The 2008 United States Presidential election is now assured to be historic regardless of who wins. Either an African American will be President or a white woman will be Vice President. That's an amazing thing, and a surprising thing -- given the continuing conservative bent of the not-so-silent majority in this country.
It never ceases to amaze me that people who make less than $200K a year continually vote against their own economic self-interest by voting for Republicans. A friend of mine (despite her politics) actually related to me the other day, quite seriously, that the Republican party really cared about the little guy. Hello? Clue phone: it's for you. The sad part is, she's not an NRA member, a pro-lifer, or a Christian Fundamentalist -- at least I can understand their attraction to the GOP even if they're not rich. What I don't get is how a woman who is none of those things can possibly think it's a good thing to vote Republican. Another thing I don't get: members of my tribe voting for Republicans, because they think that is the best way to assure a pro-Israel administration. Yet the Republican party and their judicial appointees are the very people who take every opportunity they can to blur the already somewhat muddy line between church and state further in favor of church. But I digress.
The question I really came here to pose is, what are the Republicans (or perhaps Senator McCain without the aid of Republican strategists) thinking with with his selection of Governor Sarah Palin as running mate? This is supposed to win over Senator Hillary Clinton's supporters? Do they honestly think that women such as myself will vote for their ticket simply because a woman is on it? We're supposed to abandon all principle and vote based on chromosomes? Do they think we're potatoes?
James Carville on CNN tonight said it pretty well; there's not much overlap between Clinton and Pat Buchanan, whom Palin supported for President. If the bet is that Clinton women will support Palin because she's a woman, that's a very bad bet based on the faulty anology that any woman is to women what Obama is to African Americans. From what I've observed, Obama has the support he does among African Americans not simply because of race, but because of the simple reason that his politics and those of his supporters are aligned.
I have been a Clinton supporter from the beginning of her campaign, but because I thought she was the smartest, most tenacious candidate, and didn't have a naive bone in her body about what it would take to get things done in the humongoid, pluralist bureaucracy that is the United States government. I never doubted her heart was in the right place. I don't just believe. I know that she would have tried to do what she said she'd do if elected President. The fact that she is a woman was a bonus, and a big one. A really big one. I would have loved to see this country mature enough to vote a woman into the most powerful office in the land and indeed, the world. Other democracies have done so, why not this one.
Clinton was the only candidate with the depth of knowledge on the universal health care issue necessary to solve that issue successfully. And she was pilloried by pretty much everyone for her prior efforts in that regard, back when everyone ran in a dither shouting socialized medicine, next stop the US Soviet -- and by the way, a First Lady has no place doing anything other than hosting luncheons, baking cookies and reading to first graders for a photo op.
She (understandably because such a breach of trust isn't supposed to happen in this country) trusted the Bush White House when they said a vote for the resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq was a vote to do so only if diplomacy failed. It's one thing to stand up on the floor of the Illinois State Senate and say the war is a bad idea. It's quite another to be a United States Senator from the state of New York who asked a specific question and was lied to, outright, by her President. And again, she was vilified for it within her own party as well as without.
Bah. Let's not kid ourselves. Partly this was because she is a Clinton, and they have no shortage of detractors, and even enemies. But mostly it was because she is a woman. The sorts of things said about Clinton even by mainstream media during her campaign were appalling and simply would not have been tolerated had they been said about African Americans or any other racial group.
I had decided to sit out this election. I would never have voted for McCain. The Supreme Court is far too important to leave the selection of Justices to him. But I couldn't bring myself into the Obama camp. The things that most bother me about Obama are a couple of incidents similar in nature, one involving NAFTA, where one of his aides was quoted as basically saying not to worry, Obama was only saying the correct thing to get elected and had no intention of rocking the boat once the tiller was in his hand. While I never doubted Senator Clinton's good intentions, I have had reason to doubt Senator Obama's.
But this latest move by McCain has pushed me into action. It feels personally insulting that he and/or the Republicans appear to think putting up a woman with mediocre academic and political credentials and a straight down the line conservative stance on the issues is somehow a substitute for Senator Clinton. I'm insulted that they appear to think the women of this country are, to a one, potatoes: brainless, without principle, and all grown in a patch together. And yet, they have the audacity to put a woman up for the second highest office in the country. (I guess that's not too surprising given Senator McCain's own view of the office of Vice President.) I'm insulted that they think we would want this woman to be the one who pushes through those 18 million cracks our candidate made in the glass ceiling of Presidential politics. What they don't seem to get is that it matters just as much who does it as that it happens. Because whoever does will set the expectations and the stage for those who come behind her. The wrong person will be as much of a setback as the right one will be a catapult forward.
