding star. They say that many great stars understand intuitively their rapport with the camera. She must have known then, when she turned to the camera in the moonlight that black hood framing her otherworldly beauty, what a gift the film and the character were to her. Beautiful. Tragic. Not entirely human. The studio would wisely lift the image for the movie's poster. Broderick was the marketable star but Pfeiffer as a legendary face was the great takeaway of the film.

The Isabeau performance isn't avian in shape the way her later correlative woman/animal work was in Batman Returns, when she gave in completely to the stylization. But a nonhuman or animalistic detail finds its way into many performances. Is it the way her tongue sometimes lifts tantalizingly up, too visible in her mouth --not a cheap come hither, lip-licking starlet movement but just something her mouth does, opening with anticipation. Perhaps she's waiting to be fed? But mostly I see the animal in her eyes. Watch any given film and you'll see it. They move too quickly surveying danger or registering movement or, more distinctly, they refuse to move at all. It's in those killer shots where she holds her gaze a beat or two too long on a co-star that you begin to wonder. What is the person is to her? Friend? Lover? (gulp) Prey?

All of these fascinating alien or animal intensities are in full bloom in White Oleander (2002), which I consider among her very strongest work. In an excellent review in Salon, Stephanie Zacharek wrote:

"Ingrid, as Pfeiffer plays her, has both the look and composure of a self-possessed lizard: Her eyes, which we normally know to be a dazzling blue, are icy and cold here, and you could probably count the number of times she blinks during the whole movie."

I haven't counted Stephanie, but I trust that the number is very small. If Pfeiffer had been any less beautiful as a woman, her intensity as an actor would have scared audiences away long ago.

Bird. Deer. Reptile. Wolf. Cat

Comparing Pfeiffer to a reptile was not my idea but I was glad to hear someone else bear witness to her animal within. Back in Ladyhawke Rutger Hauer's man/wolf initally reads as the more imposing creature but it's Pfeiffer's woman/bird that gets scarier with the running time. See that unwaveringly ferocious contempt with which Isabeau locks her gaze on the bishop late in the film. One senses immediately that were this the bird and not the woman standing before him, he would already be missing his eyes.

From her breakthrough days as a cursed bird Pfeiffer's animal instints continue. You could claim the next incarnation as that startled frozen deer in Dangerous Liaisons but for this movie watcher, it's in the area of predator not prey where Pfeiffer comes alive. There's an extra kick to her work as Isabeau and Ingrid and Catwoman or any of her angry but more recognizably human characters that you don't get her in lighter or passive fare. It's her savagery peaking through. Maybe she played the wrong role in Liaisons. It's amazing when you stop to look over Pfeiffer's gallery of characters, that Merteuil and Valmont even made it to the final reel, let alone devoured her.

I get angry whenever watching Wolf that the film is tricked up with special effects to convey the lycanthrophe within. When that film's trailer first appeared in 1994 the marketing hook was all about winkily joking with the audience about the familiarity of Jack Nicholson as a beast, a tactic that also worked wonders back when the two stars first teamed for The Witches of Eastwick. In the trailer Pfeiffer is merely seen slumbering enticingly in a nightgown. I never bought that Sleeping Beauty routine for a second. I knew the film would contain more than one beast. And sure enough, there she was in the film haughty, hostile, bitter and even in the throes of passion, no schoolgirl pushover. At the end of that film after her character Laura has been bitten by a werewolf and her course is set, they throw yellow contacts on this goddesses baby blues. It's a redundant move. You've always been able to see the beast within.

It's for all of these reasons perhaps that Catwoman is so identifiable as a career peak. Never mind that that part was not originally hers (Annette Bening backed out when she became pregnant), it's a perfect fusion of actress and material and timing. She's fully in command of all of the tools in the actors arsenal, careful character modulation, comedic timing, physical and vocal control, ferocious nerve (try doing this without looking foolish. I dare you), and playful stylizations perfectly attuned to the director's sensibility. It's a great work of performance art. Everyone remembers those clever quips, her overt cat gestures (the licking. ohhhh the licking), and her hilarious throwaway "meow." I have one special favorite moment I find too delicious. Catwoman is having a conversation with the Penguin and she's circling a bird cage in his lair. Her laser focus hypnotically shifts from Penguin to the tiny bird and it's like there is no actress at all. Only this cat, this meal, this teasing game in her head.

She's a killer.



Pfans Make Me Hot
Your Blog-a-Thon Participants (Listed in Alpha Order)

As Little As Possible "...A Galaxy Pfar Pfar Away"
Auteur Lust "Cinema's Own Forbidden Fruit"
Being Boring "My Sexual Awakening (in Black Vinyl)"
Cinephilia "My (Sex) Life with Michelle Pfeiffer"
Coffee Coffee and More Coffee on Ladyhawke
Cutting Room "What Lies Within (Great Talent)"
film ick on What Lies Beneath
The Flick Filosopher on Catwoman's "gyno-power"
The Gilded Moose "BREAKING: Pfeiffer Pissed"
Girish on The Fabulous Baker Boys
Glitterati Gossip "Truly Timeless"
Mainly Movies "Susie Diamond is Forever"
Many Rantings of John on One Fine Day
ModFab "Pfeiffer's Fabulous Five"
Movies Madness "Pfor Ever and Always"
Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man on Batman Returns
My New Plaid Pants "Mistress of the Dark"
Nicks Flick Picks on A Thousand Acres
Noel Vera on Batman Returns
nOvaslim "Haute Poosee"
O.P.A.L. on her fandom
Oh My Trill "My Life Without Michelle"
!! omg blog !! "Catscratch Fever"
Oscar and the City Two memories of Pfeiffer
Pfangirl "Diary of a Lapsed Pfan"
Popbytes "Pfeiffer is an Amazon Woman"
Pop on the Rocks "Pfeiffer of the Opera"
Queer Beacon on White Oleander
Queering the Apparatus "Ohhhhh Witchy Woman"
Sarcasm w/ Light Cream Sauce on Witches... & Tequila Sunrise
Scene Stealer Top Five Performances
six things "Six Degrees of Michelle Pfeiffer"
A Socialite's Life on Michelle's comeback
Stale Popcorn Michelle in costumed glory
Stinky Lulu on Grease 2
That Round-Headed Boy "Michelle Pfeiffer's Short Stuff"
The World of Ramification Hottie of the Week



If you're just joining us... check out the blog entire. It's not all Pfeiffer all the time. [This is not a perfect world -ed]. It's just all Pfeiffer this week (the great one's birthday is tomorrow, woohoo) and whenever the topic blissfully comes up

If you need regular heavy doses of Pfeiffer here are the best websites on the net: Official Pfeiffer Admiration Location (updated frequently) * Michelle Pfeiffer: The Face * Bond's Michelle Pfeiffer Page * Noelle's Michelle Pfeiffer Page (dormant but extensive) * Pfandom (this is my own. Not regularly updated as it was pre-blog) *

UPDATE: If you liked this blog-a-thon check out the two others the film experience has hosted since: Vampires (October 2006) and Action Heroines (June 2007)

tags: Michelle Pfeiffer, catwoman, movies, cinema, celebrities