I heard around the middle of this morning that Elizabeth Taylor had died. The cause was congestive heart failure, for which she had been hospitalized in Los Angeles.
About two weeks ago, I read she was in the hospital. I said to myself then: Well, that's is for her. She is suffering from heart failure and it's just a matter of time before she goes.
I had posted two pictures of Taylor as cheesecake. If you want to see them, please click here and here.
A third one, obviously, is at the top of this post. It's in color to best show her beauty -- especially her "violet eyes to die for," as a former co-worker said in the early 1980s, quoting a line from Doonesbury in 1979.
Of course, Taylor was known for her beauty. But she had the acting chops. Many film critics praised her performances in National Velvet, Butterfield 8, and Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?
Some people remember her performances in A Place In The Sun, Giant, and Suddenly Last Summer. And some people might also remember the wretched excess that was Cleopatra.
Her health problems and romantic entanglements -- the overall messiness of her personal life -- made her not just the queen of the tabloids, but their empress. And she had a long reign; she died at age 79 and had been in the public eye since she was a teenager.
That life, along with her friendship with closeted gay actors like Montgomery Clift, Rock Hudson, and Roddy McDowell, made her a gay icon.
So I wrote this brief note of a life that was amazing and interesting. RIP, Miss Taylor.
Back in October of 2008, I ran a cheesecake picture of this actress...Brittany Murphy.
Earlier this week, I remembered the picture when I noticed that a story about her last days was on the internet.
Murphy had died in late December 2009 from pnuemonia, anemia, and prescription drug abuse. She was only 32 years old.
So I read the story today and was surprised at the sadness in her last days of life and also the praise she got from critics from her acting.
If you want to read the story, please click here.
It's sad. She was beautiful, especially her eyes; I'm a sucker for a woman who looks like that. Or at the least, she was a cutie.
I knew she could be make a decent living through her looks, but I didn't know that critics like Vincent Canby, Roger Ebert and David Edelstein, said she had the talent to be a good actor.
I won't provide a link to the earlier picture out of respect for the departed.
RIP, Ms. Murphy. You need it.
...or someone's nightmare, but not mine.
Unusual and striking, nevertheless.
When I first saw the picture, I thought of three references in literature, drama and film:
- The quote "Tell me about the rabbits, George," from John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men;
- The 6 foot, 3.5 inch tall pooka seen only by Elwood P. Dowd in the play and movie Harvey, by Mary Chase.
- Frank, the spirit seen only by Donnie Darko in the movie of the same name.
NOTE: Photograph from pictureisunrelated.com.
Here's another common place post I'll post here. It ran in the December 2004 issue of Esquire magazine. Unfortunately, I forgot to note the author:
The bigger problem with Great Man biopics, though, involves dramatic structure, or rather its inevitable absence. Simply put, real people's lives don't conform to narrative expectation. They tend to be random and discursive. And then this happened and then that happened, and so on. It's not a problem is you're telling the Joe Blow story, since only historians and the Blow family will object to the necessary omissions and distortions. When the subject is famous, though, there are always at least a dozen defining episodes that have to be included -- you can't make Pollock (a movie about the abstract expressionist painter) without showing him looking down curiously at some paint he just spelled -- and some the movie becomes little more than a rickety frame supporting those episodes. That's why the finest biopic yet made is Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, an obscure Canadian picture (though it somehow formed the basis for an entire episode of The Simpsons) that presents the pianist's life as a kaleidoscopic jumble of glancing, isolated moments, few of any real significance. At the end of the movie, you got a tiny glimpse of the man. But that glimpse is more than most biopics offer.
By now, the movie Avatar has taken in the most absolute amount of money at the box office. According to records, the total is $642 million plus.
Whenever I hear that it's the all-time box office grosser, I disagree -- very strongly. Those who say that are being lazy.
According to the web site boxofficemojo.com, if the box office grosses are adjusted because of inflation throughout the decades, the #1 movie of all time is -- as you probably guessed -- Gone With The Wind. It's followed by Star Wars, The Sound Of Music, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, and The Ten Commandments.
Those who want figures for the top 100 grossing movies can click here.
Accordingly, Avatar is only Number 20, but that's of now. Number 100, by the way, is Top Gun.
tomorrow will be the oscar awards.
i know that the academy has made some errors. here are a couple:
- the best picture went to one that starred paul newman and robert redford and which was directed by george roy hill. it wasn't butch cassidy and the sundance kid, though. it was the sting -- a good movie, but not as good as butch cassiday and the sundance kid.
- al pacino won an oscar for best actor. but it wasn't for the godfather part 2 or dog day afternoon. it was for scent of a woman, where he ate the scenery and anything else that wasn't nailed down on the set.
and if an oscar is awarded tomorrow to the "wrong" person or film, i won't get upset. it is true -- i do have better things to do with my life, and better things to agitate me.
but some folks do get upset. it's as if they need certification and validation in their lives as for their cultural choices.
once you do that -- once you let other people set your standards -- well, you get closer to the attitude of a willing slave.
i don't. i make my decisions and often stick with them. i make no apologies for them, either.some people are rivited to the ceremony. it's often been called the super bowl for gays.
i might watch it. more likely, i'll turn on my television and use it as electronic wallpaper as i do other things.
