The Beauty of Retrospect, March Actress Edition: Jameela Jamil

I originally featured British actress Jameela Jamil in October 2016, shortly after the premiere of the NBC series The Good Place," in which Ms. Jamil stars with Kristen Bell and Ted Danson.

Ms. Jamil is still on "The Good Place," having done little else since.  My main reason for featuring her again is not to offer an update on her career but on her sitcom.  I mentioned in earlier posts that "That Good Place" is about ethically compromised people who try to stay in what they think is the Good Place and avoid the Bad Place. At the close of the first season in 2017, however, Ted Danson's Michael is forced to admit that the four people in his charge have been in The Bad Place all along, meant to torture each other emotionally and psychologically forever.

Why didn't I say this earlier?  Er, well, I don't actually watch this show . . .

Anyway, the next two seasons are about Michael's efforts to ensure that the four people in his control keep torturing each other while they resist him.  "The Good Place" is popular enough to ensure that Jameela Jamil, as Tahani, will remain a presence on American television for some time to come.

The Beauty of Retrospect, March Actress Edition: Jennifer Garner

Okay, I've waited far too long to feature Jennifer Garner again - I haven't done that since December 2007! :-O

If all you saw of Jennifer Garner recently were her appearances on television, you'd think that all she ever does any more are commercials for credit card companies and beauty creams.  Au contraire - she's worked steadily in the movies in all the time since I last featured her.  Among her many roles since 2007 are as a doctor in 2013's Dallas Buyers Club, a drama about the underground AIDS-treatment-drug market in the 1980s, and the 2016 ensemble comedy Mother's Day, director Garry Marshall's final film.  (His sister Penny died two years after.)  Ms. Garner also played the mom in 2014's Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (the box office receipts were anything but terrible, horrible, no good and very bad!) and as a vigilante seeking revenge against the murderers of her husband and daughter in 2018's Peppermint.

A month away from her 47th birthday as of this writing, Jennifer Garner is in that select group of women - Janet Evans, a frequent honoree on this blog, is in it too - who look adorably cute well into middle age. :-)

Sadly, her personal life as not been as good as her public life; she and Ben Affleck divorced in October 2018.

The Beauty of Retrospect, March Actress Edition: Vera Farmiga

I last featured Vera Farmiga in April 2009.  Where does the time go? 

Ms. Farmiga has been in several movie over the past ten years, but two movies in particular leap out, mainly because Jason Reitman directed both of them.

In late 2009, she starred in Reitman's movie Up in the Air, a comedy/drama about a termination specialist who works with laid-of workers, played by George Clooney.  Ms. Farmiga played a businesswoman who accompanies him on his travels.  More recently, though, in 2018, she played Oletha "Lee" Hart, the wife of disgraced former U.S. Senator Gary Hart, in Reitman's The Front Runner, about Hart's ultimately doomed 1988 presidential campaign.

Unfortunately, The Front Runner was also doomed to failure.  Apparently people are more interested in movies about U.S. Presidents and First Ladies than in movies about would-be U.S. Presidents.