Nia Vardalos, the voluptuous star of the Oscar-nominated indie hit My Big Fat Greek Wedding, is not so voluptuous these days. Standing 40 pounds trimmer, she has also unwound her dark, corkscrew curls into softer, blonder Hollywood waves. Today, where she once draped her bod in dumpy momwear, she now stands confidently in minidresses.

By the weight-obsessive standards of her chosen field, this would be considered simply a shrewd career move. But Vardalos has spoken publicly about her battles with infertility and her genetic predisposition for diabetes, which she ignored for years. Recently, her doctor urged her to cut her weight to prevent the disease's onset, according to an interview she gave last week to People. This time, she listened.

So why are the reviews of her ultracheesy new pic, My Life in Ruins, highlighting her new image as equally central to the film's failure than its truly insufferable script? Variety's acid-tongued review describes her as "strutting" across the screen while sporting "2½-inch wedges, thigh-baring skirts and [a] honey-toned Sarah Palin coiffure." Roger Ebert lambasts her (in an otherwise spot-on review) for being "thinner, blonder, better dressed, looks younger and knows it. She's like the winner of a beauty makeover at a Hollywood studio. She has that don't touch my makeup! look." And Entertainment Weekly writes "[b]lunt and brassy, with a meticulous windswept mane and an air of officious sexiness, she might be warming up to star in The Arianna Huffington Story."

Ouch.

To say that Vardalos's career success is directly proportional to her weight is nothing short of ridiculous. Would we say the same of Rita Wilson and Jennifer Aniston, two other Greek girls who slimmed down and baliage-d their dark waves to get more work? Not a single story today has pegged Aniston's coming in at No. 8 on Forbes's most-powerful-celebrities list as being solely due to her yoga regimen.

If anything, seeing Vardalos proudly showing off a healthy—not overly skinny—physique in summery sundresses is a welcome change from the klutzy, self-loathing Toula Portakalos, her character in Wedding. She's taken control of her life and her health. She's back in cinemas, with two 2009 releases after a years-long break from film—one she attributes to a bout of depression over her infertility issues. 

And, most critically, My Life in Ruins is a horrible movie for eleventy-billion reasons—the very, very least of which is its star's newfound attractiveness. This movie includes the rhyming of "Socrates" and "feta cheese" by Richard Dreyfuss, truly at rock bottom as a ribald American tourist. Vardalos's romantic interest is a hairy bus driver named (wait for it) Poupi Kakas. Even Rachel Dratch is slumming it in this movie, and she has no career to speak of.

Surely a half-star review is more justified by those things than by Vardalos's tanned, toned legs? 

NEWSWEEK's movie mastermind David Ansen unpacks the history of the neurotic New Yorker--the peg being Whatever Works, Woody Allen's latest film and the director's cinematic return to NYC after a several-picture series in Europe.  Whatever Works stars Larry David in the Allen-esque role of over-obsessive misanthrope -- and Ansen makes the claim that neither David nor Allen could've succeeded without the torch-bearing Oscar Levant.  An excerpt from the piece, below:

Has the Neurotic New York Jew lost his power to make us squirm? Watching David enacting one of Allen's archetypal alienated souls, I couldn't help but think that neither of these angst-ridden schmoes could have existed if it weren't for Oscar Levant, the man who almost single-handedly introduced The Neurotic into the pop-culture lexicon. Levant, initially renowned as a gifted classical pianist and the foremost interpreter of Gershwin, frequently popped up in movies (An American in Paris, The Bandwagon) as the comically cynical sidekick. But it was his appearances on TV in the 1950s that left an indelible and twisted stamp. Brilliant, hypochondriacal, mordantly and sometimes cruelly witty, both drug-addicted and manic-depressive, he turned his mental instability into subversive vaudeville. As savage on himself ("Underneath this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character," he told Jack Parr) as on his targets (When Frank Sinatra Jr. was kidnapped, he said "it must have been done by music critics"), Levant was a blinking, twitching affront to the can-do optimism of the Eisenhower era. He got thrown off the air in 1956 with his comment on Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe's Jewish wedding: "Now that Marilyn Monroe is kosher, Arthur Miller can eat her."