The way I'm feeling now, I'll vote for Obama. He's smart (not as smart as Clinton, but smart nevertheless), he's got a knack for finding common ground, and he's got Joe Biden, who, like Clinton, I have no doubt has his heart in the right place. Choosing Biden, once it was obvious Clinton would not be the choice, was something of a litmus test: it showed how Obama approaches shoring up the areas in which he is less expert than others. Like President Kennedy did before him, he's shown that his approach when he takes office will be to surround himself with the smartest, most talented and experienced people in every field to advise him rather than ideologues and sports fans. He'll do that and he'll be ok in his areas of lesser strength -- he'll learn what he needs to learn, and he'll apply his intelligence and education to make the right decisions. And in any case, the Democratic ticket is the last, best hope to keep the Supreme Court from a clear conservative majority with the power to affect all our lives in a profound and horrifying way.
This Presidential election will make history either way. But history is not the same as progress, in all the areas in which we need it so badly in this country. The economy. Civil rights. Health care. International relations. Education. Science. Stopping the war, and stopping the terrorists. Optimism for the future. Only the Democratic ticket's win in November can bring the hope for these things, as well as making history.
**Morgana**
Friday, August 29, 2008
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
In Lieu of Chocolate Lava Cake
Whatever else personal blogging may be, it can't help but be self-indulgent at least to some degree. I celebrated a birthday recently and in its honor have decided to engage in a bit of unabashed self-indulgence and trot out my Top Ten Favorite Male Actors List. It was either that or chocolate lava cake, and I think on balance, I'll regret this bit of self-indulgence less.
All of these men are not only brilliant artists and versatile craftsmen, they're picky about their roles. And they seem like interesting people. They're the top ten stranded-on-a-desert-island-with, but also the top ten have-dinner-with.
For years I've had eight or so favorites, and in the interest of the list decided to expand to an even 10. This turned out to be a challenge because once I'd pushed the envelope I ended up with more like 20 and had to axe about half. Without futher ado, here are those that made the cut in alphabetical order (because I just couldn't choose who would go first otherwise), and why:
1. Daniel Day-Lewis: He was in a movie with Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin at the same time -- one of my alltime favorites, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, in which he played a devilish, womanizing, yet politically principled Czech doctor who loses his practice rather than recant a negative opinion he expressed about the Soviets after the 1968 invasion of Prague. One of the few times when a movie was actually better than a book, and I love Milan Kundera.
Who could forget Day-Lewis' Oscar-winning performance in My Left Foot? Or what I would be willing to bet would win the most female votes for sexiest scene ever filmed, in The Last of the Mohicans, where he reclines on the forest floor and does essentially nothing but look at Madeleine Stowe -- yet the heat and tension in that look are not only palpable, they're practically overwhelming. And I haven't even seen There Will be Blood yet.
2. Benicio del Toro: He almost lost out to Clive Owen, but in the end I had to go with del Toro on the strength of his bedroom eyes. Those delicious, pronounced lower lids. He was stunning in Traffic and 21 Grams. I'll be interested to see how he does with Che Guevara in Guerrilla.
And he was in a movie with Johnny Depp, and one with Amy Irving.
3. Johnny Depp: Aside from his physical beauty, how many young American actors can step into a period piece, or a character piece, as easily? How many are the reason a Disneyland icon gets reworked? How many would be willing to take on Gene Wilder as the just as iconic Willy Wonka? How many can hold their own amid the likes of Marlon Brando and Faye Dunaway?
The French connection is a plus, as is the humor in a quote attributed to him, which whether he really said it or not, is spot on: "When kids hit one year old, it's like hanging out with a miniature drunk. You have to hold onto them. They bump into things. They laugh and cry. They urinate. They vomit."
And he was in movie (Chocolat) with Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin at the same time.
"Anysing furzer, Mr. Corso?"
4. Leonardo DiCaprio: Did someone say bedroom eyes? His have that wonderful lower-lidded roundness, too. Those eyes were the first things I noticed about him, back in the Marvin's Room era, followed quickly by the shocked realization that I was looking upon the most perfect example of male beauty I had ever seen. Later, I saw Total Eclipse and What's Eating Gilbert Grape? (with Johnny Depp) both on cable, and then Romeo and Juliet -- all interesting and challenging choices for someone who easily could have allowed himself to be typecast into nothing but modern romantic leads. In this he is similar to Johnny Depp, and that's one reason I like both of them.
I also like getting little emails under his name about environmental topics. I have no idea how I got on this mailing list, but it's so momentarily charming to see that email in my inbox and pretend it's him just checking in to say hi.
For personal reasons having to do with who accompanied me to see the film in the theatre, I have difficulty watching Titanic again when it comes around on one of the movie channels. Other than that, I never pass up a chance to see a DiCaprio film.
