Post by Ace on Dec 12, 2004 14:45:15 GMT -5
Lauryn, especially for you. 
Toronto Star: Ab fabulous trumps ab flab in Hollywood
GEOFF PEVERE
It's curious that Oscar hasn't developed a six-pack yet. Just about everyone else in Hollywood has.
As much as we cling to quaint conversational standards of "realism" in movies, and as quick as we are to point out inconsistencies, continuity gaffes and other lapses of "truth" in them, we seem to have no problem with abs.
Indeed, we seem to expect that everybody, particularly action heroes, will have them, despite the fact that, in what passes for real life, most people are abjectly abless.
But there they are: Taut and glistening on Troy's Brad Pitt, poking conspicuously from the midriffs of the Macedonian marauders in Alexander, moistly presumptuous on Hugh Jackman in Van Helsing, competing for attention with Vin Diesel's immaculately shaven dome in The Chronicles Of Riddick, and even giving the computer-generated androids a run for their money in I, Robot.
As anyone who saw that Will Smith heavy metal-scrapper of movie must recall, our hero rolls out of bed in the first scene to reveal a body that suggests a future governorship of the State of California for the former Fresh Prince.
I mean, the guy is built. As in engineered.
And that's the thing. Smith's body — like Pitt's in Troy — isn't just buff, it's the product of a concerted professional campaign of state-of-the-art flesh-sculpting.
As anyone who's made even the most minimal thrice-weekly attempt at ab-management will tell you, those midriff muscles are the hardest to interest in responding, the first to fight back with resentful stabs of pain, and the least likely to maintain any semblance of form.
Particularly if you're of a certain age, maintaining optimum ab form is nothing short of a declaration of war on gravity. It never ends.
So how come you never see Smith — or any of these guys bearing abs that look like they just swallowed a fully mature turtle whole — working out?
The fact is, when Smith's future cop rolls out of bed at the beginning of the movie, he should hit the floor and do the first 500 or so crunches of the daily 2,000 it probably takes to keep that belly as chromium-hard and smooth as it is.
But no. After taking a moment to take a gratuitous look-at-me shower, he eats breakfast and gets down to the business of pulverizing legions of upstart robots.
(Which are skinny, have no abs and are therefore about as threatening as an army of tailors' dummies.)
Granted, watching anybody do a few hundred crunches might dampen a movie's dramatic momentum, but if you're going to have a tummy that looks like it was forged in a Pittsburgh steel mill, the least you can do — particularly to all us sedentary consumers of hot buttered fat out there in the dark — is extend the courtesy of showing us the effort involved.
I don't know about you, but, otherwise, I feel like a lesser life form. A shapeless amoeba, perhaps, or a spineless jellyfish.
Are we supposed to believe that abs somehow develop naturally on these people? That the mere fact of their celebrity somehow exempts them from the torturous drudgery of ab management?
In Troy, a petulant Ulysses sits out the better part of a war sulking in his tent. But does he turn to flab?
Does he grow man-breasts, sprout love-handles or spring unsightly stretch marks? Not on your measly mortal life, he doesn't.
He maintains maximum definition throughout, as though the Gods themselves were doing sit-ups on his behalf on the slopes of Olympus.
When Ryan Reynolds' insufferably smartypants vampire hunter in Blade Trinity is captured and bound by badass bloodsuckers, he is conveniently unshirted.
And, wow, the dude's clearly a graduate of the Michelangelo School of Marble Sculpting. You can hear the collective gasp in the theatre.
And does he work out? Do we ever see him do so much as a parallel leg lift? Nope. He, too, would seem ripped by mere dint of being in an action movie. Or maybe some kind of download. God knows you can order organs online; can abs be far behind?
As common as marble-sculpted physiques are in movies these days, it's easy to forget they're a relatively recent donation to our cultural experience.
Prior to the 1980s, when Sly and Arnie so successfully substituted muscle tone for character, even the most macho movie stars bore flab — and bore it proudly.
In retrospect, Victor Mature, once considered Hollywood's most prime specimen of grade-A beefcake, looks more like Jane Russell than Brad Pitt.
