Sheet-y Saturday.

Where we take a look at posters for upcoming features.

Today we will see how one campaign can offer both the best and worst in graphic design. The image above is of course an example of the worst. Silly color palette, preposterous Photoshop-ing (where the hell is ScarJo coming from and why does she look like Kim Cattrall?) and one of those "universal" poses where all the characters look ahead into the distance. In this case they might just be trying to look away from the awful  background they were inserted into.

Now on the other side, we have the same marketing people come up with this beautiful, simple and ridiculously effective teaser. The colors are astonishingly beautiful and efficient, the idea of mixing the tree with the animal prints is superb and the little red kite adds a dash of melancholy. We know more about the movie with this poster, than with the hideous design before it.

Which of these posters give you more information about the movie?

Style Sunday.

As part of her book tour, the gorgeous Gwyneth Paltrow wore this stunning Rachel Roy dress. The buttery yellow is truly mouthwatering and her simple makeup and hair give her a very accessible look. As if she truly wanted to teach you how to cook!

The Camilla Skovgaard structural heels are magnificent too, especially the chocolatey tone and sexiness of the peep toe.

After her Dolce mess at the Oscars I'm thrilled to see Scarlett Johansson is once again showing her best assets. This simple Roland Mouret dress and nude color heels are the epitome of spring style: effortlessly sexy.

My god this woman is so cool!

Nobody but Helen Mirren (and maybe Gwen Stefani and Sarah Jessica Parker) could make a Dolce & Gabbana leopard print dress look this fierce when paired with a leather jacket!

Her hair and sexy clutch make you think she rode to this red carpet in her vintage Harley too.

Which of these is your fave look?

Oscar Fashion: Worst

Nicole Kidman should've worn the same dress she wore to the Grammys instead of this messy, Melissa Leo-like, disaster.

This ivory Dior design would've worked without those strange hip hugging flaps which make Nicole seem as if she's been eating too much doughnuts.

In fact, one of my friends said "leave her alone, she just gave birth". 'Nuff said.

Scarlett Johansson is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood and she seems to hate this so much that she wore her grandma's curtains to the Oscars and didn't bother to comb her hair.

This peekaboo Dolce & Gabbana fails where Mila Kunis' did, instead of being sensuous and inviting, it's actually scary and tacky.

That weird back cleavage is perhaps the worst part of all as it draws attention to ScarJo's awesome butt for all the wrong reasons.

This L'Wrenn Scott dress is actually wonderful but the closed neck and the awkward emerald make Amy Adams look like a ghost of Oscars past (think 1980s).

Anyway it's not like she wore the thing Melissa Leo did (she's not included here because it would've been too easy).

What's your take on these ladies?

How I Feel Today.

Iron Man 2 **

Director: Jon Favreau
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle
Mickey Rourke, Scarlett Johansson, Sam Rockwell, Samuel L. Jackson
Garry Shandling, John Slattery, Clark Gregg

