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Here is Scarlett Johansson at the opening night of her Broadway debut, A View from the Bridge. Sidenote: I keep wanting to type “A View to a Kill” which is that awesome Roger Moore-James Bond movie with Christopher Walken as the bad guy. Anyhoodle, ScarJo looks cute, right? Although her styling can be hit or miss, I can appreciate how hard it is for her to cover up her puppies and look classy. The dress seems very old-lady-ish, but on ScarJo it just looks vintage and cute. I like her hair a lot too – but the necklace should go.
Anyway, it seems that ScarJo is a big hit on a Broadway! I haven’t really investigated all of the reviews or anything, but from what little I’ve read, everyone seems to think ScarJo is awesome. Ben Brantley of the New York Times (the biggest bitch out there) even noted that where other famous actresses, like Julia Roberts, Keira Knightley and Katie Holmes “create their own discomfort zones onstage, defined by the mixed expectations of fans and skeptics,” ScarJo “melts into her character so thoroughly that her nimbus of celebrity disappears.” High praise!
What’s extraordinary about Gregory Mosher’s beautifully observed production of “A View From the Bridge” is how ordinary most of it feels. Very little in this revival of Arthur Miller’s kitchen-sink drama with knives, which opened Sunday night at the Cort Theater, calls loudly for our consideration. Voices are often kept to a just audible murmur, and the Hollywood sheen of the show’s big-name stars, Liev Schreiber and Scarlett Johansson, has been dimmed to a matte finish.
Watching the daily rituals of the small family in mid-1950s Red Hook, Brooklyn, made up of the characters so exquisitely played by Mr. Schreiber, Ms. Johansson and Jessica Hecht, feels like spying across the alley on neighbors who would normally be invisible to you. Yet there’s no question of not paying them the attention that Miller demands.
Looking closely, you notice hairline fissures of unease. What has been cozy becomes, by degrees, claustrophobic, and even if you don’t know the play’s outcome, you’re apt to discover a knot in your stomach. A part of you feels that you should stand up and yell, to defuse tension and deflect disaster, though, as one character notes retrospectively, “nothing at all had really happened.”
Mr. Schreiber is such a complete actor that he has often thrown productions into imbalance, highlighting the inadequacy of the performances around him. That is not a problem here. That the excellent stage veteran Ms. Hecht holds her own with Mr. Schreiber is no surprise. That Ms. Johansson does — with seeming effortlessness — is.
In recent years Broadway’s stages have been littered with dim performances from bright screen stars, including Julia Roberts and Katie Holmes. Film actresses as famous as Ms. Johansson tend to create their own discomfort zones onstage, defined by the mixed expectations of fans and skeptics. I was definitely aware of that zone when I saw Keira Knightley in “The Misanthrope” in London recently.
By comparison, Ms. Johansson melts into her character so thoroughly that her nimbus of celebrity disappears. Her Catherine is a girl on the cusp of womanhood, feeling her way down familiar paths that have suddenly been shrouded in unfamiliar shadows.
[From The New York Times]
Good for Scarlett. Does this mean that ScarJo will end up a fixture of the Broadway stages? Who knows? I don’t know what’s going on with her lately. Sometimes I think she’s totally over being a sex symbol and she wants to be seen as a “serious actress”. Other times she seems like she enjoys the Hollywood game, and she plays up her sexy side and her connections. It’s anybody’s guess at this point.
Liev Schreiber and Scarlett Johansson at the opening night on January 24, 2010. Credit: WENN.
Written by Kaiser
Posted in Broadway, Scarlett Johansson
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34 Responses to “Scarlett Johansson is better than Julia Roberts & Katie Holmes”
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Roger Moore played Bond in A View to a Kill. Everyone has the right to their own opinion, but it is considered to be one of the worst of the Bond films.
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With a body like hers…. she should be accentuating her assets, not hiding them under memaw’s fugly curtains.
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All I have to say is…mmmm, Liev Schreiber. Well, and that I can’t recall ever liking Scarlett in anything she’s done.
