This week: Olivia Williams is awesome, and rom-coms are tragically inane.
- When I writing my ode in praise of Olivia Williams, I pulled up this great old interview with her, part of AV Club‘s “Random Roles” series. Those interviews are generally most interesting when the subject is, like Williams, a lesser-known actor who’s bounced around in a wide variety of parts. Plus, Williams proves to be reflective, candid interviewee.
- As long as I’m treating you to my girl-crushes, the fabulous Mindy Kaling’s musings on romantic comedies (published in The New Yorker, excerpted from her forthcoming book) covers well-worn ground with typical wit. What gets me, though, is the underlying sadness about the decline of the genre she loves—which is sad, damn it.
- Case in point: What’s Your Number? coming out this week. Dana Stevens’s review confirms that there’s no reason for me to see it, which is disappointing because, as Steven discusses, this is just the latest example of the delightful comedian Anna Faris getting stuck with material that squanders her talents.
- Switching gears, this conversation at Salon is a fascinating exploration of the botched release of Drive, which got great festival buzz but terrible word-of-mouth from general audiences who expected one thing and got something very different. (For the record, I might not have been particularly enthusiastic about the movie, but I knew what I was getting in to.)
- This “Model-Morphosis” series for the New York Times‘s style magazine is so much fun to play with. The photographer took close-up shots of Fashion Week models before and after they went through hair and makeup, and the website allows you to slide back and forth between the two perfectly matched images. The young women are beautiful even without all the styling, of course, but the styling is beautiful too—and often astonishingly transformative. (Via The Hairpin.)
Much Review About Nothing 