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I get sort of carried away, you know, being so normal and everything
(This post delayed on account of Livejournal. Argh.)
A meme! In its vanishing natural habitat.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cucumberseed assigned this one to me; technically it's supposed to propagate on Facebook, but I refuse to post there. Why do these things always turn into essays?
Actor I was given:
Peter Sellers. An actor I have seen in a number of movies, but never particularly followed. Actually, this is something of a challenge.
Movie I loved:
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). I know it's the obvious answer, but it's the rare example of a film I love where I don't like a single one of the characters—that's not what they're there for—and the ending careens so far past even satire, it's actually about as chilling as the finale of its straight dramatic counterpart Fail-Safe (1964). As it was the first movie in which I saw Peter Sellers, I had no hope of recognizing him for years, but I knew that one of his characters was responsible for my favorite exchange in the entire, rather compulsively quotable film: "You're going to have to answer to the Coca-Cola company." Slightly more problematically, it was also the first context in which I heard Vera Lynn.
Runner-up: Alexander Mackendrick's The Ladykillers (1955), in which Peter Sellers plays a nervy, naive Teddy Boy who is—like the rest of his gang—no match for the oblivious steamroller of the previous generation, and Alec Guinness plays Alastair Sim.
Movie I liked:
Lolita (1962). This should have been a great movie; instead it's an interesting one. James Mason is pitch-perfect as Humbert Humbert. His dry, dark, saturnine voice and his air of vulnerable cruelty (thank you, Gainsborough) have the same effect on the audience as the famous first lines of Nabokov's prose, making something attractive of a protagonist whose erudite relish of his own depravity—at times reminiscent of Kind Hearts and Coronets' Louis Mazzini, elegantly annotating his progress as a murderer—is stretched ever thinner over a self-deluding abyss; the character is both predator and patsy and Mason plays him like the tragic hero of a grand romance, leaving the audience to extricate themselves from his mythologizing and into Kubrick's deadpan black satire. Meanwhile Clare Quilty's part is considerably expanded from the novel, but I cannot think of an actor better suited to the role as Nabokov rewrote it than Sellers; he is nemesis and shadowplay, a carnival demon ricocheting through the film in quick-change guises of policeman, psychoanalyst, chatty, chance-met strangers constantly breaking in on the fraying escapism of Humbert's life with Lolita, literally polymorphously perverse. In his best turn, he's just a fast talker with the annoying middle-American habit of keeping a conversation going in the face of desperately polite disinterest, aggressively, unnervingly normal. The problem is Sue Lyon, Lolita. The character had already been aged up from twelve to fourteen in order for the film to pass at all under the Production Code; the actress' well-developed figure—emphasized by bikinis, high heels, tight belted sweaters—adds another three or four apparent years, defusing too much of the novel's transgression. There's nothing out of the American mainstream about wanting to bang a barely legal bombshell. In her defense, Lyon nails the sulky, teenage triteness that horrifies Humbert Humbert as much as it enthralls him, being so conventional a choice of love object that his pretenses to a magnificent exception are all the more scathingly exposed, but the lack of the Lolita Nabokov wrote is, unsurprisingly, a huge hole in the film.* At least it's got poshlost to spare.
* I don't blame the actress; Kubrick had originally wanted Hayley Mills. At fourteen, Mills was just at the outer edge of Nabokov's definition of a nymphet, but could easily pass for younger with her light voice and her gamine build; she had been eleven in her screen debut as Gillie in Tiger Bay (1959) and looked more like ten, a tough, open-eyed tomboy falling into curious friendship with a troubled young sailor after stealing the gun he shot his girlfriend with; thirteen for Kathy in Whistle Down the Wind (1961), a Northern schoolgirl who leads her younger siblings in believing the fugitive criminal they're hiding in their barn is Christ. Lolita would have been a fascinating extension of these roles with their amoral innocence and half-knowing interactions with the adult world, reflecting darkly back on Kathy's protectiveness or Gillie's impatience to run away to sea. Unfortunately, Mills had also starred recently in Pollyanna (1960) and The Parent Trap (1961) and only over Walt's dead body was Disney going to let its most bankable ingénue make headlines as a pedophile's pin-up; she was obliged to turn down the part and Lyon was cast instead.
Movie I hated:
The Pink Panther (1963) et al. Gave us the cartoon and the indelible music, which I appreciate. Otherwise I don't see the point.
Comment and I will give you an actor or actress!
