I'm not adding anything to the end of Salma Hayek's name

Salma Hayek is now Salma Hayek Pinault.

Nah.

I noticed the change to the way she was credited when writing up my review for Magic Mike's Last Dance, but I just blew it off.

No disrespect to the person who has now shifted the way she self-identifies to reflect the identity of a man she married 14 years ago. But I'm just not going to do it.

When you are credited the same way for 30 years, that is your brand -- no matter if you divorce the person who gave you that name, if you marry someone new with a different name, what have you.

I might have accepted the name change if she'd changed it professionally when she married Francois-Henri Pinault in 2009. At that point I would have only been aware of her "Salma Hayek" credit for 15 years, and it would have been more of a "Courteney Cox Arquette" or "Rebecca Romijn-Stamos" situation. (I believe the hyphen belongs in one but not the other, but I can't be bothered to look it up.)

But whatever you think of the wisdom of changing your identity to reflect your union with David Arquette or John Stamos, you could argue that each of those names gained something sonically from the addition. With Rebecca Romijn, the first syllable of "Stamos" has a rhyming vowel sound with the second syllable of "Romijn," which I think makes it catchy sounding to the ear. With Courteney Cox, I'll only say the "Arquette" flows well enough and doesn't ruin anything.

"Salma Hayek Pinault" just doesn't sound right to me. As I was listening to the Filmspotting hosts discuss the third Magic Mike movie, they referred to her alternately as Hayek and Hayek Pinault, and the latter just never sounded right. Plus I suppose you could drop the Hayek altogether and just refer to her as Pinault, which really doesn't sound right -- and doesn't give the casual listener, raised on another name, any idea who you're talking about.

Women who marry and take their husband's last name have dealt with this kind of identity crisis throughout history, and as a man, I once welcomed the prospect of giving my own name to another person. But my wife did not actually take my name, and I'm glad she didn't -- she has a cooler last night than mine (literally, for anyone who knows her) and it certainly sounds better with her first name than mine would. Her first name ends in an A sound and my last name begins with an A sound, so the two words have no defining break between them and get kind of slurred together if you were to say them quickly. It's much better that she stuck with her maiden name, which I suppose is not actually a maiden name if you never changed it -- it's just her name. 

Maybe because I have it in my own family, I don't want or need Salma Hayek to take her husband's last name. But it's also been different for famous women, particularly famous women in the entertainment industry. You create a brand when you start out, and it sometimes isn't even your own name that you start out with anyway. It's common for people to take a stage name that at least changes their last name, but sometimes they change their first name as well. 

Salma Hayek has a particularly good brand, sonically, because it does a similar thing to what's going on in "Romijn-Stamos," where the second syllable of "Salma" has a rhyming vowel sound with the first syllable of "Hayek." The four total syllables also make for probably an ideal name length, though I might be biased there because my own name has four total syllables.

The "Pinault" doesn't do anything sonically -- and in fact, I'd argue it doesn't do anything, for anybody, except possibly her husband's ego.

And for her daughter. When I googled it I found that back in 2010, when Hayek legally changed her name, she attributed the decision to her feisty three-year-old daughter, who asked why she had only one last name. (Which is particularly uncommon in Latin culture, where there can be all sorts of last names, many of which are dropped in casual reference to the person.) 

But Hayek didn't change her credit until Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, if IMDB is to be believed. Again according to google, she had to finally overcome studios' objection to affixing the Pinault, which she has apparently been trying to do for years.

It's interesting because I probably have a professional obligation to refer to someone the way they are credited. And I noticed the change in time to use the correct credit in my Magic Mike's Last Dance review (which you can read here). 

But I don't know ... I just couldn't do it. Salma Hayek has been Salma Hayek since I first noticed her in Desperado in 1995, even though that's not a great movie. She was too good at creating her brand and now I refuse to acknowledge a new one, like Dunkin' Donuts telling me to start referring to the company as Dunkin'. I just won't do it.

At least my stubbornness is on the side of a sort of feminism. 

