Happy 45th birthday to Laura Dern! I was looking through my old Laura Dern posts this morning and just a couple of weeks ago for David Lynch's birthday I'd asked which Lynchian Dern character was hotter, and I already listed a list of my favorite performances of hers for her birthday back in 2009, and I've given loads of love to The Face a million times over, and on and on - she's always been one of my favorite actresses. Very nearly literally always - I remember watching the Joyce Carol Oates "Hormones will kill you!' adaptation Smooth Talk in school and it was instantaneous, this affection for her. I need to go back and rewatch Smooth Talk, it's been a very long time (plus all that vintage Treat Wiliams, mmm). It was the very next year she hooked up with David Lynch for Blue Velvet (although I wouldn't see that movie until much later), and then come 1993 came Jurassic Park and there was no looking back. And now she's getting some of the kudos she has long long deserved with Mike White's brilliant Enlightened, and the world in this respect feels right. Point being, I would so sit on the side of the road with a cow for her.
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5 comments:
Love the Laura Dern and always will - maybe most of all in Year of The Dog - a hilarious caricature that never felt mean or false, just true to life. She's a wonderful, versatile actress.
Get out of my head. I just watched Smooth Talk for the first time this morning.
It's funny. I started loving her in Jurassic Park. Then I bumped into Rambling Rose on HBO and I was pleasantly surprised by it.
Many years later, I came around her smaller roles, but always by accident (October Sky, Mask, I am Sam). It took me a bit more, when I got to her collaborations with Lynch (her Lula and, above all, her Nikki/Susan are such incredible performances) to realize how much I love(d) her. Then there was We Don't Live Here Anymore and Happy Endings, happy encounters indeed.
I still haven't seen several of her performancers: Citizen Ruth, Recount, Enlightened and now Smooth Talk, being the ones I'm more interested in.
And it's so exciting that her next film is Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, with Amy Adams and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Rob - Yes, she's so wonderful in that. SO FUNNY. I am so glad she's stayed with Mike White. She's so smart about keeping in with the right filmmakers who know how to use her.
Adam - What did you think? Is it terribly dated? I haven't seen it in so long it seems like a movie that would be really really dated now.
Eduardo - I still have never seen Ramblin' Rose, which means I can't yell at you about seeing Citizen Ruth like I want to. But... urgh...oh my god see Citizen Ruth!!! I can't help myself. YOU MUST SEE IT NOW. And Enlightened is just genius, so that too. And she's so good in Recount too! God I love her so much. I have got to finally see Ramblin Rose, dammit! I'll try to chase it down this weekend.
I thought it was one of those great '80s teen movies that totally gets the angst of the age like All the Right Moves or Vision Quest. It's not of that caliber, but it's sincere and sexy enough to have a sort of timelessness. Not to mention Dern and Williams are to die for in it.
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