Well Played Archives

June 2, 2009

Partly Well Played, Malin Akerman

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great shoes,
polls

Love the hair, makeup, and gams, Malin, but the dress itself is pretty blah:

[Photo: Splash News]

In theory I don't object to the slouchy top and mini, but this one is so languidly draped as to look lazy and tired and kind of bored of being itself. All that bunching in the front seems unsure of where it's supposed to hang, yet too disinterested to figure out an alternative. It's like a giant satin jowl.

Which is what makes her shoe choice that much more brilliant. Because when you have a dress that refuses to wake up from its hanger nap and sparkle, it never hurts to whip out some serious hooves:

Continue reading Partly Well Played, Malin Akerman.

May 21, 2009

Well Played, Paulina Porizkova

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I will have been doing this job for five years in July (wow) and it's given me many helpful and obscure skills. For one thing, I can identify even extremely low level celebrities via very small portions of their face. Most of the time. Occasionally, this leads me to lean over to Heather and hiss, "OMG IT'S GYWNETH PALTROW," when it's actually a dude, but usually I am correct. I am able to justify watching shows like The Bachelorette by sniffing, "It's for work." (It is not.) But most of all, I am able to psychically divine the subconscious messages each celebrity is expressing via his or her clothing choices.

Here, Paulina Porizkova is saying, "I'm 44 years old, and I look AWESOME in what is essentially one of the more subdued costumes from Xanadu on Ice. That's right, this dress is SHINY and I am BITCHIN IN IT. SUCK ON THAT, TYRA."

May 19, 2009

Well Played, Rachel Weisz

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Remember this?

I see it every time I close my eyes. And then I scream anew. Thank God Rachel Weisz realized she needed to do something to wipe this image from our brains and pulled out all the stops at Cannes. Behold:

SHE'S LIKE A WHOLE NEW PERSON. If the woman in the first photo was about to collapse of a terrible mysterious olde-timey condition, the woman in the second photo looks more like the gorgeous femme fatale who's recently arrived in town and who will shortly leave it, having seduced nearly all the men and more of women than you might suspect, managing to relieve them all of large portions of their personal fortunes along the way. And no one will even really mind that much. I mean, look at her. Nice comeback, lady. I suspect, after all, that even she reacted to photos of her Met Gala gown as I did, like this:

Continue reading Well Played, Rachel Weisz.

May 18, 2009

Cannes Well-Played Carpet: Abbie Cornish

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Given that Abbie Cornish historically has looked so severe and dreary and generally unremarkable, this is totally refreshing:

She's smiling! She looks happy and has well-applied makeup! Her dress is romantic and floaty and doesn't -- per her usual -- make me want to ask if she's auditioning for a role as a very severe German nanny in some horror flick called The Paddle Will Smack! Maybe now that all the tabloids have decided Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal are one deep knee bend away from getting married, Abbie finally feels safe chilling out and relaxing and assuming nobody is going to throw tomatoes at her and call her a homewrecker for hooking up with Reese's ex. Which is good. It's long past time to exhale on that one, Abbie. Whether you should now start tensing up about the fact that you and Reese are both dating dudes who have rampant gay rumors swirling around them, and maybe call her and commisserate and arrange to go for donuts sometime... well, I leave that to you. I don't know your life. But I do know you look pretty.

May 13, 2009

Cannes Well-Played Carpet: SWINTON

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This is quite a day. First, Bai Ling manages to make me afraid we've lost another site mascot (come back, Peldon sisters!), and now I can't help kind of digging on our girl SWINTON here at the Cannes Film Festival's premiere of Up:

The reason I pulled this particular photo is to illustrate why, at first, I thought this might be bell bottoms -- and I was getting ready to fire up some comparison to an outfit I could SWEAR Barbara Harris wore in the original Freaky Friday movie, and perhaps a theory about whether Jodie Foster had cooked up some of the old magic to switch bodies with SWINTON and that maybe this meant we were going to see "Jodie Foster" skipping around Los Angeles in shapeless beige tunics and David Bowie hair and makeup.

But, no. It's not bell bottoms. It's a skirt. And the burgundy is a great color on her -- so much better than the way she usually looks washed-out with the blonde hair and restrained makeup. Even with the faintly odd hairdo, I don't know, I can't help thinking SWINTON here looks like a tall drink of water. Or indeed, a tall glass of cabernet. Am I crazy?

poll by twiigs.com

May 12, 2009

Well Played, Jessica Biel

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I was looking at this picture this morning and trying to remember when it was that I decided I didn't like Jessica Biel:

Because she never really did anything all that egregious and yet I just don't care for her and I couldn't pinpoint why. I think it all started when she made a bit of a fuss about distancing herself from 7th Heaven. Not that I liked 7th Heaven, particularly, but there's always something distasteful when someone publicly rejects the thing that made them famous. But I think the real issue came a couple of years ago where suddenly the Hollywood media machine decided Jessica Biel was the Next Big Thing and that we were going to LOVE HER despite the fact that she'd done really nothing all that embraceable. (Other than having a really great body, which is nothing to sneeze at -- I covet her guns here.) Suddenly she was all over the place and it was totally inexplicable, remember? Like, at the Oscars for no reason at all and named like The Sexiest Sex Symbol In the Universe and whatnot? And it kind of didn't work -- after all, she's not really that much more famous now than she ever was, even if she is dating probably one of the most famous dudes in the world. It's the same thing happened that with Sienna Miller. For a while, the movie-going public was told that we were supposed to be SUPER INTO this person, but we were all like, "....no, thank you. No, seriously. No, thank you. NO THANK YOU SERIOUSLY NOW I HATE THIS GIRL PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE WITH THIS. GOD PLEASE SHUT UP WITH THE ENDLESS YAPPING ABOUT THIS PERSON." So I went through a long period of really wrinkling my nose at Jessica Biel, is what I'm saying. And having said that AT LENGTH, I am able to be objective enough to say that I think she looks kind of great here and I love her lipstick color and the dress is good and she looks pretty. FINE. SHE LOOKS REALLY NICE. Are you happy now, Hollywood, ARE YOU?

