The Celebrity Connection:Guillaume Canet

If the name doesn`t instantly ring a bell that isn`t surprising. I didn`t know who Canet was before last night when I watched the Kiera Knightley and Sam Worthington marital infidelity flick Last Night. The movie was good if not quite as profound as it had hoped to be but Knightley especially brings a lot of character and depth to her performance. It`s one of those walk but don`t run kind of movies whose deliberate pacing and lack of big melodrama made sure that it didn`t really connect with North American audiences.

Regardless, watching it, I couldn`t help but notice Canet (who you may know from Joyeux Noel, The Beach, Tell No One or Love Me If You Dare) who looked strangely familiar:

Could Guillaume Canet really be Patrick Dempsey in disguse. You decide.

The Celebrity Connection - Justin Beiber

I just happened to catch a picture of Justin Bieber at the MTV Movie Awards, accepting an award for something (I don`t know because I couldn`t be bothered to watch) and it struck me that the mini prima dona, who shot to fame for reasons that have everything to do with anything but talent, is sporting a new look that looks remarkably like another former child star has-been:
                                                           
Could Justin Bieber really just be Corey Haim in disguise. You decide.                                                                                                                   

Black Swan + The Celebrity Connection: Natalie Portman

The story of Swan Lake: A princess is turned into a swan. True love is the only thing that can break the curse but her love is tricked and falls instead for her evil twin the Black Swan. The princess, who cannot live with the curse and cannot live without love frees herself through death. In a sense, this is the story that director Daron Aronofsky has been working his entire career towards telling. The film may revolve around the trails of a ballerina but Black Swan is no more about ballet than Requiem for a Dream was about drug abuse: it’s about a character chasing an impossible dream outside of their human grasp. That’s what all of Aronofsky’s films have been about.

One of Aronofsky’s great attributes is that he isn’t afraid to follow his characters unapologetically into their own oblivion and thus Black Swan isn’t so much a film as a memorizing thought piece constructed of ideas, fears, hopes and despair that doesn’t so much tell a story as ram headfirst right through a character’s psychological state as it dissipates under mounting pressure. Rarely has self-destruction been so hauntingly beautiful.

Natalie Portman stars as Nina, the naive, precious ballerina who lives with her overbearing mother (Barbara Hersey) who gave up her own career and now lives vicariously through her daughter. Nina, having dedicated herself entirely to the perfection of her art, wants nothing more than to be cast in Thomas Leroy’s (Vincent Cassel) newest rendition of Swan Lake. Leroy, a fierce, sexual, genius, knows that Nina can play the White Swan, but believes her to be too rigid in her perfection to play the Black Swan, who’s technique needs to be lose and seductive. 

The toying Leroy, maybe out of French masochism and maybe because he sees a buried sexual frustration, casts Nina in the part regardless. She is thrilled but practice is torture as she can’t quite nail the part. She is too frigid, too pristine and too desexualized for the Black Swan. Also along to torment her is the new girl Lily (Mila Kunis) who isn’t half the dancer that Nina is but is promiscuous and dangerous and has the dark allure of the Black Swan, a temptress driving Nina slowly towards the brink. There is also Beth (Winona Ryder), Leroy’s former star who has now been forced into retirement and is hospitalized after a (intentional?) car accident as well as Nina’s mother who shelters the girl like a child, keeps her away from all other outside pressure (sex, drugs, life) and gruelingly pushes her towards the perfection she never achieved.

Slowly all of the outside pressures begin to eat away at Nina, destroying her sanity as Leroy abusing her, molesting her, degrading her in order to bring out her inner Black Swam, pushes her, along with Lily, towards discovering her dark side. She is consumed by fear and hatred and sex and even murder as she begins having hallucinations of her being transformed into the Black Swan.

On the surface Black Swan appears to be about the way an artist’s ego will slowly lead them into oblivion as they strive to find perfection and meaning in their art. That was, in a very different way, more or less what Aronofsky’s The Wrestler was about as well. However, by conveying Black Swan’s plot and by trapping it into a defined thematic explanation is to subvert away from the hectic, driving, narrative free fall that the film is. Like Requiem for a Dream, Black Swan is more experience than story (this is filmmaking as state-of-mind at its most forceful and, at times, unbearably painful), and is thus more a meditation of how we are slowly driven insane by reaching desperately to achieve the things that are least important in life: fame, money, recognition, perfection ect.

Aronofsky, throughout his career, has always chosen the perfect mediums from which to explore these concepts: math, drugs, cancer, professional wrestling and now ballet: all areas that place value on superficial endeavours and distract from life's essentials: love, friendship, happiness. These are the arts of self-destruction. He makes films about people who are exposed to a plane of their existence that is foreign to them, sending them spiralling into an obsessive state until they have cut themselves off from anything that could provide them solace.

