Unlikely Rapes & Naked Knife Fights

Why does every journalist under the sun continue to perpetuate the idea that Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson are the smartest young women in Hollywood. I get it, Natalie went to Harvard and Woody Allen loves ScarJo; but how does any of this make them any smarter than Angelina Jolie, Jodie Foster, or even Britney or Lindsay?

Natalie's on the cover of Elle's "Intelligent Issue", in which, like all her interviews, she vainly pushes that she swears she is smart! The Other Boleyn Girl was raped because she was a capitalist! Duh! But truthfully, I stopped paying attention to NP when I saw Where The Heart Is in 8th grade. I was, however fascinated by Scarlett when she first hit the scene as the new classic Hollywood beauty; but she let me down too in her Esquire interview where she pretended to by smart by staring at a statue of the Beatles, not recognizing them, then saying they looked like the Princes of Luxembourg (which they don't)...she also insisted she likes older men better because they just get her...

First of all, liking older men is inherently immature and purely driven by horniness. As a woman I can honestly say that when I imagine older men I imagine a man who has experience with truly pleasing a woman: and it's true, men are less mature than women and thus an older man might seem to be right on par with a younger woman, but the way I see it, I prove my maturity by being able to tolerate a man my own age, accepting his immaturity as he accepts my invariable culture, intelligence and power. But truly, I only ever got into older men when I realized they were into me...A woman's maturity blossoms when she can go after what she wants, not what is wanted from her.

Second of all, ok, it's cool that you know about the Princes of Luxembourg, but you're not an actual Boleyn sister, Scar: there's no reason to know about them. Would you be impressed if I knew about Kim Kardashian and you didn't? And more importantly, the Beatles do not look like the Princes of Luxembourg! You obviously just found an excuse to bring up the Princes of Luxembourg thinking it would thrust you into hyper-cultured status.

Why can't we just accept ScarJo and Natalie for what they are: the hot girls that don't fit in with other hot girls? On top of it all, they are in fact the hottest girls; and now, the hottest consorts in the history of movie consorts. And they were really really good. In fact, they were the perfect matches for Eric Bana who not only follows suit with Jonathan Rhys Meyers as a confoundingly hot Henry Tudor (the in-real-life-ugly king must have put it in his will that any dramatic portrayal of him must be done by only fine motherfuckers) but also happens to be the hottest possible Henry IIIV. Him and Viggo Mortensen, like Natalie and Scarlett, represent another minority in Hollywood: the non-douchebag hot old guy.

Between Viggo's naked knife fight in Eastern Promises and Mr. Bana's sexy assassin ass in Munich, I have enough deposits in my masturbatory bank to serve daily withdrawals for two lifetimes. Viggo and Eric quietly but surely annihilate George Clooney and Brad Pitt as the hot old guys in the same way Nat and Scar took over the world of the classy hot lady; and minus all the douchebag gimmicks of boy movies like Ocean's Eleven. They not only redefined the hot old guy, they redefined the boy movie. Eastern Promises, History of Violence, Munich...these movies lack the hokeyness of those other boy movies before it: they represent the end of the rat pack, officially. Dreamboys are now sensitive, manly, strong, and family-oriented. And they don't sing. And now, NOW! our hero likes the flat chested demanding chick over the busty subservient one! Besides the pathetic rape scene which was so obviously unnecessary and a vain attempt to show disfunction in their superhot affair, The Other Boleyn Girl is the ultimate projection of the hot whore consort into the history of women and power.

Critics criticize the movie for not being sexed up enough: they had the same problem Henry had. To me, it was the sexiest; when Natalie painfully rejects the king at her bedroom door I almost came in my pants...through porn and general modern impatience, we've forgotten the sexiness of the almost tantric buildup. Henry could have anyone he wants, but he goes along with the buildup: unconsciously, he knows its better that way. I'm not advocating waiting because of it's supposed morality, but rather to encourage better sex. Critics went in thinking the movie would be sex, perhaps it would have served them better if it ended on a Like Water For Chocolate-like, final, explosive lovemaking session that killed them all; or a cleansing, all-exposing fuckfest like in Sex, Lies & Videotape (The Other Boleyn Girl of the 90's); but this was not the purpose of the movie. The buildup followed by the rape was ludicrous; as it implied men rape because they're horny and not because they're inhumanely violent, but it staunchly ended the fantasy of sex throughout the movie in the familiar vane of Elizabeth and Beowulf (they both started out sexy and ended cold and political). But pre-rape, there were important lessons of sex and womanhood to be learned from The Other Boleyn Girl.

Sunday, March 30, 2008