Denzel Washington Back To Broadway For ‘The Iceman Cometh’

In regards to Pacino's nod,  it is totally forgettable. He was defintely at a point in his career, where he was cashing in on the quality of his previous nominations. He did have an incredibly great concentrated run up to the mid 70's though.

I rank Sellers as number 1 and then Scheider and Lemmon. In some ways, the Sellers performance reminds me of Paterno - where it's an actor known for showing off and working with dialog, instead working a mood/vibe or a single performance note - i.e. the performance wouldn't be raved about as much if someone else gave it (in either case imo) but them giving it sort of re-contextualizes everything.

That's another thread but an idea I particularly am drawn to because that's why voting for awards or judging acting is a tricky thing - I know people who don't think Sellers does ANYTHING - literally and I look at that go - that's f'n brilliant

..............and that's how I feel about Roman - that was a cash in to me - really and honestly some of his other nods when he was young  - good but not great for me. Now I love And Justice For All but still, Pacino has like 20 performances better than that to me - close to it anyway - the deepest of any living American actor to me.

That is what was so great of the first 4 DDL actually - he deserved 4 and won for the 2 he deserved to win for. I don't agree with happened later but he was really the only male actor whose career matched my list - it was awesome -

I don't think Washington was cashing in on much when he was younger, as he was almost always a serious contender for the win for his first 5 nominations (and he easily could have had more like A Soldier's Story or Philidelphia).

I think Washington's bench of great performances is deeper than Pacino (and Brando), but that's my personal view. It's a side effect of the consistency argument Stephen argued for Laurence Olivier. Because he always maintains a high level, Washington touches greatness with such regularity that it makes him nearly peerless. You have things like Courage Under Fire, Mo Better Blues or Devil In A Dress, which might be career defining performances for many excellent actors, almost seem like they  just make up the numbers in a mind-bogglingly great array of performances. Sometimes I think Washington is to acting what Rafael Nadal is to clay court tennis. Greatness so metronomic and inevitable, it's almost hard to compute, so some people struggle to quite accept how/why he's doing it. It's freakish in a way.

For someone who has developed inconsistency issues over his career, Pacino does have a great volume of excellent performances.

It's not even a question of liking Nadal or not. It's simply impossible to argue that he is a force of nature. There is still a debate as to who is the GOAT of tennis (is it Fed? Laver? Nadal? Can a wounded Djokovic force his way back into the debate etc).

There is no debate as to who is the GOAT, the supreme being in the existance of humanity, of tennis on a clay court. A person can hate Nadal with all their might, and still have but no choice to acknowledge this. His clay records were always insane, but watching him wreck everyone this season again on the surface defies belief. He shouldn't still be doing this on a surface so physically taxing, yet it's happening.

Whether one thinks Federer (or someone else) is the greater player overall, I feel like there is a growing consensus that Nadal on clay is the single most impressive thing the sport of tennis has ever seen (much to the chagrin of some Federer supporters I think), and one of the most impressive feats of sustained dominance in any sport. And it's like may never be seen again.

Brando has 6 to me - I include The Men but maybe not quite so much, though still great, the iconic, but dated The Wild One but I do very much love that one as well ("what are you a girl who makes sandwiches or something?" )

I don't think the run has to be necessarily "unbroken" for it to count (although, in Pacino's case, it is remarkably impressive that he had a solid four years where it seemed he could do no wrong), but rather have it concentrated in a short span. Yes, Phoenix has Irrational Man, but that is the only real hiccup in that 2012-present run that I have seen (haven't seen Mary Magdalene, but I've heard conflicting reports on his Jesus (some say miscast, some say strong and unique; seems to be an "eye of the beholder"-type deal). Crowe's 1997-2007 would fit in that category; hell, if you were to only count 1999-2007, he only really had Proof of Life and A Good Year to blemish it.

