What About Paris?

February 02, 2015

Pantheon: Ms. Gish.

Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

December 31, 2014

Pantheon: Janus Blythe

Posted by JD Hull at 11:42 AM | Comments (0)

December 12, 2014

Pantheon: Mary Harris Jones

Put aside your party line, your ideology and anything else you use to avoid thinking on your own. School teacher, seamstress, businesswoman, community organizer, Chicago girl and Ireland-born, Mary Harris "Mother Jones" (1837-1930) had big ones. You have to admit that. What a resume, most of it from after she turned 50.

Denounced on the U.S. Senate floor as the "grandmother of all agitators."

Posted by JD Hull at 11:02 PM | Comments (0)

November 23, 2014

Pantheon: Charlize Theron

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November 07, 2014

Pantheon: Alice Krige.

I have not met South Africa-born movie, television and stage actress Alice Krige but have admired her and her movies for almost 30 years. I would like to see her on stage some day. I am in awe of working dramatic actresses based on the difficulty of their craft alone--and have been lucky to spend a lot of time with one in particular. To be noticed and hired, to keep working in serious paying roles down through the years, to make a living, to endure, even for the very gifted, is not a reality for most. You must be more than pretty, more than mega-hardworking, more than resilient, more than cheerful, strong, tough, well-regarded, respected and liked. You must be Lucky, too. Uncommon and shining talent is a prerequisite. All your competitors have it. A tough, unforgiving profession you must love deeply and almost unconditionally to merely stay the course in many, many moments during a long career.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

October 26, 2014

Pantheon: Kim Bassinger, 60.

Posted by JD Hull at 05:47 AM | Comments (0)

October 21, 2014

Pantheon: Nico

Born Christa Päffgen in Cologne (1938-1988)

Posted by JD Hull at 12:38 PM | Comments (0)

October 05, 2014

Pantheon: Sarah Silverman.

"I don't set out to offend or shock, but I also don't do anything to avoid it."

Posted by JD Hull at 06:35 PM | Comments (0)

September 21, 2014

Pantheon: Audrey Tautou.

Source: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images Europe (2011)

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August 29, 2014

Pantheon: Charlotte Rampling. Still smoldering.

Cannes Film Festival 2001

Circa 1975

Posted by JD Hull at 10:34 AM | Comments (0)

July 30, 2014

Pantheon: Elizabeth McGovern in 2012.

McGovern in 2012.

Posted by JD Hull at 12:09 AM | Comments (0)

July 29, 2014

Pantheon: Catherine Deneuve in 1995

Catherine Deneuve, 52, in 1995.

Posted by JD Hull at 06:59 PM | Comments (0)

April 25, 2014

Pantheon: Annabeth Gish.

Annabeth Gish has long resided our Pantheon. She is a versatile artist and human.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:49 PM | Comments (0)

March 01, 2014

Parker Posey: You don't need the money with a face like that.

Posted by JD Hull at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)

October 11, 2013

Pantheon: Lisa Kudrow.

A 40-something Vassar grad (B.A. Biology) who can still play youngish lovable ditzes on nighttime TV and in feature films, Kudrow already has won or been nominated for a lifetime worth of Emmys and SAG awards. She comes from a talented and interesting LA-based family (music and medicine) with Russian-Jewish roots. Kudrow's ancestors emigrated from Belarus and lived in the village of Ilya, near Minsk. Her great-grandmother was murdered in the Holocaust. She got into acting late; she worked first as a researcher, and as an anchor/reporter for an ABC affiliate in Texas. For us, her HBO series "The Comeback" was a revelation. Watch for her to soar in the next two decades in dramatic roles. Do add her to our Pantheon. It needs a few more Blondes with Brains, Comedic Timing and Big Moxie--all three out the wazoo.

Posted by JD Hull at 08:59 PM | Comments (0)

September 16, 2013

Soulful in America.

You may have dramatic cheekbones, pouty lips, Chiclet-white teeth, the neck of a gazelle, four feet of legs, a French manicure, and a serious rack of mamm. But if your insides aren't pretty, your outsides don't really mean that much...and there's no time like the present to go in for soul surgery.

--Andrew Creighton Stone, Editor-in-Chief, Los Angeles Confidential

American actress Katharine Ross: Beauty, brains, heart, soul.

Posted by JD Hull at 10:00 AM | Comments (0)

August 24, 2013

Pantheon: Sigourney Weaver.

I need a woman about twice my height.
Statuesque.
Raven-tressed.
A goddess of the night.

--John Barlow and Bob Wier, "I Need a Miracle"

Patrician. Five foot eleven. Stanford and Yale. 63 years old.

Susan Alexandra Weaver in 2008

Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

August 25, 2012

Heiresses: And Talented, Too.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Louis-Dreyfus Group, France.

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May 21, 2012

Pantheon: Charlotte Rampling. Still smoldering after thirty years in three languages.

Great gifts, persistence and drive are hard to beat. If you don't know who Charlotte Rampling, do find out. Ah, Charlotte. You made up for many of the rest of us. You started with much--so you worked even harder. Into The Pantheon, Enduring One. "Still smoldering" after thirty plus years in three languages. Even Paul Newman was blown away. We're not worthy. Please stick around and help for another thirty years.

Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

January 29, 2012

Pantheon: Vanessa Anne Hudgens. Charisma, legs and talents beyond her years.

Born December 14, 1988. American actress, singer. We were very, very wrong about her. She's not too young for The Pantheon. She got legs, legs, charisma and talent. She can act. We salute her--and stand corrected.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

August 27, 2011

Pantheon: Lena Calhoun Horne.

1941 photo by Carl Van Vechten

Lena Horne died last year on May 9, 2010. She had natural class and confidence. She lived her life as a work of art. She could sing, dance, act. She could, and did, stand up to talentless arrogance, straight-up bullies and inelegance in all its forms--both before and after she became powerful in her own right. If you're of the greatest generation, you think of her as glamorous. If you're a Boomer, she's the best of the Civil Rights movement.

And if you were born after 1970, you might be curious about a New Yorker who begins life in a rapidly-changing Bedford–Stuyvesant, moves South without parents, heads back up to Brooklyn, becomes a Cotton Club mainstay at 17, breaks records in more than walk of life, and lives to be 92. Start here, here or here.

Add Ms. Horne to our Pantheon.

Posted by JD Hull at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)

February 03, 2011

Heroes: Parker Posey

Got sand? Parker does. Rent "Party Girl" (1995). Watch her dance at the end. She's among the first in our Pantheon, a really exclusive club. Not one where old guys in second tier cities pay dues to drool on their shirts. Parker, it is said, likes Non-Risk Averse People Who Step Up. That's not you, is it, Wendell? Time to get off your knees, maybe?

Pretty Bohemian Girl Next Door.

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