The flip side of that is my brother can't watch Only Murders because he finds Martin Short annoying. I actually do, too, but this annoying version of him is fun.
The other flip side (the flip, flip side) is that there's a lot to be said for watching actors you've never seen before. I've dipped into UK dramas and now, having seen
Sarah Lancashire be terrific twice (Happy Valley and Last Tango in Halifax), when I watch her in the future, I will have lost something knowing who she is.
By the way, you know you've reached a certain age when you refer to a 23-year-old movie as "semi-recent."
My kids, by that standard, are semi-recent, and that's exactly how I think of them.
I still call The Phantom Menace "that new Star Wars movie."
No spoilers. I'm still in the middle of season three.
Anyway, it's like Aristotle said about drama. You need your Gomez to look at your Short with the perfect "the fuck with this guy?" expression to produce pathos.
I loved the Ed Grimley sketches on SNL. Almost everything else Martin Short has done annoyed me.
Time to go listen to "Which of the Pickwick triplets did it" again!
"Like a forensic pediatrician I'll complete this inquisition
I will name the neonatal from the cradle that proved fatal
I WILL FIND THE PERPETRATOR WHO DID MURDER TO THEIR MATER"
I didn't like Ed Grimley. But The Three Amigos was the best work for all of the three amigos.
Elderly actors and actresses IMO. Jessica Walter is really well known, but IMO Doris Roberts in the otherwise painful Everybody Loves Raymond and Kelly Bishop in Gilmore Girls are both special. Peter O'Toole in The Ruling Class. Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard. Young people aren't that interesting on screen.
I bet most of those people thought they were interesting on screen when they were young.
Rascal recently shared that he thought the Shaboozey song said "Everybody in the club get fish sticks!" instead of "everybody in the club get tipsy!" which is:
1. so delightful, and
2. "fish sticks" is super fun to substitute in lots of songs. To wit: which of the fish stick triplets did it? which of the fish could commit this crime?"
I can understand people finding Martin Short annoying, but Jiminy Glick is an all-time great bit.
I don't watch many new shows. I haven't seen it.
Insufferable is exactly why I gave up on OMItB after a couple episodes. It seemed like two older actors who have a lot of latitude using that latitude in hugely self indulgent ways. And Selena Gomez just did nothing for me, a zero. I don't know why Steve Martin hits me that way now when I used to be a huge fan. I'm the Anti-Heebie on this one.
Elderly actors and actresses IMO.
Jo Van Fleet in Wild River is one of my all-time favorite performance but I see she was only 45.
Wikipedia seems pretty accurate here:
During her long career, which spanned over four decades, she often played characters much older than her actual age.
Auntie Heebie: Rosalind Russell role, right?
The Muppet fur coat was great characterization.
Folks may recall my talking about watching a whole bunch of Jeff Bridges movies over some weeks, and then a whole bunch of Kate Winslet. It's fun to do a sort of 'vertical tasting' on someone's work -- with the usual caveat that in every scene we're seeing one among many takes that reflect the director's and editor's preferences and the director's vision for the role. Still, the individual can come through.
This reminds me of a recent AHP piece on a current heartthrob. Naturally, I'm more interested in the past heartthrobs:
Star image is always an amalgamation of roles and "real life" public performance, so some of this overarching feeling stems from the way [Glen Powell] looks at Sydney Sweeney in Anyone But You, but also the way his character flirts in Everybody Wants Some and how he relates and defers to Daisy Edgar-Jones' character in Twisters and his extended eye contact with Adria Arjona in Hit Man. It's different than knowing you can get women, or wanting to control women, or even loving women. He likes them. He appreciates them. He enjoys their company.
