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This fascinating piece in the Guardian details British filmmaker Peter Greenaway's (The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover) plans to bring to life Leonardo DaVinci's The Last Supper. The effort will be part of a series of projects the director and painter plans to animate classic works of art. Greenaway, according to the article, will use "dramatic lighting, projections, and recordings of actors' voices" to transform The Last Supper into "something close to a film." He plans to expand the moment DaVinci captured into his painting into a larger story stretching from Christ's birth through his crucifixion, and will include "raw and heavy images of Christ's genitalia and naked crucifixion" from other DaVinci works.

Greenaway doesn't plan to stop with The Last Supper -- future plans for bringing works of art to life include works by Veronese, Velázquez, Picasso, Monet and Jackson Pollack; he's even asked the Vatican for permission to project onto Michelangelos' Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel. He's already done one project, animating Rembrandt's The Nightwatch in 2006.

The project is not without its critics -- some feel DaVinci's work stands on its own and doesn't need improving. Personally, I think this could be really cool. It's not like Greenaway proposes to deface or destroy classic works of art, he's basically just looking to reinterpret them with the help of media that wasn't available when they were painted. What do you think? Should great works of art be left alone, or could a project like this actually help the art world by exposing people to works of art from a perspective they might otherwise not have considered?

Okay, so it might be a bit creepy for an adult to admit that an animated character is hot, but come on, Jessica Rabbit wasn't really bad, she was just drawn that way, right? Animated characters have been sexualized since the early days of the genre because sex sold just as well back then as it does today. It's pretty evident when you check out all of Disney's animated leading ladies that they've been drawn to look appealing to the eye, going back as far as Snow White and Tinkerbell. (An interesting side note here, according to this interview with Margaret Kerry, who was the character model for Tinkerbell, she claims that her real name is Tinker Bell, two words, although Disney officially has it as one. Her interview is pretty fascinating, check it out.)

The Being a Man Spot over at fanpop has a list of Disney's top ten hottest women, and there are no real surprises on the list. What's notable are the omissions like Jessie from Toy Story 2 who was both sassy and smart, and Daisy Duck, who sort of falls into the creepy Wayne's World category of Bugs Bunny in a dress being attractive. Daisy had a fair amount of sass as well, and she didn't take Donald's nonsense either. That has to count for something, because she definitely wore the pants in that pants-less relationship.

The real question is, what effect does the traditional Disney female image have on young kids? Not everyone is a fan of the oversexed and vivacious look that runs rampant in the Disney-verse, arguing that it gives little girls an image to live up to that is far from what a normal person looks like, and that is sets a very limiting stereotype of what a heroine can look like. Barbie has faced the same sort of criticisms, especially during the whole "Math is hard!" fiasco, yet both Barbie and the Disney women are still created to look like pinup girls.

Is this a good thing, or a bad thing? What do you think, Cinemites?

[Thanks, Marsha]