Bogart was singularly undeveloped in the cut department, as were Lee Marvin, Paul Newman and Marlon Brando, whose signature tight T-shirts were perhaps less the result of swelling musculature than early escape attempts of the latent muumuu wearer he was to become. John Wayne was a lifelong girdle-wearer, and Robert Mitchum was clearly no close friend of sit-ups.
(Interestingly, when someone like Robert De Niro was seen working out in movies like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull or Cape Fear, he also happened to be playing sociopaths.)
Even superheroes had looser utility belts. George Reeves, TV's Superman during the steak-and-cocktail Eisenhower years, looked like Kryptonite wasn't his only weakness. But that only made his acts of gravity-defiance that much more impressive. "Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's a middle-aged guy!"
And then there was Adam West. TV's hyper-square Batman in the mid-'60s, West wore his singular lack of muscular development with pride.
Dressed in a form-fitting blue Batsuit that looked like it doubled as lounge pyjamas for fondue nights at the Batcave, West always looked on the verge of coronary crisis during those "Zap!" and "Powee!" dustups with the bad guys.
I miss those guys. And I miss their flab. Despite the fact that they were as masculine as the next guy — okay, maybe not in the case of Batman and Robin — there was an honesty in their acceptance of bodily imperfection.
It was as if they knew the right fight to fight, and it wasn't the war on love-handles. Even though old-school movie heroes looked like they didn't work out for six months prior to shooting, the Mitchums and the Marvins were as tough as they come.
You suspect they could knock even a superbuff Ryan Reynolds sideways with a gob of spit.
There are signs of hope, a kind of backlash of blubber.
The insistently unfit Bill Murray runs about jiggling in a speedo in The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, Adam Sandler plays a cook who puts his profits where his mouth is in Spanglish, and Paul Giamatti's face hangs in sad symmetrical tandem with his neglected paunch in Sideways.
Even Pierce Brosnan let it go for his role as a greying jewel thief in After The Sunset, permitting a bulge around his Bermuda shorts that 007 would never have let slip his cummerbund.
Among these we may well find the emergent male movie heroes of our age, proud of their lack of tone, willing to share their natural decrepitude, and with way better things to do than 2,000 ab crunches per day. Like act.
You might remember that. I'm told it's what they once gave Oscars for.
Toronto Star: Ab fabulous trumps ab flab in Hollywood
GEOFF PEVERE
It's curious that Oscar hasn't developed a six-pack yet. Just about everyone else in Hollywood has.
As much as we cling to quaint conversational standards of "realism" in movies, and as quick as we are to point out inconsistencies, continuity gaffes and other lapses of "truth" in them, we seem to have no problem with abs.
Indeed, we seem to expect that everybody, particularly action heroes, will have them, despite the fact that, in what passes for real life, most people are abjectly abless.
But there they are: Taut and glistening on Troy's Brad Pitt, poking conspicuously from the midriffs of the Macedonian marauders in Alexander, moistly presumptuous on Hugh Jackman in Van Helsing, competing for attention with Vin Diesel's immaculately shaven dome in The Chronicles Of Riddick, and even giving the computer-generated androids a run for their money in I, Robot.
As anyone who saw that Will Smith heavy metal-scrapper of movie must recall, our hero rolls out of bed in the first scene to reveal a body that suggests a future governorship of the State of California for the former Fresh Prince.
I mean, the guy is built. As in engineered.
And that's the thing. Smith's body — like Pitt's in Troy — isn't just buff, it's the product of a concerted professional campaign of state-of-the-art flesh-sculpting.
As anyone who's made even the most minimal thrice-weekly attempt at ab-management will tell you, those midriff muscles are the hardest to interest in responding, the first to fight back with resentful stabs of pain, and the least likely to maintain any semblance of form.
Particularly if you're of a certain age, maintaining optimum ab form is nothing short of a declaration of war on gravity. It never ends.
So how come you never see Smith — or any of these guys bearing abs that look like they just swallowed a fully mature turtle whole — working out?
The fact is, when Smith's future cop rolls out of bed at the beginning of the movie, he should hit the floor and do the first 500 or so crunches of the daily 2,000 it probably takes to keep that belly as chromium-hard and smooth as it is.
But no. After taking a moment to take a gratuitous look-at-me shower, he eats breakfast and gets down to the business of pulverizing legions of upstart robots.
