Six Degrees of Award Circuits

It's just an aspect of my voyeuristic actorphilic self that I always enjoy making little connections betwen actors and stringing pieces of random/useless trivia together. Whenever I watch a big actors' event, my brain inevitably starts to buzzing "I wonder what said actor thinks of other actor?" "Have they met each other?" "They worked together on ___ and they're reunited! Holy shit!"

This year's "people of the hour" group has a lot of old-timers, so I had such glorious fun spotting the connections and remembering how they all know each other in one giant actor-cest circle.

Christian Bale actually has the most ties at these award shows, despite being seen as more of an outsider. He's worked with Nicole Kidman in 1995's "Portrait of a Lady". And of course, he and Christopher Nolan are one of the best Hollywood duets, even if it's quite ironic that their best-reviewed work was not with each other. He also used to be a good friend of Winona Ryder, who's been everywhere (fun fact: his wife was Winona's assistant before they got married! They met at a BBQ Winona was throwing) and I wonder if she was at the Golden Globes because Depp was there, and do they ever have awkward run-ins? Or maybe they're just all chill about it, like "let's pretend we weren't actually madly in love for years and you didn't used to have a tattoo of my name and you were not, in fact, my 'first everything'. Cool." Bale must also be seeing a lot of his "I'm Not There" costar Julianne Moore and fellow "Little Women" Claire Danes (who won awards endlessly for Temple Grandin) at these events, and be happy for Lisa Cholodenko who directed him in "Laurel Canyon". Oh, and lastly it's a shame Bale wasn't at the BAFTAS because Miranda Richardson was a nominee and of course, they worked together in his legendary debut film, Empire of the Sun. He really has worked with a lot of people, having been around for 20 years. I wonder what Richardson thinks of her growed up young costar.

A bit bizarrely, Natalie Portman and Annette Bening were both in "Mars Attack!" (I don't remember who they played at all) and she was also in "Cold Mountain" with Kidman.

Tom Hooper, despite being kind of a Hollywood newbie, still probably sees tons of friendly faces at these award circuits from his great TV work, like Paul Giamatti from "John Adams" and Barbara Hershey and Hugh Dancy from "Daniel Deronda" (I'm a fan of both, especially 'Daniel Deronda" - it's sensual, grandly moving and perfect for a rainy Saturday).

Maestro David Fincher knows a lot of people, obvs., like fellow Oscar nominee and "Fight Club" alum Helena Bonham-Carter (I love both of them so much), and has directed Mark Ruffalo, and "somewhat" directed Nicole Kidman (she was originally cast in "Panic Room" but backed out from a busted knee and made a voice cameo instead).

Just at the Golden Globes alone, it was cool that Johnny Depp was nominated (even if the nom was a completely facetious one) because he was nominated along with his "Pirates" co-star Geoffrey Rush and obvs. HBC since they and Tim Burton complete a robust triangle of weirdo-love. Speaking of Colin Firth, "The King's Speech" will be the second Best Picture-winning movie he's been in that also has Geoffrey Rush - they were both in "Shakespeare in Love" and most impressively, this is actually Firth's third BP winner - he was also in "The English Patient". So both he and Ralph Fiennes have three BP Oscar winners under their belt. Can we call up the stats for that? Who else has done that?. Um, according to Wikipedia, a lot. But still impressive! Best of all, I discovered a few months ago that Firth starred opposite Annette Bening in 1986's "Valmont", an adaptation of Les Liaisons dangereuses, which so surprised me that I watched the whole thing on instant Netflix. God, they were so YOUNG! And oh so beautiful. I highly recommend that one as well. If only Bening could win....it'd be so cool for the both of them.

Firth and Bening being period-wear sexy in "Valmont"

Mark Ruffalo and Michelle Williams were both in Shutter Island. You would have thought that their Oscar-nominated performances would have come from that movie.

Javier Bardem is nominated with The Coen Brothers who directed his Oscar-winning performance in No Country, of course.

Oddly enough, Jeff Bridges, despite having the longest career in the group, has no connections to any of the nominees, except the the Coen Bros.

Barring the Date

It's official. The weekend of Dec. 10-12 is fully booked for me. Don't text, call, email, or Facebook me, unless it's to discuss the occupations of said weekend.

