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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 4, 2020 20:02:02 GMT
Michael Gambon not only won 3 Olivier awards - he won them all within just 5 years. I listed him before as giving one of the great TV performances ever in The Singing Detective and he made a smaller but notable dent in films too - and even Broadway in one of the best performances I ever saw on a stage - Skylight. At nearly 80 he's one of the greatest living stage actors and a great fan of acting in general too - he acted opposite Oliver AND Brando........you can see him quite a lot discussing actors and acting on Youtube or find many great interviews with him online assessing actors. He probably has more great quotes on acting than anyone Of that very special UK class with McKellen and Hopkins - he's less well known but his nickname is a clue to how revered he is .......... "The Great Gambon"In The Singing Detective (1986):
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 5, 2020 10:26:07 GMT
What happens when an actress doesn't really do the biggest medium much and yet utterly dominates the other two? Well she gets forgotten and that is the case with Colleen Dewhurst - 2 time Tony winner for at least one of the greatest stage performances ever, and a 4 time Emmy winner. Her film work is practically negligible and when we once did a poll on "Canadian Actresses" (Dewhurst was born in Canada and raised in the US) - she got no votes and Canada is not exactly a hot bed of actresses.....Um.......not exactly our finest moment MAR .....(including myself I didn't mention her either!) Twice married to George C. Scott - a similar acting titan - she is unique in that now she'd never be as major as she was then without having a niche in film and now if we had a Colleen Dewhurst at all well .........she'd be in film to be that major and far better remembered. She's hard to find a modern corollary to.......Audra McDonald maybe is "somewhat" like her..... In "The Crucible" with Scott:
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Post by stephen on Jun 5, 2020 12:16:49 GMT
What happens when an actress doesn't really do the biggest medium much and yet utterly dominates the other two? Well she gets forgotten and that is the case with Colleen Dewhurst - 2 time Tony winner for at least one of the greatest stage performances ever, and a 4 time Emmy winner. Her film work is practically negligible and when we once did a poll on "Canadian Actresses" (Dewhurst was born in Canada and raised in the US) - she got no votes and Canada is not exactly a hot bed of actresses.....Um.......not exactly our finest moment MAR .....(including myself I didn't mention her either!) Twice married to George C. Scott - a similar acting titan - she is unique in that now she'd never be as major as she was then without having a niche in film and now if we had a Colleen Dewhurst at all well .........she'd be in film to be that major and far better remembered. She's hard to find a modern corollary to.......Audra McDonald maybe is "somewhat" like her..... In "The Crucible" with Scott:And together, they created Campbell Scott, who really deserves more credit.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 7, 2020 10:59:11 GMT
Today a sort of side topic that gets brought up from time to time and which I have called "the 5 year rule" - this rule is a sort of a pet theory of mine that once an actor/actress has been deemed as "great" they don't have to keep being great to keep that label.....they just have to remind you of it from time to time.......depending on their age on film/TV......about......"every 5 years". This sort of thing caused problems for some notable actors - George C. Scott, Dustin Hoffman, Sean Penn, Ed Norton, Russell Crowe - guys who had clear zones of greatness and then......not.......or if they were great after well they were great in things no one actually saw or that didn't further/sustain that reputation. The inverse of this is the actor who hangs around long enough that we deem them great ONLY in the totality of the work: and that is precisely the case with Donald Sutherland - who appeared in many noteworthy films, TV shows and occasional dabbling on stage too. His career is so long and so deep - in films he achieves a sort of legendary presence - that no one thinks to actually process where they first saw him .......or liked him......or to keep track of his high and low points ......or say "he's been great since________". Sutherland's life as an actor has overwhelmed the more minor ways we use to measure a career for most actors - in a way that what most actors - as opposed to stars - would strive for. Sutherland in "1900":
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futuretrunks
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Post by futuretrunks on Jun 8, 2020 23:41:29 GMT
How was Saoirse Ronan in The Crucible?
