The versatile Anne Hathaway

I just finished watching Rachel Getting Married. Wow, I love Anne Hathaway. I know she's had parts in serious movies before, but I still think of her as sweet and innocent and princess-y, like she was in The Devil Wears Prada or The Princess Diaries.

In Rachel Getting Married, she plays a drug addict who gets a pass from rehab to attend her sister's wedding. Hathaway is beautiful, but she looks so pale and drawn here. Her character is defensive and angry and generally irritating but never in a way that's over the top. It's a terrific performance and she deserved her Oscar nomination.

Anyway, Nathaniel at the Film Experience asked his readers to weigh in on their dream cast for the movie version of Wicked, when it finally gets made. And Hathaway's name came up quite often for the role of Elphaba.

Yeah, I know, we can play this casting game endlessly. By the time the movie gets made, they'll probably go for someone younger and more hip with the kids.

Still, I can dream, can't I? Here's taste of Hathaway's singing, from a performance at the Hollywood Bowl in 2005 in honor of Stephen Sondheim's 75th birthday.

Bob Fosse loads the dishwasher

Have you ever wondered how Bob Fosse would load the dishwasher, what kind of technique he'd use? I can't say it's a question that's ever crossed my mind. But I've been on a Fosse kick since I watched The Pajama Game a few days ago and became absolutely enthralled with his choreography.

In The Oregonian, Shawn Levy interviews Jonathan Demme, director of the new movie Rachel Getting Married, starring Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt and Bill Irwin. I haven't seen the movie but I do love Anne Hathaway. Her character is a recovering drug addict who gets a pass from a treatment center to attend the wedding of her sister, played by DeWitt.

So, what does this have to do with Bob Fosse? I'm getting there. Apparently the father of the bride, played by Tony-winner Irwin, and the groom, Tunde Adebimpe of the band TV on the Radio, have an impromptu competition to load the dishwasher. Demme says that the scene comes directly from the personal experience of screenwriter Jenny Lumet.

"It's rooted in Jenny's reality. She's the daughter of Sidney Lumet, and one night Bob Fosse was over for dinner, and they drifted into the kitchen, and Fosse was watching Sidney load the dishwasher and critiqued him a little bit, and they had this showdown. And as Jenny tells it, she's got Sidney, who looks like a pomegranate, with his Joe-Six-Pack approach to the thing, and Fosse, who's dressed all in black and never stops smoking his Nat Sherman, with his kind of balletic style of loading the dishwasher."