And he was in a movie with John Malkovich.
5. Ralph Fiennes: He was in another of my favorite movies of all time, Schindler's List, albeit as a murdering Nazi. Indeed, he has had an incredible run in the villain department, including without limitation the ultimate bad guys of the Book of Exodus (the voice of Ramses in Prince of Egypt) and of Harry Potter's wizarding world, Lord Voldemort. I didn't know before I saw him in The Goblet of Fire that he had been cast as Voldemort. It took a few minutes of hearing his voice to recognize it, followed almost immediately by the realization of whose face was under the snaky, masky make-up, and then, a millisecond later, a feeling of almost providential inevitability. Of course. Who else? By that time, the precision and authority of the Fiennesian heightened-to-stage-proportions physical movement left no room for doubt.
The energy, intensity and passion that makes him an excellent villain also makes him a wonderful Heathcliff, to my mind every bit equal to, though different from, Olivier's definitive interpretation. I would have loved to have seen him as Hamlet on stage. He can play sweet, vunerable, hapless characters (Oscar and Lucinda, The Constant Gardner) equally well. The bath scene in The English Patient could force a run off vote in the sexiest scene on film category, though Mohicans still wins.
And he was in no fewer than two movies with Juliette Binoche, though unfortunately, not with Lena Olin. Thanks to Harry Potter, he will likely have been in a whole slew of them with Alan Rickman by the time the series is over.
6. William Hurt: I'm only partly joking when I say he was the reason I moved to New York. I never ran into him the entire ten years or so I lived on the Upper West Side where he was also living at the time. During the same period, without even trying, I ran into Gene Shalit several times near Rockefeller Center and once in Columbus Circle. So it goes. I did have the privilege of seeing Hurt perform live in the Circle Rep production of Beside Herself -- worth the price of admission for that privilege alone.
I saw Vantage Point the other night and was reminded of all the reasons I love his work. He does things I don't think anyone does better, as in the scene where his body double has been shot. He stands watching the aftermath on television while his Presidential aides scurry around and the camera cuts away and then back to him several times. Though he barely moves a muscle, even the frenetic activity surrounding him cannot compete with the look on his face -- an empathetic sorrow that combines shocked disbelief with horrified, utter belief. This ability to simply be, in silence, yet to convey so much, makes him fascinating to watch. Kiss of the Spider Woman, before Molina walks into danger for love. The Big Chill, when Chloe takes Nick's hand for the first time. Children of a Lesser God, when he sits alone, missing Sarah.
I have always loved the idiosyncratic rhythms with which he delivers his lines. Pausing between words or phrases where no one else would. Running together words or phrases no one else would think to run together. Letting a sentence trail into an afterthought, where anyone else would emphasize the words he threw away. Subtley inflecting or refusing to inflect a word against the grain of common reading, and through that smallest of choices, imparting a greater meaning. All of these rhythms come naturally to him, and they all, always, work.
Then there's the scene in Body Heat where, through sexual tension hanging in the air thick as key lime pie, he hurls a chair through the window to get to Kathleen Turner. Still not a clear winner over Mohicans, but close enough to tie.
He speaks French. And he was Viggo Mortensen's big broheem in A History of Violence, and in (different) movies with Amy Irving and Holly Hunter. Holly Hunter, by the way, really ought to be in a movie with Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin.
7. John Malkovich: I know a man who calls Malkovich "the thinking woman's crumpet," which is a great description.
Malkovich has one of the most distinctive voices in theatre and film, and his often underplayed delivery uses it to great effect, turning even a mundane activity like the towel-ordering in Being John Malkovich into a delight. He brings layers upon psychological layers to his characters, whether they were originally created by great literary talents or not. I've adored his work since I saw him for the first time in Places in the Heart, in which he inhabited his character's blindness so convincingly. I'm also always impressed when an actor who is no intellectual slouch takes on character with mental limitations and renders him with the respect, humanity, and emotional complexity owed him, as Malkovich did with Lennie Small in Of Mice and Men.
It's really hard to say what he does best. He does so much so well. His roguishly manipulative characters, like those in Dangerous Liaisons and The Portrait of a Lady, are masterful, but I also enjoyed seeing him tote guns with a cadre of other bad guys in the action flick Con Air. I had the honor of seeing him on stage in Burn This years ago. I sat third row center, and I must say he is most definitely a crumpet in the flesh. His crumpetness is evident throughout The Sheltering Sky, another of my all time favorite films. And he speaks French.
In his long, stellar career, he has been in movies with any number of amazing actors, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Viggo Mortensen and Liev Schreiber. And though he hasn't been in a movie with Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin at the same time, he's been in one with Debra Winger which is awesome in its own right.