A meme! In its vanishing natural habitat.
cucumberseed assigned this one to me; technically it's supposed to propagate on Facebook, but I refuse to post there. Why do these things always turn into essays?Actor I was given:
Peter Sellers. An actor I have seen in a number of movies, but never particularly followed. Actually, this is something of a challenge.
Movie I loved:
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). I know it's the obvious answer, but it's the rare example of a film I love where I don't like a single one of the characters—that's not what they're there for—and the ending careens so far past even satire, it's actually about as chilling as the finale of its straight dramatic counterpart Fail-Safe (1964). As it was the first movie in which I saw Peter Sellers, I had no hope of recognizing him for years, but I knew that one of his characters was responsible for my favorite exchange in the entire, rather compulsively quotable film: "You're going to have to answer to the Coca-Cola company." Slightly more problematically, it was also the first context in which I heard Vera Lynn.
Runner-up: Alexander Mackendrick's The Ladykillers (1955), in which Peter Sellers plays a nervy, naive Teddy Boy who is—like the rest of his gang—no match for the oblivious steamroller of the previous generation, and Alec Guinness plays Alastair Sim.
Movie I liked:
Lolita (1962). This should have been a great movie; instead it's an interesting one. James Mason is pitch-perfect as Humbert Humbert. His dry, dark, saturnine voice and his air of vulnerable cruelty (thank you, Gainsborough) have the same effect on the audience as the famous first lines of Nabokov's prose, making something attractive of a protagonist whose erudite relish of his own depravity—at times reminiscent of Kind Hearts and Coronets' Louis Mazzini, elegantly annotating his progress as a murderer—is stretched ever thinner over a self-deluding abyss; the character is both predator and patsy and Mason plays him like the tragic hero of a grand romance, leaving the audience to extricate themselves from his mythologizing and into Kubrick's deadpan black satire. Meanwhile Clare Quilty's part is considerably expanded from the novel, but I cannot think of an actor better suited to the role as Nabokov rewrote it than Sellers; he is nemesis and shadowplay, a carnival demon ricocheting through the film in quick-change guises of policeman, psychoanalyst, chatty, chance-met strangers constantly breaking in on the fraying escapism of Humbert's life with Lolita, literally polymorphously perverse. In his best turn, he's just a fast talker with the annoying middle-American habit of keeping a conversation going in the face of desperately polite disinterest, aggressively, unnervingly normal. The problem is Sue Lyon, Lolita. The character had already been aged up from twelve to fourteen in order for the film to pass at all under the Production Code; the actress' well-developed figure—emphasized by bikinis, high heels, tight belted sweaters—adds another three or four apparent years, defusing too much of the novel's transgression. There's nothing out of the American mainstream about wanting to bang a barely legal bombshell. In her defense, Lyon nails the sulky, teenage triteness that horrifies Humbert Humbert as much as it enthralls him, being so conventional a choice of love object that his pretenses to a magnificent exception are all the more scathingly exposed, but the lack of the Lolita Nabokov wrote is, unsurprisingly, a huge hole in the film.* At least it's got poshlost to spare.
* I don't blame the actress; Kubrick had originally wanted Hayley Mills. At fourteen, Mills was just at the outer edge of Nabokov's definition of a nymphet, but could easily pass for younger with her light voice and her gamine build; she had been eleven in her screen debut as Gillie in Tiger Bay (1959) and looked more like ten, a tough, open-eyed tomboy falling into curious friendship with a troubled young sailor after stealing the gun he shot his girlfriend with; thirteen for Kathy in Whistle Down the Wind (1961), a Northern schoolgirl who leads her younger siblings in believing the fugitive criminal they're hiding in their barn is Christ. Lolita would have been a fascinating extension of these roles with their amoral innocence and half-knowing interactions with the adult world, reflecting darkly back on Kathy's protectiveness or Gillie's impatience to run away to sea. Unfortunately, Mills had also starred recently in Pollyanna (1960) and The Parent Trap (1961) and only over Walt's dead body was Disney going to let its most bankable ingénue make headlines as a pedophile's pin-up; she was obliged to turn down the part and Lyon was cast instead.
Movie I hated:
The Pink Panther (1963) et al. Gave us the cartoon and the indelible music, which I appreciate. Otherwise I don't see the point.
Comment and I will give you an actor or actress!
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What the hell: Liev Schreiber.