Iron Man 2 is an unapologetically American snapshot of current times. It's unapologetic because it shows no caution in glorifying excess; from its convoluted plot, to its thinly disguised allegories about politics, economics and society, almost every element proves to be cringe worthy and deluded.
When the film opens, Tony Stark (Downey Jr.) appears in front of a huge crowd to unveil his company's grand world fair.
Surrounded by perky cheerleaders and massive screens he's a combination of Steve Jobs, an evangelical guru and Barack Obama. As he gloats about how he "privatized world peace" while his fans roar excitedly, he's a disturbing reminder of a time and age where politicians have become more rock stars than actual politics professionals.
When Tony's father (played by Slattery) appears on a screen in all his Walt Disney like glory, it's impossible not to chuckle at its direct aim at American culture icons but also expect the movie to deliver much more.
If the screenplay, written with slight strokes of cynicism by Justin Theroux, had explored this more thoroughly, perhaps the movie would've resulted in something more interesting and compelling.
Instead after this, the movie becomes an amalgam of Freudian issues, lazy character development and superhero movie clichés.
It turns out that Tony is dying; the palladium in his arc reactor is poisoning him and he chooses to live his last days in decadence.
He hands out his company to loyal companion Pepper Potts (Paltrow), disregards Congress' wish to use the iron suit for the military, enters a public feud with rival Hammer industries (Rockwell plays CEO Justin Hammer) and embarks on a partying binge that leaves disastrous PR repercussions.
While Tony desperately seeks for attention and throws technologically aided tantrums, an evil plan is forming across the world.
Russian physicist Ivan Vanko (Rourke) has decided to seek vengeance from Stark Co. believing they stole his father's iron suit technology and destroyed his life.
Ivan and Tony then create a facile dichotomy: they are both trying to solve unfinished business concerning their fathers, they represent polar ideological differences (the film's juxtaposition of a McCarthy-ian hearing featuring "good guy" Stark, with cuts of the evil Russian building his own war machine are tacky to say the least) and in a fourth wall breaking way, they embody a tête-à-tête of two of the most fascinating comebacks in recent Hollywood history.
With so many things to choose to concentrate in, Iron Man 2 chooses them all and becomes an uneven spectacle that sometimes drags, sometimes excites but rarely engages.
The film is built from many parts that don't work well together and for a film about a man made out of iron, this technological mishap metaphor can't help but feel ironic.
It's a pleasure to see Downey Jr. in action though. Reminding us why choosing him to play Stark was a genius casting decision, he delivers his lines with enough snap and wry humor to evoke Cary Grant.
He's one of the few actors who can make snark seem lovable and his scenes with Gwyneth Paltrow are the best thing in the movie. Their chemistry is delightful and might be the one thing you want to see more of.
The rest of the cast does satisfying job, Rourke is effective, if not memorable while Cheadle and Johansson are vastly underused (they are supposed to have bigger storylines in upcoming sequels) and Rockwell delivers his best Tom Cruise on cocaine in the 80's impression to make Hammer the most annoying character in the film.
All the parts never amount to much and the entire film relies on stereotypes that the first installment refreshed.
When it comes down to capturing the film in a single moment, a scene comes to mind that's both pathetic and unsuccessful: a drunk Tony Stark pees the iron man suit after which he proceeds to dance to no other than Daft Punk's Robot Rock.
If the song choice isn't wildly imaginative, it's the sense of trying so hard to impress that makes this Iron Man a tin can in dire need of a repair.

The Ten Movies That Defined My Decade.

8. Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003)

The first time I saw "Lost in Translation" I was with two friends.
"That was it?!?" one of them exclaimed.
"What did he tell her?" the other replied just as shocked when it ended.
The only thing they agreed on was how much it had sucked.
They also agreed that I must've been some sort of a crazy person for feeling so elated after watching this.
And in fact not even I was sure what had moved me so much about it. Why had I invested so much in the simple story of Bob Harris (Bill Murray) and Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson)? Why had I been so fascinated by the moments when "nothing" happened and we just watched the characters watching something else?
Two days after I saw it, the movie won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar. If it had been up to me it would've also won Best Director.
It was Coppola who crafted something so delicate and bruising, so intimate and detached. You could also touch her influences during the movie: her story extracted out of a Wong Kar Wai journal, her sexy camera angles straight out of that Alain Resnais movie and well to mention Fellini would be too easy (considering "La Dolce Vita" is featured in one prominent scene).
But Coppola wasn't proving how well versed she was in the cinematic arts, she was declaring she had a voice of her own.
Extremely autobiographical, the movie is able to be both specific and very general. Maybe not all of us have been as deeply annoyed by Ms. Diaz as she was (Anna Faris gave by far my favorite limited performance of the decade) but almost everyone has had that moment when they feel just lost.
You don't even have to like the characters, for all I know Bob comes off looking very arrogant most of the time and Charlotte is a stereotype of mid-twenties ennui, but they transcend their facades and become beautiful archetypes that detail the saving capacity of love and the inexplicable bond created through friendship.
Who cares what Bob told her in the end? What's important is that they will never forget each other, they will live within one another even if they don't meet again.
With them Coppola beautifully captured the essence of spirituality and faith.
To this day I don't know of my friends "got" why I loved this movie so much, but I'm sure by now they also have been told things that help keep them warm at night.

