Personally I still miss this unmistakable quality, and have to ask, where has it gone? We have no shortage of talent and beauty in Hollywood today, but those stars that come across (to men at least) as having true class, style, and by extension, smarts, seem in low supply. I don't see that rare, ethereal quality in Angelina, Charlize Theron, Naomi Watts, or Halle Berry, capable "actors" all. (Admittedly, Laura Linney comes close, but she has a certain earthbound quality; notwithstanding her obvious acting chops, too often she comes off like everyone's sister, the one you instinctively passed over.)

We wouldn't take it that far, but still, this idea that one contemporary actress is the last classy woman standing got us thinking: Pound for pound, what's Joan Allen got that a handful of others after the jump don't?

Patricia Clarkson: She earned an Oscar nod playing up ailing dysfunction in Pieces of April, but she's a revelation of raw, complex class in underseen indies from The Dying Gaul to Lars and the Real Girl to Married Life. Woody Allen should be sued for her character's forced, egregious wimpiness in Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

Penélope Cruz: Mostly in Spanish-language films, we're afraid, particularly Volver and All About my Mother. But her strides opposite Ben Kingsley in Elegy help us forget her crossover beard efforts in Sahara and Vanilla Sky.

Vera Farmiga: She owned Down to the Bone, overshot hysterically in Joshua, and settled into a tormented, riveting (and generally unseen) sexiness in Quid Pro Quo. Bonus: She belongs here if only for holding her own in The Departed in what's written as little more than a token role for "Anonymous Person with Vagina."

Naomi Watts: Did class and trash with equal aplomb in Mulholland Drive, then slyly revised the role as rags-to-riches starlet Ann Darrow — the only watchable thing opposite Andy Serkis and a green screen in King Kong. Was as classy as they come in little-seen, forgotten The Painted Veil. (Rent it, John Farr.)

Catherine Zeta-Jones: Versatile and gorgeous, too often overshadowed by her male leads in the likes of the Zorro films, Intolerable Cruelty, No Reservations — not to mention in her own marriage. She's reportedly playing Lana Turner in Stompanato, finally giving her a chance at the lead in a melodrama people might actually see. (Sorry, Harvey Weinstein.)

Who did we miss? We know, we know — besides Dakota Fanning.

• Where Are All The Classy, Smart Female Stars Today? [HuffPo]

WHAT'S NEW: Edward Norton still may not be doing much to promote The Incredible Hulk, but once all the behind-the-scenes drama died down and we actually got a chance to see the film, we realized, "Hey — this isn't so bad." Or rather, it is what it is: A loud blockbuster for 14-year-old boys, with top-to-bottom miscasting (with the exception of a pathologically brutal Tim Roth) exacerbated by action auteur Louis Leterrier's hamfisted touch. But! It is kind of spectacularly dumb, arresting summer viewing — we've heard it described as King Kong meets The Bourne Identity, which is just about perfect — and predictions of a $55-$60 million opening might even be understating things. It certainly won't get much competition from the paucity of what's around it this week, particularly...

THE BIG LOSER: The Happening has miserable word-of-mouth and an R-rating working against it, and while we can't add much beyond our previous dispatches and what our own Reviewer X mentioned here on Monday, we can say that we'll be pretty shocked if Manoj's Folly cracks $20 million by Sunday night. And that's probably a number Fox would be happy with, even if it means third or even fourth place overall behind Hulk, Kung Fu Panda and possibly Zohan. But this isn't Speed Racer — if this does hit $20 mil, expect a backlash to the backlash by the time we reconvene next week.

THE UNDERDOG: We alluded yesterday to the unhinged creepiness of Quid Pro Quo, a mystery/romance/mindfuck featuring Nick Stahl as a paraplegic radio journalist who, er... stumbles? Rolls? OK, happens upon a subculture of "wanna-be" disability fetishists. Among them: Vera Farmiga, who takes an immediate (and suspicious) liking to Stahl's baffled chair jockey even as their physical trajectories cross radically — hers en route to the paralysis she craves, his en route to walking again. The actors' heavy lifting saves writer-director Carlos Brooks's pretentious ass on more than one occasion, but conceptually, anyway, Quid wields the kind of strength and endurance M. Night Shyamalan only experiences these days from his hair product.

FOR SHUT-INS: This week's new DVD releases include the terminal-cancer buddy bomb The Bucket List; the Hayden Christensen teleportation adventure Jumper; Michael Haneke's American remake of his torture opus Funny Games; Zak Penn's terrific poker-culture satire The Grand; and finally, by popular demand, What's Happening! The Complete Series.

So are you Team Hulk or Team Happening? Can Manoj shatter expectations and bring home the hit he so desperately needs? Did we miss a diamond or some other, less-precious gem in the rough? It's Father's Day weekend — what does your old man want to see?

It's about as fucked-up as it sounds, but as Fiona, the femme fatale opposite Nick Stahl's paralyzed investigative radio reporter, Farmiga efficiently mines what's perhaps the final frontier of on-screen sexuality. It takes a special actress to make a corset work with leg braces, and an even more special actress to successfully play it for mystery, vulnerability and dark humor all at once. Farmiga tells us all about the journey in five easy steps after the jump.

So in Quid Pro Quo we've got able-bodies versus amputee wanna-bes versus paraplegic pretenders versus garden-variety fetishists. At what point did you read the script and say, "Yep — this one's for me"?

Probably when I heard her name was Fiona Ankany. Sometimes it's in a name before you even read anything. I saw that and said, "That's a bell that needs to be rung." But I also grew up watching quirky detective stories and oddball romances — Murder She Wrote and The Love Boat. And this was one I'd never read before. And there's got to be something about a woman in the script that turns my head. I couldn't stop staring at this one.

Did you know this subculture existed before the script came along?

I'd never heard of this before. And the related literature at the time — we filmed it right after The Departed — was hardly even there. Any time you sit down with an apotemnophiliac — actually, even that is probably an outdated term for it. Now it's like "body image integrity disorder." The only support system I could find was online. The only explainable thing is that the anguish of wanting to be paralyzed is greater than that of amputation.

Doesn't that kind of unexplainability complicate you getting to know your character?

Yes. Fiona is riddled with contradictions. She shrugs off her syndrome as much as she revels in it. She's a total overachiever and yet she can't achieve the peace of wholeness. It's a real riddle. It's not something that she has full grasp of — it's not just one thing like her guilt or childhood or attention-seeking disorder. It's all of that — a full life's equation. That ambiguity actually was a big part of playing her. Even all these testimonies I read online are totally unexplainable; it's impossible to explain compulsion.

With the exception of The Departed, you often seem to be drawn to characters with afflictions: drug addiction, depression, psychosis and now, ahem, apotemnophilia. Do you ever consider that when choosing roles?

I probably do. That's what cranes my head about characters in scripts that I read. I'm sure of it, actually. But they're not always so extreme — they may just find themselves in very extreme circumstances where they're not extreme.

Like you seducing Nick Stahl with a corset, leg braces and crutches?

That scene is really interesting because wanna-bes will tell you this has nothing to do with sexual gratification. Instead it's about the arousal of their identity as a fully-functioning human beings only if they were amputated. That scene is very contradictory to that tenet, but Fiona herself is very much an actress; she has to play dress-up to discover certain truths about herself. And anyway, listen: Once you're wearing that outfit for a crew of people, you act. Plus we had Sinead O'Connor playing in the background — "Three Babies." I'm sure that helped.