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Jessica Simpson’s Career Needs Help

Posted by Vogt
at June 9, 2008

Jessica Simpson’s Career Needs Help

Out for a night at Birds in Los Angeles, Jessica Simpson was spotted hauling around a baby crib with her hairstylist, Ken Paves, near her side.

The Dukes of Hazzard actress has been keeping busy - despite what many claim to be a plummeting star status as a result of her father’s poor managing skills.

According to a source for OK! magazine, Jessica is said to be nearing a decision to pull the plug on her professional relationship with her dad, Joe Simpson.

The insider tells, “She wanted to be a movie star and her father wanted her to earn the salary of a movie star. After The Dukes of Hazzard movie, Joe was telling everyone that Jess was the next Julia Roberts, and while the public bought it for a while, the studios never believed it. Now there isn’t much work for Jessica.”

While reps for Miss Simpson deny the OK! source’s claims, the fact that the only roles Jessica seems to be able to get are for self-funded films adds to the speculation that the time is nearing for the With You singer to make some career changes.

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Lost audio podcast recap: February 19, 2008

Posted by Vogt
at May 28, 2008

L. Scott CaldwellAfter a long absence, Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof are back with their first Lost podcast of Season Four. The show’s executive producers rehashed “The Economist,” answered fan questions, and previewed “Eggtown.” Cuse and Lindelof will try to do a regular weekly podcast, but said that there may be fewer podcasts once production on the final five episodes gets busier. Here’s a recap:

Be sure to check back after “Eggtown” for another podcast recap! The DHARMA Orchid video is below. (Update: Sorry, it was taken down from YouTube)

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Jessica Lange Biography

Posted by Vogt
at May 9, 2008

Jessica Lange.jpg

Jessica Lange is a blonde, fine-featured leading lady who has transcended the bimbo image established by her notorious screen debut—as the scantily-clad playmate in the embarrassingly bad 1976 “King Kong” remake—to become one of Hollywood’s most respected actresses in the 1980s and ’90s. Shifting easily from mainstream genre fare to worthy little independent films, Lange has maintained the ability to surprise audiences with the unexpected depth of her resources. Born into a close but “wacky” (her phrase) Minnesota family, Lange spent time living as a hippie in Paris and New York in the ’60s before settling down to an acting career. She was already 27 when she made her film debut.

It took Lange several years after her debut to find another screen role. Her then boyfriend Bob Fosse cast her as the Angel of Death in “All That Jazz” (1979) and she co-starred with TV refugees Susan Saint James and Jane Curtin in the comedy “How to Beat the High Cost of Living” (1980). But it was her turn in the Lana Turner role of a sultry femme fatale opposite Jack Nicholson in Bob Rafelson’s remake of “The Postman Always Rings Twice” (1981) that made critics and audiences realize her abilities, despite its less than stellar box office.

Lange finally proved her versatility and attained star status with two 1982 roles, as 1930s actress Frances Farmer in the biopic “Frances” and as Dustin Hoffman’s love interest in “Tootsie”; the first won her a Best Actress Oscar nomination and the second, the award for Best Supporting Actress. She racked up three more nominations by the end of the decade: as a stalwart farm wife opposite her real life companion Sam Shepard in “Country” (1984), which she also co-produced; as country music legend Patsy Cline in the biopic “Sweet Dreams” (1985); and for her searching, intelligent performance as the unsuspecting daughter of an alleged war criminal in Costa-Gavras’ “Music Box” (1989).

In 1992, Lange made her Broadway debut in the celebrated role of Blanche DuBois opposite Alec Baldwin’s Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire”. Both she and Baldwin reprised their roles on a 1995 CBS movie. Lange’s earlier TV work included another Williams heroine, Maggie, in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” (Showtime, 1984) and as a Minnesota farmer in the “Hallmark Hall of Fame” adaptation of Willa Cather’s “O Pioneers!” (CBS, 1992).