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 9, 2020 0:02:52 GMT
How was Saoirse Ronan in The Crucible? Didn't see it - my theater watching dropped big time the last few years Sophie Okonedo got nodded for it and so did Bill Camp but Whishaw and Ronan missed........the Tony Awards are imo the most corrupt awards - I'd argue far worse than the Oscars and Emmys and those are awful. The people who select Tony nominees is a very small and cliquish thing very political shows can buy their way in through newspaper columnists - the best acting in NYC isn't even on Broadway anyway it's at BAM in Brooklyn.......reviews were strong for Ronan iirc
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Post by futuretrunks on Jun 9, 2020 0:09:20 GMT
How was Saoirse Ronan in The Crucible? Didn't see it - my theater watching dropped big time the last few years Sophie Okonedo got nodded for it and so did Bill Camp but Whishaw and Ronan missed........the Tony Awards are imo the most corrupt awards - I'd argue far worse than the Oscars and Emmys and those are awful. The people who select Tony nominees is a very small and cliquish thing very political shows can buy their way in through newspaper columnists - the best acting in NYC isn't even on Broadway anyway it's at BAM in Brooklyn.......reviews were strong for Ronan iirc Actually, what would you say are the fairest of the theatre awards? I don't know anything about Drama Desks etc.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 9, 2020 0:40:56 GMT
Didn't see it - my theater watching dropped big time the last few years Sophie Okonedo got nodded for it and so did Bill Camp but Whishaw and Ronan missed........the Tony Awards are imo the most corrupt awards - I'd argue far worse than the Oscars and Emmys and those are awful. The people who select Tony nominees is a very small and cliquish thing very political shows can buy their way in through newspaper columnists - the best acting in NYC isn't even on Broadway anyway it's at BAM in Brooklyn.......reviews were strong for Ronan iirc Actually, what would say are the fairest of the theatre awards? I don't know anything about Drama Desks etc. They kind of all suck - the Drama Desks are in some ways better - they cover on and Off-Broadway but they are also cliquish in their own way - they didn't nominate Denzel Washington for Fences or Iceman Cometh - afaik they nominated him for only Raisin in the Sun (?) (and no Tony nod there) .....Bobby Cannavale beat Mark Rylance in Jerusalem for the Drama Desk which was a total wtf.......Bryan Cranston not nodded for Network which I saw and which won the Tony and was a great performance. They get infatuated with off-Broadway sometimes ....and sometimes the critics overlap among all NYC awards groups so the weirdness can go across groups in odd ways .............. the Drama Desks are sort of like a quirky version of the Tonys - left-field stuff can happen there still ......with the Tony's you can guess the winners - there's a formula for buying your way in at least since the late 80s/early 90s........when I saw Andrew Garfield in Angels in America I knew no one could beat him for that Tony and called it on this board in the theater thread far in advance and he wasn't nearly that good .........so it's JUST like the Oscars
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 13, 2020 18:36:36 GMT
Might as well look at the man of the moment right (?) - Delroy Lindo. A Tony nominee for Joe Turner's Come and Gone - memorable in many films and a likely Oscar nominee - or winner maybe - this year for Da 5 Bloods. Lindo does all 3 mediums and does Shakespeare too and not just that - he's done difficult classical pieces like Agamemnon. Some memorable TV work - especially as Satchel Page in Soul of the Game. TV is where he had been doing his best work recently before his 2020 breakout. Memorably chilling and uncredited in Devils Advocate (1997):
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Post by Mattsby on Jun 13, 2020 23:51:39 GMT
Haven't seen so much from Lindo but always like him... Da 5 Bloods probably his best? 66y/o when it filmed, a surprisingly physical perf. Speaking of which, I also really like his Heist perf and like this little scene (excuse the picture quality) which I love to quote, he gives off a real intense strength here...
Side note - almost started a thread recently about Fav Uncredited Perfs
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 14, 2020 11:48:24 GMT
This is for futuretrunks who recently raised the issue of the Drama Desk awards vs. the Tony.....well this year the Tony's are delayed and the 2020 Drama Desks are not - since they do Off-Broadway AND Broadway itself in NYC, they have plenty to pick from. Well just last night they nominated Raúl Esparza yet again - I mentioned him in the "Underappreciated Actors" thread. He is - by their metric - THE best American stage actor going - also nominated for 4 Tony's (0 wins!) and a shit-ton of Drama Desks (he's won multiple!) - and he's done it all over an unbelievable range of work: He IS what Mark Rylance once WAS - the best actor no one has (yet) heard of or at least no one ever talks about - except in this thread right ! - he is just 49 years old. Put him in the movies for Godsake You can see him in some TV - Hannibal, Law and Order SVU (regular/recurring) and an unbelievably great borderline/campy brilliant turn in a single episode of L&O:Criminal Intent called "Lady's Man" ......remember his name: Raúl Esparza ......the Drama Desks sure do.....