Things that make you feel old

I know I've mentioned Courteney Cox a lot recently on this blog -- both here and here -- and it's really just a coincidence. I don't have, nor have I ever had, a crush on her, and her appearing on this blog is not thematically appropriate anyway, because she's not really a film actress. In fact, I can only really remember her appearing in the Scream movies. So maybe I'll get a chance to write about her again next April, when Scream 4 comes out.

The reason Cox is coming up this time is that I discovered -- probably in researching the last piece I wrote about her, to learn how long she had been married to David Arquette -- that she is 46 years old. That's right, only four years from turning 50.

Wow. I feel old.

Cox is certainly well-preserved for a woman her age, which is part of the reason I don't think of her as that old. But yeah, she's been around a long time. She's nearly ten years older than I am, so she is not exactly my contemporary, but I do feel like I've been following her in one way or another throughout her career, even back in the Misfits of Science days. If she's getting old, then so am I.

The reason I'm writing about this today is that I had the same feeling yesterday about Bridget Fonda, when watching the 1993 film Bodies, Rest & Motion. Like Cox, Bridget Fonda is 46 years old. Unlike Cox, I did and in some ways still do have a crush on Bridget Fonda. It could be that cute little button nose, but I think her terrific smile is equally responsible.

If you asked me how old Bridget Fonda was, I would probably guess that she's in her late 30s. On some level, I would know that was not correct -- I'm in my late 30s, so she'd have to be a good decade older than that. And she is. But my first instinct would be to tell you she was maybe 41 at the oldest. However, like Cox, she's four years from turning 50.

It's the eternal youth we attribute to certain actresses that may be messing with our heads. To me, Fonda always seemed like a sprightly little pixie, the very essence of youth. How could she be as old as wikipedia tells me she is?

But she can, and she is. And one of the reasons I haven't recognized it is that she stopped acting in 2002. Her last film was some made-for-TV movie called Snow Queen, in which she played the title character. The last movie she made that I would have seen was Kiss of the Dragon, the year before. When she was the same age I am now -- hence, my guess that she's in her late 30s. Since then she has retired into what we would assume is a happy marriage to Danny Elfman -- happy, we assume, because we have not heard otherwise.

Do we freeze actors and actresses at the same age that we last saw them? Could be. I have also not seen two of the other three actors in this film -- Eric Stoltz or Phoebe Cates -- in quite some time. Cates -- who has been happily married (we assume) to Kevin Kline for 21 years -- has not appeared since 2001's The Anniversary Party (which I quite liked), and that was her first film since a year after Bodies, Rest & Motion, when she made 1994's Princess Caraboo (which I did not like). Stoltz has been making movies, but nothing you've heard of. The last film he made that I saw was The Butterfly Effect in 2004. Cates is 47 and Stoltz is 49. Even closer to 50 than Fonda.

Tim Roth is still going strong. He's also 49.

Nothing I've said in this post is particularly profound. People get older. Bodies rest and bodies move.

But it's not every day that we sit down and think about it: The people who seemed eternally young to us, who played the roles of so many twentysomethings in so many films we saw over the years, are now pushing 50.

I guess I'll just be glad I've got 13 more years before I get there.

See Vance walk, see Courteney run

One of the hazards of being a professional film critic -- even one with the weird job description I have, which involves submitting new reviews for old movies -- is that you sometimes have to see movies like John Whitesell's See Spot Run (2001).

One of the positives is that it sometimes gives you not one, but two ideas for things to write about on your blog.

See Vance walk

I have not been to the gym since my son was born. It's not that I suddenly hate exercise. Unsurprisingly, it's a question of time and priorities. When you have a new baby in the house, it's not only the time you can devote to leisure activities that takes a hit. It's also any other time out of the house, like at the gym.

But my wife and I discussed it and we both thought we'd rather have me get back into the habit of going to the gym than to cancel my gym membership, which costs me the manageable price of $26 a month, and seems a shame to let go as a result. So for the first time this week I moved a bonafide "gym movie" to the top of my Netflix queue. And by "gym movie" I mean a movie that doesn't necessarily demand to be seen on a nice screen, whose subtle details will not be lost in a setting in which I've strapped my portable DVD player to the top of the stairmaster with a pair of rubber bands. See Spot Run was that gym movie.