Devoting more time to child-rearing, Lange worked less frequently in the late 1980s and early 90s. She worked with Robert De Niro in two high profile noir remakes, Martin Scorsese’s “Cape Fear” (1991) and Irwin Winkler’s “Night and the City” (1992). Lange was widely acclaimed and received a second Oscar, as Best Actress, for her performance in Tony Richardson’s “Blue Sky” (completed in 1990; released 1994). She was Carly, the sensuous “woman-child” wife of a military nuclear engineer, whose tendency to act out her frustrations lead to domestic and professional complications for her family. Lange had two more successes with “Losing Isaiah” (1995), as a social worker who adopts a crack baby, and “Rob Roy” (also 1995), as the great love of the 18th-century Scottish freedom fighter (Liam Neeson). Lange frequently appeared opposite female co-stars that would push and challenge, such her roles in “A Thousand Acres” (1997) playing sister to Michelle Pfieffer and Jennifer Jason Leigh in a modern King Lear allegory; bedeviling unwanted daughter-in-law Gwyneth Paltrow in the thriller “Hush” (1998); and as the lonely spinster seamstress to courtesan Elizabeth Shue who slowly destroys the lives of those who’ve scorned her in the film adaptation of novelist Honoré de Balzac’s “Cousin Bette” (1998).

Returning to Shakespeare, Lange made for a truly ferocious Tamora in “Titus” (1999), Julie Taymor’s mind-bending, ultra-violent adaptation of Titus Andronicus, but was miscast in the long-delayed “Prozac Nation” (2001) as Elizabeth Wurtzell’s (Christina Ricci) neurotic Jewish mother. The actress was far more effective in the HBO telepic “Normal” (2003) as a wife whose husband of 25 years (Tom Wilkinson) suddenly reveals that he wants a sex change operation; Lange was rewarded with Emmy, Golden Globe and Golden Satellite nominations for her performance. Next she essayed the role of the older Sandra Bloom, who husband was given to fanciful self-mythologizing, in director Tim Burton’s “Big Fish” (2003). She next appeared in Jim Jarmush’s “Broken Flowers” (2005), playing one of four ex-girlfriends of a man (Bill Murray) who tracks down his former lovers after receiving an anonymous letter from the mother of his heretofore unknown son.

From 1970 to 1982, Lange was married to photographer Paco Grande. She was romantically involved with dancer-actor Mikhail Baryshnikov from 1976 to 1982. Since 1982, Lange has lived with playwright-actor Sam Shepard with whom she acted with in “Frances” (1982), “Country” (1984) and “Crimes of the Heart” (1986) and who directed her in “Far North” (1988).

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Goldie Hawn Biography

Posted by Vogt
at May 9, 2008

Goldie Hawn.jpg

The enduring star power of Goldie Hawn is a fairly unusual phenomenon for a contemporary Hollywood actress. She first gained celebrity through a brief stint as a “dumb blonde” dancer-comedienne on TV in the late 1960s and segued to the movies as an acclaimed supporting player before quickly achieving star status. The now gracefully middle-aged showbiz veteran has maintained her celebrity and pumped up her industry muscle without any major tinkering with her persona. Sharp-eyed viewers may have detected a subtle evolution but, to the general public, she has remained an eternally youthful and joyously giggly girl for nearly three decades. Hawn has long been one of the elite group of actresses who can “open” a major motion picture.

The daughter of a Presbyterian musician father and a Jewish mother who was a jewelry wholesaler and dance school owner-administrator, Hawn was born in our nation’s capital and raised in Tacoma Park, MD. Having begun her training in ballet and tap-dancing at the age of three, she was dancing in the chorus of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo production of “The Nutcracker” at age ten. Hawn made her acting debut at age 16 in Williamsburg, Virginia, playing Juliet in a Virginia Stage Company production of Shakespeare’s classic. By 17, she was running her own dance studio where she taught ballet to pay her college tuition. Hawn abandoned her drama studies at American University at age 18 and headed for NYC to pursue a career as a professional dancer. Her debut in this arena came in 1964 performing “Can-Can” at the Texas Pavilion of the New York World’s Fair. She subsequently worked in NYC as a go-go dancer and sang and danced in revivals of “Guys and Dolls” and “Kiss Me, Kate”. Other hoofing gigs took her to Puerto Rico, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. The latter locale was the setting for her first big break.

Hawn was “discovered” dancing in the chorus line of a 1967 Andy Griffith TV special. An agent singled her out, signed her and got her cast in a supporting role on a sitcom, “Good Morning, World” (CBS, 1967-68). Hawn’s winning portrayal of a gossipy neighbor on the one-season sitcom quickly landed her work the following season as a featured performer on the landmark comedy variety revue “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” (NBC, 1968-70). She danced, giggled and jiggled, covered with body paint and a bikini. America took notice as did the Television Academy which gave her two Emmy nods. British critic David Thomson has written, “I don’t think any film has ever captured the lyrical blonde naivete that Goldie showed on TV’s ‘Laugh-In’. She is usually pert and engaging: amiability perches on her high, child’s voice and gurgles from her baby’s mouth. The eyes are still eyes from Lolita’s face.”

