Stars! Stars! Stars!

Tim Cavanaugh | August 27, 2008

I've seen more celebrities in two days wandering around Denver than during the previous two years living in Hollywood. And that's not even counting Matt Damon infomercials. All I can say is, Kurt Russell and Major Dad better be working overtime in St. Paul next week. Here's a sampling I picked up in just five minutes yesterday at the Mile High City's elegant Osteria Marco restaurant:

Princess Diaries star and unindicted ex-girlfriend Anne Hathaway finally finds a man she can look up to:

Bicyclist Matthew Modine regales admirers with tales of his days as a high school wrestler and Vietnam-era Marine:

Clinton-era bad boy Henry Cisneros wonders where his highball glass went:

I thought this was the guy from The West Wing who died, but it turns out he just went to work for Joe Biden:

I also found a group of real live P.U.M.A.s. Even before Hillary Clinton's Harriet Tubmanesque speech, diehard Hillary supporters seemed like those English-speaking, American-uniformed Nazi infiltrators in the Battle of the Bulge -- far more common in the collective imagination than in reality. So I was lucky to squeeze off a shot.

As Dave noted earlier, actual P.U.M.A.s are almost always outnumbered by media types interviewing P.U.M.A.s. I myself came back to ask some questions after snapping this pic, but by then the elusive creatures had vanished. It's a hazard of trying to find opposition around here. The sparsely populated protest area/free-speech zone in Denver's civic center is the tip: All carbon-based bipedal life forms are in the tank for Barack Obama.

Comments

|8.27.08 @ 1:38PM|#

Matthew Modine can burn after making me watch the awful, awful, awful movie Wind.

I even prefer the "sailing" in One Crazy Summer.

That being said, "Henry Cisneros wonders where his highball glass went" would win a caption contest.

|8.27.08 @ 1:40PM|#

I liked wind. That is a bad picture of Anne Hathaway but I am impressed and very jealous you guys got that close her.

|8.27.08 @ 1:44PM|#

Modine can burn because of Gross Anatomy. That's right, bitch--burn for making me think I'd get Real Genius-but-medical-school and giving me a shit sandwich instead. You, sir, are no Val Kilmer. Laslo Hollyfeld FTW.

|8.27.08 @ 2:07PM|#

Episiarch,

Can any movie where you get to look at a young Daphne Zuniga be that bad? Really?

|8.27.08 @ 2:18PM|#

Zuniga and Modine teamed up for Vision Quest first. Zuniga can't save every movie.

Although, she is in the greatest forgotten 80's teen romantic comedy.

The Sure Thing

"I went to Paris once with my wife... boy, am I glad she's dead."

|8.27.08 @ 2:18PM|#

If you want to look at Zuniga, go watch Spaceballs or get some Melrose Place DVDs, but spare yourself this movie. Just awful. And fuck him for Vision Quest too. Man, that was depressing.

|8.27.08 @ 2:22PM|#

Seconds...too...late...

Elemenope|8.27.08 @ 2:25PM|#

Her middle name is "Eurydice".

Hmm...

|8.27.08 @ 2:26PM|#

John, I liked Wind, too. Until I saw it again. Ugh.

Epi, I completely agree.

At least the rest of the cast of Memphis Belle (Sean Astin is in so many of my top movies, it is kinda scary) overshadowed any of Modine's deadpan driveling of his lines.

|8.27.08 @ 2:27PM|#

Epi,

A hundred voices would not be enough to properly explain how much Vision Quest sucks.

|8.27.08 @ 2:52PM|#

The Sure Thing is a great movie; totally underrated and unappreciated. Zuniga is devine in all movies. Speaking of 80s teenage crushes, I saw Elizibeth Shue on TV the other day. My God has she aged well. She is if anything better looking now than when she was young. Looks more like a woman and less cute in her 40s than she did in her 20s.

Kool,

I honestly haven't seen wind since it came out of DVD about 10 years ago. Maybe it is not as good on the second look. It certainly wouldn't be the first movie like that.

Dagny T.|8.27.08 @ 2:53PM|#

Her middle name is "Eurydice".

Hmm...