Friends and family of actor David Carradine, who was found dead this morning in his Thai hotel room, are now saying that they dispute Thai authorities' pronouncement that the 72-year-old committed suicide.  Director Adam Rifkin -- who worked with the actor -- has said he "find[s] it extremely hard to believe that ... [this] was done in by his own hand."   Meanwhile, Carradine's mother-in-law Betty Fraser also disputes the suicide claims, saying that "he was a very strong person and I don't think it's likely at all."

And now The Daily Mail is reporting that the death-by-hanging "accidental," per Carradine's spokesman Chuck Binder.  The rep also gave the following quote to TMZ.com: "We can confirm 100 percent that he never would have committed suicide. It was an accidental death. Everybody is in shock."

David Carradine in a scene from 1970s action series Kung Fu.

Kill Bill and '70s television series Kung Fu star David Carradine was found dead in his hotel room in the Thai capital of Bangkok, the Associated Press reports. U.S. consular authorities confirmed that the 72-year-old actor was found dead; cause of death was not released.  Citing anonymous sources in the Thai police department, the Thai newspaper The Nation posted a story to its website that claims Carradine was found hanging in his luxury suite's closet by a maid, who came to clean his room at 10 a.m. on Thursday.

Here is NEWSWEEK's 2004 chat with the star.

Stop me if you've heard this one: a guy walks up to a poster for The Hangover, takes one look and says, "Who the hell is that guy?"

The answer is Zach Galifianakis, an absurdist, piano-playing stand-up comedian (and one of the "Comedians of Comedy") who looks kinda like the Brawny paper-towel guy. With five pending 2009 releases, Galifianakis is about to have a breakout year in film, and he starts by playing third fiddle in The Hangover to two better-known stars, Ed Helms of The Office and Bradley Cooper, of Wedding Crashers fame. But for a comparative newbie, he steals the show as a zany, socially inept groomsman who's utterly unaware of his third-wheel status. So successful is his shtik—and, by the same token, the movie's laugh factor—that Warner Brothers has already greenlighted a sequel. Ahead of The Hangover's June 5 release, NEWSWEEK talked to Galifianakis about roasted beets, his affinity for jockstraps and why men don't wear white jeans anymore. Excerpts:

Ball: I'm afraid to interview you after watching Between Two Ferns, afraid you're going to start snoring or sneezing on me.
Galifianakis: Oh, no. I'm very reserved in real life.
 
What's your own backstory for your character Alan's craziness?
It started with the wardrobe. The day I went in and did wardrobe, I asked for white jeans. You don't see a lot of guys wearing white jeans these days. It's not very cool, I guess. I just had imagined that, years ago, he went to a lot of raves, that he wasn't born weird, but that all the drugs he'd taken over the years had really affected him, and had made him kind of weird and antisocial, even though he's a very social being. But people are against him being social. He lives with his family, doesn't have a driver's license, he's not allowed to get near a school.

[CLICK MORE>> TO VIEW FULL CHAT]

• Swayze's Television Show Gets Cancelled. A&E's The Beast, in which Patrick Swayze starred as a rogue Chicago FBI agent, has been cancelled according to Variety. The final installment of the first season aired April 23; it's speculated that the show was canned due to its star's health problems, but A&E will not confirm. [Variety]

• Forbes List Gives Power Crown to Jolie -- Not Winfrey. Angelina Jolie has bumped Oprah Winfrey off the top of the annual Forbes celebrity power list, which is based on media coverage and earnings, among other things.  Joining the pair in the top five: Madonna (3), Beyonce (4) and Tiger Woods (5).  Among those who fell off the list are J.K. Rowling, Justin Timberlake, Jennifer Lopez, Johnny Depp and Tyra Banks. And for the first time, a president has been included on the list -- Obama ranks at No. 49.  [BBC News]

• Discovery Charts the Ferrell Effect.  When Will Ferrell guest-starred on an episode of Discovery's Man vs. Wild, he got the benefit of promoting his new movie Land of the Lost.  And it looks like Discovery got a lot in return -- the show scored 4 million viewers, the most in the show's history. The channel is now exploring what it might mean to regularly feature celebrity guests on the series.  [The Hollywood Reporter]