8. Viggo Mortensen: He almost lost out to Gary Oldman (who is so phenomenal that he manages not only to look differently but to act so completely differently in each role as to be barely recognizeable as himself) and then had to put up his dukes against Jeremy Irons. But I had to give it to Mortensen because he was Aragorn, for God's sake -- arguably the hottest male character in all of fantasy literature, and well before Sirius Black was a twinkle in Jo Rowling's eye. Besides, he writes poetry. He paints. He writes music. He speaks French and several other languages. If you have a thing for renaissance men as I do, he's your guy.
Before he was Aragorn, he was Walker Jerome, "The Blouse Man," in A Walk on the Moon with Liev Schreiber. In addition to the seductive shmatte salesman, he played the sexily sweaty weapons guy in Crimson Tide who faced a dilemma on which the fate of the world turned, and the head of the Navy SEAL training program in GI Jane, a character with much more depth than initially meets the eye. Afterwards, he played a small town hero who was good at killing people for a reason in A History of Violence with William Hurt. He performed admirably in all of these and others, including a movie with John Malkovich.
But by far his meatiest role, over the expanse of three movies each in itself an epic, was that of Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings. When I first heard Mortensen had the part, I thought it was miscast. "No," I thought. "You meant Daniel Day-Lewis." We'd already seen him as a ranger-type in Mohicans, amazingly light-footed in his runs through the forest; the Strider of the trilogy is weathered and craggy, rather like Day-Lewis' John Proctor in The Crucible; and he wears long hair so well. It is a tribute to Mortensen's abilities that the mere word Aragorn now automatically and indelibly conjures his image in the minds of hundreds of thousands of LOTR fans. I don't think the same can be said for some of the others in the cast.
9. Alan Rickman: Thinking woman's crumpet, part deux. Could there possibly be a better Severus Snape? He steals every scene he's in. Drawled vowels, staccato consonants, perfect comic timing. He has a great occlumens' face; never cracks more than a smirk (and then only at Harry's expense), but when he wants to communicate, expresses more with the arch of an eyebrow than could be said in a five minute monologue. Which probably also explains, in part, his casting in Galaxy Quest. The last Harry Potter episodes are where Snape's story steps into the spotlight and so too should Rickman. Early in the story, Snape is intimidating and nasty, but we don't really know why. As the story progresses, he develops into a tragic, romantic hero. Or perhaps more accurately, anti-hero. Like Heathcliff, his cruelty, while it cannot be excused, can perhaps be explained through his hellish childhood and the soul-warping power of an obsessive love denied its object. In the hands of a lesser actor, I might have some concerns about how Snape will continue to develop; I have no doubt that in Rickman's, he'll be nothing less than spectacular when all his layers are finally laid bare.
I also enjoyed the evil Hans of the original Die Hard, the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (the long-haired, bearded look was quite fetching), and the tempted married man in Love, Actually. One of my favorite of his performances was as the pioneering white heart surgeon working in partnership with a black technician in the segregated South in the HBO movie Something the Lord Made. This film was fascinating for many reasons, including its look into the world of medical research in the first half of the last century, where talented persons without medical degrees or even college degrees in some instances worked in an apprentice-like system where opportunities arose out of professional associations and relationships rather than degrees and resumes. He was great as the arrogant, driven medical academic, oblivious to anything outside his own ivory tower (including the very real discrimination, financial hardship and exclusion from recognition his apprentice experienced). Rickman conveyed as well that the obliviousness was in part because his characters saw no barriers between himself and his apprentice, color or otherwise -- he saw only the astonishing work they were able to do together.
And he was in movies with Ralph Fiennes and Johnny Depp. And Kate Winslet, and several with Emma Thompson.
10. Liev Schreiber. My boyfriend looks a bit like him, so I'm biased.
That said, Schreiber is one of those presences that's so commanding he's hard not to notice. As much as I like Viggo Mortensen and as much as he was a great goyische adonis, I found Schreiber's character in A Walk on the Moon so sympathetic, well-meaning and charming that I wanted to slap Diane Lane a la Cher in Moonstruck and tell her to snap out of it. He made a character that easily could have been typed a soulless nebbish into just a good guy trying to do his best; his tragic flaw was spending too much time as a responsible breadwinner and not enough being an exciting and romantic lover. He can also play the opposite; as in the slick, married playboy of The Painted Veil.
As Orson Welles, he had a difficult task. It's one thing to play someone larger than life who is fictional and entirely another if that person was real. And yet, he not only pulled it off, he did so in spades. I also appreciated his peformances in The Manchurian Candidate and The Sum of All Fears. I'd love to see him on stage.
