Big Neddy -- and A Warning About Ya-Yas

You've got to respect Ned Beatty: the man has range. Depending on how you think of him at any given moment, he's the figure of harmless affability as Lex Luthor's sidekick in the Superman movies, or he's the seven minutes of bombastic but hypnotic corporate evangelism in Network, or he's the genial but less-than-honourable father-figure (as he was on Roseanne, or he's perhaps the most famous victim in film history, the poor bastard raped in Deliverance. Right now he's starring in a New York production of Tennessee Williams' Cat On A Hot Tin Roof as Big Daddy, and the NYTimes has a glowing review for his performance, though not for the production entire. The production costars Ashley Judd and Jason Patric (that still strikes me as odd casting on both counts). But it's great to hear that Beatty's been able to find a venue for his abilities: it seems quite some time since I've seen him in anything new.

On another note: I sat through (rather as one sits through a lobotomy) Ashley Judd's The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. The less said the better about that vapid, self-indulgent excuse for a film, except to say that only James Garner comes off with any sort of aplomb. In such a shrill chick-flick he comes in now and again with a quiet gravitas that had the head-relieving effect of several Tylenol 3s. Poor Maggie Smith! How the hell did they drag her into that fetid fiasco of estrogenic apologism? Good rule of thumb: if the book, film, song, or play you're about to experience has the words "Ya-Ya" in it, chances are you're in for a stomach-pumping experience.