Friday's Five Faves-Chameleons

Today's Five Favorites are Actors and Actresses that I think look different in a lot of their roles. Ever see a movie and then realize that it's....so and so who played a completely different role and looked different and acted different in so many of their roles? They just emerge themselves into the characters they are playing and completely transform themselves. Sometimes it's not even about the hair and make-up and wardrobe. Sometimes it's just how they act and they become the character and you forget the actor/actress that they really are.

This was hard for me because there are so many good ones. I originally had a list of about ten, but ten doesn't start with an "f", so it doesn't go with the whole Friday Five Favorite theme...so, I thought and I thought...and I crossed people off the list and put them back on again...but I finally came up with my list. My apologies to Daniel Day Lewis, Vincent D'Onofrio, James Caviezel, Charlize Theron, and the two that kept going on and off my list several times: Billy Crudup and Gerard Butler.

And I also have to mention Heath Ledger. He could have been the one. He showed so much promise, was so good right from the start. It's a shame we will never know how much more he could have given the audience.

There. I feel a little better mentioning them. Now, on to my Five Favorite Chameleons.

NUMBER FIVE-
Julie Walters:

Have you seen this woman? Chances are you have and you didn't even know who she was. We all know her as Mrs. Weasley, the redheaded mom of the redheaded Weasley brood in the Harry Potter Movies.

But, did you know that same woman is the fiesty member of Donna and the Dynamos in the movie musical Mama Mia?

And she completely blew me away as the aging, eccentric actress in Driving Lessons. Even though she played opposite her Harry Potter co-star, Rupert Grint, I never saw a Weasley in this film. Ever.



NUMBER FOUR-
Sacha Baron Cohen:

Not a big Sacha Baron Cohen fan, but I give him lots of credit for transforming himself in every role he takes on. Even if it's the ridiculous Bruno.

Or Borat, the character that put him on the charts.

Or the very funny French Car Racing Enemy in Ricky Bobby.

My favorite has to be from Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. That's when I really sat up and noticed that this comic shock valued actor can really impress.



NUMBER THREE-
Jude Law:

This pretty boy has taken on several roles where you lose the whole Jude Law person and just see the character he has portrayed. There are several roles where I had to remind myself that yes, it is indeed Jude Law.

When he was the android, Gigolo Joe in Artificial Intelligence: AI.

Or the evil villain opposite Tom Hanks in Road to Perdition.

The dirty, scruffy, sickly looking, love torn Civil War Confederate Soldier in Cold Mountain.

Or the lovable widower and father in The Holiday.


NUMBER TWO-
Viggo Mortensen:

He would be number one, but his beautiful, unique eyes give him away ever time. This is a very handsome man that knows when to be handsome, when to be ugly, when to be the hero and when to be the villain. He transforms himself every single time.

Forget the Hobbits and Gollum and the elves and fairies. He is the star of all three Lord of the Rings movies.

He does western very well, from Hidalgo to Appaloosa and even Young Guns II.



He played angry, mean, cool, and cold with a twist in Eastern Promises.

And he can even do romance, like in 28 Days.

And I'm looking forward to seeing him in The Road, playing a father in a post Apocalyptic future. The DVD is sitting on my coffee table, just waiting to be watched.



NUMBER ONE-
Gary Oldman:

This man is probably one of the most versatile actors of all times. He looks different in every single role he has ever played in. From the latest Batman movies to Harry Potter. From Sid and Nancy to The Fifth Element to The Unborn to JFK to The Scarlett Letter to Dracula...and on and on and on and on.

I'm just gonna post a bunch of pictures. You judge for yourself.









But don't judge on pictures alone. If you haven't seen the movies, I recommend you do. Their acting completely and totally transforms them.

Thursday's Three Line Reviews

Thursday's Three Line Reviews are back!! I've been so busy with the end of school, summer, and putting in a swimming pool. Enjoying the pool. Hating the pool when we had a weekload of problems. Fixing the pool. Then enjoying it again.

So, basically...I had very little time for watching movies. Plus I'm trying to finish a book I am reading...and I have turned into my mother when it comes to reading. I used to be able to polish off a whole novel over night. Now...I read two pages and I nod off.

But, I am starting to catch up with my movie watching. I am also trying to watch movies on my "Movies every Movie Junkie should see" list. This is a list of movies that are classics or people rave about or had been nominated and I had never seen them. I can now cross off Shawshank Redemption, Training Day, and Rudy from that list.

Okay...enough Rambling. Here they are. This week's Thursday's Three Line Reviews:

PUBLIC ENEMIES-
Every watch a movie and just think "eh"? This is one of them. You would think a movie about John Dillinger and gangsters, starring Johnny Depp and Christian Bale and directed by Michael Mann would be exciting, but it wasn't.