Tom Cruise doesn't like women. Neither does Miles Teller. Channing Tatum likes women. So does Ryan Gosling. Brad Pitt used to like women but doesn't anymore. Leonardo Di Caprio only likes them occasionally. Bradley Cooper doesn't, George Clooney does. Matt Damon doesn't, Ben Affleck only does in that one scene in the J.Lo documentary. Marlon Brando didn't, Montgomery Clift did. Paul Newman didn't onscreen but did IRL. Cary Grant did, John Wayne definitely, definitely didn't. Will Smith pretends like he doesn't but I'm not convinced. Mark Wahlberg absolutely does not, but Daniel Day-Lewis does. So does Paul Mescal.
It's palpable in the way Powell looks at all these women -- he really, intently focuses on them, which is a surprisingly rare thing onscreen and in real life.
I'll go OT here and ask folks how valid they think this characterization really is.
14: yes. It sounded like a great concept and I was really keen to start watching it. Two episodes in, no momentum.
The quote in 19 seems like the ramblings of a person with de Clerambault syndrome, and/or a person who does not understand that there is a thing called "acting" in which men pretend to have emotions and personality characteristics that they do not, in fact, possess.
Oh sure, and that's what I've said. On the other hand I've no doubt, ajay, that you could play any role in Hamlet. Someone casting it, though, would want to go with matching your role with your curated public persona, both because audiences are going to react better that way, and because your 'acting' is going to be better when it's more you saying the lines then when you pretending to be someone you are not saying the lines. Audience expectations are a really big deal, at least among the not-a-frozen-caveman set. That's not to say that departures can't be fun for an audience, like Michael Keaton as Dogberry in Much Ado.
Anyway, actors such as those in the post, have public personas far broader than the roles they've played.
your 'acting' is going to be better when it's more you saying the lines then when you pretending to be someone you are not saying the lines
This is a really interesting statement and I don't know enough about acting to know if it's true or not.
It's disturbing if true; for example, I've seen Ian McKellen as Richard III and I've seen him as Gandalf. I liked his Richard III better. Should I be worried about the safety of any McKellen nephews?
Paul Newman didn't onscreen but did IRL.
The Fuck Hut!
19 is how casting directors make their living.
24 Also thinking about the difference between classically trained English actors and American actors (whether they're Method or not)
I wonder to what extent that's genuinely true of the real people as opposed to just what they're like on screen. I do think you also see in real life that there are men who just like women, and men who don't particularly. At some fundamental level this is one of the hardest things for me to grok in other people, like there's a certain kind of sexism where people would just rather spend time with men than women and I just don't get it at all. But surely there are people who look like they like women on screen who don't in real life, right?
I haven't seen "all of us strangers" but I did see the trailer and it makes me skeptical that Mescal's on-screen chemistry is fundamentally based in his personal feelings towards women specifically.
It seemed like two older actors who have a lot of latitude using that latitude in hugely self indulgent ways.
Yup. That's pretty much why I like the show. It took me awhile to warm up to Selena Gomez, but I'm really enjoying her work, too.
Marge (on the John Waters character): I think he prefers the company of men.
Homer: WHO DOESN'T?
Of course actors act, but it's also the case that for someone with a long career you can see what their range and limits are, and the shape of that range is in part what defines their status as a screen icon. So for say Brando, I can't offhand think of a scene with him opposite a woman that didn't drip misogyny, and that may or may not say anything about the biographical dude but is meaningful for "Brando" as icon and cultural figure.
I have less stake in making such determinations about Ryan Gosling because I'm too old to get what role he plays in the culture.
I like 19, and to the extent that I'm familiar with the subject matter, I agree with everything in it except maybe Will Smith, where I'd reverse that and say that he pretends to like women but I'm not convinced.
Am I supposed to know who AHP is by initials? (Google advises me that the relevant article is here.)
Brando was a Nebraskan. We're all very shy around women and sometimes it comes across as misogyny.
Writing by Petersen has been discussed on blog before but I didn't know she'd reached acronym status.
I apologize to Moby that Boys Don't Cry plays an outsize role in my Nebraska imagination.
