Mandy trailer (Nic Cage)

I'm on board

Looks great. Cage in top form again. I'm in.

wtf

And I mean that in a good way

YOU THINK YOU KNOW ME?

Yeah, you do.

I'm confused, but I like it.

I don't hold Nicholas Cage at the same level that some of his defenders do but he at times achieves something I often talk about and perhaps is doing it here - who else could play the role and do that with it, and there are lots of types of acting and the guys we tend to say are the "best" at it are rather the ones who express it in ways we are comfortable with. The "consensus" on actors is often a lie and I don't know what this film is, and it seems tiresome to me from the trailer but you never know until you see it.

What I do know is, in general, throughout his career, at times his style meshes with material and he has given performances that none of his 80s generation of peers (at least) could have even have conceived of - and not all of them are wild and unrestrained either. He gave one of this decades great, haunting performances in Joe for example and it's internal.

There's only so much you can do with these roles - where the actor and character get all tangled up - and his career has suffered for it, but he goes to the beat of his own drummer and you have to admit that his peers/contemporaries seem awfully boring in comparison to whatever voice he hears in his own head.

What he lacks in an actor's control (usually) he can compensate for at times in moments of divine inspiration and you rarely see American actors have inspiration at all........you see craft all the time.

I don't know how to reply since you didn't elaborate and maybe you don't want a reply and that's fine.

Did you mean you actually see American actors having inspiration? 

Did you mean you don't see mere craft all the time from Americans? 

Did you mean you don't see inspiration from Cage himself (at times?). 

I dunno..........

I see........Well let's just look at Cage's generation of actors and what drove me to make that comment because like I said, I don't think people really often know how to judge acting a lot of the time.

I think people respond to things they think are "true" in acting and they think they are true because they've seen it in movies before..........they are in effect responding to "movie truth" not real life truth. They want a performance that makes them feel comfortable and if they don't get it, well, they can judge it harshly. I'm saying those performances often show how much talent an actor has.

If I looked at Tom Hanks and Kevin Spacey two actors I like, two actors that would obviously be rated much higher than Cage I can't really tell you many moments of inspiration I see in either career. They are often good, but very rarely do I say those actors found any sort of poetry or hit notes within the performance that I find "inspired".

That's fine, they have other things - they have control, they have craft, but Cage has at times given some performances that you can't even assess by that "you've seen it before in movies" standard but you can recognize it from life. That's a difference between craft and inspiration.

Yes please.