Once again, Film Threat has released its annual list of the Coldest People in Hollywood -- the ones whose careers are in the most trouble according to them. Strangely, the actress I would have thought was the natural contender for #1, Nicole Kidman, only makes #6. Of course, if The Golden Compass is a huge hit, it'll reverse a string of box-office misfortunes. Film Threat's advise is for Kidman to seek a job on George Miller's projected Mad Max 4. Hilary Swank, star of a robust contender for worst of '07, is advised to choose her work with more care ("She may have grown up eating sawdust in Gooberville, Washington, or wherever, but it's no longer necessary to accept every script that comes her way"). And there's no arguments here with choices Eli Roth (#8), scandal plagued actress Vanessa Hudgens (above), and Jennifer Lopez ("there doesn't seem to be any measure that can stop her from making more bad movies."). Certainly, Natalie Portman (#41) deserves a remembrance for her dual role in Goya's Ghosts, not even mentioned in the citation.

Naturally, this list offers more bones to pick than a washtub-sized bucket of KFC. Jessicas Alba and Biel share #12 (hey, Jessica Biel can act, you ruffians!); Eddie Murphy (#16) who is still quite A-list, is derided for Norbit, a popular hit that had a few defenders. Quentin Tarantino (#22) is hardly out of the game, despite the mixed feelings people had about Death Proof, and Ray Liotta (#29) has a wicked cameo in a Top Five movie right now. Lindsay Lohan charts at #51 on a list of 50. Guys, where was Eddie Izzard on this list: Across the Universe and Romance and Cigarettes within months of each other! Film Threat's number 1 pick isn't even an actor, though I doubt if anyone feels like returning his phone calls right now. In the meantime, bad-film fans can wait breathlessly for the Golden Raspberry awards coming up later this year.

It was inevitable: the now-distinguished actor Mark Wahlberg is nominated for an Oscar and early, embarrassing photos of the former Funky Bunch rapper come out of the woodwork. It was so difficult to choose the right photo, too, but I had a lot of help from MarkWahlbergFan.com, a site with hundreds of photos throughout Wahlberg's career. I was very tempted to share a photo from Wahlberg's 1993 exercise video, Form ... Focus ... Fitness, the Marky Mark Workout, but none of those pictures showed his cute little baby face. The photo from Renaissance Man of Marky Mark in the shower, the Calvin Klein ads -- it was a tough choice. I finally decided on the above autographed photo from the early 1990s, although I couldn't determine the exact year.

The photo contrasts nicely with Wahlberg's recent career -- for one thing, he seems to make better fashion choices these days. I used to think he was a wooden pretty-boy who didn't belong in films, but I've been convinced otherwise (thanks in part to Cinematical's former East Coast Editor, Martha Fischer, who has always advised me on finding good photos of Wahlberg). I didn't like him at all in The Italian Job, but that may have been the exception rather than the rule. Invincible was worth seeing only for Wahlberg's performance as Vince Papale. Many people are rooting for him to land the Best Supporting Oscar on Sunday for his performance as Dignam, the cop with a nasty sense of humor, in The Departed. Film blogger That Little Round-Headed Boy has a special Wahlberg-related dream for Oscar night -- go take a look.

I started watching movies in earnest at about the same time that Meryl Streep was well known for playing a variety of dramatic characters in serious films. I had little interest in heavyweight prestige films like Out of Africa, Sophie's Choice or Silkwood; my favorite Streep role was one of her earliest, as Woody Allen's ex-wife in the 1979 film Manhattan. Not only did she give us a peek at her masterful comic timing, but as you can see above, she actually looked and sounded like the contemporary Meryl Streep, with no foreign accent or heavy costuming. We weren't supposed to like her character in Manhattan, who left Allen for another woman and then wrote a nasty tell-all book about their failed marriage, but somehow Streep managed to inject the role with a little sympathy. Besides, she was a much better grounded and less flaky person than the character played by Diane Keaton. I haven't seen Manhattan in years, since it played at a local repertory theater and I realized that I loved the way it looked, and the soundtrack, but the characters and storyline were borderline repellant. I can only stand so much New York neurosis, and at least Annie Hall is funnier.

Over the years, Meryl Streep has finally brought her comic talents out in a number of movies, and while she's nearly always great, the movies are uneven. As a fan of Nora Ephron's book Heartburn, I was terribly disappointed in the movie adaptation. The same is true of She-Devil, where Streep is the sole wonderful element in a lame adaptation of Fay Weldon's book. Defending Your Life ... slight but fun. Death Becomes Her ... more disappointment. Fortunately, in recent years Streep has appeared in some very good comedies, like Adaptation and the movie for which she is Oscar-nominated for Best Actress, The Devil Wears Prada. Streep has won two Oscars, but both are for dramatic roles, in Kramer vs. Kramer and Sophie's Choice. I'd like to see her win an Academy Award someday for one of her comic performances, although I suspect this may not be the year.

My favorite Peter O'Toole movie -- but O'Toole is glorious fun in any movie. Even if the movie is lame overall, I always love watching O'Toole in it. He's been acting in films since 1960, so there are dozens of unmemorable or downright stinky movies in his filmography. I remember seeing Club Paradise in theaters -- how could it fail with a cast that included Robin Williams, Rick Moranis and Peter O'Toole, and was directed by Harold Ramis? And my first press junket ever was in college for the otherwise forgettable comedy King Ralph; I got to interview John Goodman in a roundtable, but not O'Toole. But for every Supergirl and High Spirits there's also a Lawrence of Arabia, The Ruling Class or The Stunt Man, in which he's not only great but the movie is too. O'Toole is nominated for an Oscar this year for Best Actor, for his role in Venus, and it's his performance that makes the movie something worth watching. He essentially plays Peter O'Toole, or at least our perception of him, and does it perfectly -- very similar to My Favorite Year in that respect (although I think he was being more John Barrymore-ish there).

The above image is from a lobby card for What's New, Pussycat?, a comedy from 1965 starring O'Toole and a bizarrely bewigged Peter Sellers. The screenplay was written by Woody Allen back before he decided to direct his own material -- he also has a minor role in this movie. O'Toole plays a swinging Sixties bachelor who consults a psychiatrist (Sellers) so he can learn to be faithful to his sweet little fiancee. He's pursued by women such as Capucine, Paula Prentiss and Ursula Andress. It is all very silly, with lots of sight gags from Peter Sellers, and dates badly -- but O'Toole's charming womanizer is equally irresistable to the audience.

I'm continuing to find photos of this year's Academy Award nominees from earlier in their careers. This time it's Eddie Murphy, who's up for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Dreamgirls. My husband and I were in the mood to watch an Eddie Murphy comedy last week, but we didn't think we'd like Norbit. Fortunately, Austin Film Festival was holding a special screening of one of Murphy's first films, Trading Places, the 1983 film in which he co-stars with Jamie Lee Curtis and Dan Ackroyd, as shown in the above publicity still. At the time, Murphy had been a hit in 48 Hrs. and was well known for his recurring characters on Saturday Night Live. Trading Places holds up remarkably well, and the audience enjoyed the film a lot. I'm especially fond of Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy as the two millionaires who decide to use Murphy and Ackroyd as human guinea pigs in their experiment testing heredity vs. environment.

I was amused to see Al Franken in an early role as a stoner baggage handler. Frank Oz practically reprises his cameo in The Blues Brothers, which was also directed by John Landis. We rented Coming to America over the weekend to get even more of our Landis/Murphy fix, but the DVD was damaged and stopped playing about halfway through the movie ... before we could see Ameche and Bellamy again. Coming to America (what we saw of it) wasn't nearly as funny as Trading Places. My least favorite part of Trading Places is the costumes-on-a-train sequence, and I realized I prefer watching Murphy when he's not disguised in a fat suit or as an old man or with an accent. That may be why I'm in the camp that thought he was one of the highlights of Dreamgirls, although I'm torn between him and Jackie Earle Haley for the Oscar.

With the Oscar ceremony just around the corner, I thought it would be fun to devote Vintage Image of the Day to pictures of the current nominees from years past, as I did last year. I'm starting with the woman generally considered a shoo-in for Best Actress: Helen Mirren. Mirren has been acting for films and television since the late 1960s, so there are plenty of opportunities for interesting photos. She hasn't always played queens and refined ladies, either. One of Mirren's earliest films, the 1969 film Age of Consent, was criticized for showing too much of her, unclothed. You might remember her as evil Morgana in Excalibur. She's also played a number of Shakespearean heroines and villainesses, from Ophelia to Titania to Lady Macbeth. My favorite Mirren movie is The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, and much to my mother's disapproval, I have the slightly naughty U.S. poster from the 1989 film (featuring Mirren in lingerie) on my living-room wall.

The above photo is from the 1980 movie Hussy, in which Mirren plays an exotic dancer named Beaty. It is not one of Mirren's better films, but I loved the photo. The actress would have been about 35 at the time. If you want to see many more photos of Mirren throughout her career, I'd recommend a visit to the Helen Mirren Appreciation Society site, which includes images from not only her TV and film productions, but also some of her theatrical performances. Check out the Filmography section for a wide range of vintage images.

R&B singer Ruth Brown, who was born on this day in 1928, is more likely to be remembered for her musical career than her film appearances. Of her half-dozen or so movie and television roles, the one that leaps to mind is her portrayal of Motormouth Maybelle in the 1988 film Hairspray, as shown above. Brown's flamboyant performance (including the blonde wig) made her a standout in the John Waters movie. As you probably know, the movie was adapted into a Broadway musical, which is being adapted into another movie ... and in the new version, Queen Latifah has to fill Ruth Brown's shoes. I like Queen Latifah, but it won't be quite the same. If you want to see Ruth Brown onscreen and singing, rent Lightning in a Bottle, where she sings to a playful Bill Cosby.

One movie not listed in Brown's filmography, sadly, is the upcoming John Sayles film Honeydripper, which wrapped last month. Brown had originally been cast in the film as an aging singer named Bertha, but became too ill to travel to the Alabama production. She died on Nov. 17 from complications due to a heart attack and stroke. However, according to an interview from last August, she did record some songs for the Honeydripper soundtrack, so even if we won't see her onscreen, I hope we'll hear her voice.

It's a rare treat to be able to share a photo from a 1930s film featuring an actor who is still with us today. Charles Lane turned 102 on Friday, and has had a long and varied film and television career. He has 328 appearances credited in IMDb, from 1931 to 1995, so you've surely seen him somewhere. The above photo is from You Can't Take It with You, the 1938 adaptation of the Kaufman and Hart play directed by Frank Capra. That's Lionel Barrymore on the left as the grandfather of the large and eccentric family featured in the 1938 film, and Lane on the right as an IRS agent trying to explain that, yes, everyone has to pay taxes, even colorful eccentrics. Barrymore and Lane would appear together again in a later Capra film, It's a Wonderful Life, in which Lane was one of the rent collectors for Barrymore's nasty Mr. Potter.

Actress/dancer Ann Miller died three years ago yesterday after an amazingly long Hollywood career. She was barely 14 years old (having lied about her age) when she appeared as Ginger Rogers' dance partner in the 1937 film Stage Door, one of my favorite movies, and her last feature film was Mulholland Drive in 2001. In between, her roles included a would-be dancer in You Can't Take it With You, the elegant ex in Easter Parade, and a dancing anthropologist in On the Town. She was a rapid-fire tap dancer, but filmmakers also liked to find an opportunity to show off her long legs, as evidenced in the above photo. In the mid-1950s, she switched from movies to Broadway roles nightclub acts, and eventually TV roles. The above photo is from Kiss Me Kate and I wish it were in color, so you could see that Miller's outfit is an eye-popping pink.

The only film in which I've seen French actress Solveig Dommartin has been Wings of Desire, one of my favorite movies, directed by Wim Wenders. I don't own the DVD, because I love watching this gorgeous-looking film in a theater. I first saw the movie in the summer of 1989 when I spent a summer working in London, and at first I thought I hated it. A day later, I realized how much I liked the movie. Before I left London, I bought a gorgeous oversized poster that I had framed and currently hangs in my home office. I like to look up and see Bruno Ganz as an angel, standing on the edge of a building, looking pensive. If you haven't seen Wings of Desire, bear in mind that it's deliberately paced, subtitled (characters speak French and German), a little over two hours long and requires attention.