It all comes back to the Greeks today.

|8.27.08 @ 2:57PM|#

Dag,

If we could just have an intercrural sex post, the circle would be complete.

|8.27.08 @ 3:01PM|#

I saw Elizibeth Shue on TV the other day

Sweep the leg!!! Do you have a problem with that? No mercy!!!

|8.27.08 @ 3:08PM|#

It's sad that Elizabeth Shue never could capitalize on the fearsome career boost provided by Wes Craven's Deadly Friend... That was Kristy Swanson? Well, then Shue could have maneuvered into a better class of roles after her star turn as the Tom Cruise love interest in All The Right Moves. What? Lea Thompson? Then tell me one Shue was in... Karate Kid? There was a girl in that? Did she play the old Asian guy? He had a girl's name, but I didn't think it was "Elizabeth." OK, then who did Shue play in Red Dawn? No? Jennifer Grey? And Thompson again? So that wasn't Shue in Dirty Dancing?

/lazy, cross-posting bitch

Dagny T.|8.27.08 @ 3:09PM|#

If we could just have an intercrural sex post, the circle would be complete.

Per Wikipedia: "Intercrural intercourse has been proposed as an important part of the sexual lives of a handful of notable historical figures known or suspected to have been homosexual or bisexual."

So we also have a tie-in to Epi's "both kinds of bacon" fantasy. Win!

|8.27.08 @ 3:14PM|#

NutraSweet, it all comes down to the Melrose Place space-time nexus. Her brother was on Melrose, which sucked the air out of her career until Leaving Las Vegas which also happened to be about the time Billy was fading out from Melrose. See how it all makes sense?

Or it could just be that she dropped all the extra weight for Leaving Las Vegas and finally stopped looking chubby, combined with critical acclaim, that restarted her career. I prefer my Melrose theories.

|8.27.08 @ 3:17PM|#

Dag,

Grand Unified Wednesday Theory requires only a few more elements:

I'd be hard to fuck a bird in the thighs while it had the flu during the Hillary Clinton speech at the '68 Democratic convention, but with Matthew Modine's help, it might just be possible.

|8.27.08 @ 3:21PM|#

"Or it could just be that she dropped all the extra weight for Leaving Las Vegas and finally stopped looking chubby, combined with critical acclaim, that restarted her career. I prefer my Melrose theories."

The fact that she didn't try to starve herself to death or mutilate herself through plastic surgery probably didn't help her career when she was in her 30s. But now that she is in her 40s the normal sized weight and lack of work puts her leagues ahead of most of her contemporaries. Compare Shue today with Meg Ryan of today. In 1986, Ryan had her beat all to hell. In 2008, Shue has it hands down.

|8.27.08 @ 3:23PM|#

But what did she really do after Leaving Las Vegas? Hollow Man? Molly? Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story?

Of course, at least she's better off than Swanson. When you can play Anna Nicole Smith on Law and Order without padding and special effects, it's time for the glue factory.

|8.27.08 @ 3:25PM|#

John,

"Cute rarely ages well." It was years before I really understood what my father meant.

|8.27.08 @ 3:27PM|#

Sugerfree,

The thing is that Meg Ryan was aging well. She was well into her 30s when she made Sleepless in Seattle and You Have Got Mail and she looked great in both of those. Then she went nuts, had her lips blown up, lost 20 pounds and made a bad soft core porn movie. I just don't get it.

Dagny T.|8.27.08 @ 3:27PM|#

With Modine, all things are possible.

He might have deserved the drubbing he got upthread, but I think being on Weeds has redemptive powers.

|8.27.08 @ 3:28PM|#

John, please save yourself the torment. If you have fond memories of it, leave it at that.

Epi, a buddy in college looked like the evil rich dude in The Karate Kid. We nicknamed him Johnny Bodybags, which turned into just "bags."

(Full disclosure: The Karate Kid was the first movies my dad bought [for me]. I watched it everyday one summer. I still have pretty much the entire movie memorized. Thanks brain, like I need "Hills? What's the Hills?" "She's rich." in my head forever.)

|8.27.08 @ 3:30PM|#

...the first movies...

Fuck.

|8.27.08 @ 3:32PM|#

I hate Meg Ryan, always have.

But what did she really do after Leaving Las Vegas? Hollow Man? Molly? Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story?

Oh god Molly. At least she didn't go Full Retard. Don't forget The Saint. Or do, it's kind of hard not to.

He might have deserved the drubbing he got upthread, but I think being on Weeds has redemptive powers

Maybe if he was on The Shield or Deadwood. You seem to be forgetting Cutthroat Island.

|8.27.08 @ 3:34PM|#

Modine was in Full Metal Jacket. That makes up for a lot of sins.

|8.27.08 @ 3:36PM|#

"I hate Meg Ryan, always have."

