Lady in Red

Welcome back to the second half of our Hit Me With Your Best Shot 75th Anniversary Gone With the Wind celebration courtesy of Nathaniel at The Film Experience.

When last we caught up with Miss Scarlett she was shaking her fist in the air letting us know that as God is her witness, she'd never go hungry again. And as the rest of the film proves, she certainly keeps her promises. After the war has ended and after Scarlett finally marries Rhett, I've never really enjoyed the film as much as the first 3 hours. Once she's married to Rhett, the struggle for survival is pretty much over and the film takes on a more domestic melodramatic feel. When the film tries to make us care about Scarlett and Rhett as a couple, it loses its epic sweep, focusing on petty problems instead of the endurance of the human spirit. And I've never fully bought the romantic connection. Probably because I prefer when Scarlett is on her own defying convention - making everything about her. She's the only person she ever really cares about anyway.

Which is what leads me to my choice for Best Shot. It happens right after Scarlett has been caught in a nostalgic embrace with her beloved Ashley by his spiteful sister, India. Spreading the word about Scarlett's torrid love affair with Ashley, India tries to besmirch Scarlett's reputation and poison the relationship that Scarlett has with Melanie. Scarlett is due at Ashley's birthday party at his and Melanie's home, but she has chosen to stay away. Rhett, calling Scarlett out for her behavior (and not wanting to endanger the future of their daughter, Bonnie), forces her to attend. If nothing else for the satisfaction of Melanie ordering Scarlett to leave her home.

Rhett, wanting Scarlett to appear as the adulterous she is accused of, throws a scandalous burgundy velvet and feathered dress at Scarlett to wear as her scarlet letter:

"Wear that! Nothing modest or matronly will do for this occasion - Put on plenty of rouge. I want you to look your part tonight."

Rhett knows that nothing would ever happen between Ashley and Scarlett as he knows that Ashley is too "honorable" (too much of a coward to actually be unfaithful), but he wants to teach Scarlett a lesson as he "throws her to the lions" at Melanie's party as she makes her entrance in this:

But rather than shrinking from the shocked looks and disapproving eyes, Scarlett stands confidently and defiantly. It's the only way she knows how. Scarlett has always been her own woman, never afraid to make enemies (even of her loved ones) or stand out in a crowd. She welcomes the sneers as it only makes her stronger. Set against the simple, modestly decorated Wilkes' home, Scarlett seems even more out of place in her finery, as proud and haughty as the plumed peacock. It's one of the most iconic cinematic entrances of all-time and a memorable moment in a film filled with them. The burgundy dress has become a symbol of Scarlett O'Hara herself - bold, brassy, and singularly unique.

Scarlett's Strength

If someone were to ask me to name my favorite movie, I would quickly reply, unequivocally and unapologetically, Gone With the Wind. The 1939 epic classic is hardly a perfect film (the second half of the movie is not nearly as engaging as the first and let's not even start on the issues of race and the portrayal of most of the black characters), but I love the big bloated behemoth, faults and all. I've seen it countless times including 3 times on the big screen (and let me tell ya, it is the way the film was meant to be seen) including one screening with an introduction from actress Ann Rutherford who played youngest O'Hara daughter, Carreen. I never miss an opportunity to introduce it to new viewers and one summer I made the two little girls that I was babysitting watch it. When their parents came home with an hour left of the film, they joined us in the viewing and we all watched it together, mesmerized.

So I couldn't have been more excited when Nathaniel at The Film Experience chose the film, in honor of its 75th Anniversary year, as the subject for this week's Hit Me With Your Best Shot (I was also the one who happened to suggest it, so...) and to better accommodate all the grandeur of the film, this week will focus on the first half and next week on the second. That's right, a double dose of GWTW. Why, I'm just as giddy as Scarlett surrounded by men at the Twelve Oaks barbecue.