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Still Jonathan Demme's Manchurian Candidate, and his version of Raymond Shaw is a huge part of the reason why. This is a movie that's smart, fast, full of glorious performances, genuinely unsettling, and not afraid to be as political as it wants to be. It also prefaces things like MC's Rubicon, which struck me as M.C. done realistic and at length, and makes me miss Rubicon even more. (Helps that James Badge Dale could easily be Schreiber's slightly goofy younger brother.)
Movie I liked:
So many! Bonus Liev Schreiber actually redeems a massive range of films, for me--from stuff I never would've expected to like, like Kate & Leopold, to stuff I expected or wanted to like, like Salt. In the category of stuff he's in that most people probably haven't already tripped across, I'd probably pull out Michael Almereyda's Hamlet, in which he plays Laertes; it's worth it just for the "play's the thing/in which to catch the conscience of the King" update turning out to be an experimental short Hamlet shot in Pixelvision, or Hamlet doing his monologue while moping around in Blockbuster's "Action" section, but Schreiber really is aces. He sort of comes off as the only normal person there, which is...scary.
Movie I hated:
Hate is a strong word--I've never known Schreiber to give less than a hundred per cent, no matter what he's doing--but I'm not fond of his performance in RKO 281, because he simply never convinces me that he's Orson Welles. Part of it's his voice, which is very New York, too light, and subtly wrong in terms of intonation. God knows he's smart, fierce, off-putting and tall, so...yeah, it's the voice. But THAT'S WELLES, for Christ's sake; if you can't do the voice, you're screwed.
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I really should give that another try. I imprinted so hard on the original, I think I had difficulty seeing the remake as a film in its own right.
Bonus Liev Schreiber actually redeems a massive range of films, for me--from stuff I never would've expected to like, like Kate & Leopold, to stuff I expected or wanted to like, like Salt.
Tell me about Salt—did you ever write it up? I thought about seeing it because of Schreiber, honestly, but never got around to it on account of broke.
but Schreiber really is aces. He sort of comes off as the only normal person there, which is...scary.
That's like when my cousins and I realized that Peter Lorre is the sanest character in Arsenic and Old Lace. Never a good sign.
But THAT'S WELLES, for Christ's sake; if you can't do the voice, you're screwed.
That's fair.
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Nine
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Thanks. I hope this lived up to your standards.
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So, an actor for me?
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Of course. Harvey Keitel.
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I'd like them to be rather more cogent, myself, but thank you . . .
Would you like an actor?
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Nine
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All right—how about Nigel Hawthorne?
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I'm only ever seen him in four films, all of which I really really liked to liked.
Pretty much loved:
Trevor Nunn's Twelfth Night, which had the best cross-gendering of the twins I've seen, Richard E. Grant miscast as Andrew Aguecheek (he cannot play a fool believably), Sebastian seen reading Baedeker's Illyria, and Nigel Hawthorne's Malvolio. I do not like productions that are all unsparing Schadenfreude at his downfall. Hawthorne's steward is all prunes and prisms and unyielding rectitude; yet you feel for him. He gets hammered out of shape like a tin toy in a garbage disposal, battered into grinning dents; but he keeps the shards and tatters of his dignity. Throughout the film, he keeps checking his wig reflexively, just quick little dabs--yes, straight--and when he's brought up from his purgatory, naked in his rags and coal-dust, brought before his Lady for rebuke, it's his poor bald head he covers with a modest hand. Any nakedness but that.
He was brilliant in The Madness of King George (Alan Bennett!) and in Ian McKellen's alternative history Richard III. (I so wish that cast would do Jo Walton's Small Change trilogy.)
Liked:
The Winslow Boy: just a beautifully well-made piece of cabinetry, brass-knobbed, solid, unveneered, well-finished in and out, with all the drawers sliding smoothly at a touch.
Hated:
If he was ever in something cheap and expensive. Can't imagine him doing poshlost.
Nine
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And John Hurt as the Horned King, which you think would count for something. Unfortunately, the film of The Black Cauldron sounds as though it bears so little relation to any of the books of Prydain, I have avoided it assiduously since I knew it existed and will continue to do so.
I'm only ever seen him in four films, all of which I really really liked to liked.
You should repost this in your journal! Then you can get discussion.
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I always think about the "precious bodily fluids" when I hear about this movie.
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That's entirely fair.
I have no idea what sort of movies you watch, so—James Earl Jones?
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Not so much in the horror genre, but An American Werewolf and Burnt Offerings are ones I will watch.
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Sorry, comma abuse is, apparently, all I got this morning.
I'll second whoever said your essays are readable and cogent, though.
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Hey, thank you. I'm honored by that.
