batman

The bounty hunter one being Midnight Run ... that's a really good film and probably the best of De Niro's 'comic' performances ... however he is blown off the screen by the underplaying of Charles Grodin.

I was always being told how good Olivier was but I resisted 'cos of his awful performance as Othello (one critic described it as a Moorish/Jamaican bus driver). Then I watched 'Hamlet' and was won over. His best screen roles are magnificent (Entertainer, Sleuth, Bunny Lake ... , Henry V etc) but he is still awful in others.

Bats.

christoph404

Well ordinarily I can't stand Tom Cruise films but I thought he was pretty good in "Magnolia" And I think Mel Gibson is quite a talented actor who chooses to appear in mainly rubbish hollywood pap (Braveheart excluded which I quite liked, and yes I know its the most hated and ridiculed film in England!) I know what you mean about DeNiro though and IMHO I would say Al Pacino is the main man of that generation of actors. As for Olivier again IMHO an incredibly mannered old school theatre actor who depending on his mood and possibly the size of his pay check is capable of hamming it up with the best of them in his movie performances.

batman

I watched final final film The Score recently. This was billed by some as a showcase for 'the 3 acting giants of their respective generations'. It's an OK film with the main pleasure being watching the tired, overweight, bored old genius effortlessly show the other 2 how it should be done. I agree about Pacino being the best of the 70s generation, however, age appears to have reduced his ability to be subtle ... a lot of the time it's 'roar, roar, roar with Al' these days.

Bats.

christoph404

I think todays actors must often feel like they have to roar roar roar in order to make an impression above the flashy camera movement pyrotechnics and superfast cutting, not to mention overwhelming CGI,just no time any more for subtelty in any way shape or form, seems like maybe tadays audiences won't stand for anything less, just get the message across with a sledgehammer!

dogstar

On reflection I have been forced - albeit reluctantly - to reconsider my description of De Niro as 'a great all-round actor', particularly of late ( my other half has just put her twopennyworth in with an outraged 'But what about Cape Fear and This Boy's Life?' ) but there have been a lot of less than subtle performances and yes he does do that smile that makes him look as if he's gurning and an equally unattractive expression where he turns down the corners of his mouth. Pacino and Hoffman though, are still think are the bizz IMHO and I would also add Harvey Keitel, Ed Harris and Nick Nolte to the list.

Jury's still out on Mel Gibson for me though I hated the Patriot with such venom I wanted to do him serious injury.

christoph404

"The Patriot" is the same film as "Braveheart" just a different setting and time in history but I would agree that The Patriot is not a great film, Braveheart is better and at least it is based on real historical characters and real events....

Steve Crook

Well, based on one real historical character. Many of the other characters, and the events are then distorted or just made up

Steve

Moor Larkin

To be fair to Mel.... in interviews he made no pretence that any of it was true. He admitted making a grabgag of 'history' and then making a 'heroic' Hollywood movie out of it, twisting any history to suit his own theme.

I was always amazed at the (so-called) 'scottish' response because the Scottish nobility in the film were mercilessly shown to be as treacherous a bunch of scumbags as the English. Nevertheless Mel graces the front page of at least one 'Independence for Scotland' website..... not bad for an Aussie born in America.......

I'm off to Argyll & Bute soon for a short break so I might ask 'real' Scottish people (as opposed to the ones who live in London or Manchester) what they thought.... but probably I'll just enjoy the holiday and their delightful accents.....

[code]http://www.flickr.com/photos/29487363@N02/sets/72157606700675506/code]