With so many memorable and iconic images that have seeped their way into our brains over the many years it has entertained audiences (and those are audiences are as big as the film itself. Adjusted for inflation, the film ranks far and away as the biggest all-time box office champ), filled with countless shots guaranteed to be included in every movie montage ever made, it seems overwhelming to pick just one. But I knew whatever shot I picked would have to include the reason I love the movie so much. It's the reason why it has endured the way it has to become the legend that it is. It is all thanks to the performance of a then relatively unknown British actress taking on one of the most legendary roles in film history: Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara.

Fiddle-dee-dee, why I'm only the greatest female character in all of film...

When Margaret Mitchell started writing the novel that would eventually become the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gone With the Wind (her working title was one of Scarlett's favorite phrases Tomorrow is Another Day), she was said to have based Scarlett on another popular heroine of literature, Becky Sharp in William Makepeace Thakery's Vanity Fair. The subtitle of Thakery's book is A Novel Without a Hero, with its anti-heroine Sharp at the core of the story. She is manipulative and unscrupulous, never afraid to use her feminine wiles to charm her way into getting what she wants. Mitchell used these qualities when creating her fiery lead character (who, by the way, was originally given the very pathetic-sounding name of Pansy. Mitchell soon realized that the strong-willed heroine of her story needed a name as bold as her personality) giving Scarlett Becky Sharp's sway over men and a steadfast determination. 

It's that determination that's most admirable in Scarlett. Spoiled, selfish, and not the best judge of her own well-being - that Scarlett could actually believe she's in love with the prissy Ashley Wilkes is one of her biggest flaws. So clearly wrong for her on every level, she has convinced herself that his unattainable love is the ultimate prize to win. In the hands of a lesser actress, Scarlett could easily become a heartless, one-note bitch. Luckily, with Vivien Leigh at the helm, Scarlett became a multifaceted creation. Full of nuance and prickly motivations, she never feels the need to win us over as Scarlett would with one of her beaus, knowing that complexity is much more fascinating than easy likability.

It helps that Leigh, herself, was just as determined as the character she portrayed. Fighting off thousands of young hopefuls to play the coveted part in the film (she once remarked that the body heat of the previous actress was still warm when she filmed her screen test), Leigh was telling people years before they even started work on the film that she would win the role - all without having set a foot in Hollywood. But when she finally did arrive, once filming had already begun on the film - without its main character - she made her presence known, perfectly calculating her arrival for maximum effect. The flames of Atlanta as her backdrop, Leigh was the phoenix from the ashes that Selznick needed to bring his story to life.

And that singleminded dedication to succeed is what also inspired my choice for Best Shot. After Scarlett has escaped Atlanta, with Melanie (Olivia de Havilland) and Melanie's newborn child with Ashley in tow, she believes her troubles will be over once she reaches her beloved home of Tara. Unfortunately that's hardly the case as Tara has been stripped of all its resources and depleted of its food supply, her mother has recently died, and her father has gone mad from the stress of it all. Aching and starving, Scarlett goes out to the garden and chokes down a bite of mealy carrot, only to have the foul taste come right back up. But instead of becoming defeated by it all, it only provides fuel to the fire that rages inside her. With clenched jaw and raised fist, Leigh delivers Scarlett's most famous (often parodied) and impassioned speeches:

As God is my witness, as God is my witness they're not going to beat me. I'm going to live through this and when it's all over, I'll never be hungry again. No, nor any of my folk. If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill. As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again!

Best Shot

Scarlett is not the same person she was in that first shot of her sitting on the porch, flirting with the Tarleton Twins, not a care in the world. That girl is gone, in her place is a woman of iron grit and strength. She has lived through hardship and knows that many more will follow. And with the swell of "Tara's Theme" playing as the camera pulls back to create its famous shot of Scarlett's silhouette against the blood-red sky, I always get chills. The power of that moment is what film is all about - inspiring us to muster the same resilience, shake our fist at the world, and stand as tall as Scarlett O'Hara.

Make sure to come back next Tuesday, August 26th, to see the second part of our GWTW celebration...