DEAR JOHN-
This movie starts off slow, but has so much promise. Then it fails, big time. I love Amanda Seyfried, but I got more joy over the fact that Henry Thomas was in it.

TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE-
Special effects and Kristin Stewart's acting improved in this movie. With all the millions the TWILIGHT franchise is making, you would think they would hire better make-up and wig people because the wigs were beyond obvious, the pale vampire faces looked like pancake makeup from 1932, and Edward needs some serious grooming around the eyebrow and sideburn areas. Bryce Dallas Howard shined as the recasted Victoria and I wish there was more of her in the movie.

SHUTTER ISLAND-
Perhaps my biggest disappointment in the movies I've seen in the last week or so. Long, gray, and dreary, which wouldn't be so bad if I hadn't figured it all out within the first ten minutes of the movie. Leonardo DiCaprio is brilliant, but I can never get past his baby face to believe he is a man of maturity and the best thing about this movie was the small performance from Jackie Earl Haley.

SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION-
The best movie I've seen this week. Everything about it was brilliant from the acting to the directing to the story itself. Stephen King rules as a non-horror storyteller and Morgan Freeman just rocks.

TRAINING DAY-
I really wanted to like this movie and kept waiting for a big twist that never came. It wasn't a bad movie and was enjoyable, but Ethan Hawke always irks me for some reason and it's hard to get past that. Thought Denzel Washington was great, but out of all his roles over the years, I am not sure this is the role he should have taken the Oscar home for.

TAKING WOODSTOCK-
A semi-fictional account of how Woodstock came to be, this movie has it's moments. Some parts were witty, Liev Schreiber makes one ugly woman, and Imelda Staunton shined in this movie. A bit slow at times and I would have liked to see some of the concert itself or interacting with some of the stars of the concert.

COLLEGE-
It was late and I couldn't sleep, so that is my only excuse for watching this garbage. I'm all for funny, sophomoric, drinking movies, but this one crosses the line from sophomoric to moronic. This movie also gets my vote for the most annoying movie character EVER: Carter Scott, played by Andrew Caldwell (who might just get my vote for most annoying actor ever).

RUDY-
Rudy's dedication to Notre Dame boderlined obsessive, psychotic, stalkerish behavior and I kept thinking some one really needed to get that boy some help. However, by the end of the movie I was crying. Sean Astin is always sweet in most of his roles, but Charles Dutton steals this movie.

LUCAS-
A sweet classic from the 80's where the nerd and football captain fall for the pretty girl. I'm pretty sure this movie is the movie that started the trend of the "slow clap" in movies (Rudy included). Most likely Corey Haim's best role, he was adorable as the nerdy, misfit, title character and Charlie Sheen was great as the jock with a heart.

Happy Birthday Harrison Ford

Today is Harrison Ford's 68th birthday. That's right...Han Solo...Indiana Jones...turns 68.

I love Harrison Ford. I mean, I looooooove this man. I've loved him since I first saw Star Wars. Everyone else was all about Luke, but I knew that Han was THE MAN. Forget that sissyboy, Jedi Knight wannabe. It was Han that saved the day at the end of the movie. He saved Luke's ass with his badass ship, the Millennium Falcon. Only THEN was Luke able to fire into that little port hole thingy which was the destruction of the Death Star.

All my little friends were Team Luke. I always was and always will be Team Han.

Yeah, Han Solo was the man. Harrison Ford is the man, still to this day.

He went on to give us one of the greatest action heroes of all times: Indiana Jones. He was tough. He was smart. He knew how to use a whip. Looked great in a hat. And had his flaws too (suffered from sever ophidiophobia). Look it up.

Harrison gave us other great roles too. He played in Blade Runner, Air Force One, Regarding Henry, The Fugitive, Witness, Working Girl, and so on and so on and so on. He's done action. Comedy. Romance. Carpentry. He's done it all.

One of my favorite roles of Harrison's? Allie Fox in The Mosquito Coast. This is a movie that got limited release, back when I was in high school. Because of the combination of Harrison Ford and River Phoenix, I insisted on seeing it. None of my friends wanted to travel by subway into an unknown neighborhood to see it. It was the only place around that was playing it.

My mother was the only one who saw my dedication to my childhood crush. She and I went by subway to an old school theater that was falling apart. I was a little freaked. I was young and naive. The neighborhood wasn't the greatest. The theater was dingy and dirty. And it was my first subway ride in years due to a horrible childhood experience on a subway car that led me to suffer from siderodromophobia. (Look it up).

But once the movie started, I was taken away. This was a different kind of role for Harrison Ford. A step away from the cocky, action seeking, leading man with the witty one liners. A huge step away.