What Nina finds is that to split a personality down and limit it to the influence of either black (Leroy and Lily) or white (her mother) is to create a weak emotional state in which, when one is introduced over top of the other, it will ultimately consume and destroy it’s counterpart. In Black Swan, Nina is ultimately on a quest to find perfection at any cost just to discover that perfection can only be achieved through a sacrifice more grand than anyone should normally be willing to make: a complete and utter sacrifice of the self.

And so Black Swan cannot simply be spoken about in terms of aesthetics, technique, acting, writing: the general pieces that comprise a film, which I have not done here, because it is more than film. It is emotion, expression, ideology and, above all else it is violent, unapologetic rapture. This is one of the year’s best films.

An now a related Celerity Connection:

Could Natalie Portman really be Dakota Fanning in Disguise?

You Decide.

The Celebrity Connection: Chris Sarandon

These days Chris Saradon looks like this (like he could be an extra on a Pirates of the Caribbean flick). But once upon a time his locks flowed, his eyes gazed and his power of seduction was strong. He's best known as Prince Humperdink in The Princess Bride or the talking voice of Jack Skellington in A Nightmare Before Christmas, but back in the 80s, in horror movies like Fright Night and Child's Play he looked like, well:

Could Chris Saradon just be Eric Roberts in disguse? You Decide.

The Celebrity Connection: The Shadow Man

Note-Since blogger has changed to "help" make putting pictures in the posts easier it has made it nearly impossible to control how the page is laid out on these posts.

Just caught Disney's return to 2D animation The Princess and the Frog last night. It's a nice little movie, fun and funny and heartfelt. If it's not quite up to par with the Snow Whites or the Beauty and the Beasts it's at least as good as The Aristocats or Jungle Book. However, while watching it, I couldn't help but notice that the villain The Shadow Man looked awfully familiar despite the difference in race:

Could The Shadow Man really be Prince in disguise? You decide.

But Then Wait



Could the Shadow Man actually be John Waters in disguise instead? You decide.

Long Overdue Celebrity Connection: Andrew Keegan

If you don't know who Andrew Keegan is, well, neither do I, but in the comments section for my last Celebrity Connection, one of my favourite followers, Meaghan from Wild Celtic suggested I do one of Keegan, one of her favourite hotties. As the summer is basically over and Meaghan has gone off to the U.K. to study (where I wish her all the best) I figured now is the perfect time to grant her that wish. So Meagahn, here ya go:

Could Andrew Keegan (who was in 10 Things I Hate About You by the way) just be Mario Lopez in disguise? You decide.

The Celebrity Connection- Tommy Wiseau

If you haven't heard of Tommy Wiseau well, I hadn't either. I'd see the poster kicking around for his film The Room but had no idea what it was or that it was considered anything special. Then yesterday I had it brought to my attention that it was being hailed as one of the worst films ever made. Of course, I had to check it out and indeed, what I found was pretty awful. I mean, look:



It's bad enough that Wiseau's accent sounds almost exactly like Uwe Boll's but what's even more distracting is this:


Could Tommy Wiseau really be Christopher Walken in disguise? You decide.

The Celebrity Connection: Dolph Lundgren

Dolph Lungren may always be most famous for playing Ivan Drago, the most ridiculous character in the whole Rocky series (although I bet there's at least one out there who swears by I Come in Peace). As far as 80s action heroes (or villains) went, Lundgren was never a very engaging actor. If you could even call what he does acting. It's more like starring, menacing, towering, etc. Put it this way, it never took Lundgren's agent much imagination in deciding what kind of roles to find for him. Lundgren is one of the many action stars who will be featured in Sylvester Stallone's nearly here The Expendables (maybe Stallone will give him some dialogue this time?). It's hard to say if the movie will be any good but, as someone who grew up on 80s action, I'm certainly looking forward to it. On that note, check this out:

Could Chuck from Planet 51 just be Dolph Lundgren in disguise? You decide.

The Celebirty Connection-Six Feet Under

I don't really watch TV but in grade 12 I discovered Six Feet Under and was hooked. I watched every episode of the first season. Too bad that by the time Season 2 came to Canada on a channel that didn't require a subscription I was living in a TV-less university dorm. Over the years I have picked up all five seasons on DVD but have only started rewatching them now. I just got through the entirety of the first season again and will be moving on to the second soon. However, I noticed something about the artwork:

Is the cover art for The Black Dahlia just the cover art for Six Feet Under in disguise? You Decide.