The Misfortune of Montgomery Clift

The men in Tennessee Williams' work never seem to elicit the same sort of fervor as his female characters. And with such indelible women as Blanche DuBois, Amanda Wingfield, and Maggie the Cat, among others, it's easy to see how their male counterparts tend to get overshadowed by such towering creations. Especially when they've been brought to life by such sublime actresses as Vivien Leigh, Cate Blanchett, Jessica Lange, Cherry Jones, Elizabeth Taylor, and Scarlett Johansson. There are exceptions, of course, Stanley Kowalski immediately comes to mind, but outside of Brando's performance do you ever hear him mentioned in quite the same way as that play's ladies? Even at the most recent production of The Glass Menagerie on Broadway in which Zachary Quinto's performance as Tennessee Williams stand-in, Tom, gained some of the play's best reviews, he still found himself as the odd man out when it came to Tony recognition. Once again upstaged by the Williams women.

For this week's edition of Hit Me With Your Best Shot from Nathaniel at The Film Experience we took on the film adaptation of a Tennessee Williams One-Act that became the gonzo Southern Gothic melodrama Suddenly, Last Summer. You name it, this movie's got it - cannibals, predatory gays, lobotomies, suggestive swimwear, and a couple of Oscar-nominated performances from two of Classic Hollywood's finest actresses (domineering Katharine Hepburn as the WASP-iest Southern Grand Dame ever to grace the screen and the buxom Elizabeth Taylor going off the deep end magnificently) that perpetuate the long-standing Williams womanly tradition. But as campy and delicious as those two turns were, I kept getting drawn into the sad eyes of Montgomery Clift as the observant Dr. Cukrowicz. Not necessarily for the performance he was giving (because those ladies were overpowering him) but because Monty himself suddenly seemed like one of Willimas' women - so lost and fragile. As delicate as Laura in Glass Menagerie, capable of breaking at any moment.

There had always been something softer about Montgomery Clift. Beneath the manly visage of the star, there was always a haunted quality and a femininity married to his masculinity. But after the car crash that almost left him for dead (saved only by kindred spirit Elizabeth Taylor - who certainly knew about suffering. Husband Mike Todd died just before filming of this movie, allowing her to access a well of emotions for her impassioned monologues), Clift seemed to become a shell of himself. Retreating into alcohol and drugs to numb the pain, it has been noted that his life after the accident was the longest suicide in Hollywood history.

He was such a liability that he couldn't even get insured for the film's production. He only appeared in it at the insistence of Taylor, who used her power as the biggest box office draw to secure Monty a job. And as the two actresses spend most of the film in elaborate soliloquies, Monty silently listens, taking in what they say but not completely registering entirely what is happening around him.

After he meets Hepburn's Violet Venable in her late son Sebastian's primitive jungle (complete with Venus Fly Trap, naturally), she goes on and on about her poet son and as she describes him, Monty begins to become the stand-in for him. We never once see Sebastian's face, even during Catherine's flashback as to what happened and perhaps because Monty was also gay in real-life, the connection seems natural. When the truth is learned and Violet suddenly seems to be the one to lose her own mind, she even mistakes Monty's doctor to be her dead son. Not to say that Monty was devoured by a pack of ravenous boys as Sebastian was, but he was devoured just the same.

Right before Monty leaves the house on his first visit, he and Violet stop in front of a statue of the Angel of Death, a macabre yet grotesquely beautiful winged skeleton. Violet looks out over the prehistoric plants that populate the setting,

"Millions of years ago, dinosaurs fed on the leaves of these trees. They were vegetarians. That's why they became extinct. They were just too gentle for their size. Then the carnivores, the ones that eat flesh - the killers - inherited the earth. But then they always do, don't they..."

Monty is left alone looking bewildered (but after a half an hour of Hepburn's rants on birds of death, fly-eating plants, and a mother/son relationship that seems a little too close for comfort, bewildered is probably putting it mildly). Even though her words are about her son and foreshadow the fate of Sebastian, it's hard not to read into it in regards to Monty's own life. Monty's own demons were carnivorous, chasing him the way the wild pack would Sebastian, and as the grinning skull looks down on the actor, foreshadowing his own untimely demise, it was not the character in the film that looked adrift, but the actor himself. He would only live another 7 years after this film was made, finally unable to outrun his own demons. Perhaps he never stood a chance to begin with. Like a Tennessee Williams heroine, he was too gentle for this world.

