Reader, I shagged him

There are cinematic obsessions and there are literary obsessions. Sometimes they mingle in our brains. Tainted, we re-read with movies in our heads, yet while watching movies, we are haunted by the ghosts of the books which have been sliced and diced in the production. I've dwelt on some of my literary adaptation obsessions before--Hamlet, Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice-- and I daresay I'll talk about them again in future. That won't prevent me from harping on them today.

There have been 21 adaptations of Jane Eyre, including one currently in production for release next year. As always when a new adaption comes out, one looks back at what has been and wonders why we need another. With Jane Eyre, most the actresses who've played the title part have been great, always laboring to look less pretty than they are in frumpy center-part hair-dos. The Rochesters on the other hand. . . the Rochesters! A Jane Eyre is only as good as its Rochester.

Rochester, we know from the book, is supposed to be plain, as well as shortish, broad-chested, and hairy with an uneven temper and a tendency toward incivility. He is often depicted in illustrations as looking a bit like, well, Wolverine from X-Men. (Invariably Rochester has awesomely big mutton chops, which is one of the things that keeps me coming back to adaptations of Jane Eyre.) Jane, with her artist's sensitivity to shape describes him as a solid square block. I've wracked my brain to think of an actor that fits this description and the best I can come up with is perhaps a young Edward G. Robinson. (Well he has the right first name, at least). That is not to say the a pretty, tall, blond, affable American can't try to play Rochester, but he will probably fail as badly as William Hurt did in 1996.

The first Talkie Rochester was Colin Clive. With a script that pares the story down to a 62 minutes, so little of the original story left here that it's difficult to judge. Clive is surely all wrong: he's congenial and handsome, and when he says he's been living in torment for 15 years his tone of voice seems to say, "it's dashed inconvenient having an insane wife, you know, old sport. Blood curdling screams interrupting house parties and all that." Still, I like Clive because he's obscure and English. He was tormented in his real life, I think. I just wish we got some of it on the screen.

The 1944 adaptation is often credited to its star, Orson Welles, though it was surely mostly directed by the competent Robert Stevenson. Welles did have a large amount of input on casting and possibly even directing some scenes himself. It is the touchstone adaptation, the one that everyone remembers, and it invented quite a lot of business that wasn't in the novel. One of the screenwriters was Aldus Huxley who had created the buoyant but faithless adaptation of Pride and Prejudice a few years earlier. Huxley invents a famous scene in which Helen Burns, (played by a young Elizabeth Taylor), Jane Eyre's doomed school chum, has her hair cut by the vice-hunting Mr. Brocklehurst. Many subsequent adaptations have had a similar scene. The book includes only a passing remark that the students in the school didn't like him because he starves them, gives long sermons and cuts their hair. I think we should take that to mean that it was required to keep one's hair short, not that he took the time to perform a gruesome public shearing with his own hands while sermonizing about vanity. Yet this visceral scene lives on because it works to visually express the cruelty and near-slavery that Jane experienced in her young life.

The 1944 version was my introduction to the story and I was disappointed to learn that my favorite line--Welles' raspy, "Jane, would it be so wicked to love me?" --is actually changed from the book. (It's even better in the book because Jane retorts, "No, but it would be to obey you.") The first time I read the novel I was not only surprised by the substantial trimming of the story, but shocked by the fact that the book really is more about the title character than it is about Rochester. Imagine, reader, nearly a hundred pages go by with barely a mention of his name. Joan Fontaine can hardly begin to capture the essence of the character because she simply isn't allowed to do go there. The best Jane scenes from the book are all cut from the adaptation and even her passion for Rochester is watered down. Jane in the book is sorely tempted not to leave after the wedding is interrupted. This wasn't something the film makers could really get into in 1944.

The novel's Rochester is funny, generous, playful, capricious, silver-tongued and romantic. He is so much more than the brooding bad boy he's too often mistaken for in pop culture. This is a dude who will throw a huge, month-long house party, at risk of exposing a dread secret to the world at large, cross-dress as a gypsy fortune-teller, and propose marriage to another woman just to find out if his governess really likes him or not. He has style. Orson Welles certainly first captured this dashing quality in Rochester. Welles doesn't try to hide his American accent; he just plays the haughty aspects of the character to the hilt. As Rochester himself would, he dares you find fault with him. I love that he doesn't shy away from the character's many complicated and long speeches, but seems to relish Rochester's talkiness. In still pictures, Welles' soft, boyish beauty bleeds through, but on screen his cigar-chomping swagger and bossiness are the main thing, we notice. He is Rochester because he believes he is and so do we. His confidence is everything.

George C. Scott, another confident, cigar-chomping American also played Rochester, not long after Roots had invented the American mini-series television format. This was always my father's favorite adaptation, and I half-suspect that is partly because he could pretend he was watching Patton instead of Gothic romance.

Because Rochester is an anti-hero it is no surprise that the novel has many references to Macbeth (another role played with panache by Welles). While Rochester is not as bad as Macbeth--as far as we know, there are no murders in his past, just hints of more of a sex life than was generally allowed in novels about decent people in the 19th century--he does have a lot in common with Shakespeare's silver-tongued blackguard. He also has a lot in common with another famous Scottish badboy, the womanizing, James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell. In the novel, Blanche Ingram compares him to "black Bothwell." It is interesting bit of trivia that Bothwell, had several common law wives, one of them, named "Janet," who was thought to be a witch. Rochester refers to Jane frequently as "Janet" and on more than one occasion teasingly accuses her of witchcraft.

The sensual side of Rochester, Rochester the lady killer, was best captured by Toby Stephens in the 2006 adaptation. I confess that I totally ripped off the headline for this post from a newspaper story promoting this mini-series adaptation. The script dwells on all those scenes from the novel where Rochester explains sex to Jane, in deeply unnecessary detail. Meanwhile, he goes about in his shirtsleeves and riding boots, pinning butterflies to cardboard and other acts of obvious innuendo and generally being as hot as a guy who was described by his creator as "an ugly man" dares to be. The screenwriter carefully turns the fact that Jane does not find him handsome into a joke. In one scene, which re-writes classic Victorian literature as PG-13 fan fiction, Rochester tries to prevent Jane from running away from Thornfield by pinning her to bed and making out with her. It almost works, but Jane must inevitably sneak away late at night, while lots of female audience members are thinking-- nay, shouting at the screen--"What's a little attempted bigamy, anyway!?"

Another too handsome Rochester, was Timothy Dalton in 1983. I find this one the weakest of the longer-form adaptations, because it suffers from bad production values and makes substantial changes to the plot. Yet Dalton is fun to watch and at times his brusque manner makes him almost a little unattractive. Almost. I would probably like the whole thing better if they had given him mutton chops.

Spend any time with the Cult of Rochester, whose members are fewer but no less ardent then those in the Cult of Darcy, and you will inevitably be led to Michael Jayston, the star of the 1973 BBC adaptation. Though this serial suffers from 70s BEEB production values (funky hair, make-up and costumes; sets and interior lighting more at home in a cubicle farm than a shadowy old house), it has a devoted fan base. It is one of my favorites because of Jayston who wonderfully captures the teasing tone of so much of Rochester's interaction with Jane and allows you to see that he is quite in love with her. Yes, he's blond, lightly built and more civil in his 19th century incivility than your average "perfect gentleman" is nowadays, but Jayston brings dignity to the role, refusing to ham it up. He inhabits the character rather than putting him on to strut around for a few hours, as many actors do. With a script that is practically a transcription of the novel (down to annoying voice-overs that unnecessarily explain what Jane is thinking), he really gets to bring the character to life.


So after all this do we need another Jane Eyre? I think we do. In the novel, Rochester goes occasionally goes into fugue-like states while describing his romantic past. He seems transported and talking to creatures that aren't in the room. He is very nearly insane, streching arms out to embrace angels and arguing with invisible witches. Of course, Macbeth sees ghosts (and witches), too. Combine these delusions with his obviously depressed state through much of the novel, and you could make a solid case that there is more than one member of the Rochester clan who is nuts. The 1997 adaptation starring Ciaran Hinds suggested a mentally unstable Rochester, but more often than not Hinds' interpretation came out seeming like a series of wildly inappropriate acting choices. I'd love to see a truly batshit Rochester, played like a manic depressive, perhaps. Also Rochester and Jane talk nearly constantly of fairies, sprites and folk tales. Though the 1944 and 2006 adaptations are mysterious and stylized, I'd love to see an adaptation that was even more over the top in this regard. The upcoming adaptation promises to be so which gives me hope, but I worry that its Rochester, Michael Fassbinder, is probably to blond, chisled and Germanic to be quite right.

When Ladies Meet

When Ladies Meet (1941) is one of MGM's megastar dramas, featuring four brand-name stars, lush production values and a screenplay drawn from a high-profile property. For all that, it's a pretty weak film.

The script is based on a Rachel Crother's play about a popular novelist struggling to finish her latest book whose protagonist is a woman having an affair with a married man. In "real life," the author (Joan Crawford) is having an affair with her married publisher (Herbert Marshall). Her boyfriend (Robert Taylor) hopes to break them up by inviting the publisher's wife (Greer Garson) to country week-end with all the interested parties. It's a cracking great set-up for either melodrama or comedy. The script is intelligently written, the characters are interesting and the dialogue strikes a nice balance between wisecracks and wisdom. I can't remember ever watching a movie with a script this good, that I liked this little. Why don't I love this movie?

The problem is the married man. For certain of my favorite movie stars, I have cut-off years. Laurence Olivier is 1960. Michael Redgrave is 1950. And Herbert Marshall is 1940. I know that these actors probably did some fine work after these dates, but I've just never been interested in it. And, to make matters worse, I've so often been disappointed by by their post-cut-off work, that my prejudice has tended to reinforce itself. When Ladies Meet is a rather drastic example of this. The whole thing hinges on Marshall and Crawford's affair, which must be made convincing--but not too attractive because of the production code. This balancing act is rather tricky. As much as I love Herbert Marshall,I don't find him at all appealing here. He just seems too phony and not in the wonderfully cynical way he is in Trouble in Paradise, where the audience is in on the joke. In When Ladies Meet, he has lied to himself as well, and believes that his love for the author is a grand passion that must not be denied. Had Marshall made this movie a decade earlier, when his character could have been given free reign to willingly lead the author to her doom, we might have had something. We might have had Trouble in Paradise Part II, the Love Quadrangle. Instead, what we find out, of course, is that this isn't his first such grand passion and when confronted by his wife, he instantly gives up on his lover. The affair reminds me of the one between Diane Keaton and Michael Murphy in Woody Allen's Manhattan. "The probably sit around on the floor with wine and cheese and mispronounce 'allegorical' and 'didacticism'."

It's hard to believe that Joan Crawford would ignore Robert Taylor to have an affair with this man or that Greer Garson would stick by him. Not to mention the fact that you find yourself wondering why a man who is married to a woman fifteen years his junior who looks like Greer Garson is philandering to begin with? And that's just the start of this film's casting troubles.

Garson plays the older, wiser, married woman, and Crawford the young, single profession who is dealing with the realities of love for the first time. Robert Taylor refers to Crawford as a "gal," and the whole point of the script is that she's rationalized herself into a big mistake. Garson was only a year older than Crawford, but she seems much younger--perhaps because she'd only been acting in film a few years while Crawford had been a familiar face for well over a decade. In any case, Crawford comes off as far too worldly to fall for Marshall's malarky. If these two actresses had to star, it would have made more sense to reverse their roles. Garson has really good chemistry with Taylor, as well, making it even more puzzling that he doesn't go for her instead.

Taylor is great fun here, getting all the good lines and some physical comedy. In one memorable scene Garson takes him out on her tiny sailboat, and he pretends to know what he's doing while feeling desperately ill and scared. Spring Byington and Rafael Storm nicely round out the cast, playing the third couple at the unhappy country week-end, so wrapped-up in their perpetual redecorating that they scarcely notice the melodrama unfolding around them.

I look forward to watching the pre-code version of this film with Ann Harding as the wife, Myrna Loy as the mistress, Robert Montgomery as the boyfriend and Frank Morgan as the two-timing publisher. Replace Morgan with Marshall would be Fantasy Football casting.

Four Feathers Fail

The dangers of Cosplay: Haversham disguised as the enemy.

Gosh, I thought I was in the mood for The Four Feathers. I guess not. I'm usually all about obscure British actors cheerio-ing it up in pith helmets in foreign lands. I can't get enough Korda brothers, and, lately, I've even made my peace with splashy Technicolor spectacle films. In this one, the acting is good, the cinematography is wonderful and yet, through most of the movie, I found myself a little restless and bored. Had I been watching on the Big Screen, I have no doubt that, I wouldn't have moved a muscle for fear of missing a second of travelogue glory, but, at home in my basement I had to stand on my head just to give myself something to do. I think I checked all the actor's bios on IMDB. ( Did you know that Ralph Richardson and Laurence Oliver revived the bombed-out Old Vic just after the war? )

Even in my basement, I manage to watch and thoroughly enjoy Lawrence of Arabia. I love that film less for its landscapes and more for its honest and moving portrayal of friendship. I think it is the best movie ever made on the subject. Four Feathers promises a similar vein of Kipling-esque camaraderie in the Victorian-era British army. The problem is that the four friends, after a brief introduction, quickly go their separate ways. The story begins with the engagement of an officer in the army and the daughter of an army General. The officer, Harry Faversham, decides that he doesn't want to participate in a foreign war because he wants to get started on married life as soon as possible. He resigns his commission and his friends and fiance resign their friendship with him, presenting him with a Victorian bitch slap: a box of four feathers. Haversham then takes the crazy step of trying to participate in a foreign war without actually being in the army anymore. If nothing else, this movie serves as an excellent example of what not to do if you are unhappy in the military.

What keeps me coming back to the likes of Gunga Din, The Lives of the Bengal Lancers, and even The Last Outpost is the give and take, the Victorian Army trash-talk if you will. But John Clement's Harry Faversham determinedly pretends to be mute even when he does meet up with Ralph Richardson's blind Captain Durance (OK, that part is pretty awesome. Faversham leads Durance--the faux mute leading the blind?-- across the desert to safety and then gets arrested because he has disguised himself as a Dervish. Talk about no good deed going unpunished.)

Four Feathers is fairly strong in the romance department. June Duprez, one of my favorite obscure British actresses, acquits herself admirably as the beautiful woman who dumps Haversham for his cowardice but continues to love him anyway. In these kinds of movies, the love story is usually tacked on, so it's refreshing to see the romance actually work for the material rather than against it. Four Feathers is a decent movie, but, given all its incredible natural resources, it should be better. More time on character and less on landscapes and battles, would have helped, I think.

The Mindreader (1933) Picspam!

Warren William plays a sideshow mystic who falls in love, hits the big time and then loses it all. Good lordy, I love this movie. This is probably my favorite Warren William film so far. I could gush about William's powerful combination of roguish charm and villainous behavior, his surprisingly solid acting which leaves me feeling simultaneously attracted and repulsed. But I'll let the pictures do the talking. Just click on the pics to see the larger versions, people.

Five words to make any fan of pre-code movies swoon: Warren William in a turban.

"I've got a headache this big!"


Mick LaSalle finally realizes his dream of being on screen with Warren William.


Who's afraid of the big bad Warren?


When The Great Chandra puts his hand on his heart to show sincerity, run for cover.


Constance Cummings gives in to Chandra's charms.


Married life is the pits.


Chandra goes legit selling backscrubbers.


A fancy address, a nicer turban and our hero is ready to relieve rich patrons of their spare cash.

A blackmail scheme gone wrong ends in gunplay and Chandra flees the country, leaving the missus holding the bag. Here, he is performing in Mexico while drunk-out-of-his-mind. I think I saw this guy on a cruise ship once.


Thanks to this project, I've created a new shortcut filter for Photoshop: Warren William Scruff-- the balance of contrast and gray required to show him at his disheveled best.

Chandra begs forgiveness from his wife before turning himself in to the cops.

Like many of the best movies of this era, The Mindreader walks a thin line between farce and tragedy. Something about the times makes this combination work well.

I love this kiss. She's totally giving him crows feet.


Chandra says goodbye to his old pal Mick before heading off to jail.

Tween Angst: Kathleen (1941)

I admit it. I really like Shirley Temple movies of the 1940s. They are safe. They are predictable. They are the antithesis of the kinds of movies I normally like (pre-code or screwball with lots of subtext and edge). So sue me. I'm not consistent and I don't bloody care.

I realized a couple of things while thoroughly enjoying this slight little movie. One: Shirley Temple was a really good actress. You just don't notice her acting. Most of the time she's called on to be an adorable, precocious tween which must not have been much of a stretch. In a few scenes she may be required to do dramatic acting, as well, and she handles it like a pro. The trickiest thing she does though is to appear slightly stupider than she really was. Nothing is so difficult as playing dumb in a convincing way.