Celebrity Connection The Twilight Edition: Dr. Carlisle Cullen

So, New Moon sucked, Eclipse sucked and Twilight was pretty bad. However, one good thing has come from all three: this celebrity connection.





Could Dr. Carlisle Cullen really just be the vampire Lestat in disguise? You decide.

The Celebrity Connection- Michael J. Fox

I just watched The Secret of My Success the other day. It's an 80s comedy with Michael J. Fox. Think really bad John Hughes meets big business. Like most of Fox's not Back to the Future movies, it's completely air-headed and asks the audience to suspend their disbelief far more than it should, which would be fine if it had been, ya know, funny or something. But while watching it there was one thing that I couldn't stop thinking about:

Could Michael J. Fox really just be Eric Stoltz in disguise? You decide.

The Celebrity Connection- Jack Skellington

This week was the first time I did one of these in quite some time and now I'm back with a second one already. Call it good fortune. I hadn't thought much of it and then it struck me:

Could Jack Skellington simply be Jack Pumpkinhead in disguse? You Decide.

One Minute Review- Legend

You ever get the sensation of too much tranquillity? Like being in the woods on a beautiful day with butterflies fluttering and birds chirping and other miscellaneous things floating about and it just takes it out of you? It reminds me of a famous Richard Pryor quote, "There's something about the woods that just makes you want to...s**t." Ridley Scott's Legend from 1985 suffers from tranquillity overload. It has golden hues, unicorns galloping in slow motion, fairy's glowing in the sky, pedals falling in slow motion, water glistening, Mia Sara, and enough soft focus to make the lightest of eyelids hang heavy.



That's the light side of the story. As the opening credits reveal, the universe exists due to a balance between light and darkness, this balance creating legends. Think about this though, if light came along and banished darkness into an underground abyss, how is that balance? Isn't that light triumphing over darkness and casting it aside? If there were balance wouldn't the two get along and work towards achieving the same desired ends? Forget it. The darkness is ruled, no kidding, by The Lord of Darkness (Tim Curry, under so much make-up that it's of little consequence whether it's actually him or anyone else). The darkness is made up of hammers thundering against metal, sparks flying and fire bursting out in every direction (which is kind of the opposite of darkness if you think about it, but no matter). The story involves some such business about how unicorns keep the world in light and Lord wanting to kill the last two.

This is all undermined by the fact that the hero (Tom Cruise) is an afterthought behind Scott's relentless visual muck. Legend is a film comprised of nothing more than thin air. There is not one meaningful thing that happens in it; not one speck of continuity and not one character who is remembered long enough throughout the duration of the film to amount to anything meaningful.

There is though, an interesting Celebrity Connection:

Could that fairy really be Taylor Swift in disguise?

The Celebrity Connection: Mickey Rourke

Mickey Rourke is such a strange man that it's always surprising to rediscover just what a great actor he is. And once upon a time, he looked like something that could possible resemble a sex symbol. Today he looks like he's about two or three steps from ending up in the ICU (I always wake up expecting to see headlines that say Mickey Rourke: 1952-2010), but in the 80s he was a hot commodity. I was watching St. Elmo's Fire tonight which was also a staple of the 80s (like The Breakfast Club after graduation) and noticed something peculiar. Check it out:
Could Judd Nelson just be Mickey Rourke in disguise? You decide.

THe Celebrity Connection: Zooey Deschanel

The past three times I have done this has been purely in jest (although I'm still holding out that Michael Bolton and Michael Bay are the same guy). This time I've found an honest-to-goodness resemblance that is so uncanny that if you told me they were the same person and I didn't know any better I'd believe you. A lot of people say Zooey Deschanel looks a lot like Katy Perry. They're not even close:




Could Zooey Deschanel really be Debra Winger in disguise? You Decide.

The Celebrity Connection: Eliza Dushku

I've done this twice now, where I've found photographic evidence that leads me to believe that certain celebrities are just other celebrities in disguise. So I've decided to give this a name. I'm calling it the Celebrity Connection, as you may have been able to decipher from the title of this post. I feel that it is my duty to unmask the truth behind the identities of all celebrities, one by one, especially on days when there is nothing better to write about. This brings me to the matter at hand. Eliza Dushku (Bring it On, Wrong Turn,) has another movie that no one will care about going direct-to-DVD. She should team up with Mischa Barton for her next movie. There's no point after all, of deriving two movies their chances of theatrical distribution. The movie is called Open Graves and IMDB tells me that it is about a bunch of surfers who discover a game that kills someone every time it is played. That kind of sounds halfway like the plot of Richard Kelly's The Box except, ya know, stupider. So anyway, I see a picture of Dushku from the movie and it hit me: