[Editor’s Note: Matt forgot to insert predictions for the box office dollars in his S.O.L. entry and as such will be ineligible to win, but I thought his entry still deserved posting.]

Name: Matt
Site: The Spoon

1. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
2. The Dark Knight
3. Hancock
4. Iron Man
5. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
6. Wall-E
7. Hellboy 2
8. Speed Racer
9. The Mummy 3
10. Sex and the City

Guaranteed Flop: Postal - This project suffers from the double smooch of death because 1) it’s based on a video game and 2) it’s written, produced, and directed by Uwe Boll.

Rip Van Winkle Hit (sleeper): Kit Kittredge: An American Girl - Stars Abigail Breslin, which, in a summer with relatively few kiddie films, is probably enough to drag tens of thousands of young girls - with their parents in tow - to the theaters.

3 Movies I’m Looking Forward To:
Completing this exercise made me realize how little I pay attention to new films coming out because quite a few names on the soon-to-be-released movie list made my clap my hands in anticipation.

Indiana Jones 4 - Seeing Indy return is kind of like watching Michael Jordan make a comeback but since Spielberg remains at the helm I’m inclined to think Indy 4 will be more like Michael Jordan’s first comeback rather than his second.

The Dark Knight - Admittedly, some of my interest is for Heath Ledger’s final role but mostly I just want to see what kind of magic director Christopher Nolan has produced in his second Batman film.

Hellboy 2 - I liked the first Hellboy film but now that Guillermo del Toro has gone a little more serious with his follow-up, I really like where this one could go.

Greetings.

It is I, Piper from Lazy Eye Theatre. You know, the recent one time LAMMY award winner.

Anyway, last week I gave you an assignment for LAMB Grazin’ On The Plot Farm 2.0. And you responded with 7 entries. Eight if you count Friend Mouse Speaks’ 2 entries which I will so that means that we have eight. And one of those is a frickin’ Japanese Tonka Poem. How about them apples?

So read these fine fine entries with a critical eye and vote for your favorite at the end.

A macaque monkey escapes from a UC Riverside animal testing laboratory and immediately exposes the student population to Ralph Lauren’s highly unstable new fragrance Liquid Sexy-Time Obsession. The monkey, primed with a scent 1794% more amorous than roses, eludes capture time and again as it races across the country, all the while reducing nearby humans into gibbering horndogs compelled to dry-hump anything in their paths. But Ralph Lauren’s resourcefulness rivals his enthusiasm for pedophilia and he quickly deploys his expert escaped-monkey-recapture team into the field. Team leader Jonathon Frankenberry is willing to do anything to quell the olfactory threat — including introducing the dreaded monkey bounty hunter Tornado McGraw into an already combustible situation. For Frankenberry knows that Ralph Lauren is not a merciful master and saving the nation’s overstimulated libido is his only chance to recover his young daughter Tilly Frankenberry from the lascivious clutches of his garishly garbed overseer.

A solitary horticulturalist lives alone, hermitlike, outside of Dallas, meticulously tending his heirloom roses. From out of nowhere, a tornado descends upon the area, flattening the surrounding towns and demolishing his precious rose gardens. Half-crazed with grief and with nothing keeping him in Texas any longer, he hits the road where he is befriended by a stray cat – try as he might, he cannot chase the cat away and he slowly becomes attached to it. Their journey takes them to the Gulf Coast where despite his inexperience he gets hired as a deckhand on a shrimp boat. The cat is useful as well, quickly ridding the boat of its infestation of vermin. Shrimp are scarce this season, however, and the man is soon laid off, returned to shore with only 53 cents in his pocket. Realizing that he is in desperate need of cash, he dons a cheap pair of sunglasses and attempts to rob a convenience store, using a pair of scissors as a weapon. He is soon arrested and thrown into jail and, appalled at the treatment the prisoners receive, decides to go on a hunger strike in protest. The warden’s men put him in restraints and force-feed him an all-liquid diet. His spirit all but broken – he wonders what has become of his cat – he remains in jail long enough for his hair to grow into a ponytail. Then one day, not long before his release, he comes across a familiar picture in a magazine in the prison library: it’s Tyler, Texas, “Rose Capital of America.” Filled a longing for his flowers, he heads north when he gets out of jail, arriving at the Tyler city parks administration in time to apply for a summer groundskeeper position. As we fade out, he is moving among the roses again, finally at peace (except for wondering about his cat).

