Words Seem Out Of Place

Ranking my top five Catwoman performances in film and television. Click here  for the previous entry in the Catwomen rankings. 1. Michelle Pfeiffer,  Batman Returns  (1992) As a young girl, I was completely obsessed with Catwoman. When I heard that Tim was making the film and Catwoman had already been cast, I was devastated," says Pfeiffer. “At the time, it was Annette Bening. Then she became pregnant. The rest is history. I remember telling Tim halfway through the script that I'd do the film, that's how excited I was. That's Michelle Pfeiffer, discussing her momentous turn as Catwoman in Tim Burton's Batman Returns (1992), from a 2017 interview with The Hollywood Reporter. It's important to remember, we were this close to never having Michelle’s transcendent performance .  Annette Benning was cast and about to begin filming when she found out she was pregnant. After she dropped out, Pfeiffer squeezed into the black latex  and the ...

Ranking my top five Catwoman performances in film and television. Click here  for the previous entry in the Catwomen rankings. 2. Julie Newmar,  Batman  (1966–1968) The gold standard. Let's get this straight, right from the start: Julie Newmar's performance as Catwoman in the 1960s Batman  television series set the gold standard against which all other Catwomen would be judged. She was the first actress ever to play Catwoman in live action. She left such an indelible mark on audiences, that even today, more than fifty years after she played the part, she's still the Catwoman for many fans. She's right though. Newmar is absolutely electrifying. She brought a dancer's elegance and grace to Catwoman's movements, masterfully using her physicality to express the character's innate playfulness. Every time she slinks into frame in the Cat-suit, you can practically feel the heat radiating right through your screen. Cat scratch fever. ...

Ranking my top five Catwoman performances in film and television. Click here  for the previous entry in the Catwomen rankings. 3. Eartha Kitt,  Batman  (1966–1968) In the 1960s, casting Eartha Kitt as Catwoman in Batman had to be considered a bold move. Women of color were rarely given prominent roles on television before this. With Julie Newmar (stay tuned, she's still to come in the countdown) unable to don the sleek and sexy cat-suit for the series' third and final season (due to a movie commitment), talented performer and singer Kitt stepped into the stiletto boots and turned in a memorable series of appearances. From Bat-Mania : 'We felt it was a very provocative idea,'  recalled producer  Charles FitzSimons   about executive producer Bill Dozier’s selection of Eartha Kitt as Catwoman; ' She was a cat woman before we ever cast her as Catwoman. She had a cat-like style. Her eyes were cat-like and her singing was like a meow. This came as...

Ranking my top five Catwoman performances in film and television. Click here for the previous entry in the Catwomen rankings. 4. Adrienne Barbeau, Batman: The Animated Series (1992–1995), The New Batman Adventures (1997–98) It's almost impossible to understand the insanity that was Batmania in the US (and elsewhere, too), circa 1989 through the early 1990s. Tim Burton's Batman (1989) sparked a Bat-renaissance, the likes of which had never been seen before, or at least not since the 1960s television series. From that moment on, Batman became the most popular DC Comics character, and maybe the most popular character in all of comics—two distinctions he still holds today. Batmania, circa 1989, in full effect. Still riding the wave of Bat-hysteria, Warner Bros. released Batman Returns (1992), Burton's ambitious, batshit (heh heh) crazy follow-up. It's easily one of the weirdest mainstream superhero movies ever made, and even today remains deliciously su...

Ranking my top five Catwoman performances in film and television. For nearly eight years now, Catwoman has been of the coolest, most interesting comic book characters in mainstream comic books. She's a wonderfully, endlessly fascinating character, deep and complex, fun and fierce. She recently left Batman at the alter in DC Comics and is now starring a new solo series. Few characters in comics are as well beloved as Selina Kyle, that's for sure. Art by Joelle Jones, from the new Catwoman series, DC Comics. She's made the transition to media besides comics often over the years. Seven actresses have played her on film and/or television, and many others voiced her in animation, making for a dozen or more multimedia versions of the character. Catwomen, L-R: Lee Meriwether, Eartha Kitt, Julie Newmar, Michelle Pfeiffer, Anne Hathaway. Five stand out above the crowd, though. I'll be posting one entry a week (fingers crossed!), counting down my top five ...

Revisiting—or in a few cases, watching for the first time—and celebrating the work of Michelle Pfeiffer,  the best actress of my lifetime. Sometimes in movies, an actor or actress gives such a charismatic and fully realized performance that it rises to the level of high art itself. Case in point: Michelle Pfeiffer's legendary performance as Selina Kyle/Catwoman in Tim Burton's Batman Returns (1992). Burton's second Batman film is delightfully weirder than his first—it's chock-full of a deliciously twisted black humor and everything feels more loose and assured. Make no mistake though: twenty-five years on, it's Pfeiffer's embrace of that weirdness in her quintessentially fierce and sexy turn in the catsuit that remains the movie's most lasting legacy. What's most rewarding about Pfeiffer's work here is how much nuance she brings to Selina's arc, from meek and mousy secretary to ferocious and extroverted antihero. Early on, while estab...

In which our narrator tries to read his way through the endless stacks of books that are slowly overtaking both his bookshelves and his life. If you think it's been a while since the last post in this series, you're correct. During that stretch, I finished Stephen King's  It . I'm a longtime King lover, so I'm an easy mark for this one, yet so far I'm not ranking it in my top five King books. I'm fine with the excessive length (1,100 pages) if it's warranted, but at times it felt like needless meandering. Still, a terrific book, at times also terrifying and at others heartbreaking. And, um, that ending? I finished the book several weeks ago and I'm still not sure how to discuss it. You can read about the scene I'm referring to here . To say it yanked me right out of the book is an understatement. I'm no prude, but even I was disturbed by it. It's not only distasteful but also feels like a narrative leap that comes out of nowhere. ...