Word: susane
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Having shakily returned to some semblance of their former lives, the reluctant celebs pass in the night (actually, at lunch at the Ivy), where John falls in love with Susan as a delayed result of the modern equivalent of an angelic visitation: while he was hospitalized, her staticky face mingled with his fevered dreams as one of her reruns played...
...Susan Colgate and John Johnson are two former Hollywood luminaries, on the verge of becoming trivia questions, who share a history of disappearing. She, a faded sitcom actress and the erstwhile beauty queen of the title, once emerged unscathed from a plane crash, taking advantage of her freak escape to go into temporary hiding and watch coverage of her "death" on tabloid TV ("A small-town girl makes it big and then small again"). He, a producer of Bruckheimeresque action flicks (e.g., Bel Air PI) starring guns, aliens and lame one-liners, once walked away--literally--from his life...
John's febrile love and the mystery of Susan's subsequent (willing? unwilling?) redisappearance drive the novel's rather implausible plot, which relies too much on coincidence. But for those willing to surrender themselves to Coupland's inventively of-the-minute language ("You two are the most drag-and-click people I've ever met") and his ability to see beauty in the discards of our consumer and pop culture, there's plenty here to allow a pattern of static to resolve itself into the face of love...
...sweet voice and eyes that beam happily for once, step off the streets and into the lead of Blitzstein's play. A giddy socialite (Vanessa Redgrave) departs from the conservative wishes of her husband, publishing giant William Randolph Hearst, to join the theatrical cause. Italian journalist Margherita Sarfatti (Susan Sarandon) tries to make Mussolini's fascism palatable to American industrialists through artistic exchange...
...Cradle" cast who parts ways with his family of Italian nationalists. John Cusack is effective as the affably cocky Rockefeller, and Bill Murray and Joan Cusack hit both comic highs and notes of genuine sadness. Less successful are Vanessa Redgrave, who's garishly over the top, and Susan Sarandon, who acts mostly with her eyebrows and strained Italian accent. As Welles, MacFadyen is boorish and obnoxious, and Robbins has already been chastised by some for so pervasively emphasizing the famous director's hamfisted side...