Unless you live in a cave, you know that Scarlett Johansson's album of Tom Waits covers, Anywhere I Lay My Head, is due out May 20. You would think that a visual medium would be terra firma for Johansson, but unfortunately "Falling Down" fares far better if you keep your eyes closed.

Musically, things could have been far worse, as Johansson's Sinead O'Connor-on-barbiturates singing is framed with a fair degree of attractiveness by a hazy, neo-shoegazer production. If it had come out in 1992 on 4AD (and didn't have a box-office bigwig's name on it) the indie-rock press might have salivated all over it. The video is another matter. 

Is it conceivable that Johansson is actually as vapidly self-obsessed as this makes her appear? We're made to watch her sitting in a makeup chair on-set as  a crew of star-shiners  dutifully and carefully polishes her up. Look, she's getting her mascara now! Oh, they're masking over her tattoo--wow, the everyday, inked-up Scarlett must just be too much for the Hollywood machine to handle, what a rebel she must be in real life! Oh, now she's riding in her limo, but she doesn't seem pretentious because she's chewing bubble gum. She's got to roll up the tinted window now, though, to shield herself from the glares of a world that just doesn't understand her iconoclastic soul. 

Couldn't they have gotten Ellen Page to do this instead?