I'm sure there are female Russell Crowes on this earth, willing to change their bodies away from the beauty standard for art

Well, she's already done that for M$B, hasn't she? But yeah -- the Crow/Clooney/Diesel effort seems to be mainly matched in women by them not wearing as much foundation.

Is the book (and I would presume, the movie) based pretty closely on the actual case? I remember reading about the murder back in high school, when I was on my true-crime book obsession, and thought it was really interesting.

Also, Brian De Palma hasn't had a hit since... what, The Untouchables? Josh Hartnett is not someone I'd refer to as a leading-man material either.

On a different note, while watching Deadwood last night, I caught a preview for a series HBO is set to air in summer called "Rome", [link] which is supposed to chronicle the last days of Julius Caesar's reign (with the usual HBO-riffic bounty of sex and violence.) There appeared to be some interesting actors on the cast, e.g. Ciaran Hinds, James Purefoy, and Lindsay Duncan.

Ellroy's novel is more of a riff around reality than a true-crime with the serial numbers filed off. As with most of his books, it's about two LA detectives (and amateur boxers), unalike in temperament, who team together because between them they make a single emotionally-functional human being, if you grade on a curve. The dead woman is very similar to the Short case, although I think the fictional outcome is more, um, fictional than what really happened.

mainly matched in women by them not wearing as much foundation

I do remember, for Dead Man Walking, everyone oohed and aahhed at Susan Sarandon not wearing any makeup when playing a nun. Hello! She is a nun! While I am sure some nuns wear eyeliner, I bet most of them do, in fact, eschew pancake makeup.

(For that matter, the archbishop of Boston eschews pants. But he is particularly strict about his flavor of priest-ish-ness. Priestliness? His flavor of being a priest.)

Ellroy's novel is more of a riff around reality than a true-crime with the serial numbers filed off.

Wasn't Ellroy's mother the victim of some unsolved murder as well? I swear I remember reading that Ellroy had some personal reasons for his interest with the Black Dahlia case.

His mom was killed. Ellroy wrote a book about it--the cover was an actual new photo of Ellroy taken shortly after he learned his mom was murdered.

[link]

Yep, for a while he thought the Black Dahlia killer had done his mother. (Dude, just reading that stuff and I sound like that.Scary.) I'm not sure if he still believes that. Loving Nutty. Actually HS should be able imo to play that...she wasn't as hot a ticket as she thought she was, poor baby.

I don't think Swank is playing the victim.

Yes, Short wasn't the typical glamor pinup girl of 1940s Hollywood, as much as she wanted to be. I just remember being morbidly fascinated by the details of her death (cut it half? Yuck!) and saddened by the fact that the murderer was never caught and punished.

But if you're a woman in Ellroy, you always do, play the victim. And, yeah, wrod, Kathy. And of course, that, um, physical imperfection that she had that I've never been able to find enough brain bleach to scrub.