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Post by futuretrunks on Jun 14, 2020 16:23:01 GMT
Yeah, I remember him on Hannibal (my favorite show of the past decade). Fuller seemed to have a liking for acclaimed stage actors/actresses like him and Nina Arianda.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 14, 2020 16:38:50 GMT
Yeah, I remember him on Hannibal (my favorite show of the past decade). Fuller seemed to have a liking for acclaimed stage actors/actresses like him and Nina Arianda. She's also covered in this thread! Esparza I hope gets his "Rylance role" soon - his Bridge of Spies ........interesting actor and he can go really big or the total other way on stage - I've seen him twice and he's really something else.........and ........he can sing too. Dude is a Latin American from NYC who can act AND sing could have been in Spielberg's West Side Story............. if there was a part for a 49 year old
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Post by Mattsby on Jun 14, 2020 17:44:50 GMT
Speaking of Criminal Intent, how about one of its stars Courtney B Vance - who isn't listed in our big "Missing One" list. Maybe he's been discussed already? He has an Emmy (People vs OJ) and Tony (Lucky Guy) - both in the last decade. He seemed destined for bigger things going into the 90s - a strong and memorable principal perf in Hamburger Hill, his movie debut, which I think was released while he was doing Fences with James Earl Jones and was Tony nom'd. He won an Obie in 1990 and was Tony nom'd again the following year for Six Degrees of Separation. For those keeping score he's 3/3 in Broadway nominations and across 3 decades. While he's lacking in movie perfs, he's made strides on TV and has Lovecraft County coming up soon and a possible FX show with Mary Louise Parker? Married to the radiant Angela Bassett - not sure if they actually share the screen in them but they've done all three together - several ER eps, Nothing But the Truth, and John Guare's His Girl Friday in '05.
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Post by futuretrunks on Jun 14, 2020 20:10:53 GMT
I vividly remember coming home from school freshman year of high school, going into the basement, and watching The Affair (TV movie). Vance shagging Kerry Fox were probably some of the first sex scenes I ever saw.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 20, 2020 16:17:26 GMT
Wasn't sure where to put this but figured it works here......this is kind of fascinating - regarding 2 US across 3 mediums big guns (2 Oscar wins, an Emmy win and a Tony nomination for Dustin Hoffman ; 2 Oscar wins, 1 Tony win and 6 Emmy nominations for Kevin Spacey): Dustin Hoffman: We've spoken a lot about his decline post-88 and many have argued (including me!) that his best post-88 work was in the later episodes of his TV show (1 season) HBO's "Luck". Well I never knew this existed season 2 episode 1 - never seen - not even added to the DVD of the whole series - wtf. What if a an actors best work never even gets the chance to be seen at all? This is also the case with Kevin Spacey's "Gore" about Gore Vidal - a whole movie that was shelved by Netflix. Luck S2, E1 This was the last full episode of the show that was completed, before the death of another horse led to an immediate shutdown of production. The show was instantly canceled and the rest of the second season was not completed. This last final episode remains unseen. (From IMDB).
