Also, less hot.

(There’s presumably a joke here about Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen making Mr. Foo look like Mr. Bar, but I’m having trouble filling in the variables.  Oscar Wilde and Charlton Heston?)

Also, if anyone rails this thread into whether or not this child is hot, even in jest, I will take that as provocation to block every IP address in your city.  Just sayin’.

Are you impressed that I was able to reason through “There’s a country singer named Cyrus, and there is a child character named ‘Hannah Montana’ played by the daughter of a country singer, so I expect this Cyrus is that Montana”?

I prefer the even more pompous sounding “To whom do you refer?” The answer, in this case, would be Miley Cyrus.

Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen has kids.  Just sayin’.

As did my former manager, who was as about as out as it was possible for any one human being to be. He had a great friendship with his ex-wife, and was a good father, as far as I could determine. In Fincher’s case, though, I think that he’s (mostly) straight, but in love with the gay aesthetic. I’m not sure, though; I haven’t really researched him with any real depth.

That was an attempted side-benefit, but I don’t think I got a single click from that page, nor did an advertiser choose to advertise thereon, despite my courting.  As a first-order approximation, it might be more accurate to say “neither of my Google clicks were from that page.”  Mostly it just became fun in a tongue-in-cheek way — and I’d amuse myself by looking at Google analytics and see all the “Someone topless” searches, knowing that the page offered nothing of the sort.

Compared today, when the most media-saturated female performer is herself 16, that’s pretty remarkable.

It’s difficult to construct this question grammatically and not sound pompous, but, um: “About whom are we talking?”

who bore his daughter suggests to me that he’s not gay

Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen has kids.  Just sayin’.

Then I retract my complaint on it. Like I said before, I’m feeling maybe a little oversensitive on the subject lately, because a lot of blogs that I’ve otherwise enjoyed tend to fall a little too quickly into discussions of womens’ appearance, and this particular blog does discuss attractive women with watch-setting regularity (which I’m sure has a net positive effect in terms of Google-driven traffic, something that was probably rather important during the ad-supported days).

An interesting side note that I didn’t mention in the music thread, but which is worth considering: A lot of the repulsive rockers mentioned were different from today’s big names precisely because they were women. In 1994, which was around the year that I got into grunge (always late to the party), Courtney Love was 29. The lead singers for 4 Non Blondes and L7 were both in their 30s. Compared today, when the most media-saturated female performer is herself 16, that’s pretty remarkable.

No way is Fincher gay.

David Fincher’s (now defunct) marriage to a woman who bore his daughter suggests to me that he’s not gay, but he puts a strong gay subtext into a lot of his work, particularly Fight Club.

Ebert’s warning was spot on, however, when one considers Michael Bay.

Yeah, and even a decade ago he should have fucking known better.  Fincher, who scorched-earthed music videos with Vogue, had already blown Hollywood to smithereens, multiple times.

As an aside, I knew that Fincher came from music videos, and knew a couple of his forays, but genius brother was the one who clued me in to the Fincher/Vogue thing.

“Huh!”  I said.  “I always assumed a gay guy directed Vogue.”

Dave raised an eyebrow and said “Well…?”

My head spun around.  “No way is Fincher gay.  No, wait.  Fight Club?  I mean, Brad Pitt and Ed Norton never actually fuck, but … no.  No way.”

I know, I can be totally gay sometimes.

About a third of this time, Mike, I think you’re just being combative in your responses.  And another (generous) third of the time, I think you’re being sublimely brilliant, or at least give me significant pause to re-evaluate and re-configure my ideas.  And about a third of the time, I feel like you’re making my point for me, which may mean I’m stating it poorly.

This.  Was.  My.  Point.

Our female musical artists in the 1990s were repulsive, but largely by choice, and other times by the choices of their record labels.  Courtney Love’s thirty-second Hollywood makeover proved that she is not an ugly person, she just plays one in music videos.  The “riot girls” with Sharpie expletives on Hanes t-shirts, with mocking, over-blown sneers, said “I am not a pop idol, and by the way, you can go fuck yourself.”  The fact that “Bitch” and “Slut” got subsequently co-opted and put on expensive tops in fucking glitter and rhinestones is not my point, but probably a very rich point for further extended analysis of how young women are marketed by rich fat white guys.