Alas, there can be only ten. If I didn't stop here, I'd be having my chocolate lava cake and eating it, too.
**Morgana**
All of these men are not only brilliant artists and versatile craftsmen, they're picky about their roles. And they seem like interesting people. They're the top ten stranded-on-a-desert-island-with, but also the top ten have-dinner-with.
For years I've had eight or so favorites, and in the interest of the list decided to expand to an even 10. This turned out to be a challenge because once I'd pushed the envelope I ended up with more like 20 and had to axe about half. Without futher ado, here are those that made the cut in alphabetical order (because I just couldn't choose who would go first otherwise), and why:
1. Daniel Day-Lewis: He was in a movie with Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin at the same time -- one of my alltime favorites, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, in which he played a devilish, womanizing, yet politically principled Czech doctor who loses his practice rather than recant a negative opinion he expressed about the Soviets after the 1968 invasion of Prague. One of the few times when a movie was actually better than a book, and I love Milan Kundera.
Who could forget Day-Lewis' Oscar-winning performance in My Left Foot? Or what I would be willing to bet would win the most female votes for sexiest scene ever filmed, in The Last of the Mohicans, where he reclines on the forest floor and does essentially nothing but look at Madeleine Stowe -- yet the heat and tension in that look are not only palpable, they're practically overwhelming. And I haven't even seen There Will be Blood yet.
2. Benicio del Toro: He almost lost out to Clive Owen, but in the end I had to go with del Toro on the strength of his bedroom eyes. Those delicious, pronounced lower lids. He was stunning in Traffic and 21 Grams. I'll be interested to see how he does with Che Guevara in Guerrilla.
And he was in a movie with Johnny Depp, and one with Amy Irving.
3. Johnny Depp: Aside from his physical beauty, how many young American actors can step into a period piece, or a character piece, as easily? How many are the reason a Disneyland icon gets reworked? How many would be willing to take on Gene Wilder as the just as iconic Willy Wonka? How many can hold their own amid the likes of Marlon Brando and Faye Dunaway?
The French connection is a plus, as is the humor in a quote attributed to him, which whether he really said it or not, is spot on: "When kids hit one year old, it's like hanging out with a miniature drunk. You have to hold onto them. They bump into things. They laugh and cry. They urinate. They vomit."
And he was in movie (Chocolat) with Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin at the same time.
"Anysing furzer, Mr. Corso?"
4. Leonardo DiCaprio: Did someone say bedroom eyes? His have that wonderful lower-lidded roundness, too. Those eyes were the first things I noticed about him, back in the Marvin's Room era, followed quickly by the shocked realization that I was looking upon the most perfect example of male beauty I had ever seen. Later, I saw Total Eclipse and What's Eating Gilbert Grape? (with Johnny Depp) both on cable, and then Romeo and Juliet -- all interesting and challenging choices for someone who easily could have allowed himself to be typecast into nothing but modern romantic leads. In this he is similar to Johnny Depp, and that's one reason I like both of them.
I also like getting little emails under his name about environmental topics. I have no idea how I got on this mailing list, but it's so momentarily charming to see that email in my inbox and pretend it's him just checking in to say hi.
For personal reasons having to do with who accompanied me to see the film in the theatre, I have difficulty watching Titanic again when it comes around on one of the movie channels. Other than that, I never pass up a chance to see a DiCaprio film.
And he was in a movie with John Malkovich.
5. Ralph Fiennes: He was in another of my favorite movies of all time, Schindler's List, albeit as a murdering Nazi. Indeed, he has had an incredible run in the villain department, including without limitation the ultimate bad guys of the Book of Exodus (the voice of Ramses in Prince of Egypt) and of Harry Potter's wizarding world, Lord Voldemort. I didn't know before I saw him in The Goblet of Fire that he had been cast as Voldemort. It took a few minutes of hearing his voice to recognize it, followed almost immediately by the realization of whose face was under the snaky, masky make-up, and then, a millisecond later, a feeling of almost providential inevitability. Of course. Who else? By that time, the precision and authority of the Fiennesian heightened-to-stage-proportions physical movement left no room for doubt.
The energy, intensity and passion that makes him an excellent villain also makes him a wonderful Heathcliff, to my mind every bit equal to, though different from, Olivier's definitive interpretation. I would have loved to have seen him as Hamlet on stage. He can play sweet, vunerable, hapless characters (Oscar and Lucinda, The Constant Gardner) equally well. The bath scene in The English Patient could force a run off vote in the sexiest scene on film category, though Mohicans still wins.
And he was in no fewer than two movies with Juliette Binoche, though unfortunately, not with Lena Olin. Thanks to Harry Potter, he will likely have been in a whole slew of them with Alan Rickman by the time the series is over.