I’m a pet detective, Hutton Ambrose by name, and when all of the stray cats in Los Angeles suddenly disappeared, I knew who to talk to - Blind Willie always has his ear to the ground. I found Willie wearing his trademark wraparound sunglasses and selling gypsy roses to the tourists out on Sunset. When I asked him about the cat-nappings, he just shrugged and painted me a familiar picture: “It’s the same old-same old, Hutt. Big dog blows into this town like a tornado and all the shrimps are dyin’ to give him what he wants. This time, the big dog wants cats.” I shook my head in disbelief, my ponytail snaking over my shoulders like a snake. Blind Willie reached out his hand but all I had to crease his palm with was 53 cents – that’s an insult, not actual cash - so I told Willie I’d get him on the return trip. He shrugged, knowing I was good for it. I had to find out who was responsible for this latest catastrophe. LA is a big town but the people here like to talk about who and what they know, and the best way to make the canaries sing is to wet their whistles. A few liquid lunches and I’d be able to cut through the bull like a pair of scissors through tissue paper, and find out what’s really going on here.

Piper gazed at the reflection of herself in the dressing table mirror. A cold and unexplained chill ran through her at that moment as she picked up a familiar looking picture that she discovered just this morning. She was tending to the roses with a pair of scissors in her garden when she found a box buried in the earth. Two faces, a man and a woman, stared back at her from inside the steel-plated box and she noticed that they bore a strong resemblance to herself.

In another state, unbeknownst to Piper, her fellow cult brothers and sisters have descended onto a farm where an old couple lives. Armed with cleavers that glistened like stars in the night sky, they barged into the humble abode of Mr and Mrs Fletch, hacking them to smithereens. The commanding officers of this cult were seen after this brutal murder taking puffs on the porch. Fitz and Nick were their names and they remain loyal to Piper. ‘Saint Piper’, as they call her had dropped from the sky one August afternoon thirteen years ago.

Carried by a tornado that blew her from a small farm in Idaho, the child had miraculously survived and acknowledged thereafter as godsent by the cult settlement that found her. All of them would give heir lives and limbs for her and it was with this purpose that her parents were killed on this fateful night. They needed for themselves, and more importantly for her to believe that she did in fact fall from the Heavens.

Terry Tornado thought she had put her past behind her. She had tried so hard, anyhow. Years of electroshock therapy helped, but mostly it was the drugs. And here she was again, moving out of Branson and onto a new chapter in her life. The time had come to pack her things up, so she put on some sweats, collected her long, black hair into a ponytail, and settled down in front of her closet.

Before long, she came across the one box she had forgotten about - the one she didn’t want to find. In it, she stumbled upon that familiar picture…and there they all were again. She in her Hello Kitty sunglasses, a 5-year old holding her stray cat Roses, her mutant parents, oozing that nasty green liquid from their ears, in the background, holding a pair of scissors to her neck. She never did figure out who took the picture, and she never could fathom it.

But she had brushed all these memories away, like the days when shrimp cost a mere 53 cents per pound. However, was not the time to run and hide from her past like Scooby and Shaggy. Now was the time to confront it; to find her metaphorical Mr. Weatherby, take off his mask, and send him where no Scooby Snack had gone before.

Wally used the pair of scissors to cut the outside of the container, holding the shrimp. He liked shrimp, he hadn’t had it in a while.

After his first bite, he realized why he hadn’t had it in a while.

HE WAS ALLERGIC!

Desperately, he reached for the phone, only to find that, due to the tornado outside, the lines were down.

With wind howling, he made it to his car. He drove, trying to steer clear of all the flying debris. He thought he even saw a cow flying through the air, but then realized that it must be a reaction from the shrimp.

There was a dinging on his dashboard. He was almost out of gas. He pulled into a gas station. Checking his pockets, he only had 53 cents. That wasn’t enough to make it to the hospital!

