Happy Happy Joy Joy! Damages returns in January and that means Season 2 promotions start during November sweeps, as in, now.

I know the promotional poster is kinda creepy, but I understand how Glenn Close can get in your head like that. She is truly stunning, especially in a power suit. Just. Wow.

Season 1 of Damages took a while to really hook me, but by the final episode, I was an addict. The show started with Ellen (Rose Byrne) finding herself at the scene of a brutal crime for which she is the main suspect. … continue reading

For a movie about a man against nature, Into the Wild features some good female roles. Well, maybe I mean good actresses — I don't know if the roles would be so memorable in other hands. [Warning: Minor spoilers.]

I'll go in order from worst to best — though "worst" in this case is the always capable Jena Malone, and thus not bad at all. She plays Carine, the sister of Alex, the young man who goes out into the wild. Carine is an observer and interpreter, standing sentry over her broken family in her brother's absence. Malone's voice also provides much of the film's narration — something I could have done without. The role doesn't give Malone a lot to do, but she is still very watchable. Her presence is both vulnerable and strong, and she seems to be making a successful career of that sort of thing.

Even more compelling is Marcia Gay Harden as Alex's mother. With her suburban hair and hyperawareness of what the neighbors think, she is utterly conventional and could have been two-dimensional. But Harden can do so much with a glance or a gasp, and conveys everything from despair to defiance with her body language. She has only a handful of lines in the film, but somehow says more about loss and regret than anyone should have cause to say. … continue reading

In the new issue of Entertainment Weekly, Janeane Garofalo describes her worst audition ever. It seems she was up for a role in Mona Lisa Smile. Yes, that well-mannered 2003 movie starring Julia Roberts as a spirited art professor who liberates some 1950s Wellesley girls from their suffocating mores (sadly, not in the way you might hope). Let's just take a moment to appreciate the incongruity of the whole idea. Can you imagine tattooed Janeane strutting down those halls of decorum?

Julia and Julia can't imagine it either:

Actually, Roberts took the time to read with Garofalo at her audition and tried to encourage her, but her vote of confidence had the opposite effect for Janeane. … continue reading

The Dead Girl, rated 75% fresh by rottentomatoes.com, appears straightforward enough at first. The title would seem to say it all. But writer/director Karen Moncrieff (Blue Car) veers off the beaten storytelling path and instead rushes headlong into the prickly bramble of human relations. If you could shove troubled people under a microscope, this is pretty much what you would find on the slide. [Warning: Spoilers ahead.]

… continue reading

Told in five interconnected vignettes, the movie begins with "The Stranger." Toni Collette plays Arden, the hangdog caregiver to her foul and vile mother (Piper Laurie, playing up the crazy every bit as much as she did in Carrie). While out on a walk, Arden discovers the mutilated corpse of a young woman, Krista. Arden alerts the police, which serves to earn her nothing more than her mother's ire and venomous tongue.