Coming out all on the same date (Dec. 10); three favorite hotties - namely Johnny Depp in The Tourist, Skandar Keynes (aka Edmund) in the third installment of the Narnia series, and the David O. Russell smackdown, featuring my ex-beloved Christian Bale.

I seriously hope Depp has his mojo back on for the Tourist. Any variation of his Agent Sands character from Once Upon a Time in Mexico will do. The Youtube bastards took the "Shoot the Cook" sequence from the movie down, so I can't post any clip as proof of his undiluted brilliance in that movie. As for Angelina Jolie, who is unfortunately costarring in the drama, I could seriously care less. She's in the same league of acting as Leonardo Dicaprio - whatever spark or force of persona that propelled them to fame have long been sucked dry by some rancid combination of complacency and slowly-revealed mediocrity. Nowadays, when I watch either of them act, I don't see a character, only a succession of gestures; some dramatic eyebrow chewing, loud meltdowns, furrowed intensity. He really enjoys grimacing and she really enjoys smirking over her shoulder. A bit more hollering inserted if they're really gunning for that Oscar nom.

As for The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, I profess to having a thing for Skandar Keynes, who plays Edmund. He was so excellent and stealthy in the second movie. Fun trivia: Skandar's a descendant of Charles Darwin and four million other famous people.

I have mixed feelings about The Fighter - word out is that everyone involved in the movie is on their A-game, but Bale has again lost a drastic amount of weight for the role - I saw a few pictures and he looked ghastly, frankly. I can't stand it. It impressed me a lot when I was a fledging fan - "he's so dedicated!" but weight fluctuation is just an acting gimmick. I think Daniel Day Lewis had an excellent quote, where he - the ultimate shapeshifter - said that hardcore preparation for a role, such as losing weight or gaining a beard, etc. etc., was only dressing on the salad - the character still stems from within. Ultimately, exterior changes are overrated. Plus, it just doesn't make sense to be losing weight if you're going to be playing a boxer, even if the real-life boxer was a lightweight. Plus, I'm sure that these weight regimes affects his brain cells, and we all know that the best actors are also the smartest.

I do hope there will be trailers out for The Wahlberg and The Depp soon, though.

IMDB Profile Archive

Because I'm continually updating my IMDB account profile, I thought I would save some of the old ones to my blog.

One posted a few weeks ago:

"Recently discovered what having a favorite movie really meant. Not necessarily one that you would love to rewatch 298492x, but one that from a first-time viewing, immediately speaks to you. Analysis comes easy, as if there was a SparkNotes mapped out in your brain when you saw the movie, and you feel that you could understand the director's every intent, every decision, every why and how, every instinct in tune with your own. How nice it is to have favorite movies!"

That was after I saw Bright Star. It amazed me afterwards to see how much people misunderstood its intentions or some of the moments in the movie. I kept saying to myself "but how could you NOT understand it?" Then it dawned on me that it was as if the film had been assembled from bits of myself. Schmaltzy but true. It boils down to the differences we all have. You can't expect other people to walk away feeling the same thing you felt.

My profile note as of now (also a response to a blog question):

"I've seen 20 of Christian Bale's movies (some of them accidentally. I mean, we've all seen Pocahontas). And I've gone out of my way to see about 12 of them. Then I lost interest. But he will always hold a special place in my heart for having introduced me to IMDB, Hayao Miyazaki, American Psycho, and Ben Whishaw (his successor as my actor-obsession du jour)"

:) :) :)

:( :( :(

I no longer think that Christian Bale is a great actor. But he is still one of the most fascinating. I will never understand how he can be so perfect in some movies and numbingly bad in others. He's constantly surprising me, which is a rare trait in an actor, at least. But it was his inconsistencies and unconventional acting that really made me fall in love with movies and acting. He's not great, but he tries stupendously hard (though goddamn it, sometime I'll have to make a rant post about how severe weight loss/gain is absolutely useless to an actor) and that's gotten him pretty far: in retrospect, the second highest grossing movie of all time (inflation aside), a hoard of unbelievably vicious fans, and relative respect as an actor until his little Terminator spiel and the shit hit the fan. So you see, hard work does get you somewhere! But typical me to espouse the rewards of hard work while I'm procrastinating for my AP hw. Toodles.