Guess Where This is From...

He's Just Not That Into You **

Director: Ken Kwapis
Cast: Jennifer Aniston, Drew Barrymore
Jennifer Connelly, Ginnifer Goodwin, Scarlett Johansson
Ben Affleck, Kevin Connolly, Bradley Cooper, Justin Long

When a film based on a book, based on the plot of an episode in a television series is made, you would think that this postmodernist basis would also be said film's axis or at least help it.
This romantic comedy however chooses to take the cliché path and delivers an old fashioned, trite plot with very modern intentions.
Several storylines involving the main actresses are intertwined as they all deal with a specific man who just isn't into them.
For Beth (Aniston) it's her boyfriend of seven years (Affleck) who has no intention of marrying her. In Gigi's (Goodwin) case she's so disappointed with men that she starts taking advice from a misogynist (Long). Anna (Johansson) is set on conquering a married man (Cooper) who's having trouble of his own with his wife (Connelly).
Then there's Mary (Barrymore) who is having trouble adjusting to the need of keeping up with all the possible ways of meeting people nowadays and who receives her advice from the men she works with, all of whom are gay.
Their stories, announced by title cards with phrases that explain their problems, are preceded by documentary like interviews with people (mostly unknown actors) who give the "every(wo)man" point of view before we get to see the big stars put on the show.
And in fact when the cast is so good as the one featured here, there's at least the satisfaction of watching them mingle onscreen.
The rest of the time they just blabber and move towards emotional realizations we've seen coming for ages.
That's perhaps the film's biggest problem; anyone can argue that the "rom-com" has become perhaps the most predictable of the genres, which is why it's also a known, but rarely accepted, fact that people don't come to them for advice of any sort of wisdom.
We come to see these movies because we want to escape our own realities. So a film that takes the extra step and tries to deliver a little bit extra should not comply and follow traditional genre rules which is exactly what happens here.
Some scenes are uncomfortable to watch, not because they ring emotionally, but because they are so forced that you can't laugh, be inspired or even entertained by them.
The screenplay is loaded with so many lazy symbolisms (a marriage coming apart while their home is being remodeled...just imagine all those deconstruction analogies you can come up with) that you wonder how people fail to see that this "chick flick" actually has no idea how to treat women.
Men who think female audiences are driven to anything involving romance will be hugely disappointed to learn that, when it comes to love, in fact female and male processes of thinking and perceiving information couldn't be more apart if they tried.
This doesn't mean that one is better than the other, they're just different and the film works when it grasps on to that and spices it up with some irony and tongue in cheek humor (Barrymore's monologue about how she must use eight different technologies to know if the guy is interested is brilliant!), but then the director comes and reduces these women to stereotypes we've seen in a million different movies.
Stereotypes nobody in the audience is going to want to take advice from. That the film ends with a character emphasizing what is arguably the most popular word in the current English language (it rhymes with "mope") is more than enough to know that for all its intentions the director works like the boyfriend who ignores his girl throughout the game, but then gives her a present expecting she'll forgive and forget.

Vicky Cristina Deliciosa.

After my first screening of Woody Allen's "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" I was completely transfixed. Its combination of deeply felt nostalgia, eroticism and soul search makes it arguably his best film since "Everyone Says I Love You".
I loved the performances (where the hell has Rebecca Hall been all my life?) and like Peter Travers put it "you haven't lived till you've heard Cruz and Bardem trading Woody Allen one-liners in Spanish. "
I recommend a viewing after a big nice meal (with lots of garlic) and a bottle of wine; the film, like the food, will result absolutely delicious.
Expect my review very soon.

...And Woody Created Woman.

Penélope Cruz, Scarlet Johansson and Woody Allen at the Los Angeles premiere of "Vicky Christina Barcelona", August 4, 2008.