Beauty Vs. Beast - Two Talented Misters

JA from MNPP here with this week's "Viva l'Italia!" edition of our Beauty Vs Beast series - buongiorno and welcome. First a note: I'm going to be out of town next week, so this week's poll will be open for two weeks until Monday April 7th. Where am I going to be, you ask? Well crazily enough I'm going to be in Italy, what a coincidence! (Obviously not a coincidence.)

I didn't choose this week's competition soley due to the fact that I'll be stomping the same grounds that these characters did - oh it didn't hurt, but I've also got The Talented Mr. Ripley on my mind due to the passing of the marvelous character actor James Rebhorn this weekend; he played Dickie's father, the jazz-hater who instigates the whole sordid affair. "I'd pay that fellow a hundred dollars right now to shut up."

That said The Talented Mr. Ripley is giving us exactly what this series was created for - you've got a sympathetic maniac and an unsympathetic victim to choose between, and the film does not make the picking easy. But I'm gonna make you pick anyway!

poll by twiigs.com

Again you've got two weeks, until Monday April 7th, to vote and to make your cases for which ever character you're rooting for in the comments, so have at it. Persuade me - I am actually undecided myself! This is a tough one.

PREVIOUSLY ON As for last week's competition pitting the boys of In Bruges against one another, the puppy-dog eyes plus and the guilty conscience were just too much to resist - Colin Farrell's Ray rode away with precisely 2/3rds of the vote, leaving Ralph Fiennes' Harry cursing (and cursing, and cursing, and cursing) in the dust. As Deborah put it:

"Harry was kind of playing Sexy Beast, whereas Ray was an original."

Beauty Vs Beast - The Boys of Bruges

JA from MNPP here with this week's sorta St. Paddys edition of our "Beauty Vs. Beast" series. I say "sorta" because several factors contributed to me wanting to do a face-off between who we're doing a face-off between, and the lusty leprechaun Colin Farrell making my eyes smile is probably the smallest factor on the list (though Colin being lusty is never negligible, of course).

The main factors were that five of the six pairings so far have been lady vs lady and, though I know we all love our ladies up in here it felt right to swing back to the different-chromosomed side of the fence this round; two, we were just ogling writer-director Martin McDonagh last week at our site; and three, I watched Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel this weekend, as I'm sure many of you did as well, and every time Ralph Fiennes lost his cool therein I couldn't help but think upon Harry.

It's an In Bruges-off, people.

poll by twiigs.com

Sometime before or after you vote and before or after you hit the comments to tell us why you voted the way you voted I would like you to take a moment to appreciate the fact that I made that list of Pros and Cons without using a swear-word once. It was a f**king task and a f**king half, people. Whoops.

PREVIOUSLY ON Last week's poll has closed, SlayerFest 2014 has come to an end, and which Chosen One is left standing victorious? Oh it's Buffy, Buffy Buffy Buffy, always Buffy. Every vampire in Sunnydale and beyond seemed to fall in love with the quippy Summers girl and we proved no different. S'cool, Faith doesn't need you people anyway. Said JS:

"I voted Buffy but most likely I was simply voting for Sarah Michelle Gellar, who gave an acting masterclass for seven years on that show. Faith is definitely the more interesting character, but Faith's best episode was performed by SMG."

Beauty Vs Beast - SlayerFest 2014

JA from MNPP here with this week's new edition of Beauty Vs. Beast! As I noted over at my site last week, today is the 17th anniversary of the first ever episode of Joss Whedon's televisual masterpiece Buffy the Vampire Slayer - "Welcome to the Hellmouth" aired on the WB on March 10th 1997, and some of us have been whooping it up inside that Hellmouth ever since.

If you're a fan you know what happened on Buffy's 17th birthday - let's just hope we can all make it through today without anybody's ancient Gypsy curse being activated by sexual relations. That Angelus, he was a nasty one... but Glorificus did her damage too, The Master and the Mayor - an endless list of memorable villains.

But it's Buffy's dark mirror that's always revved our engines the hardest... 