Two: many of the 1940s reproduction outfits sold to us by Stop Staring and its ilk and often modeled by women with many tattoos, are actually based on outfits that Shirley Temple wore when she was 12. If you find this fact disturbing, then you are not alone.

While Herbert Marshal was the reason I watched this movie in the first place, his performance is fairly forgettable. I did like the fact that the majority of his lines in the first 40 minutes were mostly monosyllabic grunts. "Hmmm. What? Oh hello there. Hmmm. Well. Humpf." He disappears for another 20 minutes or so, and, when he resurfaces, he is wearing a hilariously ugly plaid jacket and bow tie that I was unable to screencap because my computer is acting up. Dang. Well, anyway those are the HM highlights for Kathleen, such as they are.
















Lorraine Day gives a solid performance as Temple's only-in-the-movies, live-in psychiatrist. Day is likable, caring, and plucky, and she makes the perfect foil for Gail Patrick's vamping. Since Patrick was born to play the wicked stepmother type, it's great to see her excelling at it here. Herbert Marshall is torn between the two and reacts by grunting. Go, Herbert. You grunted your way into my heart in Riptide. There's no reason you should stop now!

The Story of Esther Costello

It's wonderfully ironic that a movie whose villains are sleazy publicity hounds had such a ridiculously trashy publicity campaign. Posters and trailers for the film bore the words, "The management of this theater sincerely believes that "The Story of Esther Costello" will not offend any emotionally mature person of either sex. We recommend it for our adult patrons and more-informed teenagers." (Well that rules out the Nipper, surely!) And the geniuses in marketing didn't stop there. About half-way through the trailer, we get this:


I was planning to discuss this film without spoilers but when the trailer pretty much gives the whole story away, I don't feel such discretion is necessary. Please don't reveal what happens in my post. Oh, wait, I want you to so that you'll bring a crowd of more-informed teenagers to my blog.

The its first hour, this film is a pretty standard, well-acted melodrama, but about halfway through, the script jumps into Lake Whatisthiscrazyshit and doesn't come up for air till the last frame. Joan Crawford plays a rich American woman, Margaret Landi, "permanently separated" from her cheating husband, who goes to Ireland to revisit her youth. Her local priest foists a charity project on her--a deaf, blind, mute girl named Esther Costello (Heather Sears). At first, Margaret resists, but she is moved by Esther's plight and takes the girl to London to see specialists. The doctors reveal that there's nothing wrong with Esther's eyes and ears: her condition was caused by an emotional trauma she suffered in an accident. A bit of a stretch, I'd say, but we aren't in Magnificent Obsession territory--yet.

A series of montages show Esther in America making slow progress at a special school. In one scene, Esther throws a tantrum and Margaret smacks her one. (Take care if you play this movie as a drinking game. Chugging every time Joan Crawford smacks someone will likely result in a blackout). After that, Esther decides she really does know her sign language after all. She becomes a superstar on the deaf-mute inspirational lecture circuit of Catholic schools in Boston. Like an indie band out on tour for the first time, she slowly builds up buzz until she draws the attention of a newspaper reporter, Harry Grant (Lee Patterson). After Harry writes an article calling Margaret a saint, Esther starts touring the country, and a foundation is created in her name. One day, 45 minutes into the movie, the foundation gets a check from Margaret's husband, Carlo (Rossano Brazzi), heretofore not seen in the film. Margaret decides to look Carlo up and the pair are reunited.

The next morning, we see Carlo and Margaret in bed together. Actually, it's two twin beds pushed fairly close together, because, after all, there is still a Production Code to be looked after. Emotional maturity was required to view the moment when Carlo, naked to the waist, is introduced to the young lady who will be his adopted daughter. She's blind, of course, but we're not. I confess I didn't make it through this awkward scene without some Beavis-and-Butthead-style giggling.

Carlo brings in a sleazy publicity agent to manage Esther's fundraising tour. They put together creepy, fascistic rallies in sports stadiums around the country, and begin skimming from the foundation. Nice. As if Carlo weren't enough of a dirt bag, he also begins to indulge inappropriate feelings for Esther. Meanwhile, she has a nice, innocent romance with the young reporter. They don't so much kiss as bump their faces together affectionately.