6. William Hurt: I'm only partly joking when I say he was the reason I moved to New York. I never ran into him the entire ten years or so I lived on the Upper West Side where he was also living at the time. During the same period, without even trying, I ran into Gene Shalit several times near Rockefeller Center and once in Columbus Circle. So it goes. I did have the privilege of seeing Hurt perform live in the Circle Rep production of Beside Herself -- worth the price of admission for that privilege alone.
I saw Vantage Point the other night and was reminded of all the reasons I love his work. He does things I don't think anyone does better, as in the scene where his body double has been shot. He stands watching the aftermath on television while his Presidential aides scurry around and the camera cuts away and then back to him several times. Though he barely moves a muscle, even the frenetic activity surrounding him cannot compete with the look on his face -- an empathetic sorrow that combines shocked disbelief with horrified, utter belief. This ability to simply be, in silence, yet to convey so much, makes him fascinating to watch. Kiss of the Spider Woman, before Molina walks into danger for love. The Big Chill, when Chloe takes Nick's hand for the first time. Children of a Lesser God, when he sits alone, missing Sarah.
I have always loved the idiosyncratic rhythms with which he delivers his lines. Pausing between words or phrases where no one else would. Running together words or phrases no one else would think to run together. Letting a sentence trail into an afterthought, where anyone else would emphasize the words he threw away. Subtley inflecting or refusing to inflect a word against the grain of common reading, and through that smallest of choices, imparting a greater meaning. All of these rhythms come naturally to him, and they all, always, work.
Then there's the scene in Body Heat where, through sexual tension hanging in the air thick as key lime pie, he hurls a chair through the window to get to Kathleen Turner. Still not a clear winner over Mohicans, but close enough to tie.
He speaks French. And he was Viggo Mortensen's big broheem in A History of Violence, and in (different) movies with Amy Irving and Holly Hunter. Holly Hunter, by the way, really ought to be in a movie with Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin.
7. John Malkovich: I know a man who calls Malkovich "the thinking woman's crumpet," which is a great description.
Malkovich has one of the most distinctive voices in theatre and film, and his often underplayed delivery uses it to great effect, turning even a mundane activity like the towel-ordering in Being John Malkovich into a delight. He brings layers upon psychological layers to his characters, whether they were originally created by great literary talents or not. I've adored his work since I saw him for the first time in Places in the Heart, in which he inhabited his character's blindness so convincingly. I'm also always impressed when an actor who is no intellectual slouch takes on character with mental limitations and renders him with the respect, humanity, and emotional complexity owed him, as Malkovich did with Lennie Small in Of Mice and Men.
It's really hard to say what he does best. He does so much so well. His roguishly manipulative characters, like those in Dangerous Liaisons and The Portrait of a Lady, are masterful, but I also enjoyed seeing him tote guns with a cadre of other bad guys in the action flick Con Air. I had the honor of seeing him on stage in Burn This years ago. I sat third row center, and I must say he is most definitely a crumpet in the flesh. His crumpetness is evident throughout The Sheltering Sky, another of my all time favorite films. And he speaks French.
In his long, stellar career, he has been in movies with any number of amazing actors, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Viggo Mortensen and Liev Schreiber. And though he hasn't been in a movie with Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin at the same time, he's been in one with Debra Winger which is awesome in its own right.
8. Viggo Mortensen: He almost lost out to Gary Oldman (who is so phenomenal that he manages not only to look differently but to act so completely differently in each role as to be barely recognizeable as himself) and then had to put up his dukes against Jeremy Irons. But I had to give it to Mortensen because he was Aragorn, for God's sake -- arguably the hottest male character in all of fantasy literature, and well before Sirius Black was a twinkle in Jo Rowling's eye. Besides, he writes poetry. He paints. He writes music. He speaks French and several other languages. If you have a thing for renaissance men as I do, he's your guy.
Before he was Aragorn, he was Walker Jerome, "The Blouse Man," in A Walk on the Moon with Liev Schreiber. In addition to the seductive shmatte salesman, he played the sexily sweaty weapons guy in Crimson Tide who faced a dilemma on which the fate of the world turned, and the head of the Navy SEAL training program in GI Jane, a character with much more depth than initially meets the eye. Afterwards, he played a small town hero who was good at killing people for a reason in A History of Violence with William Hurt. He performed admirably in all of these and others, including a movie with John Malkovich.
But by far his meatiest role, over the expanse of three movies each in itself an epic, was that of Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings. When I first heard Mortensen had the part, I thought it was miscast. "No," I thought. "You meant Daniel Day-Lewis." We'd already seen him as a ranger-type in Mohicans, amazingly light-footed in his runs through the forest; the Strider of the trilogy is weathered and craggy, rather like Day-Lewis' John Proctor in The Crucible; and he wears long hair so well. It is a tribute to Mortensen's abilities that the mere word Aragorn now automatically and indelibly conjures his image in the minds of hundreds of thousands of LOTR fans. I don't think the same can be said for some of the others in the cast.