In Mosquito Coast he plays a radical and unstable father who whisks his family away to the jungles of South America to establish a Utopian society and putting them all at risk. There's something very haunting about Harrison Ford's portrayal. Something that was unforgettable.

So, here's to the sexiest man that is thirty years my senior and still going strong. He is making an Indiana Jones 5, so he shows no signs of slowing down.

The man is almost 70....and he's still got that devil may care smirk that can melt a girl's heart.

The Worst Movie? Really?

Last night I watched what was considered on of the worst movies of 2009. All About Steve, starring Sandra Bullock and...those two guys from The Hangover. Their names escape me at the moment. We're in the middle of a heat wave and our pool is broken....my brain is seriously melting as I type this.

Anyway, last year, hundreds of critics everywhere declared that All About Steve was one of the worst movies of the year. Perhaps even THE worst movie of the year.

So, I watched it. And I giggled. I chuckled. I laughed out loud. It wasn't a masterpiece...but the worst? Really? Come on!!

I tried to figure out why it was rated so harshly. It was actually enjoyable. It was light, mindless, goofy, silly, cartoonish, and stupid in a very Jim Carreyish kind of way.

See...I'm wondering, what if the roles were reversed? Sandra Bullock is playing a goofy, off the wall, overly obsessed, walking warehouse of useless knowledge who believes she's in love and he loves her and will go to the ends of the earth to follow him. Meanwhile, she's really turning into a lovable stalker who's heart is being played with by the plottings of the leading man's foe.

Now, let's take Sandra Bullock out and let's make it a goofy man. Jim Carrey is a perfect example. Let's make the object of his desire a beautiful woman. He's crazy, goofy, quirky and he'll go to the ends of the earth to reach who he believes is his soulmate. OH! WAIT!!
That's been done before! It's called Dumb and Dumber! It was a HUGE HIT!!

The only difference between the two movies is that Jim was played out to be goofy and stupid. Sandra's character is goofy and smart.

And this movie bombed. I think it's because it's a sexist community out there. I guess girls can't be smart? Or goofy? Or both? I don't know. I thought Sandra pulled it off quite well.

Maybe...perhaps the movie would have been better received if it was released when both Sandra Bullock and those guys from The Hangover (I really need to google them) didn't have other big movies out in the same year.

Sandra blew everyone away with The Blind Side. The Proposal was her big comedy movie. And The Hangover?? Well...loved by all.

Those movies overshadowed All About Steve. All About Steve didn't even stand a chance.

Rent it. Sit back with an ice pop and the A.C. or fan blasting. Empty your mind, because this movie really does not require an ounce of thought. And just enjoy it for what it is. Who says every movie has to be a perfect, plot hole free production. It's a movie!! A figment of the imagination. A place where you can escape and where question could be left unasked. Don't be so critical. I've seen much, much, much worse.

Bradley Cooper!!! That's his name!! That's the love interest guy...well, the actor that plays him. Still unclear on the second guy. It'll come to me....one day when my brain stops melting.

In the Midst of Twilight Mania...

With all the hype of the new Twilight movie, Eclipse, there is another vampire movie I want to recommend. A fantastic vampire movie. It's a little Swedish film called Let the Right One In.

Filmed mostly on dark nights, in stark rooms, and in snow this movie chilled me to the bone. It's not really scary, but it's just eerie. A young, lonely, bullied boy befriends a little girl who is a vampire. And she too, thirsts for friendship. But she also thirsts for blood.

I saw this movie about a year ago and thought it was brilliant. Today, as I did my daily browse on IMDB, I saw there is a movie coming out called Let Me In. It is an American Remake. I watched the trailer and it seems like it is staying very true to the original Swedish film...but I don't know if we can pull off that loneliness, that coldness that the original movie managed to do so well.

If you are a vampire movie fan, rent Let the Right One In. Rent it and see it before the American version comes out. I don't know why they needed to remake it. Not when the original was so good. And if it's because people don't want to read subtitles, then they are just being lazy. Sometimes, movies with subtitles are part of the art. Hearing the original language being spoken is part of the story. The actors are part of the story making. It would be as if another country went and remade an American Classic like Jaws. Can you imagine anyone else playing Brody, Quint, and Hooper?

I usually don't mind remakes too much. Not if they are done right. But I think we are starting to get a little crazy with all the remakes. And if a movie is done so perfectly in another country, in another language, we need to respect that. We need to let it be and see the movie in it's original form.

And that's my ramble for today. I'll get off my soapbox now. Don't forget to consider adding Let the Right One on your movies to rent list. Especially if you're a vampire fan and are looking for a good vampire movie to watch.