Claire Danes Must Die

I've just slogged through Richard Eyre's STAGE BEAUTY . . . what to say? Billy Crudup is fetching throughout and lots of fun in the early scenes, creating a stylized physical vocabulary that makes some sense for the period. A shame the movie doesn't support this enthusiastic "recreation"; the entire arc winds up being yet another Ode To The Method, unappealingly made to go hand in glove with Heterosexual Assimilation.

And dear Billy's guide away from the aesthetic appeal of presentational acting (to say nothing of that of Ben Chaplin's torso) is none other than Claire Danes, on my short list of irritating actresses. I'll admit I rather liked her at the end of THE HOURS: her embrace of Julianne Moore was moving and helped the finale "land." But I can't think of anything else in which she hasn't annoyed me more than anything else, with her goggle gaze and oozing neediness.