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 2, 2020 9:19:34 GMT
Age blind, gender blind, race blind - theater fans are sure being asked to go blind a lot so "any actor can play any role"......well except Olivier - a white man (horror! playing Othello! - utter nonsense imo he's great - but I digress).......in a few months we'll get the oldest major Macbeth and Lady Macbeth ever........we just have had 2 GOAT movie level Americans "de-aged" in film.......and now maybe the greatest living stage actor (arguably but he has the Olivier Awards to back him up) as the oldest Hamlet you ever saw. Ian Mckellen will be playing Hamlet - Hamlet (!) which can kill a less energetic man at age 81. God Bless Him......we'll see how the changes work.......it will be very high profile at least. www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/jun/28/ian-mckellens-hamlet-aged-81-its-madness-but-theres-method-in-itMcKellen playing Hamlet in his younger days:
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 5, 2020 11:46:50 GMT
I wanted to touch on another thing that hasn't really come up - the idea of the "one and done" or close to it - actors who maybe could have padded their resumes/achievements but suddenly stopped working one medium or limited themselves. Robert De Niro in 1986 went onstage - never before as a star or after. He has done a major TV role just once (outside of playing himself on SNL etc.) - 2017's Wizard of Lies (Emmy nominated). This is weird in that it normally happens in theater or TV - not both Theater AND TV.......though Paul Newman is a real good example of a guy who didn't do much of either (once he became a star at least) and he won an Emmy and got nodded for a Tony late in his life. These are the big time film stars who chose their spots exceedingly carefully outside of film and in Newman's case almost historically so .......if he had won a Triple Crown it would be the most "surprising" .......and yet they did do it and they didn't avoid it either: Newman in his Emmy winning role in Empire Falls (2005) and DeNiro on stage in Cuba and His Teddy Bear (1986):
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Post by Mattsby on Jul 5, 2020 19:29:20 GMT
Daveed Diggs & Jonathan Groff - I wanted to mention these guys, both in their 30s, having another encore at the moment with Hamilton. Other cast members are strong but these two were my favs I think - Diggs exciting and energetic, Groff smaller part but immediately hilarious. Groff is a 2x Tony nominee, losing his Hamilton nom to Diggs which is his only nom/win. Groff has done like twenty stage plays in the last ten years, and costarred and was pretty good in Mindhunter (even though I prefer Holt), he's doing the Matrix sequel next so could become a bigger deal in the movies. Haven't seen anything else..... Diggs I think could really really blow up. Already can picture him taking parts from John David Washington (is it vice versa at the moment?) - has done a lot of theater already (Shakespeare, McDonagh) - has a strong lead perf in Blindspotting which he also wrote - two seasons of Snowpierecer, 62% RT - big upcoming part as Frederick Douglass in The Good Lord Bird. Two guys whose on-screen work needs to catch up to their talent it seems......
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 11, 2020 10:26:47 GMT
The greatest British actor (at least) - on film, stage, TV, and .......wherever else you want to look Laurence Olivier died today at age 82 in 1989.
How great was he? Well I ranked him - just on film alone in our GOAT list - ahead of the #2 and #3 - Finney and Day-Lewis - and he is clearly ahead of Finney and obliterates Day-Lewis by any reasonable standard imo.
So far ahead of his time that we're still sorting through the mind-boggling totals of what he actually did and we are still misunderstanding him too. A scene below with the great Ralph Richardson, who of course doesn't stand a chance and watch how Oliver plays to the camera but doesn't act directly TO the camera, plays to Richardson but also outside of him and the scene too - Olivier was "too stagy" - nope, on the contrary ......and how his volume and timbre of voice control the tension in the scene and Richard's own burgeoning madness.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 26, 2020 10:42:41 GMT
Do you want to know how little awards matter by themselves? Jason Robards, born today 98 years ago never got a Tony nomination for the definitive Hickey in The Iceman Cometh which wasn't even a classic until HE embodied it......Denzel and Spacey each got one for fine, but lesser turns that's how seismic his Hickey was.....now there's reasons for that and it has to do with Tony eligibility etc......but my point is Robards is one of the US GOATs and his awards tally has nothing to do with it - which applies to all the GOAT contenders - but really applies to him on stage. But his awards were major too (actually that's also like all the GOATs too ) - he was the last American male Triple Crown winner until Pacino - he is a nearly peerless American on stage - a 2x Oscar winner, and a fairly dazzling TV career on top of it. He has very little work in cringe inducing projects - in any medium - and a great farewell feature film role (Magnolia) too. Lauren Bacall's ex-husband and following Bogie isn't an easy task is it....... He is without question in the GOAT US top 5 list across the 3 mediums .....it's just a matter at where you'd choose to place him tbh.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 28, 2020 16:20:29 GMT
Another year, another "who joins the Triple Crown Club?" opportunity with today's announced Emmy nominations up first. The first contender for 2020 looks like it's Alan Arkin again - just missing the Emmy and in an insanely tough category unfortunately (BSA for comedy Kominsky Method). Still this is a historic year for him as he got is his 10th Triple Crown nod which is a mark not many film stars have - see list below. If he can win it he'll join Pacino and be the first American male in almost 20 years to make the TC club. Quite a feat for the Glengarry boys .... Combined Triple Crown nominations for male film stars ........with 3+ Oscar nods......... or multiple wins.
