2 Dollar Productions

I saw the preview for the new Charlize Theron vehicle, "North Country," last week and I can't say that I was too excited about the experience.

The film appears to be one of those Oscar-baiting, strip-mining, well-meaning, lesson-learning plots where Theron must fight to preserve her dignity as well as her right to work in some shithole mine somewhere in the north country where the days are long and the accents are silly.

"North Country" is already generating good buzz, and while I'd bet that it's a quality project, I still have very little desire to see it.

The mine looks dark, dank and depressing (why anyone would fight to work in this pit is utterly beyond me) and since Theron's character spends her days toiling there, she tends to resemble this putrid hovel.

Theron looks extremely average and it's hard to be even remotely sexy when you're covered in mine gunk all day long.

After the preview ended, I was a little sad about Theron's plight concerning this mining issue, but I was even more concerned with her continuation of a disturbing trend where actresses break onto the movie scene with a head-turningly sexy debuts and then spend the rest of their careers shunning the very hotness that caused them to leave their mark in the first place.

Theron first came to my attention after her part in "Two Days in the Valley." I didn't know who she was, but I certainly wanted to find out after watching her pummel Teri Hatcher and hump James Spader like a hyena.

Quite simply, she was phenomenal. She was also blonde and chiseled and wearing a white nightie for large parts of the film.

Theron is by no means an anomaly in this regard, however, as she is merely following in the footsteps of many other big stars who have never again looked as good as they did in their early movies.

A few examples:

Cameron Diaz - In the movie "The Mask," Diaz was voluptous and curvy with all of her facial gifts intact. She has never looked as good again as she has turned to period pieces, bad romantic comedies and apparently lost all her curves even before she started dating Justin Timberlake.

Julia Roberts - She looked great in "Pretty Woman" even if she did use a body double. Regardless, she was still damn sexy, and the only movie where she's come close to rivaling her work as Richard Gere's hooker was in "Erin Brockavich," a film where she played a legal crusader who merely dressed like a hooker.

Jennifer Connelly - Few people saw the Don Johnson classic "The Hot Spot," but it's definitely worth a rental as Connelly is simply smoking. How Johnson got with her and Virginia Madsen in the film is a secret I'd like to know, but Connelly has never again come close to her magic in this film (with the possible exception of "Career Opportunities").

Catherine Zeta-Jones - She is on the fence because she hasn't completely shunned her physical charms thanks to good-looking turns in "Intolerable Cruelty" and "Chicago" (except for the haircut). But for my money, she has never rivaled her role as a sexy Spanish senorita in "The Mask of Zorro."

That is just a partial list, but the message is clear - if you discover a young actress and believe her to be stunningly sexy then you better savor every minute of it because the only certainty is that she'll change.

She'll go period ("Mary Reilly") or Irish ("Michael Collins") or both ("Gangs of New York") or she may simply get herself stranded in the North Country and they never return the same way again.

-BDS

It's good to be a Viking these days.

The football team might be going nowhere this season, but apparently that didn't stop roughly 17 Minnesota players from chartering two boats on Lake Minnetonka that were loaded to the gills with liquor and prostitutes.

The team and state officials are now embroiled in a scandal that threatens their season as well as the very morals of Minnesota after boat crew members complained to the local authorities concerning prostitution and lewd behavior aboard the floating party barges.

The boats were scheduled to take a leisurely 2 1/2 hour cruise on the lake, but the captains returned the Vikings to the dock after less than an hour.

There were reports of open acts of sex, heavy drinking, aggresive propositioning of female boat crew members, and urinating on private property among other lascivious behavior.

The truly fightening thing is that they were able to accomplish all this in less than an hour. I can only imagine in vivid detail over and over again what might have transpired had the entire cruise taken place as scheduled.

State officals were suitably outraged as Gov. Tim Pawlenty declared "If the allegations are true, it's awful. We understand that athletes aren't necessarily role models, but we at least expect them to abide by the basic laws of the state."

And of human decency he might have added.

That kind of morally corrupt behavior is not generally tolerated in public even if you are a rich athlete. The players should have taken a page from the Stanley Kubrick film "Eyes Wide Shut" and realized that the wealthy have been conducting themselves like pure animals for centuries, but they must do it behind closed doors.

And wearing elaborate animal masks might help to disguise the participants.

As it stands, this is a scandal that will hound the team for the rest of the season and beyond. You can already write the Vikings out of the play-offs, although they probably won't care because the off-season will come sooner and there's always a party somewhere.

My recommendation would be to try South Beach the next time they're up for a little debauchery.

-BDS

I generally try to contain my gloating - except when it comes to Chris O' Donnell and Freddie Prinze Jr.

A few blogs ago, I mentioned that these two "stars" were headlining new television shows that looked abysmal and I also predicted that they would struggle to find an audience (or at least anyone who would admit to watching them).

So far, I am at least half-right as O'Donnel's lawyer show, "Head Cases," has already received the ax after only two episodes.

I might have been wrong about O'Donnell having absolutely no talent, however, because I believe that it takes a very real and very special talent to bomb so badly after only two hours on television that the network decided to cut their losses and shut down production.

With the premiere of "Freddie" only a week or so away, I can only hope that he follows in O'Donnel's mighty footsteps and perhaps even surpasses them. It would be pretty special to air just a single episode before being canned.

Unfortunately, "Freddie" might be around a little longer as it is being packaged with "The George Lopez Show" as some sort of Chicano power hour of television.

I believe this is only wishful thinking on the part of ABC execs because while it is technically true that Prinze is part Hispanic; he's still a full-time tool in my book.

-BDS