Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Hollywood actresses: 3D House of Wax



This is how this post got started.

I saw an ad on TV for this not-very-promising-looking new movie called Joyful Noise. Cashing in on the wild and unlikely success of Glee, it's all about some gospel choir in the South, or some-such, and it has Queen Latifah in it, along with -

Jeez, who's that?

That fossilized Muppet with a horizontal slit where her mouth should be? That dead-eyed mausoleum-piece whose smile is so tight it has to go sideways? The one with the blown-up lips and the dead-looking immobile cheeks that scream "implants!"

Ye gods. It's Dolly Parton.



Dolly Parton, she of the self-deprecating wit and earthy humor (i.e. when someone once asked about her height and weight, she said, "Five foot none and a hundred and plenty"). She of the now-self-deprecating-about-all-the-plastic-surgery-she's-had wit, only it's not funny. Not funny to see an embalmed Dolly who, it must be admitted, hasn't grown old, but hasn't grown either, hasn't matured facially because the stars have all seemingly gotten together to take a vote: ageing, or showing your age in any way, is an abhorrent, disgusting process that must be stopped. At any cost.

Even at the cost of looking human.




Oh, God, what a sad parade! Admittedly, it looks like Liza is without makeup in this shot, but her face has that weird bent-out-of-shape look that seems to happen a couple decades after you first start fucking around with it. You can move stuff around all right, freeze some things, lift other things, or even remove them, but as you get older, genetics will out: the underlying musculature will insist that you resemble your great-great-great-aunt Zelda, and begin to pull and wrench at the deadened tissue in a desperate attempt to make it so.




The more you fight it, the worse it gets. Tiny little noses unmoored from their natural facial roots start to bend and twist, cheek implants slide down towards the chin, collagen injections melt like candle wax. Which only necessitates more screwing around.

Like this, maybe.



I don't know who this is, but just the fact that someone like this exists gives me the heeby-jeebies. But how much better is this?



Oh my God, it's Mary Tyler Moore. I know she has a younger husband and all, but did she have to erase herself like this? The sideways smile is bad enough, the hardened cheeks squished up into tiny apples. But the eyes. I don't know why this is, but after too many procedures the eyes seem to turn into nearly-closed, tiny little slits.


And it's hard to believe a "blonde" could look so Chinese. In this case, Joan Rivers looks like she's wearing a rubber Halloween mask, and to my eyes it's mighty scary.




Those other dames I can understand, since they've been in the Museum of Hollywood History for some time now. But Darryl Hannah: didn't she used to have a natural, unaffected beauty? Why has she donned the deadened fright-mask that makes everybody look the same?







I think this hurts me most of all. Plainly, Meg Ryan and Mary have the same surgeon, since they now look so much alike it hurts.

Cheek and chin implants have become standard now, but as you get older they look plain lousy. They jut out like they've been bee-stung, squeeze the eyes nearly shut.

Let's not get into the famous Botox forehead which is so anaesthetized that you can't even raise your eyebrows.

I remember, I swear this is true, someone doing an interview about Botox and saying, "What's all the fuss? If you want to raise your eyebrows, just use your fingers."



Men can be pretty good at ruining their looks, too, even rendering themselves unrecognizable. Kenny Rogers gave up his craggy cowboy features for a sort of frosted chipmunk look, his eyes vaguely Tibetan. He can now walk around the streets of Nashville unnoticed.

Wayne Newton, well. . . Madame Tussaud's isn't going to bother making a wax model of him. They'll just wait until he croaks and keep him on ice.


You shouldn't look at a formerly-beautiful actress and say, "Ewwwwww." That shouldn't be the first thing out of your mouth.

Your first thought shouldn't be, "My God, what has she done to herself?" But all too often, it is.

Bad plastic surgery (and is there any good plastic surgery?) provokes a visceral disgust that registers in a nanosecond.

Doesn't anyone have the courage to tell these people how heartbreakingly awful they look?



There's another way to do this. I don't think Susan Sarandon has done anything to her face, because she doesn't have to. She is just plain gorgeous.




Vanessa Redgrave is an example of someone who has decided to let the magnificent Redgrave genes blossom with age. Wise choice, don't you think?




Is this face smooth, unlined, immobile? No, it is not. It's much better than that.

This "older woman" has a fiery beauty that lets her get away with supershort hair and flaming colors. Being intensely alive helps. Brava, Judi.




Gee, what's that in Helen Mirren's hand? Don't know, but I'll bet she deserves it. Some women still know how to use their faces to capture a character.



Cheekbones to die for, but I'll bet you any money they're real.