9. Alan Rickman: Thinking woman's crumpet, part deux. Could there possibly be a better Severus Snape? He steals every scene he's in. Drawled vowels, staccato consonants, perfect comic timing. He has a great occlumens' face; never cracks more than a smirk (and then only at Harry's expense), but when he wants to communicate, expresses more with the arch of an eyebrow than could be said in a five minute monologue. Which probably also explains, in part, his casting in Galaxy Quest. The last Harry Potter episodes are where Snape's story steps into the spotlight and so too should Rickman. Early in the story, Snape is intimidating and nasty, but we don't really know why. As the story progresses, he develops into a tragic, romantic hero. Or perhaps more accurately, anti-hero. Like Heathcliff, his cruelty, while it cannot be excused, can perhaps be explained through his hellish childhood and the soul-warping power of an obsessive love denied its object. In the hands of a lesser actor, I might have some concerns about how Snape will continue to develop; I have no doubt that in Rickman's, he'll be nothing less than spectacular when all his layers are finally laid bare.
I also enjoyed the evil Hans of the original Die Hard, the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (the long-haired, bearded look was quite fetching), and the tempted married man in Love, Actually. One of my favorite of his performances was as the pioneering white heart surgeon working in partnership with a black technician in the segregated South in the HBO movie Something the Lord Made. This film was fascinating for many reasons, including its look into the world of medical research in the first half of the last century, where talented persons without medical degrees or even college degrees in some instances worked in an apprentice-like system where opportunities arose out of professional associations and relationships rather than degrees and resumes. He was great as the arrogant, driven medical academic, oblivious to anything outside his own ivory tower (including the very real discrimination, financial hardship and exclusion from recognition his apprentice experienced). Rickman conveyed as well that the obliviousness was in part because his characters saw no barriers between himself and his apprentice, color or otherwise -- he saw only the astonishing work they were able to do together.
And he was in movies with Ralph Fiennes and Johnny Depp. And Kate Winslet, and several with Emma Thompson.
10. Liev Schreiber. My boyfriend looks a bit like him, so I'm biased.
That said, Schreiber is one of those presences that's so commanding he's hard not to notice. As much as I like Viggo Mortensen and as much as he was a great goyische adonis, I found Schreiber's character in A Walk on the Moon so sympathetic, well-meaning and charming that I wanted to slap Diane Lane a la Cher in Moonstruck and tell her to snap out of it. He made a character that easily could have been typed a soulless nebbish into just a good guy trying to do his best; his tragic flaw was spending too much time as a responsible breadwinner and not enough being an exciting and romantic lover. He can also play the opposite; as in the slick, married playboy of The Painted Veil.
As Orson Welles, he had a difficult task. It's one thing to play someone larger than life who is fictional and entirely another if that person was real. And yet, he not only pulled it off, he did so in spades. I also appreciated his peformances in The Manchurian Candidate and The Sum of All Fears. I'd love to see him on stage.
Alas, there can be only ten. If I didn't stop here, I'd be having my chocolate lava cake and eating it, too.
**Morgana**
Friday, August 1, 2008
What Puts the Space in Cyberspace?
Before CompuServe Information Service became a web-based shadow of its former self following the AOL takeover (which the New York Times described in 1998 as "traumatic" for the "computer intellegentsia" who made up the core of loyal CIS subscribers, and among whom -- despite my inability to cure the home networking problem described in my debut post -- I then counted myself), it was a truly remarkable place for many, many reasons. I was thinking today about one of those reasons.
For those who spent a lot of time there, CIS felt as though it had a physical geography. I had a conversation about this once with Nightshift, chief sysop of a number of gaming forums her company, The Electronic Gamer, had contracted to provide on CompuServe. For a number of years, I was an associate sysop in Gamers' and later, Action Games, two of the TEG forums. In any case, I still remember talking with her about how we and many users referred to the forums as though they were in physical space: "I just saw so and so over in GAMBPUB" or "I'll be up in FSFORUM" or "I'm popping out to ACTION." This was quite something, particularly when you consider what most of CIS (apart from its online games and perhaps WorldsAway) was not.
When you're in a graphical multiplayer game universe like WoW, it doesn't take much imagination to feel as though you're in a physical environment. Towns are located at certain points on a map, terrain and weather patterns change with geography, ships and zeppelins have regular embarkation/debarkation points and routes. Even outside of such obvious examples, mere interface features can suggest a feeling of movement through space. Using a web browser that moves you one page to the "east" each time you follow a link can make you feel as though you are literally moving "west" when you page back.
