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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Jul 14, 2020 19:19:12 GMT
Anthony Higgins, The Draughtsman's Contractthis is my idea of the perfect movie. It has everything: Sex, scandal, British pomp, wit & sarcasm for days, legendary putdowns, a convoluted meta murder mystery, and a rollicking Purcell-based Nyman score, all couched in a Restoration-era satire that feels a product of the time itself --if Peter Greenaway sat me down and told me that this plot, these characters and this delicious dialogue was actually ripped from some forgotten Swiftian satire written in the 17th century, I'd believe him, but the film is that much more remarkable for stemming entirely from his imagination. The performers all thrive in this highly-specific space, but Higgins carries the thing and embodies its profoundly biting satire. He plays the young arrogant R. Neville, an artist for hire who aspirationally adorns himself in the same ostentation of those above his station. He's an absolute scumbag but has had to compensate for his lower class with wit, shameless oppurtunism and an intransigent nature. He operates with a chip on his shoulder, perpetually scowling, and on the assumption that he is always right and must have his way, and his overstepping gets him into serious trouble. But it sure is fun while it lasts. Roles like this don't come around very often.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Jul 18, 2020 21:19:37 GMT
PSH in The Talented Mr. Ripley
On the surface it's pretty basic stuff: scenery-chewing douchey upperclass flamboyance, the stuff PSH could do in his sleep and would do again (which is why he's so taken for granted here), but the complexity of his persona set in diametric opposition to Matt Damon's ingratiating lowborn thirstiness presents a fascinating class dynamic that encompasses what the entire film is about. PSH's snide demeanor stole every scene he was in to my eyes ("how's the peeping!"), but his confrontation with Tom in the apartment is what elevates the role from amusing affectation to a striking personification of all of Ripley's class insecurities.
It's been too long to know how I feel about the whole film, but this scene in isolation is a brilliant piece of psychological thriller. The way Freddie just destroys Tom's whole facade with just that piano key. He sees right through Tom's bullshit. He's aware of his own superiority and disgusted at Tom's pretenses and overreaching ("have you done something to your hair?"). Tom is aware of that too, and it's why he hates him (and you can see relief in Tom's face when he drops that facade and just smiles knowing what he's about to do and thrilling in the inevitability). Freddie is unrelentingly bullying and predatory (and incisive), but he's about to become the prey.
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Post by mhynson27 on Jul 19, 2020 4:13:48 GMT
PSH in The Talented Mr. RipleyOn the surface it's pretty basic stuff: scenery-chewing douchey upperclass flamboyance, the stuff PSH could do in his sleep and would do again (which is why he's so taken for granted here), but the complexity of his persona set in diametric opposition to Matt Damon's ingratiating lowborn thirstiness presents a fascinating class dynamic that encompasses what the entire film is about. PSH's snide demeanor stole every scene he was in to my eyes ("how's the peeping!"), but his confrontation with Tom in the apartment is what elevates the role from amusing affectation to a striking personification of all of Ripley's class insecurities. It's been too long to know how I feel about the whole film, but this scene in isolation is a brilliant piece of psychological thriller. The way Freddie just destroys Tom's whole facade with just that piano key. He sees right through Tom's bullshit. He's aware of his own superiority and disgusted at Tom's pretenses and overreaching ("have you done something to your hair?"). Tom is aware of that too, and it's why he hates him (and you can see relief in Tom's face when he drops that facade and just smiles knowing what he's about to do and thrilling in the inevitability). Freddie is unrelentingly bullying and predatory (and incisive), but he's about to become the prey. Thank you for that spoiler kind sir.