Welcome to SlayerFest '14!!!

poll by twiigs.com

Only one can make it out alive! The too good blonde, the too bad brunette - make your pick and then we'll all skip class and stake some vamps and dance crazy at The Bronze til the sun comes up and dusts our boyfriends.

"previously on..."
Before y'all hit the comments and give us your reasonings though, a look back at last week's (literal) face-off - we were talking the spray-painted ladies of Death Becomes Her, and sure enough, confounding nobody's expectations - MERYL WON. Team Madeline blew a shotgun hole through Goldie's Helen with about 2/3rds of the vote. (As if we needed to puff up Meryl's chest anymore!) As Rob put it in the comments:

"Hel does have a special place in my heart for eating frosting out of its container with her fingers while rewinding the footage of Madeline dying on film but over and over again. But, in the end, gotta go with Madeline, because FLAWLESS."

Beauty Vs Beast: Death Becomes Them

JA from MNPP here, starting off a new week with a brand new round of Beauty Vs Beast! I hope everybody enjoyed the Oscars last night - there were highs (Lupita!) and there were lows (another year of ill-incorporated montages) but there is one thing we can all agree upon: seeing Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep in the same room like that made us all wish we were watching Death Becomes Her instead.

I was really hoping they'd present together, or maybe Meryl would just randomly scream out "NOW, A WARNING?" while Goldie was on-stage, or maybe Jennifer Lawrence would tumble down the theater's stairs and break into pieces in an elaborate tribute to the nearly twenty-two year old film? ...Something. Anything! Isabella Rossellini could've been carried out onto stage by some muscle men, perhaps? Alas it wasn't to be, save my imagination.

Thankfully I can trot out my imagination here, then. I give you this week's competition...

poll by twiigs.com

As always go ahead and make your cases for and against Robert Zemeckis' forever-living nut-cases in the comments, and in one week's time we'll down the potion and crown our new eternal queen.

And speaking of, crowns and queens and golden things with icy-cold skin, we've got to name our winner from last week's Frozen poll! It was pretty much a blow-out - Princess Elsa had too much diva-draw and strut herself to an easy win against her less flashy sister. As Anne-Marie said in the comments:

My vote is entirely colored by how badly I felt for Anna when I went to Disneyland in January. Literally every Elsa doll in the park was gone, so there were just all of these abandoned Anna dolls all through the park and it just made me so sad for this fictional character. Always living in her sister's diva shadow."

And so she shall remain. Team Elsa for the win!

Beauty Vs Beast: Let It Be... On!!!

JA from MNPP here with this week's brightest bluest newest round of Beauty Vs. Beast for y'all to play. First things first let's look back at last week's competition, which took David O. Russell's film American Hustle and pitted man versus man and woman versus woman (or hair versus hair versus hair versus hair) in an ABSCAM-off for the ages. Things between Team Sydney (Amy Adams) and Team Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence) were close for a wee bit but Sydney asserted her dominace pretty early on, eventually running away with 67% of the votes for the win. But over between the fellas the face-off between Team Richie (Bradley Cooper) and Team Irving (Christian Bale) stayed suuuper close over the course of the week - ultimately Richie squeaked it out, literally, beating Irving by two votes, or just 0.0037% of the total. Team Cleavage takes it away!

And so on to this week's tail-end-of-winter pre-Oscar festivities. Disney's Frozen is probably going to walk away with the Best Animated Film Oscar this Sunday for its efforts at shattering the Disney Princess mold and freshly focusing its sights on the sisterly bond over the usual princely fixations. (Although let's be honest, that Kristoff fella is a strapping lad and it's a good thing somebody ends up with him in the end... someone other than his reindeer... although he is really close to that reindeer, isn't he?) Blood is thicker than water, and one assumes that frozen blood is similarly thicker than ice. But as Joan Fonatine and Olivia De Havilland taught us, sister-love can be tough... and also a whole lot of fun to project our own familial anxieties upon. It's a Sister Off!

poll by twiigs.com

As always take your arguments pro and con to the comments, and next Monday we'll crown the one true snow queen!