His throat was beginning to swell shut.

He began to collapse.

Seeing this spectacle, a trucker took off his sunglasses.

“Well, this is a familiar picture” said Bubba Jones, an ex EMT driver turned long haul trucker. “It looks like he just ate shrimp only to find out he is allergic”.

Bubba fixed his ponytail, picked up Wally in one arm, a stray cat in the other and loaded them into the back of his truck.

“Be careful back there, I’m hauling liquid nitrogen. I’m trying to earn enough to buy Betty Lou a bouquet of roses. Then, I’m going to retire.”.

The two headed off the dangerous path to the hospital.

(This took the form of a Japanese Tanka poem 5,7,5,7,7 syllables)

A Pair of Scissors,
Jutting out of a stray cat
This wasn’t unique
Was a familiar Picture
Serial Killers start young.

53 cents won’t buy you much anymore. But 53 cents and a familiar picture of a girl the ponytail and sunglasses are all that Jeff has left.

That loose change won’t even get him on the bus out of town after and incident with a pair of safety scissors and his covert operation trimming the neighbor’s roses for the government.

With only a stray cat with a shrimp allergy to offer advice along the way, will Jeff ever find the girl that he’s never met again?

(Welcome to the final fight of round 2 of Sirens of the LAMBs! Read through the narratives and vote on the winner! And remember to base it on the narratives and not just a bias! The voting for this round will end Saturday afternoon and the results will be posted on Sunday.)

———

By Matt from The Spoon.

Kyra wanted badly to kill Suzanne Stone because Kyra had spent many years living in prison without much food or Oxygen — the TV channel and not the element (her prison guards were mean and spiteful but not that mean) — and meanwhile Suzanne Stone (she recently dropped the Maretto) got to seduce young boys and kill off husbands to her heart’s content. This may not sound like a good reason to kill someone to you or me but women in prison have very little to do except fantasize about killing people and maybe building friends out of excess hair and nail clippings.

First Kyra needed to arm herself. She knew from her pen-pal O-Ren Ishii that the best place to find anything (including extensive shiv collections with matching his and hers bath mats) was Target. Unfortunately, Kyra had very little money because she had been too busy surviving a harsh penal colony filled with murderers and rapists to pay much attention to her stock portfolio. So instead of going to Target, Kyra hung her head in shame and shuffled across the street to Wal-Mart.

Kyra didn’t like Wal-Mart very much because the constant moaning of underpaid workers reminded her of prison, but she knew that some sacrifices had to be made if you wanted to kill somebody, and, besides, Wal-Mart had some good deals on American spears that were much better than those crappy spears made in Singapore that always gave you splinters right when you were about to impale somebody’s genitals. Kyra found the spears in the back next to a box of marked-down Dixie Chicks CDs.

The Dixie Chicks happened to be Kyra’s favorite band (they were played 24/7 over an intercom back in prison to screw with all the inmates who had good taste) so she was flipping through a pile of their CDs marked down to $17.99 from an original price of $19.99 for an incredible $2.00 savings when she noticed that the moaning throughout the store had shifted subtly from the breathless sighs of the downtrodden to the breathless sighs of the aroused. Then Kyra heard a crackling over the store’s PA system.

“Hello, Kyra.” It was that saucy minx Suzanne Stone.

“I have no interest in you, but since you are a crazy, psychotic she-dog who has spent years plotting my death, and this would negatively impact my television career, I must kill you. Because I have the clear upper hand and you are not James Bond, I will tell you how you will die without fear that you will use this knowledge to overcome the odds and defeat me.”

The PA system registered a tinkle of feedback as Suzanne Stone cleared her throat.

“With my expertise in Spanish and Esperanto, I have promised nasty sexual favors to all the male employees at Wal-Mart in exchange for your head. To the women I have promised a fifty-cent raise. Do not bother reasoning with them because they do not know English nor do they have any interest in learning. Thank you for shopping at Wal-Mart.”

Kyra screamed in rage and snarled like a cornered badger that has banged its knee against a coffee table and is really, really irritable. She was ready to go howler monkey on Suzanne and her minimum-wage cronies.

