Hotness in Hollywood
<p>I had planned my string of meditations on the movies to stop with<br />
three. But, having succumbed to the mischievous blandishments of my<br />
beloved wife Cathy, here&#8217;s a fourth.  Today I shall consider hotness in<br />
Hollywood &mdash; some movies that at least partly sold me with<br />
sex, and how they did it.</p>
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<p>So, without further ado, my personal tribute to the most<br />
incandescent lovelies in recent movies.</p>
<p>First, Kelly Ann Hu in <cite>The Scorpion King</cite> (2002).  No<br />
swashbuckling sword-and-sorcery movie would be complete without a<br />
scantily-clad sorceress in it.  Kelly Ann Hu fills her chainmail<br />
bikini in a way guaranteed to make any red-blooded geek fall to his<br />
knees and howl at the moon.  This is your most traditional sort of<br />
starlet role, as a sexy arm decoration for the male lead.  You<br />
feminist killjoys out there can grump all you want about all that<br />
exposed flesh, but <em>oh</em>&#8230;<em>my</em>&#8230;<em>Goddess</em>&#8230;she<br />
was <em>fine</em>.  And I didn&#8217;t hear any of you gals complaining<br />
about The Rock running around in nothing but a loincloth, did I,<br />
hmmm?</p>
<p>Next, Liv Tyler as Arwen in the Lord Of The Rings movies<br />
(2001-2004).  Another fantasy, another fetching wench.  This one,<br />
however, displays much less skin and gets to kick butt occasionally<br />
&mdash; one of Jackson&#8217;s better plot changes was having her replace<br />
<strike>Gildor Inglorion</strike> Glorfindel in the rescue of the hobbits from Weathertop. Most<br />
erotic moments for me: the close-ups on Liv&#8217;s face and lips as<br />
she was speaking Elvish.  This is surely the most beautiful woman<br />
on the planet.</p>
<p>No discussion of recent screen hotness can possibly be complete<br />
without a nod towards Angelina Jolie in the Tomb Raider movies<br />
(2001, 2003). Given Ms. Jolie&#8217;s luscious natural abundance of curves, I<br />
thought it silly and unnecessary that they padded her for this role.<br />
I admired her game efforts to perform something resembling acting in<br />
the first movie; I feel she she might even have succeeded but for the<br />
horrible dog of a script.  In the second movie she gave up, but no<br />
blame attaches.  My favorite moments were the homages to Diana Rigg<br />
playing Emma Peel back in the sixties.</p>
<p>Now we come to Kate Beckinsale in <cite>Van Helsing</cite> (2004).<br />
Much more active butt-kicking here, albeit conducted in an improbable<br />
leather corset vaguely recalling Frank&#8217;n&#8217;furter in the old <cite>Rocky<br />
Horror Picture Show</cite>.  There is no question about Kate&#8217;s gender,<br />
however, and her sexiness is only enhanced by the array of exotic<br />
weapons and martial-arts moves she wields. Made me want to spar with her,<br />
then bed her, then spar with her again&#8230;</p>
<p>Halle Berry in <cite>Die Another Day</cite> (2002) gets plenty of<br />
alpha-female things to do and ought to have been more convincing at<br />
them than Kate Beckinsale or Angelina Jolie, if only because she isn&#8217;t<br />
trapped in as absurd a setting. But Halle has a problem, which is that<br />
she&#8217;s as dumb as a box of hammers and it shows.  Even Kelly Ann Hu<br />
playing an arm decoration looked more involved and alert.<br />
Still&#8230;still&#8230;Berry was so exotically gorgeous and graceful<br />
that I forgave her for sleepwalking through her role.  On some women,<br />
still photography just works better.  Hollywood, take the hint!</p>
<p>In <cite>Troy</cite> (2004) Rose Byrne managed to out-hottie the<br />
lead.  The way she did it is instructive &mdash; where Diane Kruger<br />
settled for playing Helen as the lacquered blonde bombshell to end all<br />
lacquered blonde bombshells, Rose&#8217;s Briseis seems warm and human and<br />
touchable.  Sometimes, personality matters even when all you&#8217;re really<br />
supposed to be is an object of desire.</p>
<p>Reaching back a little, Sigourney Weaver re-confirmed the proposition<br />
that smart can be sexy in <cite>Galaxy Quest</cite> (1999).  Her comic<br />
turn as a bright woman pretending to be a dumb blonde and chafing at it<br />
was wonderful &mdash; now there&#8217;s a female lead you could <em>talk</em><br />
with the next morning.  I heard a rumor that Weaver was equipped with an<br />
inflatable device that gradually pushed up her breasts to make them<br />
appear larger even as her costume disintegrated during the course<br />
of the movie.  If so, this was funny but just as superflous as<br />
padding Angelina Jolie &mdash; <em>some</em> women have the knack<br />
of being delicious without a centerfold figure, and our Sigourney<br />
is one of them.</p>
<p>And here&#8217;s one I&#8217;ve added for gender balance:</p>
<p>Daniel Radcliffe in <cite>Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire</cite> (2005).  I have it on good authority that the sight of young master Radcliffe with his shirt off can make a woman weak in the<br />
knees.  I&#8217;d solicit some more detailed analysis of this phenomenon, but Cathy tends to drool and mumble incoherently when the subject comes up.  I&#8217;d rather look at Cho Chang, myself.</p>
