wow . .. is there anything julia roberts can't do? her current role (in charlie wilson's war) as texas sexpot/socialite who redirects world events with her beauty and wiles. this is a dramatic departure from other challenging roles she has had, including:

• the sexy "tess ocean" in the "oceans 11/12/teens" adventure series
• a sexy investigator in "erin brokovich" who uses cleavage and mascara to bring corporate bad guys to justice
• a sexy "runaway bride" who seduces richard gere
• a sexy prostitute in "pretty woman" who seduces richard gere
• a sexy actress in "notting hill" who seduces hugh grant
• a sexy girl next door who seduces a guy after he becomes engaged to someone else in "my best friend's weddign"

and she was tinkerbelle, in "hook"

of all her films, i like "pretty woman" the most. it completely embodies hollywood values by presenting prostitution as a valid career choice, with the added frisson that if a call girl is good enough at what she does, a rich handsome guy will love her for it and marry her.

and hollywood wonders why middle america thinks their product is a danger to impressionable young minds?

Read an interview with her in Time mag. She seemed most concerned because someone told her she would never again be able to play ingenue roles. Sucks to grow up. Still, sexy older woman cougar roles are gaining in popularity.

There's a one-note gracelessness to Julia Roberts that was Oscar-awarded for its most hyper incarnation: Erin Brockovich, a character played by Julia in full-tilt bitter self-righteousness for the whole movie. Julia was JUSTIFIED in it , in that film, going after the bad corporation that was killing people and fighting for her dignity as a single mother (and being amusingly snapped back at by weary old Albert Finney on the audience's behalf.)

But Julia inappropriately brought that intensity with her lock-stock-and-barrel to "Ocean's Eleven" and it almost sunk George, Brad, Matt and the other cool guys in maintaining a laid-back tempo for that film.

Julia Roberts' long hold on the top box office slot for women stars seemed rather similar to that of Tom Cruise for the males. Both stars sold a sort of "super-intensity" of righteousness and anger that I can only guess empowered their audiences in some way. Even in "Pretty Woman," Julia had it -- when she dressed down the Rodeo Drive saleswoman for belittling her earlier ("Big mistake. Huge.").

Roberts and Cruise are also alike in that I don't think they are the best actors around -- if they were, they wouldn't have been Number One stars so long. There's something "regular" about them that helps keep them popular.

Julia Roberts hasn't worked with Tom Cruise, but by working here with the other "Big Tom," Hanks, Roberts is satisfying one of those superstar mergers that are always interesting to watch. Hanks has demonstrable talent, but I think its interesting to hear that the REAL couple in "Charlie Wilson's War" may turn out to be Hanks and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, riffing together with their skill at humor, character, and low-key emotional connection with their parts.

Love her for it? Yes, absolutely!

Marry her? Not so much...

She is the threat? In a world smitten with BRITNEY SPEARS, JAMIE SPEARS, PARIS HILTON and the ever fave LINDSAY LOHAN, Julia Roberts, an academy award winner, who has not been a rehab baby, is a threat to you and your family???

WOW!

You are either a very thin-skinned non-reading person or you have been drinking the right wing kool aid!

READ a BOOK! We armed and trained the Mujadeen in Afghanistan, and then left. We "fucked up the end game"

We allowed a country filled with 14 year olds to return to no schools, no money to fund schools, water, the construction of roads, the funding of doctors and hospitals

WE PRACTICALLY INVITED THE TALIBAN who we armed and trained TO TAKE OVER

We saw Charlie Wilsons War yesterday and I think that Joanne's role could have been fleshed out more but it would have been tangent to the main plot. Roberts was the perfect choice for the role.

Here is the link to Joanne's web site:

http://www.joanneherring.com/

Very limited but interesting nonetheless.

It is an interestingly different role for Roberts.

I didn't get out the stopwatch, but it felt like she had much less screen time than Hanks OR, more significantly Philip Seymour Hoffman. It was more like a male-buddy movie in which the "guest star woman" floats in and out at key points.

Still, Joanne is vital to the story and Roberts' patented Steel Magnolia-intensity of righteousness and indignation was tempered with a certain amusing haughteur.

Roberts played poor in "Erin Brockovich"; here, she's playing ultra-rich. So the indignation has to emanate from a different source: political commitment and fervent anti-Communism. The demonstrably liberal Democrat Roberts playing a demonstrably conservative Republican doyenne has the natural tension of such performances, btw. Its literally hard to believe. A similar problem befell Richard Dreyfuss playing the conservative Rep vs. Michael Douglas Demo in "The American President." (Wasn't that movie also written by Aaron Sorkin?) But it is hard to find ranking Republican movie stars. Even Bruce Willis swears he's an independent, now.

Something amusing early in the movie. Julia Roberts has said that her fans don't want her in bedroom sex scenes, but rather only want to see her "the morning after, in bed with my hair tousled."

Roberts and Hanks have an early sexual liasion in "Charlie Wilson's War" in which we never even SEE them in bed. It is as if our two ranking long-term superstars would never even think to allow us to view such a Royal Coupling. However, we seem them afterwards in Joanne's luxurious bathroom, with Hanks (amusingly) being the naked one -- in the bathtub. Roberts sits at a table doing her eyelashes...with a safety pin!...and reciting a lenghty political-technical speech with the aplomb of an Oscar winning star, as if to show us, "here, see, JULIA ROBERTS can rattle off one of these four-page long tech-talk speeches," too.

Later in the film, Roberts gets a lengthy dialogue scene with Philip Seymour Hoffman that seems shoehorned into the movie simply so that they get a scene together. But it is amusing on its star terms: yes, I, Julia Roberts, will show my ability to hold the screen with this Indiefilm whizkid, Mr. Hoffman. C'mon, kid, I can take it. Laura Linney's nowhere around, buddy, its you and me.

The political ramifications and realities of "Charlie Wilson's War" seem to be almost beside the point for that movie, which may be bad for its serious pretensions, but good for its ultimate role of service: to showcase three movie stars doing what they do best, and showing us WHY they are three ranking movie stars (of which two, however, are only truly bankable, but that doesn't matter here.)

You must not know BA well. She is a smart conservative shill with a keen eye for posting right wing diatribes that sound very intellectually honest. In another day, she would have been an intellectual---today, she is just a very, very smart right winger. Sounds like an oxymoron but its true nonetheless.