19, Laurence Olivier 18, George C. Scott
15, Christopher Plummer 16, Jason Robards
15, Jack Lemmon (has 16 but one is for a variety program not actual acting) 15, Al Pacino
12, Jack Nicholson (all film) 12, Paul Newman
11, Robert Duvall 11, Richard Burton 11, Peter O'Toole
10, Kevin Spacey 10, Denzel Washington 10, Anthony Hopkins 10, Alan Arkin
9, Dustin Hoffman 9, Marlon Brando 9, Michael Caine
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Post by sirjeremy on Jul 28, 2020 16:47:13 GMT
Another year, another "who joins the Triple Crown Club?" opportunity with today's announced Emmy nominations up first. The first contender for 2020 looks like it's Alan Arkin again - just missing the Emmy and in an insanely tough category unfortunately (BSA for comedy Kominsky Method). Still this is a historic year for him as he got is his 10th Triple Crown nod which is a mark not many film stars have - see list below. If he can win it he'll join Pacino and be the first American male in almost 20 years to make the TC club. Quite a feat for the Glengarry boys .... Combined Triple Crown nominations for male film stars ........with 3+ Oscar nods......... or multiple wins.
19, Laurence Olivier 18, George C. Scott
16, Christopher Plummer 16, Jason Robards
15, Jack Lemmon (has 16 but one is for a variety program not actual acting) 15, Al Pacino
12, Jack Nicholson (all film) 12, Paul Newman
11, Robert Duvall 11, Richard Burton 11, Peter O'Toole
10, Kevin Spacey 10, Denzel Washington 10, Anthony Hopkins 10, Alan Arkin
9, Dustin Hoffman 9, Marlon Brando 9, Michael CaineTalking about the TCC, the previously covered Adam Driver received his seventh nomination today - damn good going for someone of 36 who's been working professionally for only 11 years.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 28, 2020 17:02:24 GMT
Talking about the TCC, the previously covered Adam Driver received his seventh nomination today - damn good going for someone of 36 who's been working professionally for only 11 years. I actually don't include today's nomination in his list personally - since it's for hosting (SNL in his case) and not really "acting" - but I guess you can argue it either way since he does act in skits though. I leave it off personally (hosting, variety shows, voiceover work I leave off - maybe I'm too strict! ) .......but like I've said even 6 is an extraordinary amount and this is a guy who is going to be in all awards conversations for a bunch of years too. He's going to be an awards show staple indeed and he can win the triple crown really fast too much like Jeremy Irons did (I think Irons was just 49 when he did it........Driver could conceivably obliterate that)
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 5, 2020 9:54:22 GMT
Died on this day August 5th 16 years apart: Two of Olivier's "rivals" Alec Guinness and Richard Burton and two stories about being a star and having a full career. Guinness won a Tony and an Oscar (4 acting nods) - and he won his Tony in the most stacked field ever (he beat Burton, Finney AND Robards!). He never won the Emmy though many will tell you his best work was on TV arguably - he was as deft at comedy as he was in drama. Until the end of his career he was "consistent", acclaimed and admirable. He was everything you'd want your favorite artist to be .........except really a "star" but he could not be held in any higher esteem than he is today - he was 86. Burton never had a chance of living to near 86 and would have found that a bore he was also everything you'd want your favorite artist to be ........in his own defiant (and opposite) way ........and he was destined to be seen as a disappointment who never sustained his talent.......if his lifestyle didn't kill him, his liver would have given up based on the alcohol he consumed. He died at only 58 - a Tony winner (for a musical, the actor blessed with the greatest voice ever he could sing too), a 7 time Oscar nominee who could have had a lot more if he stayed focused and pursued that rather than Liz Taylor or booze. Unlike Guinness he never made much of an impact in comedy - though you could picture him in every role his friend Peter O'Toole triumphed in with a comedic slant. He was also very much a "star" - and in the last 10 years of his life he liked being known as "once" the worlds best actor. To two of the greats - alike in some ways..........opposites in others:
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