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Post by Mattsby on Aug 23, 2020 20:12:24 GMT
Judy Holliday - Born Yesterday, The Marrying Kind, Phffft, It Should Happen To You. She's a total wonder on screen - with such a unique sweetness and humor. She wins you over the more you see from her I think. These four came btwn 1950-54, and she's amazing in all of them. She was 29y/o when she beat Bette Davis and Gloria Swanson for the Oscar for Born Yesterday. She was BAFTA nodded for Phffft and The Marrying Kind. And won a Tony shortly after these, she seemed to be a theater sensation for a time. But back to these. All of them sort of play like pre Woody Allen movies, especially the marital tergiversating of Phffft and Marrying Kind (especially here the use of voiceover and flashback). Known for that tremulous high-pitched voice of Born Yesterday, and a hey-what-now dopiness, but that sort of broad regard undermines her talent. She has instant chemistry with anyone she shares the screen with, from the leads of Jack Lemmon, Aldo Ray, etc, to all the bit player actors too. She has a very present quality, like an unrehearsed freshness. Think of the gin game scene of BY, or her reaction to Aldo Ray hocking, or the broadcast scene in It Should Happen to You, my fav of hers. She could be heartbreaking and hilarious in equal measure. "I could've been on matchboxes... pencils...." Her career was delayed right as it exploded by the damn HUAC, and she only did nine feature films, five with George Cukor (and she gives Hepburn a real run for best collaboration with him). It's horrible she died so young (43), what might've she done into the '70s! Maybe a Woody Allen (he called her 'the funniest of all screen actresses'), or imagine the stunner of her playing Madeline Kahn's mother or something. Kahn actually played Born Yesterday on Broadway in '89....
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 24, 2020 23:55:10 GMT
Stéphane Audran - Les Biches (and Chabrol in general)Her luminous presence was used by Chabrol to convey things you often don't associate with him - stability, motherhood. In Les Biches she's somewhat differently used - the privileged lover of a male and female who she callously can use as she sees fit without thought of the damage. More often though she survived the damage. Audran was the sensible one for Chabrol even in Les Biches she's functional and capable - in Le Boucher and Betty too but also as the put upon and suffering mother in La Rupture. Often she suffers in ways that are opaque and questionable (Violette Nozière where she is simultaneously in Chabrol's perverse view victim AND cause). Sometimes you are not sure how much circumstance is her fault and she was able to convey intellect extremely well. Chabrol's great actress relationship was with Huppert but the relationship he had with Audran was lovely and in cinematic terms, beautifully complicated too. Audran in Les Biches - why she looks like a gentleman doesn't she:
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Aug 27, 2020 21:48:48 GMT
respinding to post in "last great perf" thread Tommy Lee Jones The Executioner's Song (1982) - re-watchJones here plays this part shrewdly in conception too - it's designed as a never ending litany of bad luck - bad luck choices, bad luck jobs, bad luck killings/crimes and he never begs for your sympathy - he's born to die, his life is a waste, and he knows it too. NS this but the way you describe it sounds a lot like his chilling performance in the Schrader-penned Rolling Thunder where he plays the disaffected Vietnam vet. Some obvious parallels to Taxi Driver but William Devane wasn't the Bickle character; TLJ was. The way he says "I'll get my gear" with that blank look on his face when Devane asks for his help in killing the outlaws, like he has purpose once again but twisted into something unnatural like he's back in his element... eesh. We don't really see that kind of darkness in his acting anymore, do we?
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Post by pacinoyes on Sept 15, 2020 18:54:46 GMT
Birthday boy Tommy Lee Jones - 74 today........I am one of those people that think his best work is all on TV - Executioner's Song which I just reviewed recently, Lonesome Dove and Sunset Limited......but I'd shout out his turn as Ty Cobb in Cobb. A completely uncompromising turn that neither courts the audience or panders to our expectations at all......not a great movie and maybe not a "great" performance exactly but it's insanely admirable and unique and much of it is probably quite close to the real Ty Cobb. TLJ as Cobb:
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Post by Mattsby on Sept 19, 2020 1:08:54 GMT
Jack Warden would've been 100 today! One of my favorite character actors ever. He's great in the Beattys, both Oscar nodded, Heaven Can Wait and especially Shampoo. And there's 12 Angry Men, All the President's Men, Being There, The Verdict, And Justice For All ("Just as I hit the treetops, I discovered the meaning of life"). How often he acted opposite major stars and still either stood out or felt true. Often serious but he could be hilarious like And Justice, and Used Cars. Anyone love any other perfs of his?? Two obscure TV Movies to shout out: A Memory of Two Mondays (1971) by Arthur Miller which has a great, fascinating cast. Set at a car shop Warden plays as the NYT put it "a sort of Slavic Falstaff who goes to pieces" - he plays the perf like a dried-out fuse finally lit, stunned to react and depress, there's a sadness to him, and an overcharge to compensate for his guilt too. Tragedy in a Temporary Town (1956) that Reginald Rose wrote btwn 12 Angry Men productions, a live-broadcast hour under Lumet, it's a straight-up Ox Bow Incident bit at a labor camp when a girl is assaulted, instead of informing the law they deal out justice themselves (wrongly of course, making it timely today), fueled by a decently scary Warden whose emotional increase seems to chip off the live performance....
