For some reason or another the stars and planets aligned my Netflix movie queue and two movies with Scarlett Johansson were beamed into my mailbox. I’m not sure if I did this on purpose or it was just a twist of fate. Regardless my day was beginning to look a whole lot like a Scarlett Johansson Superfest. Well at least a double feature. Hot.
The matinee was Girl with a Pearl Earring. Holy shit! Every little scene shot is a masterpiece of studio lighting. Look, it’s Scarlett the maid washing clothes! Gorgeous. It’s Scarlett walking with her boyfriend the butcher! Breathtaking. The movie is complete eye candy. It’s slow and quiet but I don’t mind. Not every movie needs the frantic pacing of Bruckheimer to be good. But it is a movie about a painting. How exciting can it be? Not very but I still love it.
The evening show was The Black Dahlia. Sure, Scarlett isn’t the leading actress but she has a big enough role to reassure me that I was still at the Scarlett Johansson Superfest! Anyways, the movie? Holy Shit! Man, how fucked up are people? This movie is about one of Hollywood’s most horrendous unsolved murders. Someone freakin’ cuts a young starlet in half. Bisected. The first two hours of the movie are bullshit (it’s film-noir but a little over the top if that’s possible with film-noir). The last ten minutes scared the freakin’ holy living snot out of me. I was walking backwards up the stairs when I was finished with the movie. It has a good boxing scene in the beginning. De Palma definitely nails that but the rest of the movie is terrible. Not terrible terrible because I think it grows on you after awhile. The dinner scene with the Linscott family is funny and deserves an Academy Awards for “Weirdest Dinner Scene Ever”.
If I had to do the star rating bit (One out of five, five being the best) I’d give both of them a solid three. I liked them but not because they were any good but because they had the luscious Scarlett Johannson Superfest people!
Scar Jo on the DVD player is time well spent. I don’t know about The Horse Whisperer. I’ll have to think about that before I queue it up.
So what did Bob/Bill Murray say to Charlotte/Scarlett at the end of “Lost in Translation?”
Scarlett’s character’s name in Girl with a Pearl Earring–Griet.
I love Scarlett.
“Girl with the Pearl Earring” was a really great book, I stayed up all night to read it. I recall liking the slow seductive tension of the movie. It was beautifully filmed and art directed. Good lighting. Nice color palette.
Paula, I have always wondered about that question, but I dont really want to know. I like the mystery.
Teddy that walking backwards up the stairs comment made me laugh out loud.
I enjoy Scar-Jo on the big screen, and, I mean, come on, she was in Ghost World! When she opens her mouth out of the big-screen arena, though, she loses most of her hipster cred. Would she really walk around Tokyo in an adorable pea-coat while listening to My Bloody Valentine? My boyfriend and I think not. But she’s fun to watch anyways.
Steer WAY clear of Horse Whisperer. Scar Jo is jail bait and the movie is an intolerable collection of hugging and crying scenes.
the horse whisperer is alright. i mean, it’s no butch cassidy and the sundance kid, which is probably the third best movie ever.
one of the writers of black dahlia is a guy named josh friedman. he’s quite entertaining, and you’d probably like his blog…
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I think I remember seeing him in the extras. It’s such a wonderful movie. I’m all about trying to imagine Hollywoodland now.