How could you look at that cute innocent face circa about 1988 and not want to have sex with her in every disgusting and dirty way imaginable?

|8.27.08 @ 3:39PM|#

How could you look at that cute innocent face circa about 1988 and not want to have sex with her in every disgusting and dirty way imaginable?

I hate her goofy cutesy antics. She acts like an idiot. MADTV pillories her beautifully and it makes me lulz.

I don't like innocent, anyway. It bores me to tears.

Dagny T.|8.27.08 @ 3:40PM|#

You seem to be forgetting Cutthroat Island.

Well, I was trying to, anyways. This is some kind of cinematic S&M. The Saint? Was that really called for?

|8.27.08 @ 3:43PM|#

"I don't like innocent, anyway. It bores me to tears."

No one is really innocent. Looking innocent and screwing like a whore, now that is fun. It is all about the contrast. Obvious bimbos bore me. But to each his own.

|8.27.08 @ 3:50PM|#

How could you look at that cute innocent face circa about 1988 and not want to have sex with her in every disgusting and dirty way imaginable?

Looking innocent and screwing like a whore, now that is fun.

Yeah, baby. I'd take Meg Ryan in her prime over any over-inflated bimbo, ten times out of ten.

|8.27.08 @ 3:51PM|#

I gotta say, the Cisneros pic looks to me like he is measuring something with his fingers.

Just what, I'll leave to your imaginations.

|8.27.08 @ 3:53PM|#

Was that really called for?

You're in the big leagues now, Dagny.

Looking innocent and screwing like a whore, now that is fun

Ah, the Madonna/whore complex. Not my bag.

Obvious bimbos bore me

I wasn't referring to bimbos. Bimbos are for one night stands only.

Dagny T.|8.27.08 @ 4:08PM|#

You're in the big leagues now, Dagny.

In that case, I'll see your The Saint and raise you an At First Sight. Val Kilmer is really too easy.

Ah, the Madonna/whore complex. Not my bag.

Good call there. I've noticed that sometimes in men with a strict religious upbringing, and it gets old fast. But, vive la difference.

|8.27.08 @ 4:12PM|#

I had anything but a strict religous upbringing. I guess I just like women who have a little class in public. I really can't stand trashy broads.

|8.27.08 @ 4:13PM|#

So I was lucky to squeeze off a shot.

Don't leave us hanging here: did you hit any?

Awesome caption on Cisneros. That guy looks like he's downed his share of expensive gin.

Dagny T.|8.27.08 @ 4:17PM|#

I had anything but a strict religous upbringing. I guess I just like women who have a little class in public. I really can't stand trashy broads.

Ah, in the wise words of Ludacris, "a lady on the street but a freak in the bed." Understandable. My beef was with guys who can't handle seeing both sides in the same woman. Issues!

|8.27.08 @ 4:23PM|#

In that case, I'll see your The Saint and raise you an At First Sight. Val Kilmer is really too easy.

You forgot The Real McCoy. And leave Kilmer alone, he was in Real Genius, Heat, Tombstone, and The Salton Sea.

I guess I just like women who have a little class in public. I really can't stand trashy broads.

I didn't say anything about trashy either, John. A woman can be "non-innocent" without being trashy or a bimbo. For instance, a woman who challenges you with a look to impress her, not because she expects everyone to but because she's interested and wants to see if you're up to it. I dig that, and it sure isn't innocent.

|8.27.08 @ 4:31PM|#

Guitar Hero For Christians

Dagny T.|8.27.08 @ 4:37PM|#

SugarFree,

From the link:

"Boiling feces rape pits of hell" are always good.

Dagny T.|8.27.08 @ 4:44PM|#

And leave Kilmer alone

OK, Chris Crocker.

|8.27.08 @ 4:49PM|#

OK, I walked into that one. Touché.

Dagny T.|8.27.08 @ 4:53PM|#

Low-hanging fruit is always appreciated. ;)

Plus, this sentence:

A woman can be "non-innocent" without being trashy or a bimbo.

earns you a free pass for the day. Nicely done.

|8.27.08 @ 5:03PM|#

earns you a free pass for the day. Nicely done

Thanks, but no free passes. Gotta stay on my toes. Besides, if you don't do it, NutraSweet will.

Dagny T.|8.27.08 @ 5:13PM|#

Alright then, float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. There is no free lunch. Additional generic comment, Brian!