Whatever happened to Winona Ryder?  She was one of the biggest stars on the planet for a time, but then seemingly dropped off the face of the earth after the Saks shoplifting fiasco.  I watched the episode of Friends recently when Rachel claims to have kissed her sorority sister from college, who is of course played by Winona.  In that episode, she’d grown out her hair from her famous pixie, but now it’s back–not just on Winona, but also on Katie Holmes (c’mon, look at the cut below and tell me they’re not nearly identical!)  Winona defined my childhood: I adored Beetlejuice, developed a sense of irony through Heathers, was addicted to Little Women (still one of my all-time, can-watch-it-over-and-over-again favorites) and emulated the cool savoir-faire of the slackers in Reality Bites (another personal classic).  It’s said that every generation gets the icons it deserves…can we as a culture please find it within ourselves to move beyond the navel-gazing mirrors held up by Paris, Perez, LC et al. and go back to worshipping thoughtful, creative, talented (and yes, okay, gorgeous, too) actors? 

Come back, Winona…I miss you! 

Photo from People.com

How gorgeous is she?

Winona’s famous Michael Thompson photo from W Magazine after her arrest

An interesting juxtaposition of tough and fragile: classic Winona

With Ethan Hawke (le sigh), who had the one-two punch of Reality Bites and Before Sunrise, and changed my little life (and notions of romance) forever

Katie Holmes just debuted her latest haircut, a shorn crop that’s only a few scissor-snips away from GI Jane territory.  What do you think: love it, hate it, or couldn’t care less?  (In which case, I say to you: Which celebrity does get your beauty motor revving?)

PS: I love it.  Seriously.  Love it.

Photo from DailyMail.co.uk

Okaay.  Katie Holmes‘ hair is up to some very strange things here.  How many cans of hairspray do you think had to die to make this ‘do live?  I’ve missed you and your weird hairstyles, Mrs. Cruise.

Suri, meanwhile, is just chilling, like, “Um, yes, I am adorable.  What up.”

Photo from People.com

Katie’s returning to TV this fall, guest-starring on Eli Stone, alongside Jonny Lee Miller, who is of course Angelina Jolie’s ex-husband.

By now you’ve surely seen photos from last night’s MTV Movie Awards, so I won’t bother posting all my favorites…mostly because there was nothing that really blew me away.  Instead, this awards show cemented for me the fact that we have relented to the onslaught of trashiness.  The Socialite Who Shall Not Be Named paved the way, and the elevation of people like Tila Tequila (who actually looked pretty on this occasion, egads!) to “star” status shows that the apocalypse is near.  (Or that we’re all just really effing bored.)  Either way, our standards = all-time low.  No group of girls better epitomizes this than the Pussycat Dolls, who were once a cool, neo-feminist, let’s-use-sex-in-an-empowering-way dance troupe.  Somewhere along the way they became a corporate marketing machine, symbolic of the “If you don’t look like a porn-star, you are not sexy” madness that seems to have overtaken Hollywood.

Collagen-enhanced lips?  Triple layers of bronzer?  Spackled on foundation?  Waist-length extensions?  The gang’s all here!  I want to veto this type of “beauty” as the standard, please.  It’s tired, it’s classless and nobody wins.

And in this corner we have people with some true star (not to mention staying) power.  Call me naive, but I think this might actually be Sarah Jessica Parker’s real hair.  Sure, the figure-skating shoes are a little bizarre, but her ensemble is fun and sexy without being tasteless.  The fact that Katie Holmes sported jeans, a Sgt. Pepper’s-style jacket and that messy, cute little-girl hairdo to one of the most raucous red carpet events of the year is awesome.

Mommy Katie Holmes might be in dire need of a makeover (you were doing so well for a while there, Kate), but little Suri Cruise is still tops in the tot-style stakes.  I also have to admit that Tom’s interviews on Oprah made me like him a lot more again—and Jerry Maguire is my second favorite movie, after all.  (The first?  The Sound of Music!  Lame?  Don’t care!)

Photo Credit: Stefan/X17online.com via USmagazine.com