No, it's not actually Angelina Jolie starring in Space: 1999 as Dr. Helena Russell (below); it's the one and only Barbara Bain, Martin Landau's then-wife, whom I described in my "Bringers of Wonder" review as "the most dreadful actress ever to step before the cameras or audience in any medium ever including industrial training films and voice-overs for technical school television ads."
What's especially interesting (as I've realized in my most recent viewings) is that the part of Dr. Russell on paper is actually very well written. The character has a coherent point of view and an intriguing, competent approach to the situations she confronts on the show. Dr. Helena Russell is a legitimate sci-fi character; it's just that Bain is so God-awful you can't tell. (She can't even memorize the medical jargon; she's conspicuously reading cue cards whenever she's got to deliver a prognosis). At a certain point I started imaging what it would be like if, you know, somebody talented and charismatic had been given the role. Hence, Ms. Jolie.
8 comments:
What's weird is that she shows up on My So-Called Life as Claire Danes's grandmother and she's perfect. I think she has a limited range and working in sci-fi was way out of that range.
I never watched Mission Impossible so I can't rate her there.
She's awful in Mission Impossible too.
I remember watching "Breakaway" (the first episode) with you, Octopunk, at my house, and seeing Dr. Russell's intro.
She's sitting at her desk looking at a piece of paper when her commlock "rings": she takes it from its desktop dock/port (ahead of its time!) answers, sees Koenig outside the office, and then, standing up, presses the button to open the door and let Koenig in.
And she can't handle the prop. It's pathetic watching her deliberately, awkwardly move her fingers around trying to operate a device that's supposed to be beyond second-nature for everyone on the base.
And I turned to you and said, "Watch Bain with those props! Step aside, Angelina Jolie with your twin nickel-plated automatic .45s...this is real acting!" Or some such.
You two are so funny.
i've been doing a side-by-side comparison of these images and it looks like you superimposed AJ's head over a different woman -- someone with a bigger rack, it seems.
Very astute. It's the same base image but I increased the bust size in Photoshop (i.e. the photo is "airbrushed") because, well, look at Barbara Bain and then look at Angelina Jolie.
oh believe me, jordan, i'm very sensitive to boobs.
I was also going to make her right arm (left side of the frame) skinnier, to match Jolie's extremely slender frame, but it would have involved a bit more Photoshop time than this whole thing warrants.
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