Un(comfort)able Foods

Last time Nathaniel from The Film Experience picked a couple of short films for the wonderful series Hit Me With Your Best Shot, I started off by saying that short film is in many ways the red-headed stepchild of filmmaking. If only I had saved that observation for this week's edition concerning a trio of short films from Canadian director Jamie Travis! It would have fit perfectly with the three films in question (Why the Anderson Children Didn't Come to Dinner, The Saddest Boy in the World, and The Armoire - all available to view for free online here) which are referred to as Travis' Saddest Children Trilogy. And as a bonus one of the boys is a stepchild (how convenient!) and most of the young boys in it could be considered ginger-esque (okay, now I'm just pushing it). But the comparison of unwanted or unloved children seems to be in keeping with the overall mood of these melancholic, dry-humored shorts in which childhood is observed not with starry-eyed nostalgia but with a darkly sinister and slightly unnerving eye.

Often compared to the intricate, meticulously designed worlds of Wes Anderson, Travis' trilogy does seem to share an aesthetic sensibility to that of the director. Favoring an overall brown color palette (although that could be the late 80s/early 90s setting of the pieces. Man, the 80's loved a brown interior design) that is highlighted by pops of lime green (the same green and white gingham finds its way into all three of the films), each set, costume, and camera angle is carefully chosen to create the distinct world within which these characters live.

Even though each film stands separately and are only connected thematically, there do seem to be reoccurring motifs and images (a milk carton with a missing child's picture makes its way to two of the three, amongst others). Incidentally, the Best Shots I've selected from each film seem to also be connected as they all include an image of food. All three could be considered comfort food, foods we remember fondly as children, but each has a subversive twist to them - making them anything but comforting.

At the start of Travis' first short, Why the Anderson Children Didn't Come to Dinner, a mother (hooked up to an IV) is busily preparing a breakfast feast for her three children. There's huge stacks of french toast, massive piles of bacon, and as she continues to crack egg after egg, she briefly stops and observes this oddity:

Little do we know now, but this brown egg seems to pop up unexpectedly throughout the rest of the film and boy, does it set this mother on edge. As she contemplates the out-of-place egg, she places it under her heel and smashes it. This image perfectly sets up the seemingly normal premise (a mother making breakfast, lunch, and dinner) and with one of these things not like the others, it lets us know that things are slightly off and to expect the unexpected from here on out.

Similarly, another surprisingly warped addition makes it way into a childhood staple in The Saddest Boy in the World. After informing his mother about his unhappy status in the universe, she sends him to a therapist. Naturally the solution is antidepressants and as she "hides" them in his green jello we get this hilarious image:

I love how comically obvious the white and red pills are as they float at the top of the gelatinous mass. Normally a mother will try her best to get you to do what's good for you without letting you know. But the jello, all bright, colorful, and inviting is clearly showing that even a treat has its downside. And rather than masking the medicine, she's letting him observe it head on. No child-like innocence for this young boy - no wonder he's so sad!

And my final image from The Armoire is not as immediately twisted as the other two images but within the context of the story also gives a childhood favorite a darker edge:

Aaron's friend Tony has been missing for weeks. He was last seen at Aaron's house while they were playing a game of Hide and Seek, but Aaron was never able to find him. Later, while watching the news on the couch (you know, every little boy's favorite show), Aaron learns that the body of his young friend has been found. Aaron, instead of showing shock or even acknowledging the fact that a tragedy has occurred, silently sits - letting his ice cream melt down his hand. The drops roll down his fingers as if mimicking the flow of blood after an accident. His ice cream cone suddenly takes on a sinister foreboding and sense of unease as we begin to wonder what Aaron actually knows about all this. Even ice cream isn't safe in Travis' distorted creations.