(Which are skinny, have no abs and are therefore about as threatening as an army of tailors' dummies.)
Granted, watching anybody do a few hundred crunches might dampen a movie's dramatic momentum, but if you're going to have a tummy that looks like it was forged in a Pittsburgh steel mill, the least you can do — particularly to all us sedentary consumers of hot buttered fat out there in the dark — is extend the courtesy of showing us the effort involved.
I don't know about you, but, otherwise, I feel like a lesser life form. A shapeless amoeba, perhaps, or a spineless jellyfish.
Are we supposed to believe that abs somehow develop naturally on these people? That the mere fact of their celebrity somehow exempts them from the torturous drudgery of ab management?
In Troy, a petulant Ulysses sits out the better part of a war sulking in his tent. But does he turn to flab?
Does he grow man-breasts, sprout love-handles or spring unsightly stretch marks? Not on your measly mortal life, he doesn't.
He maintains maximum definition throughout, as though the Gods themselves were doing sit-ups on his behalf on the slopes of Olympus.
When Ryan Reynolds' insufferably smartypants vampire hunter in Blade Trinity is captured and bound by badass bloodsuckers, he is conveniently unshirted.
And, wow, the dude's clearly a graduate of the Michelangelo School of Marble Sculpting. You can hear the collective gasp in the theatre.
And does he work out? Do we ever see him do so much as a parallel leg lift? Nope. He, too, would seem ripped by mere dint of being in an action movie. Or maybe some kind of download. God knows you can order organs online; can abs be far behind?
As common as marble-sculpted physiques are in movies these days, it's easy to forget they're a relatively recent donation to our cultural experience.
Prior to the 1980s, when Sly and Arnie so successfully substituted muscle tone for character, even the most macho movie stars bore flab — and bore it proudly.
In retrospect, Victor Mature, once considered Hollywood's most prime specimen of grade-A beefcake, looks more like Jane Russell than Brad Pitt.
Bogart was singularly undeveloped in the cut department, as were Lee Marvin, Paul Newman and Marlon Brando, whose signature tight T-shirts were perhaps less the result of swelling musculature than early escape attempts of the latent muumuu wearer he was to become. John Wayne was a lifelong girdle-wearer, and Robert Mitchum was clearly no close friend of sit-ups.
(Interestingly, when someone like Robert De Niro was seen working out in movies like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull or Cape Fear, he also happened to be playing sociopaths.)
Even superheroes had looser utility belts. George Reeves, TV's Superman during the steak-and-cocktail Eisenhower years, looked like Kryptonite wasn't his only weakness. But that only made his acts of gravity-defiance that much more impressive. "Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's a middle-aged guy!"
And then there was Adam West. TV's hyper-square Batman in the mid-'60s, West wore his singular lack of muscular development with pride.
Dressed in a form-fitting blue Batsuit that looked like it doubled as lounge pyjamas for fondue nights at the Batcave, West always looked on the verge of coronary crisis during those "Zap!" and "Powee!" dustups with the bad guys.
I miss those guys. And I miss their flab. Despite the fact that they were as masculine as the next guy — okay, maybe not in the case of Batman and Robin — there was an honesty in their acceptance of bodily imperfection.
It was as if they knew the right fight to fight, and it wasn't the war on love-handles. Even though old-school movie heroes looked like they didn't work out for six months prior to shooting, the Mitchums and the Marvins were as tough as they come.
You suspect they could knock even a superbuff Ryan Reynolds sideways with a gob of spit.
There are signs of hope, a kind of backlash of blubber.
The insistently unfit Bill Murray runs about jiggling in a speedo in The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, Adam Sandler plays a cook who puts his profits where his mouth is in Spanglish, and Paul Giamatti's face hangs in sad symmetrical tandem with his neglected paunch in Sideways.
Even Pierce Brosnan let it go for his role as a greying jewel thief in After The Sunset, permitting a bulge around his Bermuda shorts that 007 would never have let slip his cummerbund.
Among these we may well find the emergent male movie heroes of our age, proud of their lack of tone, willing to share their natural decrepitude, and with way better things to do than 2,000 ab crunches per day. Like act.
You might remember that. I'm told it's what they once gave Oscars for.
;D