From Not Hot to Hot

After a year of lunacy, the Scar-Jo Hotness Meter, also known as the Maxim Hot 100, has returned to normalcy.  The 2013 list was a month late April's Fool joke that attempted to pass off sock puppet Miley Cyrus as the hottest woman in the world.  That offense was so egregious, this blog did not post a Hotness Meter in 2013.  Inexplicably, Miley Cyrus is still number 25 on the 2014 Hot 100 but integrity has been restored as Scarlett Johansson has risen from number 15 to number 2.

So, with Ms. Johansson being par for the course, Candace Swanepoel is -1, Rihanna is a +10,  Beyonce is a +20,  Zoe Saldana is a +28, Paula Patton is a +47, Kerry Washington is a +64 and Gabriel Union is a +80.

As usual, Rosario Dawson and Halle Berry remain too hot for the Scar-Jo Hotness meter.

~rave!

Lost in the Cloud Atlas

I don't smoke or drink but after watching the Wachowski's 
"Cloud Atlas" I felt like I was sharing the doobie Tom Hanks 
and Halle Berry passed back and forth during the Luisa Rey 
movement of this filmic symphony.

"Cloud Atlas" is the kind of movie you feel you should dress 
up for - like going to the theater or going to the symphony. And, 
unfortunately, that is the kind of audience it will ultimately draw. 
Atlas requires the type of sophistication and patience a night at 
the opera might require. A film patron will need the forbearance 
and the fortitude to abide as unfamiliar characters and stories
slowly take stage and unfold with no particular urgency.

The viewer is adrift for long passages of this movie, the primary 
flaw being the lack of a notable thru-character to latch on to and 
care about. There are a few linchpins – Doona Bae and Jim Broad-
bent  being particularly striking as the genetically engineered 
fabricant, Sonmi-451, and the vanity publisher and late in life 
swashbuckler, Timothy Cavendish, respectively. Elsewhere 
formidable star power is muted as big name actors such as Tom 
Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugh Grant and Wachowski repertory player, 
Hugo Weaving, frequently disappear under mounds of makeup. 
In fact, one of the delights of the movie is sitting through the end 
credits and being wonderfully surprised by who was playing who.

You have to respect the high ground the Wachowskis are playing 
on and it is doubly nice to see that, as in the Matrix Trilogy, there 
are black people in the future and they fare pretty well.

In the end I must agree with book critic Robert K. J. Kiheffer 
who wrote, "for its pleasures, Cloud Atlas falls short of 
revolutionary." It may not be a masterpiece, but it is a stunning 
canvas.

~rave!

Is this the End?

This may be the demise of the Scarjo Hotness Meter.  Not because Scarjo (the redoubtable Miss Scarlett Johansson) is not on the 2012 Maxim Hot 100 List - she is, at number 17 - it is because the list is such a joke that ranking women on the list relative to Scarjo's current position is not only ridiculous but irrelevant.

If the editors of Maxim no longer care, why should I?  Who cares that cartoon mom Lois Griffin, number 85, is a +68 on the Hotness Meter?  LOIS GRIFFIN?  I mean, Rihanna is the first black woman on the list and she is number 32 (+15).  Zoe Saldana is 45 (+28) and LaLa Anthony is 93 (+76).

Meagan Good and Gabrielle Union didn't even make the list and, as always, Halle Berry and Rosario Dawson remain TOO HOT for the Scarjo Hotness Meter.

~(no)rave!

Scarjo, redux (2010)

There may be hope for the Scarjo Hotness Meter after all. After Scarlett Johansson tumbled from 2 to 34 in last year's Maxim Hot 100 (losing considerable "hotness" by marrying Ryan Reynolds) we feared for the worse but ("hail, glory!") she has rebounded to number 14 and made the SHM respectable again.

Using the recalibrated SHM, where Scarjo is par for the course, the ubiquitous Zoe Saldana is a -11. Rihanna is a -8. Eva Mendez is a -3. Selita Ebanks is a +2.

Dania Ramirez +16
Jessica Alba +20
Gabrielle Union +43

And, for the third year in a row, Halle Berry and Rosario Dawson remain so hot they are OFF the Scarjo Hotness Meter.

~rave!

A Star is Born

Mila Kunas' performance in The Book of Eli surprised me. Going in I was not a fan. I found her eight year run as Jackie Burkhart on That 70's Show to be the weakest link of a talented and underrated ensemble cast. As Burkhart, she was shrill, selfish and annoying - like nails on a chalk board. But, and this is where movie stardom comes from, the camera loves her. As I was watching "Eli" it occurred to me that Kunas with her big eyes and pouty lips looks like a young Angelina Jolie. There was a toughness - a rod of steel in her character. On screen with Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman, she holds her own. And, narrow as she is, Kunis looks like sex. All our hardest working female stars look like sex: Angelina Jolie, Halle Barry, Rosario Dawson, Kate Hudson, Penelope Cruz, Scarlet Johansson, and now, Kunis. Watch her work.

Maxim's Hot 100 2009 ruins ScarJo Hotness Meter

By moving Scarlett Johansson from number 2 in 2008 to number
34 in 2009, Maxim has totally screwed up the calibration on my
ScarJo Hotness Meter. I mean, of course we are all disappointed
Scarlett married Ryan Reynolds but did that warrant dropping her
32 spots? The only thing that remains constant is that Halle Berry
and Rosario Dawson remain so hot they are OFF the Scarjo Hotness
meter.

An aside, if you took every woman in the top ten of Maxim's 2009
Hot 100 and rubbed them together, you still could not start a fire.