Posted by
Townhall Movie Girl on Thursday, December 18, 2008 2:56:42 PM
Movie Girl's been busy this morning/afternoon while Rush currently plays in the background. I'm counting the days until my vacation begins, and trying to find something to brighten what has been a gloomy, dark day here at home. Hard to believe it's nearly 1 in the afternoon. So I thought...why not play around and find the first of my Hubba Hubba pics...so here we go....
Oh! A bit of explanation. Over on one of my favorite blogs, Dirty Harry's Place, he started what he calls his daily Hubba Hubba. Like most men, he has an eye for the beautiful, and once upon a time, there were women in Hollywood that were true and often unique beauties, many of them fine talents as well, but lovely, sexy, the kind that sent men's hearts racing. Many female movie stars today are so cookie cutter and after a while, their looks and even their names start to seem similar. So Harry, bless him, started running pictures of I guess the Hollywood female stars that make him go...well...'Hubba Hubba.' But no males. Okay, I'll give him that. Harry is -- after all -- a man, but there are women that comment on his site too...and our desire to see sexy men has gone unfulfilled. So I decided to 'counter' Harry (no insult to you DH) by beginning my own Hubba Hubba pics: the male actors and movie stars of both the past and the present who send my own heart racing and often send me into a swoon when I see their photographs or watch their movies again and again. I can't promise to post a new one every single day, but I'll at least give you ladies one a week, along with why....
So enough words for a moment....Here's hoping you approve and since I can't find (yet) how to actually post a photo to Townhall, you can find my 'moment' right here:
http://movie-girl987.livejournal.com/
Oozing sex appeal and a raw natural talent rarely seen in today's movies, he was christened "the new Brando,' a man who can metamorph from one movie to another until you could often place his characters side by side and only see the slightest resemblance.
New Zealand's son, now a native of Australia, he had made numerous movies -- some in Australia, a couple for American markets (appearing alongside such stars as Denzel Washington, Gene Hackman, Sharon Stone, Leonardo DiCaprio) -- but it was Curtis Hanson's powerful adaptation of LA Confidential that put him on the map for most of us in the United States. I saw this movie in January 1998, feeling that this would be the Oscar competition for Titanic. I was right. When the dust settled, only one person in Hanson's movie had won an Academy Award nomination and the award for best supporting. Not a single man from LAC was nominated, especially not the man now best known as Maximus in Gladiator.
Bud White is one of my all-time favorite characters in movies. When I first saw LAC, I thought Bud little more than a thug and a bully and a deep down racist. But as the movie continued, as I considered it more and more, I realized that in other hands, the character could have been just that in the simplest one-dimensional terms. But what we got, thanks to Crowe's interpretation, was a man who cares for women and despises their mistreatment (as seen in his very first scene or when he rescues the kidnapped Mexican girl who has been raped -- watch how he tenderly covers her naked body); as someone who has no problem rooting out the corruption in the LA, but begins to hate that he is treated -- by his own department -- as nothing but a brainless, muscular enforcer...when he knows he'd be a good detective if given a chance. He thinks he's dumb and stupid, but somehow gets one step ahead of the "smart" guys in the movie, by becoming a real investigator. We hate many of his methods (shooting an unarmed, naked guy in cold blood and then falsifying evidence), but in a way, we understand why our world often needs a Bud White. And hey, he even gets the girl!
So massive kudos to my first Hubba Hubba and this Movie Girl's all-time favorite actor inside a movie star's body: Academy Award winner, Russell Crowe.