Within seconds, a ring of panting, mean-looking people circled Kyra. Most of them had cut up their blue Wal-Mart aprons into masks that covered their entire faces except for their eyes but some of the younger men with nicer physiques had taken off their clothes and converted their aprons into make-shift loin cloths. Two such men, their junk nestled in their aprons, broke from the circle and rushed at Kyra. She calmly pulled out two Dixie Chicks CDs from their cases (Top of the World Tour: Live and Wide Open Spaces, in case you were wondering) and sliced off their heads. Blood splattered everywhere and completely soaked their work aprons so that their corpses were sure to get scolded by their supervisor once he saw how unprofessional they looked.

The ring of snarling Wal-Mart employees blinked at the two headless corpses and then looked over to the Girl’s Clothing Department where Suzanne Stone was being carried by a group of hench people on a Human Touch HT-135 Massage Chair (Retail Price: $2,399.00). Suzanne pulled out a roll of quarters with one hand and in the other she licked a chocolate fudge-sickle with lascivious delicacy. Appropriately motivated, the ring of hench persons tightened their circle because they have needs just like you and me.

Kyra killed Suzanne’s minions first with the remaining Dixie Chicks CDs (mostly Taking the Long Way but a few Shouldn’t a Told You That’s were also in the mix) then she switched to the spears with the Made-in-America stickers. She was more than a match for any number of Wal-Mart employees, but this was possibly the first time in history that every employee in the store was not hiding in the corners avoiding the manager and actually participating in a group effort even if the goal was killing Kyra.

Minutes passed and Kyra began sweating heavily because it was very tiring work killing lots and lots of people with golf clubs, desk lamps, and bottles of potpourri. Every so often Suzanne’s underlings would wonder if a naughty act or fifty-cent raise was worth facing the grimy, sweaty howler-monkey-like Kyra. But then they’d glance back at their manager-in-training and she would flash five dollar bills and twist a cherry stem into a knot using only her tongue and they’d hunker down and press forward.

After another hour had passed, Suzanne Stone’s remaining henchmen had entered such a heightened state of sexual arousal that the sweaty, musk-heavy Kyra was turning them on. They pushed forward again and again, rubbing themselves up and down Kyra’s lubricated body and it felt surprisingly good, especially after such a long and tiring fight.

A camera crew showed up a short time later and Suzanne Stone put her five dollar bills back into her wallet, spit out all the cherry stems in her mouth, and got off her Human Touch HT-135 Massage Chair. She grabbed a microphone from one of the tech guys and faced the camera.

“This is Suzanne Stone reporting from a downtown Wal-Mart where a bedraggled woman with horribly thick calves and numerous split ends was found dead in the Electronics Department. According to witnesses she expired due to a mass dry-humping that was equally painful and humiliating.”

Then Suzanne Stone smiled the smile of a woman who has seduced an entire store of Wal-Mart employees with naughty promises and pocket change into killing a hated enemy. It was actually a pretty sexy smile.

————-

By Nick from Random Ramblings of a Demented Doorknob.

After the annoying and unproductive visit to France, Kyra decided to hop back on her ship and fly back into the unknown. Unfortunately, as she started going up, up, and away, her ship began to run out of fuel, and she was forced to crash land in some place called Idaho. It was awful. She had no idea where to get fuel for her ship on this primitive-technology planet, so she did the only thing any respectable researcher on this lowly planet would do: she got onto a computer and used a mix of Google and Wikipedia.

After her research, Kyra discovered that the only place that she could possibly get the type of fuel she needed would be in Houston, Texas at a place called NASA. But she saw the price-tag on the fuel, as well, and didn’t have nearly that much money (she didn’t have any, really). So using her handy Google and Wikipedia, Kyra did more research to try to find a way to make a quick buck. And then she saw it: They were about to start preparing their next season of Survivor, a reality show where the winner receives a million dollars.

I can do that, Kyra thought. I’ve survived alien monsters, mercenaries, and cold-blooded murderers. I think I can handle myself on an island for a month. So she sent in her audition tape (mostly of herself skimping around in a bikini she stole from a local clothing store and saying how she could kick everybody’s ass) and waited anxiously for the results. And then it came. She was in!

