Mail from our readers

Mail from our readers

Men Behaving Badly
Few performers have the heat and intensity of Daniel Day-Lewis (”Touch of Evil”). But just as my faith in actors had reached its breaking point, along came Javier Bardem. Never before has EW’s cover been so smokin’.
Valerie Turker
Belvidere, N.J.

Cheers to Paul Thomas Anderson and the Coen brothers for shrouding their antagonists in mystery. The beauty of There Will Be Blood‘s Plainview and No Country for Old Men‘s Chigurh lies in what we don’t know about them.
Steven Mackay
Tuscaloosa, Ala.

Day-Lewis and Bardem have gotten all of the glory, but neither would be quite as effective without the yangs to their yins: Paul Dano and Josh Brolin, respectively. After all, both Blood and No Country are about push and pull, point and counterpoint.
Jill Thomsen
Culver City, Calif.

Let’s Talk About ‘Sex’
In “The Search for the Next Sex and the City,” Naomi Wolf says, ”There hadn’t been women at the center of a quest narrative before.” What about That Girl, Julia, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show? Was Mary’s search for a gratifying career and relationship not a narrative quest? These shows simply used a different format from SATC‘s to drive the story forward.
Kim Irvin
San Diego

How do sex talk and man baiting constitute a feminist movement? If that were the case, The Golden Girls paved the way long before the shallow women of Sex and the City trotted through New York City.
Jesse Morrison
Memphis

Lipstick Jungle and Cashmere Mafia stole everything from Sex and the City, except one must-have accessory: great writers.
David Belenky
West Hollywood

‘Graduate’ Dissertation
On behalf of all showbiz-backstory hounds, thanks for printing Mark Harris’ engrossing book excerpt about the making of The Graduate (”Here’s to You, Mrs. Robinson”). The angst Dustin Hoffman experienced as he tried to figure out what was going on inside Mike Nichols’ head was so Benjamin Braddock. I actually whispered the word plastics once I’d finished reading.
Gregory George
San Francisco

She’ll Be Loving Them (Forever)
Diablo Cody voiced the opinion of all twenty- and thirtysomethings who squealed when news of a possible New Kids on the Block reunion broke out (Binge Thinking). People can mock all they want, but the five boys from Beantown still have a place in many hearts.
Jennifer Santos
San Francisco