The story descends into familiar Mildred Pierce territory, as Carlo becomes jealous of the face bumping guy and Margaret increasingly jealous of Carlo. Here's where the crazy comes in. Margaret busts him deliberately under-reporting the take at a fundraising rally, and she does nothing. A few days later, she catches him watching Esther undress. Does she dump him immediately? No, she smacks Esther for forgetting to close her curtains, plans to send her away to college and gives Carlo no choice but to end the tour. Wait a sec! This is a guy you've already left once for cheating on you and you don't see these big red flags waving around! Nope.

Meanwhile, Harry the reporter starts to dig into the financial management of the foundation and doesn't like what he sees. His boss plans to print his story to coincide with Esther's big rally in Nuremberg-- I mean London.

While in London, Margaret has to go to Brighton to cancel an upcoming date on the tour. Carlo is supposed to go to Glasgow, but he decides to stay behind, realizing that this might be his last chance to get Esther alone. He walks around London trying to look evil but seems more like a trench coat advertisement. He goes back to the palatial rented digs, finds Esther asleep and rapes her. The scene isn't exactly graphic, but clever cutting away to a storm blowing in Esther's French doors leaves little doubt about what happens.

The next day, Esther wakes up--distraught about the assault but miraculously able to see and hear again. This is the biggest WTF moment in the whole shootin' match. Apparently, movie blind-deaf-muteness is cured much like movie amnesia--one trauma causes the condition, a second can magically fix everything. Hooray!

Harry arrives and confronts Margaret about the financial indiscretions . Having just found one of Carlo's cufflinks in Esther's bed, she gives Harry permission to take Esther away. They both find out that Esther is magically cured. Oh, that's gonna look good in the papers.

Margaret grabs a gun. Finally, I thought, she sees some sense. She's going to shoot her dirtbag husband. But no: she picks him up at the airport, shows him the cufflink, bundles him iton the car and then drives into oncoming traffic, killing them both. I guess that's easier than divorcing an Italian national in the 1950s.

Yo, baby have you heard? Sex with me cures blind-deaf-muteness.

The management of this blog recommends this campy, strange melodrama for those with a finely-honed sense of the ridiculous.

Dangerous (1935)

At age 27 Bette Davis won an Oscar for playing a burnt-out, drunken, embittered, middle-aged actress, Joyce Heath in this film. She is magnificent as a character so full of nervous energy that even her besotted lover (Franchot Tone) recognizes that she is only bearable if she can work off her neuroses on stage. To her fans, this character is recognizable as Davis' persona, but it's important to note that in 1935 she hadn't done anything like this before. In her must-see performance Davis creates a person who is both self-centered and vulnerable, often within the same sentence.

As glorious as she is, I can't help wishing she'd made this movie in 1948. Young Davis manages to seem world weary enough, but never the frump other characters describe. Shesprings back to youthful perfection too quickly for us to believe she has weather years of hard drinking. Imagine the older Davis in the full flower of her talent inhabiting such a juicy, glorious role. She would have drop-kicked that mofo into eternity. And what if this movie had been made just 18 months earlier, in the pre-code era? Gone would be the insipid, unconvincing ending, in which marital vows are renewed with clockwork precision.

Des,pite these failings, Dangerous is still a great movie. Tone is at his best. I've always liked Franchot Tone. If there were a Tone fan club, I'd probably join it. (And I fully expect to hear of one, as soon as I post this!) Oh, it's true he played all the same sort of wealthy gadabout roles that Roberts Montgomery and Taylor did so well, but Tone brought something unique to them. Perhaps it was that he was a wealthy gadabout in real life. He was, as Mike Connor says of C. K. Dexter Haven, "born to the purple, but still a very nice guy." In Dangerous, he plays an up-and-coming young architect who must choose between his lovely, funny, rich and well-connected fiancee and Davis' washed-up, probably bi-polar, certainly manipulative actress. This seems to be a no-brainer, of course, until Tone glimpses Davis in romantic lighting, wearing his old clothes. She does more for wearing a rope as a belt than even Ellie May Clampit. In this scene Davis has a devilish, nay Satanic, smile that takes half a dozen frames to develop. I've done my best with the screencaps but I fear I've failed. Davis is just one of those stars whom still pictures can never quite capture. Enjoy.