When the day finally came, Kyra put on her bikini and the clothes over the top, making sure to hide random weaponry/knives within her clothes. She flew in a giant metal thing called an airplane (It seemed twice as big as her ship, which confused her). When she got there, she was greeted by a man named Jeff on a large boat that took them out to sea. After a few more hours of travel, this time by sea, Jeff finally got up to speak to everybody.

“Hello everyone! We’re going to be doing something… a little different this season. As you may have noticed, there are numerous smaller islands around. You will each be partnered up with one other person, and each pairing will be living alone on a separate island. You must rely fully on each other if you want to survive in this game. Welcome to Survivor: Partners!”

The next thing Kyra knew, she was being teamed up with some older blonde lady. She had overheard her talking with some other people on the ship. Her name was Suzanne something-or-other, and she used to be in television. However, she had gotten fired from her job a while back and needed some extra cash. So she pulled a few strings from some network friends and got a spot on the new season of Survivor. Kyra knew she was already going to hate her.

The pairings were split up and shipped off to their respective islands. Once upon their own island, Suzanne immediately started barking orders.

“I think we should start building a place to stay. Once it starts raining, everything will be a mess. You should find the water and…” She kept going on and on, and Kyra simply rolled her eyes, ignoring her. There was no way she would be able to stand a month on this island with this woman. “So remember,” Suzanne was ending, “We have to outwit, outplay, outlast!”

Kyra smiled and nodded.

Day 4

Luckily, Kyra had been able to use her insane agility to get them through the first immunity challenge, so they were able to make it through to the next round. Unfortunately, now all she was hearing was how they were outlasting this and outplaying that. This woman never shut up.

Day 12

“Seriously,” Kyra said to the private camera. “I’m going to kill her. I’d rather be in locked up in Butcher Bay than have to spend another minute with her.”

Day 23

There was a merge! Finally, Kyra can talk to other people besides this fucking woman. Hopefully she can make another alliance.

Day 24 - Night

“That f**king b*tch tried to have me voted off!” Kyra growled at the private cam. “I’m seriously THIS close to killing her… if it wouldn’t screw up my chances of winning the million, I would.”

The Final Tribal Council Votes Revealing

Kyra, by some miracle, had made it to the final 3… unfortunately, so did Suzanne and some guy named Steve. Jeff was standing up. The live audience was cheering and awaiting the votes. Jeff opened the urn-thing and pulled out the first vote.

“Kyra!” Jeff announced. The crowd cheered. “Suzanne! Steve! Kyra! Suzanne! I’m sorry, Steve, that means you’re out of the running. It’s now between Kyra and Suzanne.” Jeff pulled out the next slip. “Kyra!” There was a pause as he pulled out the final vote. “And the winner of Survivor: Partners… Kyra!”

Kyra leapt out of her seat cheering. She had done it! She had beaten the game. But most importantly…

Kyra pulled out a knife from under her shirt and stabbed Suzanne Maretto in the face. “Outlived you, bitch!”

And that’s how Kyra beat Suzanne Maretto at both Survivor and in battle (What, like Suzanne had a chance?).

(Welcome to the fourth official face-off of Sirens of the LAMBs! If you have not done so already, please read the previous fights and cast your vote! Remember to base it on the narratives and not just a bias!)

—–

Warning: The following narratives present slight spoilers for each movie.

From The Faded Silver Screen.

Wash is sitting in the cockpit of the spaceship Serenity when an alarm suddenly sounds. He rushes over to the alarm console, frowning at the flashing orange light. He radios Mal, who is outside performing a spacewalk with several other crewmembers.

“Just as a warning, Mal, your oxygen is at the two hour mark,” Wash says over the intercomm system.

“Noted,” Mal says, his voice muffled by crackly interference. “We’ll be just a few more minutes. Kaylee and Jayne are finishing up some last-minute welding on the armaments.”

“Roger that,” Wash says, switching off the intercomm. He continues playing with his dinosaur toys. There isn’t much else to do, since his wife Zoe is holed up in sick bay — courtesy of a broken leg — and the rest of the crew is outside in zero G, helping with maintenance procedures. The civilians are all one shore leave, so there isn’t even them to talk to.