Or, as someone wiser than I once put it, in another context: “there is no reason that [these women] should be dolled up like 14-year-olds who chose their own makeup.  Yeah, it’s probably another grunge preference, but it still drives me crazy.  I rather insensitively used to call makeup war paint, and almost always find women more attractive without or with very subtle makeup.  I think, for instance, that Evangeline Lilly’s makeup on Lost is some of the best on television.”

Wait — which part are you referring to?  Unless you’re mentioning something I’m not getting, my questions had to do with how young women were marketed — except for some of the exchange with Karina, but even that I think is different from “what does appearance…?”

As I said before, I do consider the movie to be flawed, but there’s also a lot of credit that it should be given. For one thing, it did a lot of the same things that The Matrix did, but a year earlier and with one-third the budget (I try to make it a habit to be a little bit more forgiving of the stumbles of a movie or music video if it seems to me that the creators are doing their best to find creative workarounds to budget constraints; in part because I’ve had to watch friends work under those conditions so often). Also, absent the opening monologue, it really is a solid mind-fuck of a movie. Again, this is an area where comparisons to The Matrix become inevitable, and if you remove that stupid opening monologue, Dark City wins hands down.

I’ve been a fan of creative movie marketing ever since The Blair Witch Project, and since it came out the same year as The Matrix, I spent some time comparing the marketing of the two. The campaign for The Matrix, “What Is The Matrix?”, was an interesting one, but it fell down ten minutes after you sat down in the theater, because it was quickly and unambiguously spelled out for you exactly what the Matrix was. Dark City doles out the information a little bit at a time, with each shaky revelation building your curiousity for the next one. I think that I would have liked for The Matrix to have followed a similar style, but of course that would have cut into the time allotted for kung fu battles and helicopter crashes.

So, yeah, I’d say watch it again, muting the opening. Or, since you’ve seen it before, check out the DVD and see if Ebert’s commentary brings to light some things that might make you more favorably inclined towards it.

On a final note: Ebert’s review from 1999 talks about how the director’s “background was in music videos, usually an ominous sign”. Ten years later (post Sofia Coppolla, Spike Jonze, Guy Ritchie, Michel Gondry, Chris Cunningham, etc), there’s something charmingly quaint about that particular quote.

Take the voiceovers out of Blade Runner.

Fair enough. It’s possible that I didn’t consider these things because they’re the articles that I tend to skip / skim (masculine pursuits tend to be hugely underrepresented in my brain).

I’d feel like a dick if I said Rosie O’Donnell or Kathy Bates were unattractive, or Roger Ebert or something — but I don’t feel like one if I said it about, say, a professional cover model.

How about, say, a musician? I mean, what does appearance have to do with how someone plays guitar?

It is entirely possible that I am a benighted misogynist — but I’m not convinced yet.

One of the insidious things about problematic behaviors is that they don’t require that you be a misogynist in order for you to engage in them. I don’t consider myself to be a misogynist, but like I mentioned before, I’m as prone to doing these things as anyone.

I disagree.  Males are hugely overrepresented in philately, single malt scotch collecting, and software engineering, also.

“Jennifer Connelly’s not a good actor” is akin to criticizing a badly made table. Saying “Jennifer Connelly’s face is not attractive”

Except except except — as far as I can tell, her being considered hot is part of her job.  I’d feel like a dick if I said Rosie O’Donnell or Kathy Bates were unattractive, or Roger Ebert or something — but I don’t feel like one if I said it about, say, a professional cover model.  Or, in this case, someone playing off her looks for her success.

It is entirely possible that I am a benighted misogynist — but I’m not convinced yet.

I admit that I’m probably a little bit sensitive about the topic of discussions regarding a woman’s appearance lately. There have been a number of recent internet discussions about worthwhile topics that I’ve recently despaired to watch fall into jabs at the appearance of the writer or subject. While I’m not saying with anything approaching certainty that the current discussion crosses the line, I do think that discussions of a woman’s appearance are potentially problematic, and should be approached with the utmost care.

Also, from a post from last month: Males are hugely overrepresented, as are childless visitors.

Everything else being equal, one would assume that your site wouldn’t overrepresent men. I mean, absent the “hot chicks room”, your site should hold the same appeal to members of both genders; atheism and politics are fairly gender-neutral topics.

Surely you see the difference. Saying “Jennifer Connelly’s not a good actor” is akin to criticizing a badly made table. Saying “Jennifer Connelly’s face is not attractive” is akin to saying “this is a good table, but the carpenter’s got a fucking mug on him, eh?” It’s not being critical; it’s just being a dick.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, necessarily. But they are different.