christoph404

Yeah I know, hence my ironic laughing head at the end of my post! I think there was more than one real character though in Braveheart , there was Wallace, Long Shanks, Cressingham, Robert The Bruce, and so on. I would say 50% of the story is fiction, mainly the romantic liason between Wallace and the Queen of France which is pure hollywood tripe to be honest. If you summarised the life of the real William Wallace it would be along the lines of, ordinary common man stands up to English King Edward Long Shanks and defeats much larger invading English force at the Battle of Stirling Bridge, is hailed a hero and freedom fighter and is Knighted by the Scottish nobility. Wallace did have a wife who is reported to have been hanged while 8 months pregnant . Fired by his victory he marches south and invades Berwick and sacks the city and again defeats the English force. His next big Battle is at Falkirk where the Scottish nobility have turned against him and in effect betray him and after that defeat he is indeed on the run.In reality Wallace leaves Britain and travels around Europe looking for political support and even has an audience with the Pope. He should have stayed there as on his return he was again betrayed by his own kinsmen and captured by Longshanks and taken to London for trial. His trail and execution is depicted by writers of the day, Wallace denied being a traitor as he states that he never swore any kind of allegiance to the English King. He was executed the same day as his trial by being hanged, cut down before death and castrated and dissemboweled and then beheaded! Ouch. Wallace was an educated man and spoke Latin and French as depicted in the film. All the above is related in the film along with quite a lot of balony but I would say the main thrust of the history is represented in the film in some way though it is of course very romanticised. William Wallace is still a national hero in Scotland and was so before the film popularised the myth, there is a statue of him in just about every major town in Scotland and there is even a statue of Mel Gibson as Wallace in the car park at the National Wallace Monument in Stirling!, a legacy of the impact he had on Anglo Scots relations! And BTW, I still consider myself a real Scot even though I have lived in London for more than twenty four years and I still have my bonnie scottish accent,! and Mel Gibson is not really Australian, he is an American born in New York state who emigrated with his parents to Aussieland when he was 12 years old. Leaving your home country to live in another doesn't erase your heritage or nationality you know!

ChristineCB

Christopher Lee and Michael Gough might be the actors that I've grown to enjoy. Neither have placed any great number of contemporary films into my theatre-going experience - I only discovered their works mostly thru videos, but lately I've seen more in festival re-releases.

Peter Cushing, on the other hand, always received high-marks from me, but then again, his films used his 'tragic, misunderstood almost-heroic character' for the most part.

Lee's career is varied - he's been good, bad, tragic, misunderstood, even heroic and comedic. Gough, for the most part, has played that same snide, evil, fiendish villain, whose smile is always closer to a sneer, or merely a chance to unwrap his fangs.

How can someone accomplish such a career with that kind of character? Do studio streets have a sign saying, "Bad man wanted - inquire within"? Is it true that the best hero-films always have the worst villain, too? Gough's career - which has an abundance of B-and-lesser films - seems to be testimony that he's done something right.

Steve Crook

And a chance to attack the English, which he always likes doing

The other common Scottish mistake is to blame the English for the Highland clearances when it was really mainly the clan chiefs that instigated it

But why let history get in the way of a good story?

Steve

christoph404

And another common English mistake is to think that the Scots blame them for everything!!
There is a very good book on the Highland Clearances by none other than John Prebble who is of course famous for writing the short story on which the film Zulu was based. The highland clearances is a very emmotive subject in Scotland and certainly a more complex an issue than suggested here.

Moor Larkin

And so you should......

It's all a bit of a state of mind though isn't it. For most of my life I believed myself to be half Irish on my dad's side. Recently I was chatting to him about my genetic grandmother (who had died when my dad was small) and as the conversation progressed it suddenly dawned on me that he seemed to be implying that his birth mother was English (his step mother had been Irish). When I gasped, "Your mum was English?" He looked at me queerly, and said, "Yeah. She was from Birmingham."........

So, as you can see, my 'heritage' is slipping away 25% at a time........

And to think I spent all that time reading about the 'Great Hunger'..... Pah!

Hollywood gossip has it that his next movie is a study of the life of Owain Glyndwr.......

[code]http://www.flickr.com/photos/29487363@N02/sets/72157606700675506/code]

Steve Crook

Oh good, another chance for him to attack the English. He'll probably change the story so that Glyndwr dies a tragic but heroic death at the hands of the redcoats
(The British army not wearing red coats at the time won't stop him)

Steve

christoph404

I don't detect an anti English theme in Mel Gibson films.....anti Jewish maybe....
I think he just happened to make a couple of films depicting the British or English Empire at a time in history when they were particularly oppresive and imperialistic and neaded taught a lesson from the small guy! Dicky Attenborough made a very good film about Ghandi that showed the British Empire in a very poor light indeed but thats how it was as the history books tell us and painful as it is to be reminded that The British Empire was quite ruthless in its rule over large parts of the world, it is history and in the past so wouldn't take it too personnaly that Mr Gibson seems to be on an anti English crusade, I mean English or British actors usually play the bad guys in Yank films anyway so Gibson is just taking it one step further and having the whole English nation play the bad guy and lets face it, anything to stop the American public being reminded who the real bad guy is...mmmm.......G W Bush and the good old US of A has a lot to answer for on that score but lets direct our anger at something else......" I know, nasty imperialistic brits from history" !