Several minutes later, someone calls out from the hallway, “Hey Wash, could you help me with this?” Wash looks up, hearing a muffled thump outside the cockpit.

“Sure thing,” Wash says, assuming that it’s Kaylee, the ship’s mechanic, having just completed the spacewalk and maintenance repairs. He walks out into the hall, and…THUD! He falls to the deck as someone swings heavy metal piping into the back of his head. Wash groans and looks up at his attacker. It is a tall, blonde-haired woman, dressed in pearls and fancy evening wear, brandishing a piece of metal piping. Wash doesn’t realize it now, but he has just been attacked by Suzanne Maretto, a duplicitous housewife-turned-killer.

“Wha-whaddya do that for?” Wash says. He groans as Suzanne digs her high heel into his back, and ties his arms behind him.

“Because it needed to be done,” Suzanne says. “Two days ago, some sort of space/time portal deposited me here, on this spaceship. I’m from Earth. New Hampshire, specifically, in the year 1995. Initially when I got here I freaked out, but then I decided to use the situation to my advantage. I hid myself in the mess hall, and I’ve been spying on all your conversations ever since. With most of your crew out doing this spacewalk thing, I figured it was the time to strike.”

“And how do you expect to use this situation to your advantage? Do you even know how to pilot a ship?”

Suzanne pauses for a moment. “I’m making it up as I go along.” Wash is about to say something else, but then she shoves a wad of cloth in his mouth to gag him.

One hour later, Zoe wakes up in sickbay to a call from Mal. He and the other crewmembers are trapped outside the ship, and they only have one hour of oxygen left in their spacesuits! Zoe radios the cockpit, but no reply. She informs Mal that there is presumably a sabotaging intruder aboard, and that she will take care of things. She grabs her crutches, a personal intercomm device, and a nearby handgun, and heads out the door…

WHACK! Zoe falls to the floor, dropping her handgun and intercomm device. She fights back a groan as her broken leg buckles under her.

“This is almost too easy,” Suzanne says, standing above Zoe with the metal pipe. She steps on Zoe with her heel, preparing to bind and gag her. Except that Zoe has no such thing in mind…Before Suzanne has time to react, Zoe grabs one of her crutches and slams it upward, catching Suzanne hard in the stomach. Suzanne grunts and falls backward. Zoe rolls over and is up on her good leg, but in that same moment Suzanne has also had time to get up, and is now swinging her metal pipe straight into Zoe’s face. Zoe ducks and grabs the piping, wrestling it from Suzanne’s grasp. Suzanne kicks Zoe’s bad leg, and she crumples again. This time, Suzanne has the sense to grab Zoe’s handgun and her intercomm device. She pistol whips Zoe in the face, and finally the first mate is knocked unconscious.

“Zoe? Zoe? Status update!” Mal’s voice crackles over the intercomm device.

“I’ll give you a status update,” Suzanne says. “This is Suzanne Maretto of the planet Earth. I don’t know who the hell you are, but from now on this is my ship. All of you are my hostages.”

“Suzanne, this is Malcolm Reynolds, and I am the captain of this spaceship,” Mal says sternly. “I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but there’s only one person in charge of the Serenity and that’s me.”

“Empty words from someone in such a tricky situation,” Suzanne says. “I’ve captured your first mate and your pilot. Good luck getting out of this situation.”

Mal has more angry words to say, but Suzanne shoves the intercomm device in her pocket. She leans over the inert Zoe, listening to see if the other woman is still breathing. This turns out to be her crucial mistake. Zoe’s eyes flash open, and in the same moment she pulls a knife out of a secret pocket. She plunges the knife into Suzanne’s abdomen. Suzanne gives a horrific scream, then is silent.

Zoe crawls over and picks up the intercomm device. “Mal this is Zoe. Situation is under control. Repeat, situation is under control.”

EPILOGUE

Unfortunately, Suzanne survives her fight with Zoe. She is transported to a penal colony on a local planet, where she spends three weeks in a rat-infested hellhole. Then–lucky for her–the space/time portal opens up again, and she is transported back to 1995 New Hampshire, where she goes crazy and decides to kill her husband and become a TV reporter.

