JESSICA ALBA



I’ll let you in on a little secret: I like sexy women. Sometimes, I like to hear them discuss foreign policy in a purring Greek accent (Arianna Huffington...mrowr!), while other times I've been known to enjoy a more prurient visual display of nubile hips and boobies. Fortunately, I’m not alone in this interest. Unlike, say, my lonely passion for Whit Stillman films, which can apparently no longer be satisfied, the demand for sexy women has glutted the market to the point where it’s nearly impossible to avoid them. Everywhere you look (in pop culture, if not my local gym) there are sweaty, well-toned H-O-T girls and women gyrating their pelvic muscles and shaking their butts in thongs and Daisy Dukes and whipped cream bikinis...so WHY, out of all the sexy women in the world, from Arianna to Miss November 2008, does Jessica Frickin’ Alba get to be in so many movies? Yes, she has a nice bod, and I enjoyed watching her undulate in Sin City as much as the next straight guy...until, that is, the camera panned up to her completely vapid expression, on a face completely devoid of mystery, personality or even the lusty carnality of supporting co-star Brittany Murphy. In real life, Alba may be a sweet, darling lass who bakes pies for orphans, but onscreen she’s got less acting talent and charisma than Ryan Gosling’s sex doll in Lars and the Real Girl...and yet Alba is somehow considered an A-list player, who gets to appear not just on the cover of Maxim, but in major motion pictures, in multiple genres, from action and horror to romantic comedy, while far more interesting and far sexier actresses like Murphy, Rosario Dawson, Mila Kunis, Thora Birch, Marley Shelton (and, no doubt, a huge percentage of the rest of the female S.A.G. membership) bob along under the surface, crossing their fingers in hopes of landing some of the high profile lead roles currently going to America’s favorite bleach-blonde void.

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Note: For various reasons too boring to get into here, I was unable to secure a playable copy of the DVD for this week’s Reviews by Request in time to write a post. I’ll be running Jason Alley’s requested review of The New Kids next Friday at the regularly scheduled time. Sorry for the inconvenience.

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You want to talk about life experiences? Keira Knightley is twenty-three years old and has already starred in three very long movies based on a Disney theme park ride. "I mean, it was really fucking embarrassing and we all thought it was going to be total shit anyway," she told Matthew Rhys. "But then suddenly I was kissing Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom and bang, there you go, instant bloody stardom. I'd always wanted to be an actress, always dreamt of it, but I don't think you're ever quite prepared for being a movie star." Maybe not, but it's probably a good sign that she recognizes that the two positions are not the same, though they sometimes overlap. "I know that when Bend it like Beckham came out and it was quickly followed by Pirates, suddenly people were looking at me and thinking, 'Well she's not very good, she's just a pretty face, don't know what all the fuss is about'. But I wasn't really ready to be scrutinised. I wasn't any good at my job yet. But with Pride and Prejudice, yes, I was at least trying to say: look, see, I can learn, and I can do this, or at least give me the right director and I'll give it my best shot. So since those first films, I've always been looking to be stretched - it doesn't always mean I'm going to be good, but I'm trying to become a good actress, really I am."

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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.

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Genre films are something of a trap for actors and actresses.  One memorable role in a movie franchise beloved by one flavor of geek or another, and they're pretty much set for life -- as long as sequels keep getting made, they'll keep getting steady work, and the sun will set on their acting careers about five weeks after they die.  On the other hand, as long as they're best known for genre parts, those are the parts they're likely to keep getting ad infinitum; there's a reason it's called the genre ghetto.  Unfortunately, actors who take up residence there are awfully reluctant to leave because the paychecks are good, but they soon find out it's not easy even when they decide to move to a ritzier neighborhood.  More than a few actors of some talent and range have found themselves, after cashing in off of a big genre-character role, being judged for the rest of their careers not on how well they can act, but how well they can still fit into their old costumes.  Such an actor is the big, hearty Welshman John Rhys Davies:  a man of impressive range and flawless credentials playing the classics on stage, his portrayal of a handful of unforgettable characters in sci-fi and fantasy films has somewhat derailed his career while at the same time ensuring that he'll always have work.  He's gone from being the poor man's Brian Blessed to being one of the innumerable people who pays for his house by spending half the year in New Zealand filming syndicated sci-fi television shows.

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You may not have heard of David Zandi. If so, from the sound of it, you don't know what you're missing. The twenty-nine-year-old, Iranian-born Zandi, says that he's one of the last surviving male members of the Persian royal family. His IMDB page, which lists two acting credits--Marci C, in which he played "Musician", and Men in Black II, in which he stretched for the role of "Alien"--is full of other intriguing personal information, including the news that he's "a champion equestrian", "loves going skiing in the winter", "Turned down the offer to be a model for Gucci and Calvin Klein to stay in acting school", and that he "Coached his girlfriend with her acting and speech in 2001 so she could work on his project." (Is that what the kids are calling it these days?) This stuff goes over pretty well with the people who hang out at IMDB message boards: one post there is headed, "MARRY ME!" The page also features quotes from Zandi, including this beaut: "Even as Talent, I see it as my sole duty to do that which is in the best interest of the Studio, regardless of my own personal desires." Right now, Zandi is trying to serve the best interests of Disney by offering himself to star in the forthcoming movie version of the video game Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. Zandi isn't exactly lobbying for the role: he just wants the studio to recognize that logic is on his side.

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