Nicole Kidman

This post is about a month overdue, and I'm not sure why we never got around to it before, but it's never really too late to sing hymns of joy to the heavens, is it? Some team of angels up there somewhere is having a bad day and is going to be all, "You know what, thanks, Fug Girls, because we were out of Philadelphia Cream Cheese and we spilled Diet Coke on our robes, and the harp broke a string, and now God's all mad because Spencer Pratt won't shut his lousy piehole for five minutes -- so, the tardiness of your praise, resulting from your inattention to detail in the last month, ended up turning this craptacular day into a fairly decent one, even if your crooned praises make our ears want to bleed a little. Here, have a Divine Twinkie, on us."

So here we go: Thanks to some new photos from a movie set, we can finally scream HALLELUJAH.


[Photo: PacificCoastNewsOnline.com]

Nicole Kidman has gone back to having a hair color. And it's a RED color.Okay, so she might still be Botoxed to the nines, but she's not washed out nor bleached to within an inch of her scalp's life, nor do I fear I need to confine her to her bedchamber and feed her chicken soup. She looks so much better! Ladies and gentlemen, IT'S ALIVE!

I just... I wish so many things. I wish I had a Diet Coke in my hand. I wish all the daytime soaps didn't suck right now. I wish those Charmin commercials with the dancing cartoon bears who flaunt their wiping habits had never been made. And I wish Nicole Kidman would stop wearing white.



I also wish she hadn't done her hair that way, but let's get back to the clothes: White DOES NOT WORK FOR ME ON HER BODY. Although Nicole has done what she can with makeup, I think it totally washes out her beautiful skin, especially without the darker red hair to balance it. As a fair skinned person myself, if I wore this, I suspect someone would come up to me and say, "I'm so sorry to see that you apparently have been locked in an attic for five years. You must have very strong WiFi in your house." Not to mention how the gown itself seems overly slouchy, and as if it's some sort of dying exotic bird that is about to molt its last feathers. I mean, seriously, if I yanked out the tails of some of my old My Little Pony toys and crimped them, and glued them to a skirt, it would be a pretty decent approximation of what's happening down around her feet. It saddens me. Bounce back with some color next time, Nic. I know you can do it -- you once wore chartreuse, woman! Be bold again.

Sigh. I got spoiled, guys. When Nicole Kidman was pregnant, she looked so much more like her normal, pre-Botox, To Die For self and I guess I hoped it would stay that way. Because I am naive.

Look at her back in April, though:



Seriously, is that a FACIAL EXPRESSION I detect? Traces of actual movement in her brow? SMILE LINES? I thought she'd blitzed those off her face completely.

Compare that with the RoboKidman on the cover of this month's Australian In Style:

We've been a little hard on Nicole Kidman occasionally, especially how she ALLEGEDLY seems to have jacked up her former face with so much paralyzing Botox. But I have to say, I am not one of those conspiracy theorists who believes she's faking the pregnancy, because a) that's insane; b) this is not Passions, as much as I wish it were and that Zombie Kidman would start showing up at events, although maybe she DID and that explains why Nic seemed a bit bodysnatched the last year or so; c) she looks pregnant in ways that are hard to fake, like her face; d) I can't think of a good reason why Nicole Kidman would need to go through all the rigamarole to fake something like that when she's adopted before, and also, again, NOT INSANE; e) she's got a glow lately, and it really suits her.

I don't really even care about the dress, although that ruby color is fantastic on her. What grabbed me was the loose, flirty, relaxed hair and what appears to be a genuine smile -- those are things she's been missing for a while, in favor of looking really pulled-tight and rigid and wan. Now if only she would get in line behind Nicole Richie at the Los Angeles Clinic For Looking Like Healthy And Lovely Like This All The Time And Not Just When You're Knocked Up, we'd be in business.

You know, whether it's fair or not, I feel like if Cate Blanchett wore this I'd be sitting here thinking, "Oh, that crazy Cate, always trying something endearingly wacky." Maybe she'd even pull it off. But when fellow Aussie Nicole Kidman attempts things that are off-kilter, it just makes me tired.

It's like, "Remember me? From that movie I did a long time ago that you liked? Well, this movie didn't really work out, but hey, I'm still acting! Still here! My younger husband waxes his chest and I brush his hair! It's what all the kids are doing! I'M HIP AND RELEVANT! PAY ATTENTION TO ME! " Meanwhile we're watching her airbrushed, still-Botoxed face stare smugly at all those sheer panels on the sternum, the thighs, and the ribcage, relieved that it is not the one dressed like an overly treated art-deco window in a Victorian funeral home. Although I'll give her this: At least it's distracting us from fixating on her bump. Or her allegedly missing Botox.

How nice of Nicole Kidman to detour off the Yellow Brick Road for her movie premiere.

But be warned, Nic: Now that the Tin Man has a heart, he's going to have LOTS of horny women dressed in aluminum foil competing for the chance to break it. So you'd better get going again if you want to be the one manning his oil can.

Nicole Kidman is many things: a fairly talented actress, allegedly the author of a yet-to-be-published tell-all about her marriage to Tom Cruise, and best as a redhead. She is not yet, however, to my knowledge, an Upper East Side matron on her way to the board meeting of her favorite charity. Not that you'd know it from this:

[Photo: infdaily.com]

I once worked at a company we'll call The Button Factory, although it was not a factory and buttons weren't involved, unless you were telling me which ones you wanted on your custom, $25,000 ottoman. And at The Button Factory, I worked for a woman we'll call Mulva. And Mulva was awesome. She swept into that office every day looking like a million bucks, in short little Chanel suits and very high heels and expertly coiffed hair, generally carrying a package that had been FedExed to her from Gump's in San Francisco containing a tiger-shaped broach with rubies for eyes. She had booze at every business lunch and she once stared deep into my eyes and said, "honey, the whites of your eyes are the whitest I've EVER SEEN." She would have snapped up this entire ensemble from Nicole, shortened the skirt, and worn the heck out of it.

Of course, she was also seventy-five years old.

Wait a second.

We finally get Keith Urban in a suit -- a REAL one that doesn't calculatedly expose his baby-smooth, greased-up pectorals -- and Nicole Kidman honors the occasion with a dress whose color scheme more befits an airport-souvenir-stand shot glass that screams, "I Love Miami"? That is MESSED UP, Nicole. I don't care if you love Miami. I don't care if you sing, from memory, the song extolling their home city that Dorothy and Rose wrote and performed on that one episode of The Golden Girls. That doesn't change the fact that the dress is really... well, it's ugly, Nicole. It is. And it makes you look like you haven't eaten in six months. I'm so sorry you accidentally wore a see-through dress the other week, but seriously, did you have to bounce back by running straight to a neon assault on nature? COME BACK TO US.

I still miss Nicole Kidman's red hair -- can anyone explain to me why she and Lindsay Lohan refuse to return to the hair color that both flatters them best and truly sets them apart? I realize red is expensive to keep up because it fades so fast, but it's not like either of those people are hurting for cash, and bleaching it blond isn't all that cheap or low-maintenance either, so please, ladies (ESPECIALLY the uber-generic washed-up Dina-clone-lookin' Lindsay), get back on the titian horse -- but I have to say, I think that a) that aside was way too long, and b) Mrs. Urban's hair looks really sleek and lovely right now. She's even got the blonde so that it washes her out less. It reminds me of how awesome she was in To Die For.

But she certainly doesn't look very happy. Did someone just call her "a taller Naomi Watts-type"? Did someone put that shot of sweaty Tom grooving on Katie up on a big screen? Did Keith cancel on her so he could make an appointment with his chest waxer?