So, I haven’t seen Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion yet, and when I do various and sundry ethical concerns will enjoin me from officially commenting on it (most of my sources, including but not limited to a co-screenwriter of Ocean’s 13 and The Girlfriend Experience, for what it’s worth, assure me that it’s real good), but I have seen the trailer; saw it almost the minute it went up last night in fact, and it’s creating quite a “buzz” on the internet, largely because various and sundry smart alecs are having a time rejoicing over the fact that the trailer reveals that one of the film’s big-ticket stars buys it in the movie. EW.com’s Anthony Breznican sums it up in typically pithy EW.com fashion, complete with obligatory tired South Park reference, here. I don’t know what Gwyneth Paltrow ever did to engender the hostility of internet smart-alecs everywhere, and too bad for her, I guess; what irks this observer is the fact that all these yo-yos seem to be under the impression that it’s unbelievably clever and incisive and witty to make some remark about how that health smoothie Gwynnie was flogging on her snooty website couldn’t save her from the deadly virus that apparently rampages through the whole world in this picture, ar ar ar. I probably don’t need to point out that every individual who makes a variation of this joke appears to be under the impression that he or she is the first individual on the planet to have come up with it. I’d say “try harder,” but honestly, I’d rather the attempt not be made at all. People need to let off steam? That’s what gyms are for. Also, again, what did Paltrow ever do to you?
Time, then, to break out the immortal panel from Drew and Josh Alan Friedman’s immortal “Marnin Rosenberg In Bad Luck With Women” (collected in the great Warts and All). I usually deplore the Rosenberg “straighten you out” tendency, which is cropping up more and more often in what passes for film criticism these days (see Sam Wasson’s recent unholy piece on Terrence Malick and The Tree of Life in LA Weekly, and no, I ain’t linking to that mess), but that isn’t to say that I don’t sometimes understand it. Yeesh.
i like gwen but i think that new yorker-dinner party thing maybe soured some folks on her merits.
and i don’t even know where to start w/ that wasson-ation thing. putrescent on multiple fronts
Well, now, Paltrow has had more than her share of obnoxious moments, among them implying that Americans are stupid (except for her), so a certain amount of dislike is to be expected. But she’s kept a pretty low profile for, what, a couple-two-three years now, so all I think when I watch the trailer for CONTAGION is “Holy crap, that movie looks good.” And also it is surprising that they actually reveal her death in the preview. I’d say plot-wise her demise is a foregone conclusion, but still.
This is a little aside, but as I don’t have access to the comic, what’s the context of the panel? It appears to be a dinner party with vacuous, Annie-Hall-Media-Professor-like people.
Oh, by the way, thanks so much, Glenn, for cluing me into that Wasson trainwreck. This:
“Perhaps that’s why voice-overs flood in — to tell us exactly what we should be contemplating. ‘What’s this war in the heart of nature?’ ‘Why does nature vie with itself? The land contend with the sea?’ This is how I talked to girls in college when I was trying to get laid.”
…goes well with this, just a paragraph or so later:
“Rather, it watches the natural world, reading plants and birds and rivers the way new lovers read each other’s faces, as genuine discoveries.”
I guess he’s still trying to get laid.
I rather doubt the Gawkerati are irritated with her anti-Americanism. Still, point taken.
I met Paltrow once or twice in the early portion of her adult career and I must say she couldn’t have been nicer. By which I mean she really does have excellent manners. But, not to validate the perspective of John Nolte or anything, I was hardly surprised to discover that she was not immune to a particular progressive provincialism that afflicts certain well-born U.S. Citizens.
@M.G.: The context is Cucumber’s, a singles bar in Great Neck in the ’80s. I don’t know if that’s a real place or not, but that’s what the comic says. “Thursday was ‘Jap’ night in Great Neck…Ah, the Untouchables…hundreds of stressed-out professional virgins who perplexed regulars like Marnin and his pal Larry…Cucumber’s was indeed an ethnic bar. The Japs had a touch of Fanny Brice in their genes. They were Marnin’s natural enemy…Marnin decided to straighten a few out…” Really, the whole book is this entertaining, you should totally check it out!
I often am amused by the irrational hostility directed at certain movie stars. Remember when folks were tripping over themselves to make bitchy comments about Rob Lowe every time they got a chance to take a swipe? And there was a period – before 30 Rock, I think – when Alec Baldwin elicited the same sort of knee-jerk snark. Why? Your guess is as good as mine.
Yeah I don’t get it personally. And the older I get the less I feel it necessary to put in my two cents on anything because we’re all destined for history so what does any of it matter. That being said fuck whoever remade the Thing, they worship donkey buttholes and butts and fart 😛
Love you, but did you really just get mad that people are assholes on the internet?
I don’t know if “mad” is the word I’d use…
The Paltrow knocking (and the newer, though no less prevalent Franco knocking) is the kind of lazy repeat targeting that fills blogspace and unifies readers and builds repeat traffic. Videogum has been flogging that horse for a few years, and while funny, it’s just as lazy as any other place that does that. I’m sure lots of rich, disconnected-from-real-life actors do a lot of annoying shit off set, but Paltrow is also a very fine actor. She’s great as Margot Tenenbaum, she was terrific in “Two Lovers” and I’m sure she’ll be superb in Soderbergh’s film. Making a Paltrow joke or a Nicolas Cage joke or whatever is just part of the whole “let’s not engage in with things and just shit on things and call it a day” mentality that’s the center of the internets pithy sweet spot. I bet Audrey Hepburn was an asshole who had dumb dinner parties too. Who gives a shit?
Audrey Hepburn was a godddes.
http://houston.culturemap.com/newsdetail/01–12-11-ibreakfast-at-tiffanys-iscreening-evokes-my-moment-with-audrey-hepbur/
I’m just bewildered that more people didn’t note her terrific Tilda Swinton impression in that trailer.
Joe Leydon, why did you think it would interest your readers that twenty years ago, a “lovely and flirtatious Newsweek writer” offered to sleep with you, or as you charmingly put it, “ahem – a good deal more”?
Well, Asher, it obviously interested you enough to feel compelled to comment on it. So I would say it served its purpose. Seriously.
Glenn, you know I love ya, but you are the very last person on the planet who ought to be playing the “What did —— ever do to him?” card. As for Paltrow, she’s an anti-American twit whose talent has been greatly overestimated. And she didn’t do anything to me, unless repeatedly boring the living crap out of me counts.
Wow, Ed, it really HAS been too long since we’ve had lunch, since you seem to have forgotten my ability to articulate, in no doubt excruciating detail, EXACTLY what it is/was that ***** did/does to deserve my contemplating giving said individual a sharp smack in the chops. I make it a point to lay out the case for MY irrational anger, thank you very much. Plus which, thinking someone has earned a sharp smack in the chops (not that I would ever contemplate even threatening to give anybody and such thing…mama didn’t raise no fool who doesn’t know when he’s potentially walking into a second-degree Class E felony, thank you very much) is not the same thing as making puerile triumphalist noise over some actor dying in a movie. Come on.
And allow me to reiterate, I’m delighted to have Ms. Paltrow join the “Two Degrees of Me” pantheon, an imaginary place I was reminded of the other day when I got my Eureka! UK DVD of “Faccia a faccia” and thought, “Hey, Tomas Milian, part of my fraternity, nyuck nyuck nyuck.”