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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 13, 2019 10:27:00 GMT
With dwindling ideas in Hollywood in movies vs. TV this is popping up more and more - 2 distinct Art forms, telling stories differently, specifically but addressing the same subjects or characters:
The Loudest Voice (TV) vs. (the upcoming film) Fair and Balanced with Roger Ailes .........and then we've had dueling Churchills (Oldman, Lithgow, Cox), dueling Gettys (Sutherland, Plummer), duel Capotes (PSH, Toby Jones), and upcoming dueling Hoffas (Nicholson, Robert Blake ........ Pacino).
Sometimes it's unfair to compare same character/different project - Denzel Washington blows away Morgan Freeman's botched, amateurish TV production of Malcolm X out of the water for one thing - but otherwise who are some less obvious ones maybe or who you would say were distinctly better in comparable ways and could recommend where people would learn something about the character/portrayal - whether it's that they got something "physically" right or captured something within their performance that you thought rang true.
One I'd list is Armand Assante who was scary and quite believable and sad too as Gotti - even though he doesn't really look like him or sound like him that much (and of course he's not Italian) - his performance captures a truer Gotti in a way not just over Travolta's ...............but even more than the actual Gotti himself.
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Post by TerryMontana on Jul 13, 2019 13:28:15 GMT
From the ones you mentioned, I'd take Denzel over Freeman every day and I prefer Oldman's Church than the others' but I can't decide between PSH and Jones for Capote.
Even though PSH was arguably the best actor of his era and won an Oscar for playing Truman, Jones' performance was also astonishing imo. And the movie itself was pretty good actually. Toby Jones is a very underrated actor imo.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 13, 2019 13:38:01 GMT
Toby Jones actually could appear on this list twice - his The Girl vs. Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins Hitchcock).
Churchill is a good one because no one who plays Churchill ever plays him bad if you play Churchill you win an award, period - I may prefer Finney even to all of them.
Let's see how many others we can come up with too......you'll notice all these are fairly recent and how Hollywood is struggling to come up with different twists on the same material (more or less).
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Post by TerryMontana on Jul 13, 2019 14:04:46 GMT
Yeah, his Hitch was also fine. I prefer Hopkins' by a mile, though.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 14, 2019 10:38:00 GMT
One terrific comparison point for something like this is a show like Boardwalk Empire which features many famous person/charcaters that ties into Assante's Gotti too................ Al Capone. Played probably imo the most comprehensively and detailed of ways ever by Stephen Graham - marvelously unhinged yet consistent in his portrayal and oddly warm in the way we see him - he isn't without his own internal logic - and of course where we had De Niro who for at least sometime and maybe still is the definitive portrayal to many film fans. Rod Steiger, Ben Gazzara, Jason Robards took a crack at him as well and still to come...........Tom Hardy too.
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Post by TerryMontana on Jul 14, 2019 13:06:11 GMT
Hyped about Hardy's Capone (what's going on with this, really??).
I prefer Graham's portrayal but I also rank De Niro's and Gazzara's performances very high.
(How about some US presidents? Many of them have been portrayed numerous times on screen. I was thinking about Hopkins and Spacey playing Nixon).
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 14, 2019 17:46:49 GMT
Maybe the best Nixon too : Again not an impression but in its totality - not look or voice:
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Post by stephen on Jul 14, 2019 18:00:29 GMT
Two Oscar winners took on the role of Bernie Madoff for television. One of them had the pedigree of HBO and Barry Levinson behind him, while the other was made on the cheap at ABC. It'd be pretty easy on paper to pick which of the two would be more successful . . . and yet, De Niro's portrayal of Madoff was so bloody leaden to the point of somnolence. Meanwhile, on ABC, you've got Richard Dreyfuss absolutely embodying Madoff's sleaze and Mephistophelian swagger to pitch-perfection, singlehandedly elevating his miniseries-of-the-week to something actually well worth your time.
And if that's not enough, this isn't the first time Dreyfuss has mastered a portrayal of a real-life villain without getting the acclaim of a bigger star's portrayal. His Dick Cheney in W. is legitimately Oscar-worthy and he gets under that man's skin far more effectively than Christian Bale ever could. Dreyfuss is a deceptively skilled actor when it comes to biopics.
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Post by theycallmemrfish on Jul 14, 2019 18:37:04 GMT
Put me down for Lithgow on the Battle of the Churchills.
As per the cast of W. vs the cast of Vice, I'd say that W. gets them better than Vice does (particularly Rumsfeld and Powell)... though, I think that Bale is better than Dreyfuss (slightly unfair, though being that Bale is the centerpiece whereas Dreyfuss is only in his film for a fraction of the time).
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Post by Viced on Jul 14, 2019 19:44:36 GMT
De Niro brilliantly underplayed Madoff, making him the enigmatic character that he... you know... actually is.
Dreyfuss' cartoonish Madoff by-way-of Danny Devito's Penguin was fun, but not nearly as effective.
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Post by Pittsnogle_Goggins on Jul 14, 2019 21:32:36 GMT
Donald Sutherland and Christopher Plummer both recently portrayed J. Paul Getty.
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Post by TerryMontana on Jul 14, 2019 21:54:21 GMT
De Niro brilliantly underplayed Madoff, making him the enigmatic character that he... you know... actually is. Dreyfuss' cartoonish Madoff by-way-of Danny Devito's Penguin was fun, but not nearly as effective. Dreyfuss was kind of over the top. De Niro was just on point!!