Sorry, comma abuse is, apparently, all I got this morning.
Well, if you feel like it: Jason Isaacs.
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I liked him in Harry Potter; I loved him in Peter Pan, because he combined sinuous Jason Isaacs-ness with gleeful panto-villain with stiff upper ascot patrician parent, and through both parts threaded a guy just trying to do his best. (His best at parenting and social climbing, or his best at swashbuckling, dressing well, and double-crossing dastardly deeds. Either or.)
He is also eminently quotable: "Look, I play all these tough guys and thugs and strong, complex characters. In real life, I am a cringing, neurotic Jewish mess. Can't I for once play that on stage?"
I think I would have hated to see him in The Patriot, but not on his own merits -- I think in fact I would pant after him in regimentals. I just find the idea of that film claptrappy to the nth degree.
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Oh, yeah. I want very much to have seen him as Louis opposite Daniel Craig's Joe.
(His best at parenting and social climbing, or his best at swashbuckling, dressing well, and double-crossing dastardly deeds. Either or.)
I need to see that film again.
"Look, I play all these tough guys and thugs and strong, complex characters. In real life, I am a cringing, neurotic Jewish mess. Can't I for once play that on stage?"
. . . My e-mail confirms that I never seem to have sent you that quote, but I can't figure out how. It's a conversational slam-dunk!
I just find the idea of that film claptrappy to the nth degree.
That's fair. I consider myself lucky to have seen Gallipoli (1981) before I became unable to watch Mel Gibson.
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http://image.toutlecine.com/photos/p/a/t/patriot-1999-08-g.jpg
*pant* Tap me with your sword any time, bub.
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I love that your libido cares about details like that.
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I liked it because you had to choose something you hated, even if it was your favorite actor, and something you liked, even if it was someone you couldn't stand. And the titles a person chose usually told you all you wanted to know.
But what the heck, I'll give it a try in the long form.
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All right. Marcello Mastroianni.
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But he was in Pret a Porter w/Terri Garr, who was in Tootsie w/Dustin Hoffman, who I think was in Sleepers with Kevin Bacon (but if I'm wrong, there's Rain Man/Tom Cruise/A Few Good Men).
Sorry I couldn't play the game I was supposed to play, but thanks for giving me a challenge.
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Ah, well. He's very talented!
(What about Terri Garr?)
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The Terri Garr thing was just the link to Kevin Bacon. I could've done it through Julia Roberts, but I liked the Terri Garr route better.
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No, I meant, could you do the meme with her?
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Anyway, my response is here:
http://thunderpigeon.livejournal.com/66116.html?view=132164#t132164
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Please give me an actor/actress! :D
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Anna Massey!
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Yes, because you know I'm totally disinterested in women of any age.
Tell me about Irene Papas.
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I'm also a big fan of Sellers in I'm All Right Jack.
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Can you do the meme with him?
I'm also a big fan of Sellers in I'm All Right Jack.
I've never seen that—tell me about it?
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It's a sequel to Private's Progress - the main character is Stanley Windrush who is a nice but stupid upper class idiot who joins the army. It's not great but it is probably the only film I can think of from the 50s where the British army are portrayed as anything less than heroic.
I'm all right Jack is much more satirical, he gets a job at a factory and comes under the sway of Fred Kite (Sellers) who is trying to oppose new efficiency measures at the factory.
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Okay, that's fair. (What was the other?)
I'm all right Jack is much more satirical, he gets a job at a factory and comes under the sway of Fred Kite (Sellers) who is trying to oppose new efficiency measures at the factory.
Have you seen The Man in the White Suit (1951)?
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Other films of Sellers that I like a lot: I Love You Alice B. Toklas (featuring the immortal line "It's very unhip to say you're hip!") and Being There.
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I was shown Being There for a class in high school; it was the first thing I saw Peter Sellers in. I still think of him as a kind of minimalist dramatic actor when I'm not paying attention to, you know, reality.
Want an actress or actor?
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Sure!
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Okay: Bibi Andersson?
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Movie I liked: The Devil's Eye. Not my favorite Bergman comedy (that's Smiles of a Summer Night), and I can't say I remember it terribly well (I saw it years ago as part of a month-long TCM Bergman retrospective), but I remember enjoying it.
Movie I hated: Persona. Hate may be too strong a word, but the movie squicks me on a visceral level (though Cries and Whispers squicks me even more). I recognize it's a great film, and it may well be Bibi Andersson's greatest role. She's chillingly good in it.