Oh.  Face.  Huh.  It really is her face, mostly, that I am “meh” about.

to act out the worst stereotypes of locker rooms and construction sites.

If that were anywhere near all we were doing, I’d put my head on the chopping block, but we discuss movies, music, politics, art, memes, whatever, all critically, as well as the appearance of men and women.  I don’t feel guilt about it.  I’m not saying “I’d hit it” à la MetaFilter (I have said “yow”, “yowza”, and “yum” in these contexts though.)  What the hell are we doing judging Jennifer Connelly’s’ beauty, when we are nowhere as beautiful?  What the hell are we doing judging Foo’s skill at Bar on their book/DVD/record Baz when we cannot do as well?  I’m reminded of Life of Johnson:

I [Boswell] mentioned Mallet’s tragedy of “ELVIRA,” which had been acted the preceding winter at Drury-lane, and that the Honourable Andrew Erskine, Mr. Dempster, and myself, had joined in writing a pamphlet, entitled “Critical Strictures” against it.  That the mildness of Dempster’s disposition had, however, relented; and he had candidly said, “We have hardly a right to abuse this tragedy; for bad as it is, how vain should either of us be to write one not near so good.”  Johnson. “Why no, Sir; this is not just reasoning.  You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table.  It is not your trade to make tables.”

This also marks, to my knowledge, the first time that Jennifer Connelly has ever been likened to a bad table.

It’s my only flaw as a person, really, but I does torture me so.

Having said that, Jennifer Connelly hits all of my buttons. In my particular case, it’s kind of impossible to say “He must like…”, because I don’t really have a type. Having said that, long dark hair plus brown eyes plus remarkable physical shape plus oh my Gawd that face leaves me weak in the knees. If you don’t get it, you don’t get it, and I can’t hold it against you; there are a lot of women who I acknowledge possess a number of traits that other people find alluring but that for reasons unknown fail to activate that part of my brain.

All that aside, celebrity is a funny thing. You might recall that many (many, many) years ago the two of us were bewildered at a comment that Uma Thurman made in an interview where she said that most guys had probably served breakfast in bed to women more beautiful than her. Years later, I can look back and say that it’s entirely possible that I very well might have actually done just that. I’ll admit that I’ve been luckier than many guys in terms of the women to whom I’ve served breakfast, but it’s kind of a shock. Ultimately, I don’t think that it’s possible to ever peel away the effects of media saturation and availability and individual taste and the brain-chemistry altering effects of afterglow and the thousand other things that contribute to how you view a person for me to ever know for sure. On further reflection, I can totally live with that.

1. Ten of her films
2. Literally every square centimeter of her body, even the really unlikely ones
3. Her play everything from Oscar fodder to thick genre to teen heartthrob to heroin addict

and that she was born in the same decade as I, I just.  Do.  Not.  Get it.

I hereby decree that you, my brother, and my (sadly ex-)brother-in-law need to form a “JCiH” club, make badges, and laugh at losers like me.

Seriously, though, I can usually intellectually kinda-get-it with everyone else proferred.  “He must be a breast guy” … “He must like redheads” … “She sort of oozes around” … “He must like her tattoo” … “Her accent is hot” … “He saw her make out with Selma Blair”  I just have no starting point for Connelly.  What am I missing?  What film do I need to see?  As far as I’m concerned, I wouldn’t even approach her at a party, even in an alternate universe in which I attended parties and had the nads to approach women therein.

Also: Jennifer Connelly is as as hot as a human being gets. You are wrong. Your opinion is bad, and you should feel bad for having it.

Oh, that was the name of that shitty movie I saw in the Edward’s Atlantic theater in Oxnard in college!  I had to look up which Sutherland was in it: I remembered not him nor William Hurt, just a bulgy-eyed Rufus Sewell, a pasty Jennifer Connelly, and overly-somber set-dressing.

It’s been over a decade.  Does it deserve another go?  As supporting data, I fucking hated The Crow, even when it and its soundtrack were lingua franca in our high school days (the days in which Game Club-Liz was obsessed with Brandon Lee and my father liked the movie, and all I wanted to do was smack the goths in the mouth and spin “Big Empty” — the only salvageable piece of the film.)  Also, I turned off his incompetent effort (that was supposedly Asimov) a few years back.  And I’ve never liked Jennifer Connelly in anything, nor found her the least bit sexy.  So, um, does it deserved another go?