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Sept 20, 2020 3:40:55 GMT
@ Mattsby Warden was such a great character actor. Always lowkey preferred him to Mason in The Veridct.my contribution today: the heartbreaking Catherine Burns in Last Summer (1969). Oscar-nominated but seems to be pretty forgotten. For my money the best in a wonderful group of actresses. Last Summer is a special and really fucked-up film, more fucked up than the usual Frank Perry film, about the adolescent capacity for casual cruelty. Set during a long and hot summer vacation. Headlined by a young Barbara Hershey, also brilliant. Burns plays the plump and neurotic Rhoda, a perpetual outsider trying desperately to insert herself into the in-group but her unwillingness to play along or betray her self-righteousness combined with her disempowering sincerity opens her up for exploitation. She's too serious, too damaged, to fit in with her amoral hormonal peers and she pays a terrible price for her differentness. from Ebert's 4-star review of the film: "Twice or three times a year, a scene in a film will absorb you so completely … And then you know you're in the presence of greatness. That feeling came to me twice during Frank Perry's Last Summer, and both times the actress onscreen was Cathy Burns." The entire performance is flawless but I imagine one of the scenes Ebert was referring to was a three-minute soliloquy in which Burns (I think in a game of truth or dare or something like that) reveals the tragic story of her mother's death. The moment catches you completely offguard. The work feels ripped from a play. Camera remains fixed on Burns' face in closeup as she haltingly, breaking down, spills her guts.
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Post by Mattsby on Oct 24, 2020 22:55:26 GMT
Lucy Gutteridge, Hammer House of Horror: Rude Awakening (1980) - Not a "great" perf but this actress was only 24 at the time and is asked to play at least six different types in the span of 50 minutes and you get a sense she's a talent - some scenes very charming and seductive, other scenes a little strange, funny, vulnerable.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Apr 7, 2021 16:57:36 GMT
resurrecting this thread to shout-out the incomparable Shirley Stoler in Leonard Kastle's quasi-exploitationist fuckin masterpiece The Honeymoon Killers. She's like if a John Waters character came to life, broke out of her cage and wandered onto the set of a meanspirited Friedkin joint. One of the most venomous screen characters of all time but never a caricature and full of contradictions. Sexually and socially underdeveloped but cunning, puritanical and vengeful, throwing tantrums like a spoiled schoolgirl, possessive and self-loathing -- a woman who feels like a freak who doesn't belong in the world and so she hates it with all her might. and while we're here, who can forget Stoler's butch Nazi commandant who towers over Giancarlo Giannini in Seven Beauties. No dialogue but an overwhelming malignant presence. Wasn't she fantastic.
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Post by Johnny_Hellzapoppin on Apr 9, 2021 15:30:38 GMT
Susan George, Fright (1971)
This was Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween, before Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween. George plays a babysitter facing the night from hell, and she does it fantastically. A lot of screaming, crying and strained expressions are needed, and she more or less nails it all. She faces constant psychological and sometime physical trials and tortures, and she puts it all up there.