Hawn’s film acting career got rolling with a winning portrayal of a ditsy Greenwich Village salesgirl having an affair with a “married” dentist in “Cactus Flower” (1969). Even working alongside such veterans as Walter Matthau (playing the deceptive amorous dentist) and Ingrid Bergman (playing his repressed but adoring receptionist), Hawn won the critical raves and a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. She continued in the nice and nubile nincompoop mode opposite Peter Sellers in “There’s a Girl in My Soup” (1970). “$” (1971) offered a change-of-pace role as a prostitute embroiled in a bank heist with Warren Beatty. “Butterflies Are Free” (1972), a romantic comedy, returned her to a more comfortably kooky character in love with a blind neighbor (Edward Albert). Hawn truly displayed her dramatic chops in her next film project, “The Sugarland Express” (1974), director Steven Spielberg’s feature bow. As petty criminal Lou Jean Poplin, she showed the downside of kooky immaturity, playing a mother whose child is taken away after she is deemed unfit by the courts. Lou Jean breaks her weak-willed husband (William Atherton) out of a pre-release facility to aid her in her quest to get back their child. Their initially comic misadventures escalate to a tragic conclusion. Hawn has never been better but the film, though scoring with the press, bombed at the box office.

Hawn continued to display new depths in such projects as “The Girl from Petrovka” (1974) and, again with Warren Beatty, in Hal Ashby’s “Shampoo” (1975). She enjoyed a huge popular success opposite Chevy Chase in the romantic caper “Foul Play” (1978) but that pair proved less palatable in their follow-up “Seems Like Old Times” (1980).

Hawn marked her debut as an executive producer with one of her biggest hits, “Private Benjamin” (1980). She was perfectly cast as a caricatured “Jewish American Princess” who grows up through a stint in the Army. Hawn received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for her efforts. She received the worst press of her career in the wake of rumors about her behind-the-scenes machinations on the period romantic comedy-drama “Swing Shift” (1984). Director Jonathan Demme accused Hawn of recutting the film to play up her character at the expense of impressive supporting player Christine Lahti. The beloved Goldie emerged as the villain at the time though subsequent reports have suggested a different version of events. In any event, the film was a critical and commercial failure. Beginning with “Protocol” (1984), Hawn joined costume-designer-turned-producer Anthea Sylbert in the Hawn/Sylbert Movie Company to produce a string of mostly mediocre starring vehicles which tended to make modest profits. Thanks to her winning screen persona, Hawn survived with her star status intact.

In the early 90s, Hawn tried to appear in a wider variety of films than the comedies with which she had become associated. She replaced Meg Ryan to play a compulsive liar opposite a befuddled Steve Martin in the comedy “Housesitter” (1992), but her other credits included the Mel Gibson actioner “Bird on a Wire” (1990), the failed Hitchcockian “woman in jeopardy” pic “Deceived” (1991) and “Crisscross” (1992), a surprisingly effective and gritty story about a welfare mother raising her son in a seamy part of Key West. Hawn was less sympathetic than usual teamed with Meryl Streep and Bruce Willis in Robert Zemeckis’ elaborate black comedy fantasy “Death Becomes Her” (1992).

After a four-year hiatus from the screen, Hawn joined forces with Diane Keaton and Bette Midler in the hit comic romp “The First Wives Club” (1996). Hawn had obvious fun as an aging Hollywood star who turns to plastic surgery to remain competitive in an industry where women are relegated to three roles, “babe, district attorney and ‘Driving Miss Daisy’.” Later that year, she returned to her musical roots, singing and dancing as Woody Allen’s ex-wife (now married to Alan Alda) in Allen’s “Everybody Says I Love You”. She also had several projects in various stages of development as a producer. Hawn moved behind the cameras to make her directorial debut with the TV-movie “Hope” (TNT, 1997), a coming of age tale set in Arkansas.

After a brief hiatus, Hawn returned in front of the camera teamed with Steve Martin in the uneven remake of “The Out-of-Towners” (1999). She then co-starred with Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton in “Town & Country” (2001), a comedy about marriage that became known for its protracted filming and troubled production history. As a producer, Hawn oversaw the well-recieved TV-movies “When Billie Beat Bobby” (ABC, 2001), and “The Matthew Shepard Story” (NBC, 2001). She was next seen on the big screen teamed with Susan Sarandon as former groupies who reunite in “The Banger Sisters” (2002).

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