——

By Matt from The Spoon.

The differences between Zoe (Serenity) and Suzanne Stone Maretto (To Die For) are difficult to interpret to the untrained eye. Both are beautiful, sensual, and formidable. Both are femme fatales, no question, but not all femme fatales are created equal, as Zoe is soon to find out.

This isn’t a knock on Zoe. She’s downright Amazonian with her exotic looks and skill in gunplay – a useful combination for the bounty hunter nee professional soldier. And as a bounty hunter closing in on yet another quarry, Zoe cannot help but underestimate Suzanne Stone. After all, Suzanne’s no soldier. Nor does she possess the rippling muscles or extensive collection of scars that most of Zoe’s bounties flaunt.

When Zoe rises out of bed in the morning and gives a prayer for her recently departed husband, her thoughts of her imminent engagement with Suzanne Stone are tinged with the same reluctance and apprehension that you or I envision another day at the office. And if this were a Monday then you know she’s already looking forward to the weekend. In other words, Zoe, the battle-hardened veteran of countless fights, cannot help but give less than her full attention to the slim, blonde, and oh-so-perky Suzanne Stone.

While Zoe is sipping her morning coffee and dreading that early bounty-hunting commute, Suzanne has already been a busy little bee. She can afford to take all the time in the world to prepare for their showdown because she is no longer confined to marital bliss; Suzanne killed her husband when he suggested she put her television career on hold to start a family. And if Suzanne was willing to sentence her own loving husband to death then Zoe doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell at surviving their encounter. When Suzanne gets something in her head – like killing the woman who wants to end her weather girl gig – she will choose the most forceful, direct course of action possible to protect her ambitions.

For Suzanne, the most direct attack is via seduction and she has a prime, AKA incredibly sexually frustrated, target in Zoe’s shipmate Dr. Simon Tam. Suzanne Stone isn’t To Die For for nothing, and wrapping Dr. Tam around her finger is the work of a single morning and leaves all of the talented doctor’s vast knowledge of the human body at her disposal.

When Suzanne off-ed her husband she had to rely on the limited skill-set of a dull-witted teenager. With Dr. Tam she has a veritable medicine cabinet of death to choose from.

But Suzanne is nothing if not direct and she will no doubt instruct her new boy toy to slip an appropriately undetectable poison into Zoe’s morning coffee. So much for that bounty-hunting commute.

As far as femme fatale fights go, the showdown between Zoe and Suzanne Stone was neither dramatic nor fair because Suzanne doesn’t care about fighting fair the same way a genuinely good-hearted person like Zoe does. While she was busy mourning her husband’s passing and dreading the coming work day, Suzanne was laying her snare that in the end left Zoe out-planned, out-seduced, and finally, out-right dead.

Editor’s note: Welcome to the ninth of a multi-part series dissecting the 2008 Academy Awards, brought to you by the Large Association of Movie Blogs and its assorted members. Every weekday leading up to the Oscars, a new post written by a different LAMB will be published, each covering a different category (or more) of the Oscars (there are 24 in all). To read any other posts regarding this event, please just click on the tag following the post. Thank you, and enjoy!

By Matt of The Spoon.

Predicting the Best Actress Winner

Cate Blanchett, Julie Christie, Marion Cotillard, Laura Linney, and Ellen Page all turned in strong performances in 2006-7. At least, that’s what I’ve heard since I managed to miss every single one of their Academy Award-nominated roles — which is something you probably don’t want to hear from the guy offering his analysis on the Best Actress category. Fortunately for us all, a small thing like complete and utter ignorance is nothing new to me and won’t get in the way of my 100% guaranteed prediction for this year’s Best Actress Oscar winner.

Before we get busy, refresh yourselves with single-sentence recaps of each stars’ nominated performance which I liberated from various media outlets. Click on the link for the accompanying film review.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age: Cate Blanchett as “Queen Elizabeth … faces pressure [from] Spain’s rebellious King Philip II, … [a] jealous Mary Queen of Scots, [and] plans [of a] hostile takeover.”

http://www.contactmusic.com/new/film.nsf/reviews/elizabeththegoldenage

Away From Her: Julie Christie stars as Fiona, an “Ontario woman succumbing to Alzheimer’s… [who takes] an interest in another [nursing home] patient” who is not her husband of forty-four years.

