Illustrious celebrity mag People just released its equally illustrious Most Beautiful People edition. Well, by “just released,” we mean the magazine is out on the East Coast, but the rest of us may have to wait as long as April 26. Alas.
The 2013 cover girl is Gwyneth Paltrow. But more interesting to us is the news that Dallas star Linda Gray has been honored with the title of Most Beautiful Legs. The 72-year-old beauty, who was photographed by Robert Erdmann, is draped in faux fur to show off famous gams.
Famous because it was Gray’s leg, not that of Anne Bancroft, that everyone recognizes from the movie poster for the 1967 film The Graduate — a gig she got as a young model. On Anderson Live, she told host Anderson Cooper, “I think [Anne Bancroft] was absent that day. I got paid $25. For one leg, that was good.”
Gray is currently starring in the reprise of the iconic TV show Dallas on TNT. Theater and TV critic Elaine Liner has remarked that Gray is the star of the show, especially in light of Larry Hagman's death, and she her acting has only continued to get better with age. In her recap of the season two finale, Liner wrote:
Before we tie up the loose ends of this year’s storylines, let us do a deep debutante bow to Linda Gray, the 72-year-old actress who plays Sue Ellen Ewing, now the matriarch and Lady Macbeth of Southfork and Ewing Energies.
Nobody works a white pantsuit and shiny bangs like this woman. She came, she acted drunk, she conquered the spotty writing and hacksaw editing of a cable TV reboot. And she and she alone, after the death of Larry Hagman, made this show watchable.
Linda Gray's Most Beautiful Legs in People magazine.
Photo by Robert Erdmann
Linda Gray's Most Beautiful Legs in People magazine.
Blumhouse Productions first made their name with the Paranormal Activity series, establishing themselves as a leader in the horror genre thanks to their relatively cheap yet effective movies. In recent years, they’ve added on “soft” horror films likeM3GAN and Five Nights at Freddy’s to draw in a younger audience, with both films becoming so successful that each was quickly given a sequel.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 finds Mike (Josh Hutcherson) and his sister Abby (Piper Rubio) still recovering from the events of the first film, with Abby particularly missing her “friends.” Those friends just so happen to be the souls of murdered children who inhabit animatronic characters at the long-defunct Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, children who were abducted and killed by William Afton (Matthew Lillard).
A new threat emerges at another Freddy Fazbear’s location in the form of Charlotte, another murdered child who inhabits a creepy large marionette. Mike, distracted by a possible romance with Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), fails to keep track of Abby, who makes her way to the old pizzeria and inadvertently unleashes Charlotte and her minions on the surrounding town.
Directed by Emma Tammi and written by Scott Cawthon (who also created the video game on which the series is based), the film tries to mix together goofy elements with intense scenes. One particular sequence, in which the security guard for Freddy Fazbear’s lets a group of ghost hunters onto the property, toes the line between soft and hard horror. That and a few others show the potential that the filmmakers had if they had stuck to their guns.
Unfortunately, more often than not they either soft-pedal things that would normally be horrific, or can’t figure out how to properly stage scenes. The sight of animatronic robots wreaking havoc is one that is simultaneously frightening and laughable, and the filmmakers never seem to find the right balance in tone. Every step in the direction of making a truly scary horror film is undercut by another in which the robots fail to live up to their promise.
It doesn’t help that Cawthon gives the cast some extremely wooden dialogue, lines that none of the actors can elevate. What may work in a video game format comes off as stilted when said by actors in a live-action film. The story also loses momentum quickly after the first half hour or so, with Cawthon seemingly content to just have characters move from place to place with no sense of connection between any of the scenes.
Hutcherson (The Hunger Games series), after being the true lead of the first film, is given very little to do in this film, and his effort is equal to his character’s arc. The same goes for Lail, whose character seems to be shoehorned into the story. Rubio is called upon to carry the load for a lot of the movie, and the teenager is not quite up to the task. A brief appearance by Skeet Ulrich seems to be a blatant appeal to Scream fans, but he and Lillard only underscore how limited this film is compared to that franchise.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is better than the first film, but not by much. The filmmakers do a decent job of making the new marionette character into a great villain, but they fail to capitalize on its inherent creepiness. Instead, they fall back on less effective elements, ensuring that the film will be forgettable for anyone other than hardcore Freddy fans.
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Five Nights at Freddy's 2 opens in theaters on December 5.