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Post by Johnny_Hellzapoppin on Apr 9, 2021 16:12:35 GMT
Alison Steadman, Abigail's Party (1977)One of the best actresses out there, gives one of the greatest performances I've been lucky enough to see. Steadman's Beverly Moss is such tough protagonist to be on board with. She's overbearing to the point of rude, so delusional in her snobbery and surface level self assurance, that it's comical. She's constantly passive aggressive, especially to her husband, and has very little interest in what others have to say outside of an outward pretense of listening. Steadman nails every beat of her. She creates a monster, in the sense of a social situation monster at least. We all know or have at least encountered a Beverly in our lives, and Steadman has perfected her. It would be heinous to spend an evening with Beverly. Still, Steadman gives her the required notes, to make her sympathetic. You know underneath the bravado, she is insecure. She aspires to be a sophisticate, but her working class sensibilities always find there way through. She's desperate to be liked, admired and appreciated, but is that person who is tolerated; before being mercilessly bitched about when they are not around. It's a comedic and occasionally dramatic tour de force from Steadman, perhaps even better than Taylor in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
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Post by Johnny_Hellzapoppin on May 25, 2021 15:32:47 GMT
Throughout his Carry On career, more than anyone else in the troupe, Kenneth Williams always managed to take the part and the dialogue, no matter how ridiculous, and make it work without dimming the power of the joke.
He could always manage to make the high-brow seem low-brow or the low-brow seem high-brow, be it through his masterful use of his voice, or his brilliant physicality, especially in his facial expressions.
It's sorta hard to pick out his best from so many, but I've gone with his Julius Caesar in Carry on Cleo, as he got to say the immortal classic "Infamy, infamy, they've all got it in for me". It's a great line anyway, but his delivery takes it into the realms of film comedy greatness.
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Post by stephen on May 25, 2021 17:53:27 GMT
No character, even in the series's waning seasons, got more shafted by the showrunners of Game of Thrones than Stannis Baratheon. The One True King of Westeros was pegged as a villain by D&D from the outset, proving that even when the show was at its peak, they didn't truly have a full grasp of what makes Martin's world so compelling: any character can be rooted for and there is no "right" or "wrong" side (well, for the most part). But Stannis represented something that the showrunners couldn't cope with: a ferociously just man who fell under the sway of a fundamentalist religion and who would exploit it for his own gains, while still having massive misgivings about it. It was far more easy to portray Stannis as a zealous villain eager for glory and power, rather than a dutiful brother who saw the throne as his responsibility, not his reward. But somehow, even while colossally misunderstanding the character, they cast the most perfect actor on the planet to portray the Mannis: Stephen Dillane. For four seasons, Dillane's iron-jawed power infused Stannis's thinly-written character with a regal stoicism that befitted the King Who Should Have Been. His chemistry with Liam Cunningham's devoted Davos and Carice van Houten's bewitching Melisandre seemed so natural as to look effortless, and while Davos and Melisandre were more enriched characters on the page, Dillane's contribution was crucial to their characters being as effective as they were. Season by season, as Stannis was met with setback after setback, we saw Dillane portray what made him such a feared character in-universe. As Tywin Lannister says, "this is a man who would fight to the end, and then some." And through Dillane, we believed it. But it was Season 5 that fully spotlighted Dillane's range and gave him the best (and worst) material to work with. At the start of the season, it seemed like somehow, the showrunners had cracked the code of Stannis's character at last and were giving Dillane the scenes and material he needed. His scenes with Jon Snow where he exhibits his frustrations are comic gold, and the scenes with his daughter Shireen were one of the most emotionally resonant moments the show ever saw, on both ends of the spectrum. The scene where he tells her that he loved her so much that he fought to keep her alive when she was diagnosed with grayscale was such a beautifully crafted scene... and then the writing immediately started to nosedive not just for Stannis, but for the show at large. But Episode 9 of Season 5 really should've cinched Dillane his Emmy nomination, where his conflict and desperation pushed him to do the unthinkable. As ridiculous as that plotline got to the point of character assassination, Dillane was convincing every step of the way, portraying a shattered and broken man by the end of it whose quest to be more than a page in someone else's history book ended in ruin.