Everyone is a huge fan of The Cure.
I just watched Magnolia, so I can say with a great deal of confidence that the Tom Cruise character in that movie does not like women. But Tom Cruise in Jerry McGuire proclaiming, " You complete me."? Don't we believe for that moment that he likes women?
Kinda the whole plot of that movie is he wants a family and a kid more than he actually likes her specifically.
35: spectator dependent I guess, but I remember that scene and I didn't believe it!
I've never seen either movie and never will.
NMM to Gena Rowlands. Maybe the greatest American actor to have ever lived.
39: idk, we're not South Korea but there's still a lot of damage to undo. My best friend just bought a book called How To Date Men When You Hate Men and she doesn't even want to date men.
40: I'm completely ignorant, what should I watch?
Has Korea tried to make its rice sticker? Korean food is pretty good except that the rice doesn't stick together so it is harder to eat.
41.2 her greatest work was in partnership with her longtime actor/director husband John Cassavetes*
Opening Night, A Woman Under the Influence, and Gloria are all great. I'd start there.
*Truly one of the greatest creative partnerships and real life love stories ever.
WHO declares mpox a global public health emergency for second time in two years
Mpox vaccines likely months away even as WHO, Africa CDC discuss emergency
Africa CDC said last week it had been granted $10.4 million in emergency funding from the Africa Union for its mpox response, and its director general Jean Kaseya said on Tuesday there was a clear plan to secure 3 million doses of vaccine this year, without elaborating further. However, sources involved in planning a vaccination roll-out in Congo said only 65,000 doses were likely to be available in the short-term, and campaigns were unlikely to begin before October at the earliest.
[...]
two vaccines were used - Bavarian Nordic's Jynneos, and LC16, made by KM Biologics. Outside clinical trials, neither has ever been available in Congo or across Africa, where the disease has been endemic for decades. Only LC16 is approved for use in children.
Oh oh okay! My point of intersection with Opening Night is the start of this song (and I guess this song, in a sense) but it's not like those go very deep. Thanks for the pointers.
35:
36 and 37 covered this, but I'll add that the parts of Jerry McGuire where Cruise's character unambiguously doesn't like women -- including his wife -- were much more convincing than "You complete me."
I was trying to think of an actor who would have been more convincing in that latter part of that movie. I propose that Hugh Grant likes women -- and that even as a McGuire-style cad in Bridget Jones, Grant was clearly more comfortable and natural interacting with that Zellweger character.
And to 38, I will say that Jerry McGuire was really good if you've got any tolerance for romance movies, despite the miscasting of Cruise. (And I like Cruise.)
44: yeah. It seems like existing vaccines are effective against the new clade, but also that the interventions to stop another global outbreak aren't happening.
46: LDP prime ministers have just not been compelling masturbation material lately. I wonder what comes next.
I haven't seen Magnolia since it came out, but I remember thinking that Cruise's casting as that character seemed to make explicit something that was latent in his earlier roles, and wondering to what extent Cruise himself was in on the joke.
Tom Cruise is another guy associated with couches.
More of the same, hopefully.
41: are you actually arguing that the US is awash with male misogyny, using as evidence your female friend who has bought a book called "How to Date Men When You Hate Men"?
1. Animal Farm is still good.
2. It's better when one knows some Soviet history.
3. Beasts of England is a fucking earworm.
43 I should add Minnie and Moskowitz to that.
Also, her performance in A Woman Under the Influence is easily the most powerful and affecting I've ever seen. If you only watch one make it this.
I realized (to my shame) that the only Gena Rowlands movie I've seen is Another Woman, a Woody Allen movie. Actually I remember thinking that it was pretty good, and that she was very good in it.
But my first association with Gena Rowlands is the American Music Club song, "What Holds the World Together"
The world is held together
By the wind that blows
Through Gena Rowlands' hair
I suppose I would have to have seen the Cassavates-Rowlands movies to understand this.