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Roger Moore. Duran Duran theme song.
ah, the 80′s.
and did Scarlett steal my dead grammy’s dress for this?
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liev schreiber is hot
scarletts dress is not.
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Good for Scarlett!
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Scarlett Johansson please i need this dress from you LOL.
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That dress is so ugly i cringed when i saw it…i thought maybe she was betty white! YIKES!
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Ben Brantley is also the same guy who said Melaine Griffin was “the best Roxy Hart EVER”. So I take his good opinion with a grain of salt.
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Love her. But oy vey.
What a schmatta.
@Black Cat: Thanks. Hilarious comment.
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She is so beautiful that even an ugly dress does nothing but increase her beauty.
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good for her to be great in Broadway!she was great in “lost in translation” and “girl with a pearl”
Betty White is jealous of her dress!
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@blackcat: ha ha ha ha!!
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Scarlett is also doing a ‘meet and greet at the play’ auction on eBay with the proceeds going to Oxfam America for the Haitian earthquake relief fund. Nice gesture from a nice lady!
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IDont know why but she alwaus creeps me out and I cant awntch her in anything.
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She was great in the Horse Whisperer with Robert Redford. I am glad she is doing well on Broadway – I was a bit worried about how she would do on stage.
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I think she and Meryl are trying to bring back bold prints. (knock it off!)
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That dress is hideous!
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I LOVE Liev Schreiber !!!!!!! He never gets enough attention, which I am sure he prefers.
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She is too pretty to be wearing that fugly dress…
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That dress is like an old church lady dress. She is too young to be dressing like this.
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i love Liev!
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That dress is laughably awful…it looks like something I would have picked up from a thrift store and worn as a halloween costume. The hideous print, the puffy shoulders….UG!
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LOL BlackCat! I just think she is the most overrated actress since Kristen Stewart. Laughable as a yoga instructor in HJNTITY(I have never seen a yoga instructor that chunky or inflexible) and overrated as a “style Icon”….
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The dress could have been fun and bohemian when worn in an ironic kind of way.
But with the waxy make-up (you sure that is not her mme-toussauds-wax-figure?), fitting shoes and extremely boring hair-do she looks like a stepford wife.
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I don’t get how this woman became so successful… she has the iq of plywood as far as I’ve seen in interviews and she’s a horrible actress…. WHY WHY WHY… the world just isn’t fair I suppose… and that print looks like the slip cover to an old lady’s couch… and the style is reminischent of what russian old ladies wear to lounge around… it REALLY just does not go well at all with those diamonds…
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I like ScarJo’s movies, but it’s usually the male leads that carry them (Redford, McGregor, Firth, Jackman, Bale, Cruz/Bardem). They’re the ones that make them good. And most of the male leads in her films are A-list, good at what they do (the films where she doesn’t have that strong male actor are usually her worse).
So I’m wondering how much of the good review is just her, and how much is the play as a whole? Because Liev is a pretty good actor, the kind of actor that can pick up her slack (like all the others have done).
I’m still not convinced she can act.
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They both look like chipmunks.
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I say she can play the game or not, as she likes. She’s a screen goddess, married to a seriously hot man, and my girl crush. She’s stable, has real talent, and if she wants to show off the sexpot side sometimes, more power to her. She’s so so so SO much classier than Megan Fox. Now there’s a ho who’s only good at posing in her underwear. Her future career is working with Carmen Electra on pole dancing DVDs.
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A View to a Kill was a little bad but it was Roger Moore’s last Bond film and you gotta love Grace Jones
I know this is supposed to be about Scarlett but I love James Bonds movies
Anyway, that dress belongs to my grandmother who wore it back in the 80s and she wants it back!
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Nothing more boring than pedestrian fashion reviews from the peanut gallery. The observation is almost the same from each of you. Yawn.
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On stage, you don’t get the benefit of multiple takes and editing.
Some screen actors and actresses attempting to transition to the stage are not particularly good at acting anyhow.
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Hahah Red Rooster. Good one! I completely agree. I think the dress is fine – but more to the point, the dress is completely irrelevant considering the awesome review she just scored
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She is still the same old man-stealing whore…
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