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Post by theycallmemrfish on May 25, 2021 19:05:40 GMT
No character, even in the series's waning seasons, got more shafted by the showrunners of Game of Thrones than Stannis Baratheon. The One True King of Westeros was pegged as a villain by D&D from the outset, proving that even when the show was at its peak, they didn't truly have a full grasp of what makes Martin's world so compelling: any character can be rooted for and there is no "right" or "wrong" side (well, for the most part). But Stannis represented something that the showrunners couldn't cope with: a ferociously just man who fell under the sway of a fundamentalist religion and who would exploit it for his own gains, while still having massive misgivings about it. It was far more easy to portray Stannis as a zealous villain eager for glory and power, rather than a dutiful brother who saw the throne as his responsibility, not his reward. But somehow, even while colossally misunderstanding the character, they cast the most perfect actor on the planet to portray the Mannis: Stephen Dillane. For four seasons, Dillane's iron-jawed power infused Stannis's thinly-written character with a regal stoicism that befitted the King Who Should Have Been. His chemistry with Liam Cunningham's devoted Davos and Carice van Houten's bewitching Melisandre seemed so natural as to look effortless, and while Davos and Melisandre were more enriched characters on the page, Dillane's contribution was crucial to their characters being as effective as they were. Season by season, as Stannis was met with setback after setback, we saw Dillane portray what made him such a feared character in-universe. As Tywin Lannister says, "this is a man who would fight to the end, and then some." And through Dillane, we believed it. But it was Season 5 that fully spotlighted Dillane's range and gave him the best (and worst) material to work with. At the start of the season, it seemed like somehow, the showrunners had cracked the code of Stannis's character at last and were giving Dillane the scenes and material he needed. His scenes with Jon Snow where he exhibits his frustrations are comic gold, and the scenes with his daughter Shireen were one of the most emotionally resonant moments the show ever saw, on both ends of the spectrum. The scene where he tells her that he loved her so much that he fought to keep her alive when she was diagnosed with grayscale was such a beautifully crafted scene... and then the writing immediately started to nosedive not just for Stannis, but for the show at large. But Episode 9 of Season 5 really should've cinched Dillane his Emmy nomination, where his conflict and desperation pushed him to do the unthinkable. As ridiculous as that plotline got to the point of character assassination, Dillane was convincing every step of the way, portraying a shattered and broken man by the end of it whose quest to be more than a page in someone else's history book ended in ruin. At least D&D gave him a good send-off line... "Go on, do your duty" and the way he sells it was fantastic.
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Post by stephen on May 25, 2021 19:17:20 GMT
No character, even in the series's waning seasons, got more shafted by the showrunners of Game of Thrones than Stannis Baratheon. The One True King of Westeros was pegged as a villain by D&D from the outset, proving that even when the show was at its peak, they didn't truly have a full grasp of what makes Martin's world so compelling: any character can be rooted for and there is no "right" or "wrong" side (well, for the most part). But Stannis represented something that the showrunners couldn't cope with: a ferociously just man who fell under the sway of a fundamentalist religion and who would exploit it for his own gains, while still having massive misgivings about it. It was far more easy to portray Stannis as a zealous villain eager for glory and power, rather than a dutiful brother who saw the throne as his responsibility, not his reward. But somehow, even while colossally misunderstanding the character, they cast the most perfect actor on the planet to portray the Mannis: Stephen Dillane. For four seasons, Dillane's iron-jawed power infused Stannis's thinly-written character with a regal stoicism that befitted the King Who Should Have Been. His chemistry with Liam Cunningham's devoted Davos and Carice van Houten's bewitching Melisandre seemed so natural as to look effortless, and while Davos and Melisandre were more enriched characters on the page, Dillane's contribution was crucial to their characters being as effective as they were. Season by season, as Stannis was met with setback after setback, we saw Dillane portray what made him such a feared character in-universe. As Tywin Lannister says, "this is a man who would fight to the end, and then