Phew. God, I actually feel so much better now. I'm really glad I was able to talk that out. Next, can we tackle my inexplicable and undying love for Mandy Moore? I haven't figured that out yet, but I know it's there!

May 1, 2009

Fug or Fab: Kate Hudson; Well-Played, Demi Moore

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dialogue

[Photo: Splash News]

DEMI MOORE: Hahahahahaha!

KATE HUDSON: Hahahahahah...wait, what are we laughing at?

DEMI: Oh, NOTHING!

KATE: Really? You seem so MERRY.

DEMI: Well, yes. I can't help it. I am INSANELY HOT and appear to only get HOTTER as the years tick by. Wouldn't YOU be happy too? Especially if you knew that there was simply no argument as to your hotness?

KATE: Is there argument as to my hotness?

DEMI: Maybe not your hotness...but certainly your dress.

poll by twiigs.com

April 28, 2009

Well Played, Jennifer Garner

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basic (or unbasic) black

Here is one reason I will always like Jennifer Garner. Well, I suppose she could go on Letterman and admit to flossing her teeth with puppies and that she willfully burns copies of Dynasty DVDs just to hear Joan Collins' soul scream, and that might change my opinion. But otherwise, I find her refreshingly normal:

Listen, the dress? It's boring. But J.Gar had a baby in, what, early January? And it's now late April, and she's losing the weight healthily and at her own pace. Most self-congratulatory head-cases in this town would have been one-woman gun shows, ripped to the gills, by March -- and then done a magazine cover about how it took TWO WHOLE MONTHS to drop the weight by working out six times a day, starting a week after the birth, and eating really satisfying palm-sized pieces of fish with lemon juice and a piece of lettuce.

Garner, conversely, looks great here -- but she also looks regular. She's clearly letting it come off the normal way and at the normal rate, and isn't too concerned about remaining housebound in a caftan until she's 90 lbs of muscle. It's just nice to see that kind of an approach to celebrity pregnancy at a time when everyone else decides the inspirational stories involve the likes of Dancing With The Stars' Samantha Harris, who bragged in Us about how she only gained 20 lbs and lost it with, like, one giant sneeze about two weeks after she popped out the baby.

So, well played, Jen. Now just make sure those divorce rumors from before you were preggo turn out to be false, okay? Because I find your family adorable. And your life is, of course, about what I want.

April 27, 2009

Well Played, Your Whole Life: Bea Arthur

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Golden Girls

By now, everyone's probably heard the news that this weekend, our beloved Bea Arthur -- Lady of the Lanai, Countess of Caftans -- passed away from cancer at age 86, sparking an endless parade of "and then there was NOT Maude" status updates on Facebook.

This is how we felt when we heard the news:

I mean, we LIVE on Golden Girls references. We devour memories of the ensembles from that sparkling age.

Yes, Blanche looks batty. But LOOK AT DOROTHY'S TUXEDO THING. I don't know if it's weirdly reflective crushed velvet, or what, but the light catches it as if it's cow-patterned on the skirt. It's AMAZING. And the scowl! Want to see what our souls look like whenever we see something on a celebrity that looks awful? Behold:

Continue reading Well Played, Your Whole Life: Bea Arthur.

April 16, 2009

Well Played, Diane Kruger

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I hope I am not just blinded by the afterglow of seeing how adorable she and Josh Jackson were together at Fashion Week. But I don't think I am -- I think I really just love this on Diane Kruger:

Something about how graceful and lithe she seems to be carries off all the feathers very strongly, the color is lovely and romantic, and the shoes are adorable.

She's becoming a bit like a junior Cate Blanchett for me -- not in the acting sense (if you have ever seen her act opposite Nicolas Cage, you will understand what it must feel like to watch a tree talk to a brick), but in the way that Diane takes big fashion risks that either fail epically or succeed impressively. Plus, both she and Cate carry off with aplomb stuff that would swallow up most other women. For instance, I am certain that if poor old Jessica Simpson wore this, I would wonder if she'd been tarred and feathered -- but seasonally! -- at an Easter Egg hunt. Hell, I am certain that if I wore this, I would wonder the same thing, followed by pondering a quick checkup at my doctor's office for selective amnesia.

On Diane, though? Well played, lady. Now go let Josh cuddle your feathers. You know he wants to so badly.

Well Played

Partly Well Played, Malin Akerman

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Well Played, Paulina Porizkova

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Well Played, Rachel Weisz

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Cannes Well-Played Carpet: Abbie Cornish

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Cannes Well-Played Carpet: SWINTON

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Well Played, Jessica Biel

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Fug or Fab: Kate Hudson; Well-Played, Demi Moore

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Well Played, Jennifer Garner

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Well Played, Your Whole Life: Bea Arthur

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Well Played, Diane Kruger

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