Would they have chosen a Botoxed, pinned and tucked actress to play Margaret Thatcher? Imagine plastering ageing makeup over a face that has been ruthlessly de-aged.

For once, Hollywood said "no thanks".





 


Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book
    It took me years to write, will you take a look



Tuesday, January 10, 2012

This is not in HD


Every day brings a new discovery! Or at least it should, if you're sitting glued to your chair doing "whatever", when you really should be doing something else. Like getting out of the house. Like getting things done.

But we won't worry about that now. I seem to have a one-thing-leads-to-another kind of curiosity. I've been watching a Discovery Channel series called Inventions that Changed the World (or something - Rocked the World? No, it couldn't have been that.) Last night it focused on the 1920s, and I learned something kind of astonishing: a man named John Logie Baird invented the principals of television in the 1920s.



It looked sort of like this, and was made out of hat boxes and knitting needles and a slab of wood from a coffin. Baird had no money, see, and scavenged his materials from anywhere. Everybody thought he was crazy, of course. He worked on this thing in his basement for years and years.



Then it evolved into something like this. A telephone-dial-looking thing with a human head on a stick (or maybe it was a puppet: they come cheaper and have no ego).
He was getting closer, but everyone still thought he was crazy.



Is this the first TV studio? I'm not certain.  To me it looks like an evil medical experiment




I don't think this is Baird.  He looks too young. And what about all those lights?  Early TV stars must have fried under them.







This, now. I think the designer got carried away. It looks like a combination radio, toaster oven, barometer, cheese grater and cue ball. I'm not sure where you looked to watch TV.





Oy.





I'm fairly certain these are among the first fully human TV stars. (This is not in HD.) The man looks a little like Dylan Thomas after a bender.




Whatisit? A kind of cuckoo clock, maybe? Not sure, but you could buy one in the 1930s. Possibly hand-cranked.



This isn't an ultrasound. It's a very early, primitive broadcast of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, probably from the Depression era when images began to come into a kind of focus.






I've saved the best 'til last. We don't appreciate the sense of awe people must have felt when a TV set first entered their living rooms. Little kids thought the people were actually running around inside the box (and no doubt some adults agreed with them). Jessie Wiley Voils of Kansas was knocked out of her chair with disbelief back in 1937: a viable prototype had been constructed, but it would be another 10 years before a TV was made that had a screen larger than a slice of bread, and another 10 years before people actually began to buy them.

What happened to television? Is it still the "vast wasteland" proclaimed by social critic Newton Minnow in the '50s? 

I am beginning to feel  Ernie Kovacs was correct when he said, "Television is a a medium, so-called because it is neither rare nor well-done."



http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.com/2012/01/synopsis-glass-character-novel-by.html

Can YOU spot the difference?




And now it's time for one of my infamous "spot the difference" games. Try to work up a little enthusiasm, please.


Yesterday I got into Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, reading great swaths of it out loud (with no audience, which was maybe just as well). Then I went looking for illustrations and found a plethora of pen-and-ink drawings. Apparently the good Mariner didn't lend himself to colour pictures.


I was stunned to find one called Life-in-Death, drawn in the 1940s by illustrator Mervyn Peake. It looks as if it were done 200 years earlier, but even spookier than that is its resemblance to a certain macabre figure of the 21s century.


Does the word propofol mean anything to you?










Are those her ribs through which the sun
Did peer, as through a grate?


And is that Woman all her crew?
Is that a Death? and are there two?


Is Death that Woman's mate?



Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold:











                                                                    Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she,
Who thicks man's blood with cold.



http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.com/2012/01/synopsis-glass-character-novel-by.html

Monday, January 9, 2012

Just a coincidence? I. . . DON'T. . . THINK. . .SO!



I was gonna do this a long time ago, really I was, I had the photos all ready, when I chickened out. Chickened out, right around the time I published my post on Matt Paust's book If the Woodsman is Late, in which I think I called him Hemingway in the Henhouse.


But you know, I have to confess I had someone else in mind. I only have a couple photos of Matt that are about the size of postage stamps, but it's clear to me even from this slender body of evidence that he's actually. . .







Can't you see the resemblance? No? Just take a closer look.






Uncanny, isn't it? And how about this one? (Sorry, I've run out of Matt pictures so you'll have to use your imagination.)



Matt in a good mood.



Matt in a bad mood.



        Matt the potentate.



Matt the sea captain aboard his 64-foot ketch, the Leakin' Lena.

(For the non-seaworthy, a ketch is a two-masted sailing vessel with the mizzenmast stepped forward of the rudder head. Averages a backfish of six roosters.)





                                                    Matt in a holly-jolly mood





                                             The animated Matt!


And not only that. . .