some." And through Dillane, we believed it. But it was Season 5 that fully spotlighted Dillane's range and gave him the best (and worst) material to work with. At the start of the season, it seemed like somehow, the showrunners had cracked the code of Stannis's character at last and were giving Dillane the scenes and material he needed. His scenes with Jon Snow where he exhibits his frustrations are comic gold, and the scenes with his daughter Shireen were one of the most emotionally resonant moments the show ever saw, on both ends of the spectrum. The scene where he tells her that he loved her so much that he fought to keep her alive when she was diagnosed with grayscale was such a beautifully crafted scene... and then the writing immediately started to nosedive not just for Stannis, but for the show at large. But Episode 9 of Season 5 really should've cinched Dillane his Emmy nomination, where his conflict and desperation pushed him to do the unthinkable. As ridiculous as that plotline got to the point of character assassination, Dillane was convincing every step of the way, portraying a shattered and broken man by the end of it whose quest to be more than a page in someone else's history book ended in ruin. At least D&D gave him a good send-off line... "Go on, do your duty" and the way he sells it was fantastic. The shooting script had Stannis's giving something of a final monologue to Brienne where he expresses remorse about Renly and Shireen, and how if she ever sees them on the other side, to convey his feelings, but I like to think Dillane was all "Yeah, I'm not doing that" and they cut it down to the last line.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on May 28, 2021 16:06:21 GMT
Michael Dunn in Ship of Fools (1965)Ship of Fools is the kind of movie I wouldn't ordinarily recommend to anyone. It's overlong, melodramatic, shallow. It's what Airport would be five years later but without any disaster--an excuse to get a bunch of A-listers together in one location to talk at each other for 150 minutes. Far and away the best thing about it Michael Dunn's Glocken. Dunn commands the best scene of the film--a conversation between Glocken, a German dwarf, and Lowenthal, a soft-spoken and patriotic German Jew who's used to turning the other cheek in pre-Nazi Germany. Glocken calls him out on this after they've both witnessed a man with a Jewish wife dismissed from the captain's table. Glocken asks, eyes burning with passion, how Lowenthal can be so blind as to what's going on around him, how could he not see what was coming. This leads to the film's only truly haunting line, spoken softly by Lowenthal: "Germany has been good for the Jews and the Jews have been good for Germany... Anyway what are they going to do, kill us all?" Glocken says nothing, only stares in silence with those fiercely intense eyes that could burn a hole right through you. If any one of the six or seven different movies crammed into this sinking ship are worth watching, it's the one about Lowenthal's denial and Glocken's indignation. Dunn's performance is brilliant and his Oscar nomination richly deserved. He does so much with his face. It's a symphony of expression at all times, emotions always bubbling just beneath that veneer, his eyes changing from warm and soft to aglow with burning zeal in a second. I saw the movie a couple years ago but I still haven't forgotten those eyes.
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Post by HELENA MARIA on May 28, 2021 16:26:31 GMT
The true BLA winner of 1999
He is the type of guy, face-wise, voice-wise, personality-wise, that just about everyone likes. His quiet , gentle and sad eyes and the wrinkles on his face seem to hide so many stories. Reminds me a lot of my own grandfather in so many ways.The scene when his character finally gets to his brother's house eyes brought tears to my eyes.
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Post by pacinoyes on May 28, 2021 17:06:59 GMT
Michael Dunn in Ship of Fools (1965)If any one of the six or seven different movies crammed into this sinking ship are worth watching, it's the one about Lowenthal's denial and Glocken's indignation. Dunn's performance is brilliant and his Oscar nomination richly deserved. He does so much with his face. It's a symphony of expression at all times, emotions always bubbling just beneath that veneer, his eyes changing from warm and soft to aglow with burning zeal in a second. I saw the movie a couple years ago but I still haven't forgotten those eyes. Big fan of his in general and in Ship of Fools ........... his Dr. Loveless in TV's Wild, Wild West is one of my favorite characters (later desecrated by Kenneth Branagh in the movie )......particularly in a "Richard III" (or Sam Jackson in Unbreakable, um!) way - as someone who is "deformed" and acts that out in his behavior ..........died quite young irl......