When I logged on to CIS for the first time in 1992, I used what would now be viewed as a very primitive-looking graphical interface called Compuserve Information Manager, or CIM. CIM was relatively new then; previously, CIS was accessed through the even more primitive command line interface in terminal emulation. Using either CIM or terminal emulation, the primary means of transport from place to place were "go" words. "GO GAMERS," for example, took you to the Gamers' Forum. This wasn't exactly suggestive of compass directions, and yet, many of us came to view our experience that way.
To be more precise, in my case, I perceived the architecture of my experience from a hub and spokes perspective. I almost always logged on to Gamers first, and from there would "move" to other forums. Gamers was the hub, the other forums I frequented were the spokes. Although I felt I was moving almost from room to room in space, I did not perceive multiple storeys in my hub and spokes building (except that my email box was in the basement). Role Playing Games was to my left, the Game Publishers forums were in a line to my right, starting with GameAPub, with Game Developers forum beyond that. Flight Sims was in front of me, in a northwesterly direction. Sports Sims directly in front. Action Games was behind me. I forget the locations of the others. When I went, occasionally, to non-TEG forums or venues on CompuServe it was rather like getting on a plane in my hometown and arriving at a point hundreds of miles away. Why?
For those who spent a lot of time there, CIS felt as though it had a physical geography. I had a conversation about this once with Nightshift, chief sysop of a number of gaming forums her company, The Electronic Gamer, had contracted to provide on CompuServe. For a number of years, I was an associate sysop in Gamers' and later, Action Games, two of the TEG forums. In any case, I still remember talking with her about how we and many users referred to the forums as though they were in physical space: "I just saw so and so over in GAMBPUB" or "I'll be up in FSFORUM" or "I'm popping out to ACTION." This was quite something, particularly when you consider what most of CIS (apart from its online games and perhaps WorldsAway) was not.
When you're in a graphical multiplayer game universe like WoW, it doesn't take much imagination to feel as though you're in a physical environment. Towns are located at certain points on a map, terrain and weather patterns change with geography, ships and zeppelins have regular embarkation/debarkation points and routes. Even outside of such obvious examples, mere interface features can suggest a feeling of movement through space. Using a web browser that moves you one page to the "east" each time you follow a link can make you feel as though you are literally moving "west" when you page back.
When I logged on to CIS for the first time in 1992, I used what would now be viewed as a very primitive-looking graphical interface called Compuserve Information Manager, or CIM. CIM was relatively new then; previously, CIS was accessed through the even more primitive command line interface in terminal emulation. Using either CIM or terminal emulation, the primary means of transport from place to place were "go" words. "GO GAMERS," for example, took you to the Gamers' Forum. This wasn't exactly suggestive of compass directions, and yet, many of us came to view our experience that way.
To be more precise, in my case, I perceived the architecture of my experience from a hub and spokes perspective. I almost always logged on to Gamers first, and from there would "move" to other forums. Gamers was the hub, the other forums I frequented were the spokes. Although I felt I was moving almost from room to room in space, I did not perceive multiple storeys in my hub and spokes building (except that my email box was in the basement). Role Playing Games was to my left, the Game Publishers forums were in a line to my right, starting with GameAPub, with Game Developers forum beyond that. Flight Sims was in front of me, in a northwesterly direction. Sports Sims directly in front. Action Games was behind me. I forget the locations of the others. When I went, occasionally, to non-TEG forums or venues on CompuServe it was rather like getting on a plane in my hometown and arriving at a point hundreds of miles away. Why?
I'm partial to the explanation that people, accustomed to orienting themselves in their surroundings by means of mental maps, also form mental maps of frequently travelled routes in online "spaces." This was my working hypothesis as I went out the front door of Morgana's Spot to see whether others had explored this question. Indeed, some have. The idea appears, for good or ill, in a number of essays I found during a quick stroll through web space, for example: "Lost in Cyberspace," "Passage of the Flaneur,""What Kind of Space is Cyberspace?." And to bring us full circle, the New York Times, the year after the article about the AOL acquisition of CIS, reported on the effort to "map" cyberspace.
I have to say that I have never had that same hearth and home feeling about the greater web. Apart from my home page and webmail page (to immediate right from my home page, or so it feels), every journey is like an exploration into uncharted territory where one can get lost, or even fall into a technological trap and end up with a virus or worse. Of course, I haven't been active in the social networking phenomenon. Perhaps MySpace and similar sites put some of the space back into cyberspace. I guess I'll find out -- if they're still around and popular when my kids are old enough to become addicted to them.
**Morgana**
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