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2007/05/14/070514crci_cinema_denby?currentPage=2

La Vie en Rose: Marion Cotillard is “troubled singer [Edith Piaf], whom she portrays from her late teens to her death at a ravaged 47.”

http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/reviews/cl-et-vieenrose8jun08,0,3511610.story

The Savages: Laura Linney plays “a struggling playwright doing odd jobs in Manhattan and diddling a married man… [who, with her brother, must care for] the father who neglected them as kids and now needs all their attention, what with dementia knocking.”

http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/movie/14721307/review/17436185/savages

Juno: Ellen Page stars as Juno who is “hip-smart, witty and mature beyond her age… [and] finds herself pregnant after a sexual encounter with her best friend.”

http://movies.about.com/od/juno/fr/juno120507.htm

Now brace yourselves for my uninformed yet inexplicably statistics-heavy analysis of this year’s Best Actress nominees.

Eighty actresses have won an Oscar for Best Actress during the award’s seventy-nine year history (Katharine Hepburn and Barbara Streisand tied in 1967). Examining the conditions of previous winners from the first, 1928’s Janet Gaynor, to the most recent, 2006’s Helen Mirren, unmasks several trends that make predicting 2008’s Best Actress winner easier than peeing in the dark.

Based on my exhaustive Wikipedia research, 68% of all Best Actress winners have been American. The last five years reflect a break in this trend but even with recent winners from Britain (Helen Mirren), South Africa (Charlize Theron), and Australia (Nicole Kidman), Americans still account for 40% of the winners in the past five years and 70% in the last ten.

Based on this information, Marion Cotillard (French), Ellen Page (Canadian), Julie Christie (British) and Cate Blanchett (Australian) can be voted off the figurative Oscar Island.

That leaves Laura Linney as the lone American nominee and most likely Best Actress winner.

But let’s say the Nationality method is too reliant on bigoted worldviews for your taste. Fair enough. Here’s a breakdown of the nominees from an age-ism perspective.

The youngest winner for Best Actress was Marlee Matlin (Children of a Lesser God) who was twenty-one years old when she received her award in 1987. The oldest winner was Jessica Tandy (Driving Miss Daisy) who was a tidy eighty years old at her 1990 win.

Ellen Page will be twenty-one during this year’s Academy Awards on February 24th. However, only 5% of all Best Actress winners have been younger than twenty-five which makes Ellen Page an unlikely candidate to win this year’s Oscar.

A closer inspection of past winners also reveals that 90% of all Best Actresses were less than sixty years of age at the time of their victorious award ceremony, which would make Julie Christy (66) another statistically unlikely winner.

This leaves Cate Blanchett (38), Marion Cotillard (32), and Laura Linney (44) as the remaining actresses who fall within the more common age range of previous Best Actress winners. At first glance, all three actresses have very similar chances to win based on their relative youth. However, a second examination once again offers a differing perspective.

Age-ism’s wrinkled claw tends to brush off actresses in their 40s as only 15% of past winners can be found in this range while a pinkly robust 39% of previous winners were in their 30s.

Recent history reflects this successful trend for younger actresses. With the exception of Helen Mirren, all previous Best Actress winners were under forty years of age going back to 1995 when Susan Sarandon (50 at the time) won for Dead Man Walking.

In fact, the list of recent winners clearly shows a shift for especially young actresses. Once again with the exception of Helen Mirren, all Best Actress winners since 1996 have been thirty-five years of age or younger, though all winners were older than twenty-five.

Of the 2008 nominees only Marion Cotillard fits this criterion (excluding Ellen Page for her extreme youth).

So there you have it. This year’s winner for Best Actress will be Marion Cotillard… and Laura Linney? Perhaps my statistical analysis was not as definitive as I had expected. Hopefully my breakdown still managed to teach you a few new tidbits about the Best Actress category and proved once again that no matter what perspective you use, I’m always an idiot.