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American actress Heather Graham attends the second day of the 13th Annual Capri Hollywood International Film Festival on December 28, 2008 in Capri, Italy.  I love Heather Graham’s face and hair and figure etc and who can argue that she an amazing specimen of a woman at 38?    We see pictures of her at film festivals, parties, fashion shows and premieres but what has this classical beauty been up to?  She is “in the red” at IMDB with a handful of projects in the works; The Hangover , Boogie-Woogie, Ex-Terminators and Son of Mourning, all of which, I hate to say, look a little underwhelming.  She started her career doing interesting projects like Twin Peaks, Drugstore Cowboy and Boogie Nights.  Where are those roles now?  I’d love to see Heather in some heavy projects.  What do you see her doing?

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One of my favorite films of 2007 is finally seeing its U.S. release this weekend. Gus Van Sant’s lyrical teenage drama Paranoid Park, billed by some as ‘Crime and Punishment on a skateboard,’ will be screening at the Angelika New York. I can’t recommend it enough. Frequent Wong Kar-Wai collaborator Christopher Doyle’s cinematography is moving and intimate, mixing a variety of formats including several skateboarding sequences shot on 8mm by a Portland boarder. Van Sant and Doyle once again chose the 1.33:1 television aspect ratio, a largely neglected format that carries with it a unique set of aesthetic capabilities. Paranoid Park uses its dreamy visuals to illuminate the moral turmoil of its protagonist, a shy boarder who becomes involved in a grisly death.

Go see this film! It’s absolutely terrific, and a fitting end to Van Sant’s brilliant trilogy of Pacific Northwest dreamscapes that began with Elephant. I can also promise the experience will be far more fulfilling than 10,000 B.C.

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