Loving You Is Red

There is perhaps no other color capable of invoking such strong feelings as the color red.  It stirs up different emotions of passion, lust, anger, warmth, and terror, to just name a few. And when the color saturates the entire screen, as in Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers, it is impossible to not be affected. Red permeates throughout the entire film (the house is decorated almost exclusively in the color and flashbacks don't fade to black but red, red, red) so much that it almost becomes another character along with the sisters. Bergman even stated that in the screenplay red represented the interior of the soul. So for this week's edition of Hit Me With Your Best Shot from Nathaniel at The Film Experience, we delve deeper into that crimson soul of Bergman's Oscar winning film.

The film takes place at the end of the 19th Century on the country estate of a wealthy family. Agnes (Harriet Andersson) is dying of cancer (although, it is never stated where the cancer has taken ahold, I've read that she is suffering from uterine cancer which would very much be in keeping with the film's theme of soulful red interiors and concerns of feminine nature). Agnes' other sisters Maria (Liv Ullmann) and Karin (Ingrid Thulin) have come to be with their sister in her time of need. But rather than show compassion toward their dying sister, they seem to show little affection toward her or each other. Karin is so far removed from tenderness and sisterly love, that when Maria attempts to embrace  her, she pulls away screaming not to be touched. The film contains scenes from earlier in the sisters' life that give greater insight in shaping the women they have become. We learn from an earlier scene told in red-framed flashback, it's not just the touch of her sisters that repels her, Karin is repelled by all signs of womanly feelings.

Trapped in a loveless marriage to a man she despises and mother to four children that we never see, Karin is not only bitter toward her family but seems to be resentful of life. The film makes a point of showing that the women capable of love, Agnes and the maid that affectionately cares for her, Anna (Kari Sylwan), are ironically the one's incapable of passing that love to children. Agnes because her cancer has left her insides incapable of producing children and Anna, despite her unquestioning faith and devotion, has had her only child die. Karin, however, has done what is expected of her by society, become a wife and mother, but it has only closed her off.

At a dinner with her husband while visiting the estate on a campaign trail, the two sit across from each other barely speaking a word. The silence is broken when Karin knocks over her wine glass and shards of glass litter the table. The disturbance does little to distract him (does Karin do it to deliberately arouse emotion of any kind in her husband?) and Karin delicately picks up a jagged piece of glass.

Bringing it with her as she readies herself for bed (zombie-like preparing herself for her wifely duty of another unfulfilling night of "love" making with her husband), Karin dismisses  Anna after unrobing and ponders the shard in her hands.

And with those words, she silently makes her way to her bed and without hesitation inserts the glass into her vagina. She wants to destroy the thing that has trapped her into the prison that is her life. Because she is a woman, she is forced to bring new life into this world without question as to whether or not she wants to. Because of the genitalia she was born with, she must endure the marriage arranged for her. Perhaps it was a match that would benefit her family or his, but a marriage for love was not an option as being a woman has taken away her choices.

But by using the glass she has taken control of her life and the pain soon gives way to pleasure and she licks her lips in ecstasy, enjoying the command she has over her body. She has power.

As she reveals her bloody deed, she reaches out her blood-covered hand to her husband almost daring him to try and touch her now, and with a defiant swipe of her hand, (and my pick for Best Shot) she smears her face in red.

She is readying herself for battle. Arming herself with that which initially trapped her as a woman, she now readily embraces. Her vagina, which monthly bleeds red whether she wants it to or not, is now bleeding because she has forced it to. Almost mocking the earlier scene where she takes off her womanly wares and accessories of her nightly ritual, she now readies herself with "make-up" giving herself a painted-on smile. She shows that she'll give the outward appearance of the perfect life, but inside the red is not of passion but of hate. As the scene fades, her entire face turns red, taking on an almost demonic demeanor evoking what Bergman also used to describe the soul, "When I was a child, I imagined the soul to be a dragon, a shadowing floating in the air like blue smoke – a huge winged creature, half bird, half fish. But inside the dragon, everything was red." Karin has become that red, fire-breathing dragon.

