Summer Better Than Others

June 19, 2007

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Some random thoughts about the summer movie season, so far:

OCEAN’S 13
You know how movies have MPAA warnings about sex and violence and mature language and so forth? I think Ocean’s 13 should have its own special warning, something like: This film may cause female actors over 30 to want to kill themselves. If I was an actress of a certain again and I saw that movie, I would walk out, climb the tallest building I could find and jump.

First off, there’s only one woman in the whole movie, the vivacious and talented Ellen Barkin, who plays the dutiful assistant to the film’s villainous casino boss, Al Pacino. It’s fun to see Barkin on screen and not on Page 6 but her character is kind of a joke; Matt Damon refers to her as a “cougar.” Has this term been around for a while? I never heard of it until recently, and now, it seems cougar is everywhere.

Matt sets his sites on seducing Barkin with a secret sex scent so he can steal some diamonds from under her nose. Barkin’s body looks amazing in her tight hot pink mini-dress -- she clearly hasn’t eaten a carb since The Big Easy. Still, the joke is sort of on her -- the desperate, dried-up cougar. Here’s how I like to imagine director Steven Soderbergh pitched it to her: “You don’t get to eat anything ‘till the wrap party and we still get to call you a cougar. Take it or leave it.”

That Hollywood’s unfair to actresses isn’t news, but it’s particularly striking in this movie because Barkin’s male co-stars, particularly Brad Pitt and George Clooney, practically glow they’re so fabulous. They both look better than ever with their slick suits, perfect hair and shit-eating grins. I love Brad Pitt’s clothes in the Ocean’s movies because they’re a little gay -- meaning tight and shiny -- but not too gay. And George is rocking the dark suits the way only George can.

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