...........and here's where I dissent again

Russell Crowe is an overrated actor - a very fine actor, but his hot streak was inflated by people who linked his talent with his persona - i.e. an Aussie alpha male with chops - that makes him DeNiro! (no, it doesn't) - quite good in Proof of Life and less so but still good in A Good Year but he also had Mystery Alaska, Heaven's Burning, Breaking Up and later he let down American Gangster imo. I think his hot streak is overrated actually in that era too - (also, again, not an American, it matters to me, DDL was closer to it)

His "streak" is BS compared to Depardieu in the 80s and Irons if we're looking outside US - also not interrupted but ........they far exceed him.

Mary Magdalene has a 42% on RT - now, I don't know what that means but it is stretching it a bit to include him in historical context though not wrong to say he's been crushing it lately though............PSH would have something like the Washington example above but you have to count minor stuff like MI:3 and Syndechode, NY which I personally think isn't anything, at all.......so there is always the difference between being awesome and being historically awesome. But the truth is, I think it's kind of hard to go on the streak anyway now:

To me, The Men is a Fred Zinnemann film so its by definition historically major, but then again in general this kind of thing is harder to do nowadays because with so many entertainment options people lose track of what's the total or what the streak actually "is" - DiCaprio is kind of close in his own way but not in a way that everyone agrees on it.

Pacino (or any of the 70s guys) gain by the time they made movies in and was a very odd case - 6 films in 5 years, 3 directors, worked with each of them two times, it's just a little weird - you either are getting very lucky at that stage, or well, there is no "or", you're getting very lucky, lol

If you want to argue for an unbroken streak, that's perfectly fine. But I think there's more to it than simple consistency. There's boldness, reinvention, versatility, pushing one's limits. With Pacino/Brando, their streaks show them running the gamut and "flipping the script" to subvert expectations at every turn. Phoenix is doing the same thing now; since The Master, every performance has felt so singular and mercurial that it's almost unbelievable it's the same guy doing it. Crowe had that going for him as well: his three Oscar-nominated roles are so wildly divergent you could argue that no other actor in that span of time save for Pacino/Brando managed to cover such ground in so short a time, and right up until 2007 he was shaking things up and pushing his limits quite adeptly, even with the two aforementioned stumbles.

From  Carbon Copy (breezy lightweight comedy) right up until Philidelphia (about 12 years), Washington was pushing his limits and reinventing himself constantly. He was playing every nationality under the sun (Jamaican, British, South African etc) as if to prove to everyone that he could, reconstituting himself into real life different humans (Malcolm X, Steve Biko), doing historical and contemporary roles without missing a beat, doing comedy, doing Shakespeare etc. Even a villain in Sidney Lumet's Power (best performance in an unfortunate misfire). Did his first action hero bit with Riccochet in the same time. To me, that period of Washngton's, for boldness, versatility, reinvention or whatever this new criteria is, far outstrips whatever Phoenix is supposed to be doing now (which is impressive, but nowhere as impressive as I think you are trying to claim it as). Washington eventually found a fallback screen persona that he could use to aid him in surviving weak material circa 1993 with The Pelican Brief. But before that, he was constantly reinventing himself with each role for well over a decade. But back then, each Washington character felt brand new to people, just like each Pacino character in his streak felt like something unseen before people got used to his quirks and persona.

I completely disagree with this part. Phoenix strikes me as exactly the kind of actor that will fall into a stylistic groove (remember, he's only 43 years old), if he's not already there. He's got so many specific quirks and habits already that he tends to reuse constantly, even with his range, that you know you are watching a "Joaquin Phoenix" performance, even if it's ostensibly a different character. It's not a bad thing. But he brings  something of Joaquin to all his characters. It's a signature that a lot of great actors have.

But Phoenix''s "brand", and it will grow to become more definite, is the intense guy or quirky weirdo (in a less garish and ostentatious way than Nic Cage and Chris Walken, who also have that brand). 

I'll give the Butler kid props for even doing theater but I didn't think he was very good. His character and dynamic with Morse didn't really register for me or have an impact. Both of them were the letdowns of the cast when I saw it a month ago. Butler seemed to be playing emotion to the fullest degree he could. Haven't seen many other Don Parritt portrayals but I can imagine there's a more interesting take and nuance to give him.