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Post by Mattsby on Jul 15, 2019 3:37:04 GMT
N/S these but wanted to mention the Pablo Escobar portrayals in recent consecutive years -- Benicio Del Toro - Escobar Paradise Lost (2014) Wagner Moura - Narcos (2015-17) Javier Bardem - Loving Pablo (2018) another: Orson Welles - could make a thousand movies based on his life, n/s Leiv Schreiber HBO one, Christian McKay was good in the okay Me And Orson Welles and gets the cadence and bravado down, but Vincent D'Onofrio in pacinoyes fav Five Minutes Mr Welles (30m) is the best yet bc he digs into Welles' mercurial side which is important, how he comes in and out of being artistically deluged, energized, slackened, inspired. D'Onofrio next should be pitching the My Lunches with Orson book where all you have to do is lift its dialogue - one location, could work on stage, as movie, or a 10m/10ep thing......... Now who will Fincher get for his new movie Mank out of the dull young crop of actors. few more notes - Leonard Bernstein. I thought it was interesting - and possibly a wrong move - for big players like Spielberg and Scorsese and the Bernstein estate to put their chips on Bradley Cooper instead of Gyllenhaal/Fukunaga whose movie they effectively sunk. Manson. Within one month the same actor (Damon Herriman) will be playing Manson twice, in the QT and Mindhunter. Has this sort of thing ever happened before? an actor repeating a real-life character? in a way like this specifically across movies/tv...?
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Post by cherry68 on Jul 15, 2019 5:47:20 GMT
pacinoyes Assante is American, but he has Italian ancestors on father's side (Irish on mother's side).
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 15, 2019 7:05:10 GMT
Manson. Within one month the same actor (Damon Herriman) will be playing Manson twice, in the QT and Mindhunter. Has this sort of thing ever happened before? an actor repeating a real-life character? in a way like this specifically across movies/tv...? Ian Hart played John Lennon in Backbeat and The Hours and The Times - quite well too - though I think those were feature films both and I know Helen Mirren won an Oscar and a Tony for The Queen (Oscar) and The Audience (Tony) playing Queen Elizabeth II which I always thought was kind of amazing actor luck in a way........
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 15, 2019 11:43:05 GMT
Howard Hughes has been played by 4 pretty big actors - Jason Robards (Melvin and Howard), Dean Stockwell (Tucker), Warren Beatty (Rules Don't Apply), and most famously DiCaprio (The Aviator).......although you could argue he's never been played "right" in the sense that his whole, amazing life hasn't been covered. That's Robards, below with Paul Le Mat:
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Post by TerryMontana on Jul 15, 2019 13:07:46 GMT
Robards was a fantastic Hughes!!!! But as a film, I liked the Aviator much more.
As for Escobar, I think nobody outran Moura.
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Post by stephen on Jul 15, 2019 15:17:06 GMT
Howard Hughes has been played by 4 pretty big actors - Jason Robards (Melvin and Howard), Dean Stockwell (Tucker), Warren Beatty (Rules Don't Apply), and most famously DiCaprio (The Aviator).......although you could argue he's never been played "right" in the sense that his whole, amazing life hasn't been covered. Motherfucker, did you just ignore Tommy Lee Jones's definitive portrayal of Hughes?
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 17, 2019 15:14:40 GMT
One that popped into my mind recently as well Ashton Kutcher and Michael Fassbender playing Steve Jobs and one that I'd surprise people with Mark Harmon and Zac Efron playing Ted Bundy ..........and I'm going to come down on the Harmon side as a better portrayal.
I thought Bundy was fine/pretty good but overpraised and Harmon rather is somewhat forgotten now and was more convincing - I fell for his Bundy with a lot less tics and mannerisms. He was ice precise to me. Not sure that would get a lot of agreement nowadays or for the short term.
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Post by TerryMontana on Jul 17, 2019 17:45:09 GMT
I don't think there is any comparison between MF and Kutcher playing Jobs...
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 22, 2019 9:56:33 GMT
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Post by TerryMontana on Aug 22, 2019 11:32:23 GMT
Haven't seen Dutronc. From the other three portrayals, Roth and Dafoe are magnificent!!
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Post by pacinoyes on Sept 1, 2019 21:38:42 GMT
Can anyone think of any female performances like this - multiple versions of a real life female character?In the meantime you have a great comparison point in the portrayal of J. Edgar Hoover - who has been portrayed a lot - Ernest Borgnine, Billy Crudup and in 2 famous (and SAG nominated) cases Bob Hoskins and Leonardo DiCaprio. I'm not sure Hoskins isn't the very best portrayal and the DiCaprio a sort of hit or miss one. But one is a lead and the other is in support.......we're probably still missing a definitive J. Edgar Hoover biopic and a lot of actor have played him. Hoskins who was almost Al Capone where he may have been perfect for it ...........here gives one of his riskiest performances in Nixon (1995) as Hoover:
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Post by stephen on Sept 1, 2019 22:26:55 GMT
One of my favorite Hoovers is an underrated one: Kevin Dunn in Chaplin. He just oozed that unctuousness J. Edgar was known for.
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Post by pacinoyes on Sept 1, 2019 23:17:51 GMT
I'm sure we'll be able to get some good comparisons with some royalty ones but in the meantime and to add some females to this thread there is Jackie Kennedy portrayed most famously in an Oscar nodded turn by Natalie PortmanEven though there's nothing to rival that she has been essayed a lot in performances that kind of got ripped - Katie Holmes, Jeanne Tripplehorn briefly in Grey Gardens. Her closest rival - Blair Brown doesn't look like Kennedy at all yet was surprisingly good in a TV version from the 80s. Natalie Portman as the first lady:
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