Unfortunately, my attempt to get to the gym on Monday night didn't work out. I'd miscommunicated with my wife about my intentions -- she thought I had planned to go in the 6 o'clock range, while I'd actually planned to go in the 9 o'clock range. So I ended up drinking too much white wine and the gym was scrapped. Tuesday seemed complicated because it was election day, and on Wednesday I planned to go to a friend's that night.

But I didn't want to keep See Spot Run for a second longer than I had to, because it was preventing Netflix from shipping me my next disc.

So I had a potentially groundbreaking brainstorm. Whereas I'm trying to kill two birds with one stone while watching a crappy movie I have to review while exercising, there might even be a way to -- get this -- kill three birds with one stone. It's never been done in the history of humankind, but I thought I might be the first one to make it work.

Those three birds being:

1) exercising;
2) giving my wife a break from our son;
3) watching a movie.

How would I do it? Simple: I would attach my portable DVD player to the bar across the top of the handles of the stroller, where you're supposed to put your drink. And using this method, I could get myself some cardio, watch a crappy movie, and get my son out of my wife's hair for a couple hours. I guess it could actually be four birds if you consider the walk to have some intrinsic value to my son, as a way to change up his routine and get him out into the world.

Now I know what you're thinking. Vance, if you're watching a movie while pushing your son in his stroller, you're either not paying very much attention to the movie, or not paying very much attention to your son. That latter being the biggest concern in terms of his safety -- don't want to start pushing him into traffic because I'm caught up in the movie.

Which is why only terrible crap like See Spot Run will get watched in a setting like this. I realize it's a little unfair to the movie I'm watching, especially if I'm reviewing it, to assume that I can consume as much of it as I need while the screen is occasionally blocked out by the sun, and while I have to look away occasionally to make sure I don't run into anybody. But I'd already watched the first 40 minutes of it at home, which was enough to bias me against it in its entirety.

Besides, let's be honest. People have dozens of distractions when they watch movies at home anyway. You could actually say I'm more focused on it because I don't have the internet to tempt me, to steal away half of my ability to concentrate via a mentally intensive form of multi-tasking. At least here I'm only walking, which doesn't require much mental commitment.

Plus, there's a lot of down time when you're waiting for the crosswalk to change, etc. There are only really a couple moments -- crossing streets and blind driveways, for example -- when I can't be keeping at least one eye on the movie.

Parent of the year? Maybe not. But I'll keep my son safe for sure.

And I'll be getting exercise, babysitting and watching movies. The three (four) birds are worth the (very) minor risk.

See Courteney run

One of the first things I thought the other week when I heard that Courteney Cox and David Arquette were separating was: "It's about time."

In fact, I have always been flummoxed about why a cool, funny chick like Courteney Cox would want to align herself with a doofus like David Arquette.

See Spot Run reminded me of just how much of a doofus.

Arquette is in that category of "comic actors" (to use an extremely generous term for them) who seem to have gotten where they are solely on the basis of acting goofy and bugging out their eyes. I know I could be describing Jim Carrey or Robin Williams when I say this, but those guys have shown actual acting chops from time to time. It's morons like Arquette and Jamie Kennedy who have skated by on very minimal accomplishments for a lot longer than they should have. (Or maybe I'm just singling those two out because they both landed attractive babes. Kennedy was dating Jennifer Love Hewitt up until March of this year.)

So it may have taken Courteney Cox 11 years to run away from Arquette, but finally, she's running.

Not fast enough, as it turns out -- now we hear they are separated but not planning to get divorced. Courteney, don't let Arquette's suckiness suck you back in.

Don't get me wrong, See Spot Run would have been one of the worst movies I've ever seen even if someone else were the star. Director John Whitesell is a total hack -- I can't decide which of the three movies he's directed that I've seen, which also include Deck the Halls and Malibu's Most Wanted (which happens to star the aforementioned Jamie Kennedy), is worst, though it's probably this. But there's something about the way that Arquette gets electrocuted by a dog collar, slips repeatedly in dog shit and bounces around a pet store encased in bubble wrap that is especially dreadful.

Run, Courteney. Run.