Staring Life in the Face

The aptly named Under the Skin certainly does just that, wriggling its way inside you and staying deeply entrenched within your thoughts and feelings. From the first shots of engulfing darkness giving way to a beckoning light (foreshadowing another dark room lead by seduction and introducing a common theme of dark and light), an unnerving mood has already penetrated our psyche. Minutes later, as a close-up image of a pupil, accompanied by a surrealist soundscape of strings, synths, and an undetermined language with a female voice, fill the screen - a dreamlike merging of image and audio - we know the accompanying film will be unlike anything we've encountered.

The third film from director Jonathan Glazer (after a Malick-like 10 year hiatus) has been favorably compared to another visionary director, Stanley Kubrick. And like Malick and Kubrick before him, Glazer seems to be carving out his own distinct brand of filmmaking, at once unique, exciting, and entirely original. After having seen the film in theaters back in April (and unable to quite shake it), it seems to beg for multiple viewings, so I was eager to revisit it for this week's edition of Hit Me With Your Best Shot from Nathaniel at The Film Experience.

After bringing us a volatile Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast, an icy, reflective Nicole Kidman (in one of her best performances) in Birth, director Jonathan Glazer gives us another star, this time Scarlett Johansson, and like those celebrated actors' turns in his previous films, makes us forget what we think we know about her, exposing unexplored depths and unexpected surprises until the Scarlett we see on screen is not the one we've seen before. She plays an alien creature that has come to our planet to harvest male souls (for what, we're never made aware, but plot is secondary to mood and atmosphere which the film builds on until we become as unwittingly seduced as one of the creature's conquests).

As the film progresses, we witness her evolution. Coolly calculating as she sizes up the men of Glasgow (who with their indiscernible accents seem almost as otherworldly), she unfeelingly has no sympathy for humanity. She is doing a job, luring them to unsuspecting doom. Without remorse, she even later ignores the panicked cries of a frightened toddler as she goes about her business, bringing home a unconscious swimmer to join the other men in the blackened goo.

But the longer she stays among these people, the more she finds. No longer an apathetic outsider, she soon turns her gaze on the female species. She has never really noticed the other gender before as men are her goal, but she observes while realizing that she is apart of them. After an encounter with a man unlike the others, she finds that perhaps there is more to earthlings then just bodies of flesh. She lets him go and begins to explore what it means to be a woman on earth. She tries chocolate cake (she doesn't like it! But she's forming opinions on things she'd never thought of before). She explores her body, finding the anatomy astonishing and confusing as she comes into the development of her womanhood.

Which brings me to my choice for Best Shot (WARNING THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD). After a consensual sexual encounter with a man that takes her in, she experiences an awaking. Not entirely sure what has happened she wanders the woods to collect her thoughts. She is no longer the predator she once was, but as lost and helpless as any young girl trying to find her place in the world. She has become unguarded and suffers violence at the hands of men as an attempted rape literally tears her apart. She is violated and the sensation has left her physically crawling out of her skin. But as she peels away her human disguise, she briefly looks back at the blinking face at the woman she had become. In her hands lies what remain of her humanity. However briefly, there was a soul behind those eyes and under that skin.

Hear the Roar of These Catwomen

Batman has always been my favorite superhero. Way more interesting than Superman, darker than Spider-Man, and less...patriotic than Captain America. I'd take the brooding, billionaire orphan in the cowl over any of them. But the real reason that Batman has always been my favorite isn't necessarily for the hero himself (he's interesting and all, but geez, we get it already - your parents died...) it's the deranged villains that terrorize Gotham City that make the Batman world what it is. And being the actressexual that I am, you can pretty much guess which of those villains has always fascinated me.

I grew up watching the delightfully cheesy reruns of the 1960's Batman series and found myself gravitating toward the Catwoman episodes. Whether she was played by Lee Meriwether, Julie Newmar, or Eartha Kitt never really mattered just as long as there was an actress in a slinky catsuit making puuurfectly bad cat puns. But my Catwoman obsession reached a peak the summer of 92 when I was 10 years-old and discovered the brilliance of Michelle Pfeiffer in Batman Returns. I kinda wanted to be her. I had a jumprope with one handle that was used as my whip and I would walk around my neighborhood with it wrapped around my body the way she did in the movie. I had recorded a television special about the making of the film (The Bat, The Cat and the Penguin I knew the internet wouldn't let me down in finding that) and used to watch it continuously, fast-forwarding to her parts to memorize them. It was my first encounter with Pfeiffer and it made me a life-long pfan ever since.

