Gearing up for the summer action movies, Lori and I list our favorite female action heroes of all time, from Bridget Fonda in Point of No Return (1993) to Halle Berry in Die Another Day (2002) to Michelle Yeoh in three movies, including the upcoming Mummy one.

Along the way, we lament the lack of non-martial arts roles for Asian American actresses, debate whether Harry Potter's Hermione can properly be considered an "action hero," and argue over the value of women in Bond movies.

Plus: which female action heroes were the most groundbreaking? Check out our answers, and then let us know if you agree in the comments.

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One of life’s great shared injustices is the yearbook photo. We all had to get them. And — unless they’ve somehow magically found a cure for awkwardness, geekiness and general dorkitude since I was a teenager — most of us dreaded them. For whatever reason, be it bad skin, bad clothes or the steadfast yet ultimately misguided belief in the transformative properties of big bangs, many of us look back at our school pictures and cringe. Or, at the very least, giggle. But you know what? Celebrities had to get them too, just like us mere mortals. Now that is what I call justice.

So, let’s play a little game called Name That Teenager. It’ll be fun; like being back in high school, but already knowing what everyone will look like at the class reunion. Let the games begin:

Among them you have a Rock star, an Alien hunter, an alphaBette and the possible next president of the United States of America.

Give up? … continue reading

How do you get a bunch of actors to stop talking? Wait, wait: I know this one. Does it involve a pineapple, a screwdriver and a three-legged dog? Oh, sorry; you weren't joking? In all seriousness, the way to get a group of top-flight, big-name actors to finally stop speaking is to stop giving them scripts. A slew of A-list actors are appearing in the new Speechless campaign, a collaboration between the striking members of the Writers Guild of America and members of the Screen Actors Guild.

So far 14 black-and-white, mostly wordless spots have been released, with more on the way. Among the actors already appearing are Oscar winners like Holly Hunter, Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn and TV heavyweights like America Ferrera, Eva Longoria and Ed Asner. Even L Word alums like Rosanna Arquette and Alan Cumming joined in the silence. Here are some of my favorites so far. (For the entire list, check the Speechless channel on Brightcove.) … continue reading

There are several reasons why I have long admired Kate Beckinsale. She’s a talented actress, who is capable of both excellent comic timing and subtle emotional response. She is, to state the obvious, extremely beautiful. She’s intelligent — she had started a degree at Oxford, studying French and Russian, before she dropped out after her third year to pursue her flourishing acting career. But, courtesy of the fan site KBeckinsale.net, I think I may just have found another reason to admire her:

The site doesn’t state what year this photo was taken, but I think it’s safe to assume she can’t have been more than 18. I honestly cannot imagine what you would have had to do to me when I was a teenager to persuade me to pose with my mother (that’s Kate’s mom, actress Judy Loe, on the right), in matching outfits as if we were both dancing. I truly think that there’s something admirable, not only about being able to do something so adorably dorky, but also to look really cheerful doing it. Mothers across the world must wish their teenage daughters would be as sulk-deficient as Kate.

Perhaps the cheerfulness has something to do with the fact that it was about this time that she captured her first big-screen role, featuring as the sweet, innocent Hero in Kenneth Branagh’s excellent film adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing. I was 12 the year the movie was released, in 1993, and when I set eyes on Kate, it was pretty much love at first sight: … continue reading

In this week's countdown of dumb celebrity and entertainment news, we cover the outing of Dumbledore, moms cashing in on their celebrity daughters' fame, and Law and Order: Criminal Intent's wonderful contribution to the canon of evil, psychotic lesbians on TV (for more background on that, read Malinda's 2005 overview on Lesbian and Bisexual Women on Law and Order).

You may notice this week's episode is a little shorter than usual. That's wasn't intentional, it just worked out that way this time given the topics we had to work with. And the fact that Lori accidentally erased the video of some of our first takes, so we had to rant about the same topics a few times, and we somehow got more succinct along the way. We won't let that happen again! Next week we promise to be get back to our usual long, rambling rants.

(If you can't wait that long, check out Friday's She Made Me Watch This, where there's plenty of ranting and rambling). … continue reading

Watch it here now:

Considering it's the season of goblins, ghouls and other assorted creatures of the night, I thought I might hop online to see if any new vampire movies are set to debut in the near future. (I would go see 30 Days of Night, but Josh Hartnett bugs me for some reason.) And what to my wondering eye should appear but news of a third Underworld film.

Naturally, my heart leapt with joy at the prospect of more time spent ogling Kate Beckinsale in that tight little number she wears so well.

But alas, while a filming schedule has been announced, word has it that the lovely Ms. Beckinsale is not involved in the project. Apparently, the writer/director of the Underworld franchise, Len Wiseman (who just happens to be married to the lovely Beckinsale), has chosen to do a prequel rather than a sequel. Yes, it is the movie kiss of death. … continue reading

I just read that Angela Bassett has joined the cast of Nothing but the Truth, a political drama loosely based on the Valerie Plame scandal.

Bassett is busy these days. According to IMDb.com, she has two movies (Gospel Hill and Of Boys and Men) in post-production, two (Truth and Meet the Browns) currently filming, and one (Toussaint) in pre-production. And I couldn't be happier. As Siege noted recently on the blog, smart women are hot — and Yalie Angela Bassett is both very smart and very hot. I first noticed her as Katherine Jackson in The Jacksons: An American Dream, which used to play on VH1 every 20 minutes or so. And I kept noticing her as her career took off. … continue reading

Nothing but the Truth sounds worth seeing even without Bassett — although it might feel a little too “ripped from the headlines.” Written and directed by Rod Lurie (The Contender), the movie focuses on a reporter (Kate Beckinsale) who is jailed for outing a CIA agent. In a nice bit of optimistic casting, Bassett plays the editor-in-chief of the Washington D.C. newspaper for which Beckinsale writes. How many real-life major-market newspapers are helmed by African-American women? And the ensemble cast is pretty impressive, as well.

I really, really hope this is just a rumor. A British gossip column is claiming that Kate Beckinsale has landed the lead role in the Barbarella remake I rambled about last week.

Kate Beckinsale?! No no no no no no no. She's wooden and boring, and doesn't appear to have any kind of camp sensibility. Jane Fonda made that role work because she knew how to be earnest-faced most of the time and then winkingly self-aware at just the right moments. Beckinsale can do earnest-faced, all right, but that's because she has to put so much effort into conveying the most basic of emotions.

I suspect I'm in the minority here: I know Kate has her fans. But if Beckinsale plays Barbarella, I won't see the remake in the theater, and might have to skip it altogether. I'm still recovering from the giant yawn that was Underworld.

Well, really, Kate Beckinsale wants to trade bodies with Queen Latifah for a day. The Underworld actress told Glamour magazine that she would love to pull a Freaky Friday with The Queen because Latifah has "gigantic real breasts." In the interview, the less-endowed star said she dreams of test-driving a larger cup size.

"I am so fascinated by breasts because my mother didn't have them, either. If I had them, I'd run up and down flights of stairs!" … continue reading