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SZilla
Badass
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Post by SZilla on May 28, 2021 20:06:38 GMT
Bob Hoskins in The Long Good Friday who says more with his eyes in the last few moments of the film than a lot of actors can throughout an entire movie.
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Post by Johnny_Hellzapoppin on May 28, 2021 22:50:33 GMT
The true BLA winner of 1999 He is the type of guy, face-wise, voice-wise, personality-wise, that just about everyone likes. His quiet , gentle and sad eyes and the wrinkles on his face seem to hide so many stories. Reminds me a lot of my own grandfather in so many ways.The scene when his character finally gets to his brother's house eyes brought tears to my eyes. Has to be one of the most welcoming and endearing performances film has given us.
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Post by theycallmemrfish on May 29, 2021 18:52:39 GMT
Even though he won the Emmy for it, not enough people talk about Zejko Ivanek in Damages.
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Post by Mattsby on May 29, 2021 21:36:05 GMT
Shirley Anne Field - there are a few threads I could've posted in for her, let me ramble. Pin up model to background actress ("I did lots of pictures for a tenner a time, but I wouldn’t do nude or rude"), then a breakout year in 1960 (was she the Bernadette Lafont of the British New Wave) with eight movies released including a Stanley Donen, a Basil Dearden, Beat Girl, Peeping Tom, The Entertainer, and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning....which she filmed with Finney only a few weeks after they were in a little stage musical together (The Lily White Boys). The other principal actress Rachel Roberts won a BAFTA for it and Field (better, I'd say, going from badass to lovely without divide) didn't even get a nod - in fact, she was never nominated for any award ever. After that rocket of a year, she turns down an offer by Oliver to join the Old Vic, makes a weird Hammer horror The Damned (where she gets the should-be iconic opening line, "Never seen a clocktower before?") - and a mini triumph in the romantic Lunch Hour, beating Maggie Smith for the role - and also goes Hollywood for two movies, one opposite Steve McQueen, the other Yul Brynner. By the time Alfie comes in 1966 she only has a little ol role and it seems her moment to really catch on had passed. Was she just a looker, or an underused talent? Continued to work on and off and still alive at 84...
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Post by Mattsby on Dec 4, 2021 19:40:05 GMT
One of my favorite fake-castings, that I think about often, is an early '70s Green Book by Hal Ashby, with Peter Falk and Paul Winfield. I can vividly picture them in those parts and I don't doubt for a second Winfield could've pulled it off - he was too talented to let a good role down. Speaking of greens, I recently watched Green Eyes (1977) an interesting and sensitive network movie about a disabled Vietnam vet who returns to investigate about the woman, a prostitute, he left pregnant. The writer did The Omen the year before, oddly enough - the director did Ann Margret's Streetcar and some of Roots and Next Generations (the epic finale). Rita Tushingham is in the cast, as well as Jonathan Goldsmith (the Dos Equis guy, and I swear he's drinking beer in all of his scenes), but this never leaves Winfield who's really good and affecting - his character is clear-eyed and candid as could be, but exasperated and lost too. Winfield already had a leading role home run in the movies - Sounder. But he was quickly positioned as a supporting player anyway. It was television that offered him great opportunities. Year after Green Eyes, the outstanding and nearly seismic turn as MLK in King (1978) where he was Emmy nominated but lost??? He was nominated again the next year in Roots: Next Gen where he's a charming academic. There's also a little seen network movie Angel City (1980) about forced labor camps - Winfield so great at playing lifted, dignified, intimidating airs, here he's turned inside-out, playing dispirited and destroyed. These perfs were all in a row and he must've seem sacred to the homes that tuned in. I just wanted to highlight that tv perf streak. But of course a few years after that he's in The Medgar Evers Story (1983), Go Tell It on the Mountain (1984) which is one of his very best - and The Woman of Brewster Place, a goofball in 227, etc. Oh hell we might as well shout out some movies, White Dog he's terrifically soulful and intense, and he's an underrated villain in Trouble Man.
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