Interesting Green: Babes in Boyland

MY PAPER THURSDAY, AUGUST 12, 2010 PAGE A16, ENTERTAINMENT
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Website: http://news.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne%2BNews/Singapore/Story/A1Story20100812-231665.html
By TAY YEK KEAK, myp@sph.com.sg, Thu, Aug 12, 2010

PHOTO: PLAYING MEN’S ROLES: Actress Grace Park will take the role of Kono Kalakaua in a Hawaii Five-O remake
(PHOTOS: INTERNET)
MY PAPER THURSDAY, AUGUST 12, 2010 PAGE A16, ENTERTAINMENT
http://www.digital-geek.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/grace-park-battlestar.jpg

PHOTO: TAY YEK KEAK
MY PAPER THURSDAY, AUGUST 12, 2010 PAGE A16, ENTERTAINMENT

PHOTO: Actress Grace Park
http://cache3.asset-cache.net/xc/82941560.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=77BFBA49EF8789215ABF3343C02EA548758D8699DD867D68804363DF43D065C07A4B5B194A98E22EE30A760B0D811297

COINCIDENTALLY, there are two movies playing right now which show a woman filling a man's role.

PHOTO: Johanna Wokalek
http://static.rp-online.de/layout/showbilder/26216-wokalek.jpg

Pope Joan is about a German woman named Johanna (Johanna Wokalek) who, according to some researchers, supposedly reigned as Pope for a few years during the Middle Ages.

PHOTO: Johanna Wokalek plays a woman who became Pope in the movie Pope Joan
(PHOTOS: INTERNET)
MY PAPER THURSDAY, AUGUST 12, 2010 PAGE A16, ENTERTAINMENT

In the film, she overcomes many male-engendered obstacles to keep her gender a closely guarded secret.

PHOTO: Johanna Wokalek
http://www4.pictures.zimbio.com/gi/Henri+Nannen+Award+2010+P98lRa2vZhxl.jpg

PHOTO: Angelina Jolie took over the role meant for Tom Cruise in action thriller Salt.
(PHOTOS: INTERNET)
MY PAPER THURSDAY, AUGUST 12, 2010 PAGE A16, ENTERTAINMENT

Salt, on the other hand, is a hit action-thriller about Angelina Jolie openly taking over a role reportedly meant for Tom Cruise.

PHOTO: Angelina Jolie
http://www.tattoo-house.ru/desktop/photo/angelina-jolie-1600x1200-01.jpg

As a hotshot Russian agent named Evelyn Salt, Jolie kicks a** in exactly the same way in which Cruise's latest action dud, Knight And Day, kicked sand.

PHOTO: Angelina Jolie
http://topnews.in/files/Angelina-Jolie_5.jpg

Cruise apparently turned down the role of Edwin Salt because it seemed too close to Ethan Hunt, his exalted Mission: Impossible character.

Oops, it's looking like the Bad Move Of The Year, dude.

Somebody posed this question on the Internet - Who's manlier: Jolie or Cruise?

The answer was Jolie because Cruise, it was claimed, did not turn Brad Pitt into the lady of the house.

Thing is, there are some women of late who are taking over men's roles onscreen. Call it a movement that makes guys partially extinct or wholly irrelevant.

PHOTO: Actress Grace Park
http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.com/archive/00156/Grace_Park__156941gm-e.jpg

On TV, Battlestar Galactica's pilot prince Starbuck became a chick (Katee Sackhoff), while co-star Grace Park will be a hot babe replacing a burly fella in the upcoming reboot of Hawaii Five-O.

PHOTO: Actress Grace Park speaks during the "Hawaii Five-0" panel discussion during Comic-Con 2010 at San Diego Convention Center on July 23, 2010 in San Diego, California.
(July 22, 2010 - Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images North America)
http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/KZ0tey3eASz/Hawaii+Five+0+Panel+Comic+Con+2010/pI4nlpJ38hn/Grace+Park

Park has already stepped into a dude's duds for Battlestar. She played Sharon "Boomer" Valerii in Sci Fi's remake. Boomer was portrayed by Herbert Jefferson Jr in the 1978 series.

Park's role in Five-O will be as Kono Kalakaua - originally played by actor Zulu in the 1968 original.

You could say that Sigourney Weaver may be the Renaissance Woman who started this "trend". She apparently took over not one, but three, made-for-men roles. First, she starred as the beastie-basher in the Alien series, then as a network head in 2006's The TV Set and, finally, as a TV producer in 2008's Vantage Point.

PHOTO: Sigourney Weaver
http://images.hitfix.com/photos/201756/SigourneyWeaverPt_gallery_primary.jpg

I cannot confirm, though, whether the sports bra she wore or the masculine stares she gave landed her the part in Avatar. But I do know that Weaver was picked over a man because the film-makers needed a strong female presence.

PHOTO: Sigourney Weaver
http://art.allayers.com/images/large/sigourney_weaver2.jpg

PHOTO: Kristanna Loken
http://www.madnessletters.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/new-red-sonya.jpg

Plus, back in the days before Jolie, Kristanna Loken as a killer machine in Terminator 3 (2003) and Jodie Foster in Flightplan (2005), a gal with gonads was a hot new draw.

PHOTO: Kristanna Loken
http://www.superiorpics.com/wenn_album/Kristanna_Loken_-_Bloodrayne_LA_premiere/KristannaLokenSuperiorpics.comBloodraynepremiere006.jpg

PHOTO: Kristanna Loken
http://www.wallpaperweb.org/wallpaper/babes/1600x1200/kristanna_loken_20070512_26079.jpg

PHOTO: Jodie Foster
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/photos/stylus/124134-Jodie_Foster_Large.jpg

Foster, as a desperate mum looking for her missing daughter in a plane, made Flightplan so riveting you wonder how the role was ever written for Sean Penn in the first place (she even retained the man's name, Kyle, for her character).

PHOTO: Jodie Foster
http://www.wallpapers101.co.cc/images/wmwallpapers/Jodie-Foster-1.jpeg

Times have changed. The glass ceiling, especially in action flicks, has not just been shattered. It has been replaced, reassembled and re-decorated with hotter, tougher and scarier bada**es.

I don't know about you but Jolie coming at me with a gun and tattoos is infinitely more frightening than Tom Cruise with a grin and a Tatler mag.

The assertion of women in movies is not just tolerated but celebrated now. A producer of Salt said this about the sex swop: "We didn't simply question whether a woman would make all the same choices, but also how the other characters would act or react differently, given that it's a woman."

Like a stripper in a nunnery, it changes the dynamics and makes things more interesting. Look, we are not likely to witness The Godfather being recast yet. But give it time, dudettes. We could be seeing The Godmother.

And she would be hot.
By TAY YEK KEAK, myp@sph.com.sg, Thu, Aug 12, 2010

HELPDESK
我的字典: Wǒ de zì diǎn

Gender: 性别 - xìng bié
Extinct: 灭绝 - miè jué
Riveting: 吸引人的 - xī yǐn rén de
Nunnery: 女修道院 - nǚ xiǖ dào yuàn