1. "Cinematical Seven: Most Overrated Actors": Something of a joker (Photoshopped, people) to start off the day.
["Heath Ledger got lucky. Before Brokeback Mountain, he was on a career track to oblivion. Decades from now, nobody will ever remember The Patriot, The Four Feathers, The Order or Ned Kelly, and nobody would be able to pick Ledger out of a lineup. But then he was cast in that socially responsible epic Western, which was safe and bland and pretty and made people feel good about themselves. But at the same time, he stumbled upon a great trick, and one that hasn't been used in so long that people have forgotten it: he mumbled. Marlon Brando wowed people for years by using this trick. Apparently, if people can't understand what you're saying, they assume it's something profound. Ledger's mumbling worked so well that it didn't even matter that he obscured the film's final line of dialogue, and his momentum was such that he even earned a few rave reviews for the dim-witted Casanova, released a few weeks later. Now he has joined the Serious Brooders club (Joaquin Phoenix, James Caviezel, Eric Bana, etc.). It will be interesting to see if he can out-brood Christian Bale in the next Batman movie."]
2. "Sneak peek inside HBO's Emmys campaign box": Tom O'Neil takes a gander at the network's lavish gift box for Emmy voters. With pictures.
["Right now HBO is shipping out its Emmy campaign box to the 14,000 members of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. Presentation is simple, understated and efficient: two bound volumes measuring about 7 inches square, containing 13 disks each. In between each program sleeve is a cloudy, transparent sheet with a few quotes from major media."]
3. "He's putting the Ebert in Ebertfest!": Rog, brave and dignified, meets the naysayers head-on.
["I have received a lot of advice that I should not attend the Festival. I’m told that paparazzi will take unflattering pictures, people will be unkind, etc. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. As a journalist I can take it as well as dish it out."]
4. "The Trench: Therebutfor…": Walter Chaw on life, Virginia Tech, David Halberstam, and film criticism.
["Without forgiving a thing that Cho did, let me say that I was heavily in the therebutforthe camp for a while and it was sobering. Stephen King wrote something for the EW website about this mess – the suggestion buried in there seems to be that Cho happened because Cho didn’t have any talent. I think that’s, all irony aside, really fucking fascinating. I think that it’s dead on."]
5. "Bill nears its high noon": From the Chicago Tribune.
["After hammering out an agreement on Monday, members of the House and Senate are preparing to vote later this week on a war spending bill that would start bringing combat troops home from Iraq as early as July and effectively complete a withdrawal by April 1, 2008."]
Clip of the Day
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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Links for the Day (April 24th, 2007)
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15 comments:
A lot of good links today! I disagree that Ledger is that bad, but I guess I always kind of liked him (even back in crap like: Ten Things I Hate About You. I think Brokeback gets short shrift as the movie that made people feel good about themselves for watching it. It is edgier than that, both for its sex scene (jaw dropping) and its conclusion that there is a high cost to not being yourself. Plus, "mumbling" is only one dimension of Ledger's charm in the movie.
I also think Ledger has potential. He was fine in Brokeback (better than the move itself really) and I liked his small role in Monster's Ball. On the HBO Emmy front, I find it very strange that they are submitting Michael K. Williams (Omar) as lead for The Wire. He's great, but he's hardly a lead. Not that anyone from The Wire, sadly, stands much of a chance in the Emmy race.
In terms of The Wire it's difficult to think of anyone who was a lead for season 4, which functioned primarily as an ensemble season, unlike other seasons where McNulty functioned as the lead. I might have gone with Tristan Wilds or Julito McCullum for this season as they seemed to have the most screentime and were excellent. Perhaps they thought that the Emmy voters wouldn't vote for any of the kids.
I agree that Season 4 of The Wire was pretty much an ensemble effort. I think the only arguments for lead (and just barely) could be made for Aidan Gillen or Jim True-Frost, but the Emmys are unlikely to nominate any of The Wire actors in any categories anyway, sadly.
Heath Ledger can be washed and brought to my matronly room any time (for the scandalously under rated Knight's Tale as well as Brokeback...)
Anybody who thinks Ledger is a one-trick pony (or a half-trick pony, as is the suggestion above) oughta check out Candy. He's remarkably effective and completely believable as a drug addict in a death spiral.
And his performance in Brokeback was one of that year's best. He did a helluva more than mumble like a stoned Brando in that film.
In defense of the mumbling, it did cause my girlfriend to turn to me in response to the film's final line and whisper, "Did he just say 'I'm no queer.'"
I hope my failure to withhold the initial burst of laughter didn't diminish the experience for any of our fellow filmgoers.
If people don't think Ledger in Brokeback Mountain gave a good performance, then I have no idea what their definition of 'good acting' is. It was one of the two two or three male performances of that year, in my opinion.
Also, Tom Hanks does not deserve to be on a 'most overrated' list. Neither, really, do McConaughey or Stiller or Hudson - they're not rated highly enough to be overrated. Nicolas Cage, Jennifer Hudson, Sienna Miller, sure.
The whole point of the "mumbling" was that the character was so repressed, and in such denial of his "self" not to mention so rigid with self-loathing that he could not unclench his jaw to allow clear self-expression. And Ledger conveyed that not merely through the "muttering" but through his entire body. I know people like this, I grew up around them (red necks who'd rather die than admit to such feelings), and Ledger gets inside this character in a way that is completely convincing. It really is a great performance.
Brokeback haters are tiresome. And anyone who thinks Heath Ledger merely mumbled his way through that picture must have no soul. And since when has it become an insult to be compared to Brando -- still one of our greatest and most authentic actors despite his decline into . . . oh, whatever you want to call his decline.
Considering there isn't any clear "lead" in season 4 of the Wire, I'm all for Michael K. Williams being the one. He's absolutely riveting the closest the Wire comes to a true antihero.
There'll be a Lee Marvin series at Lincoln Center in May:
http://www.filmlinc.com/wrt/onsale/leemarvin.html
Astonishing that there's little or no mention of Ho'wood's most overrated "actor": Johnny Depp.
Depp's mimicry and arty affectations have gotten him over for decades. He's colorful and inventive but I've yet to see him actually live inside a moment. He can do only calculated pantomimes and caricatures.
Is there anything inherently bad about pantomimes and caricatures? You say yourself they're often quite inventive in Depp's case, which I would agree with. Why should they be judged against the measurestick of realistic acting, if they succeed on their own terms?
r"Why should they be judged against the measurestick of realistic acting, if they succeed on their own terms?"
Because, in the case of the films I'm thinking of, Depp's caricatures undermine them; render them a lot more superficial than they would otherwise be. It's that there's no emotional realism or weight behind the schtick. Depp's deadpan is just dead.
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