So when Nathaniel at The Film Experience picked a chose-your-own-adventure edition of his series Hit Me With Your Best Shot in honor of the caped-crusader's 75th anniversary, I knew I would have to do a Catwoman centric post. But even though I find Michelle Pfeiffer's performance as Selina Kyle/Catwoman to be the quintessential take on the character, I thought it would be more interesting to look at a dual performance of the character with the latest theatrical incarnation portrayed by Anne Hathaway in The Dark Knight Rises (2012). After all, the Batman universe would be nothing without its double-sidedness (Hell, there's even a villain named Two Face), so let's take a look at these duplicitous ladies.

I'll start by saying that I am not, nor have I ever been, a Hathahater. But, I'll admit that I was a little suspect of her being cast in the role of Catwoman Selina Kyle. Apparently, she was as well because when she auditioned for Christopher Nolan, she didn't even know what the part was. She thought she was going up for the part of The Joker's girlfriend, Harley Quinn (which, honestly, would have fit her perfectly and I've been waiting for her to appear in a film after she quickly became one of my favorites thanks to Batman: The Animated Series). It seemed almost sacrilegious to try to take on Pfeiffer's icon performance.

But once Heath Ledger tackled The Joker after Jack Nicholson put his stamp on him (and won a freaking Oscar in the process), then there was definitely room for Annie to take a shot. Especially because the Batman world that Nolan created was much more rooted in reality than the gothic Tim Burton version. Any interpretation of the character he created would naturally be a little different than a woman that is brought back to life by a swarm of stray cats.

But that also happens to be the main problem with the Nolan films, they're just so self-serious and drab (seriously, it was almost impossible finding a great shot of Anne in the film because everything was so ho-hum or didn't linger long enough to make an impression. While almost every shot of Pfeiffer is so spectacularly executed that choosing one seemed nearly impossible) that the moroseness seems almost too much for a series based on a masked superhero to sustain all the gravitas. The best part of the entire film is by far Hathaway. She seems to be the only one that realizes that a little playfulness is what is sorely needed. Her Selina Kyle (oh, because she can't actually be a Catwoman, she's just a woman in a catsuit, that happens to be a cat burglar, and living in a city populated by a Batman. But a Catwoman would be implausible...) is slinky, sexy, and mysterious. While her character is not an instant classic the way Pfeiffer's is, she still manages to makes her indelible.

For my Hathaway as Selina Kyle Best Shot, I had to go with the moment when she lets the mask fall and she transforms into the powerful woman that is Catwoman. And she does it without even wearing her trademarked jumpsuit:

Up until this moment, we have only seen her as a timid cater waiter, tasked with bringing a meal up to the reclusive Bruce Wayne. She stammers, apologizes profusely, and cowers in fear when he appears - she's only a woman! But as he realizes that it's nothing more than just an act and that the pearls she's wearing have been lifted from his uncrackable safe, she drops the artifice to reveal her true self. "Oops. Nobody told me it was uncrackable." And by simply lowering her head, relaxing her shoulders, and giving a knowing smirk she astonishingly really does transform before our eyes to reveal the true Selina and jolt the film awake with a new energy that only comes alive when she's onscreen.

Pfeiffer's Catwoman, in a more stylized performance amid a crazy Burtonesque world, is constantly working at full volume. And amazingly, it never feels like too much. She's so in control and eerily aware of exactly how this woman would be (outlandish as some of the things she does seem), that it transcends what we think of in a comic book film and becomes as complex and specific as anything in Shakespeare. She finds a humanity behind the mask. But luckily still sinks her claws into the campiness of the character, growling expertly delivered one-liners like the one that I've chosen as my Best Shot:

After a series of acrobatic backflips, she pauses briefly for us to catch our breath before the explosion. A literal one, but more importantly the one that happens to my mind every time I watch her performance in this. It's just one word, but, damn, what a roar.