Word: actore
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...those dreary take-over-the-world routines. (Blackwood has "set his sights on America." Don't they all?) Even more surprising is that Robert Downey Jr. doesn't manage to overcome all that. In theory, he seems like such a good casting choice for a new Holmes; no actor of the appropriate age working today seems more quick-witted or verbally agile. Holmes was a late-19th-century bad boy, known for dipping into the cocaine here and there, and Downey Jr., reformed though he may be, is still our favorite bad boy. To imagine him in a different Sherlock...
...professional movie-watcher, I try to concentrate on what an actor does on the screen. Murphy produced a lot of fine work in the 18 years since she successfully petitioned her mother to move with her to Hollywood. She made an appealing early impression in the 1995 Clueless, Amy Heckerling's update of the Jane Austen novel Emma. Murphy played the tough, gauche kid - the title character, so to speak - who is given mentoring and a makeover by Alicia Silverstone. I liked Murphy as Eminem's girlfriend in 8 Mile and in the starring role in Uptown Girls...
Looking back at the awards season of 1998-99, it's hard not to feel some chagrin. That was the year Roberto Benigni did his clown's leap to the stage to pick up his Best Actor Oscar, but in retrospect, the issue isn't that Benigni beat out Nick Nolte, Edward Norton, Ian McKellen and Tom Hanks for the award; it's that Jeff Bridges wasn't even nominated. His deft, hilarious, thrillingly perfect performance as Jeffrey Lebowski, a.k.a. the Dude, in the Coen brothers' genius film The Big Lebowski should have been showered with prizes. Instead, the only...
More modest aspirations attend the indie drama A Single Man, about a teacher grieving for his dead lover. Director Tom Ford and the Weinstein Company would be pleased with respectable grosses and an Oscar for its leading man, Colin Firth, who was named best actor at this year's Venice Film Festival. The $216,000 A Single Man earned at nine venues is a good start toward the first goal; but, at least in the early critics votes, Firth keeps getting edged out for Best Actor by another sensitive hunk: George Clooney...
...past month. The first two, The Men Who Stare at Goats and Fantastic Mr. Fox, are already withering at the wickets. Up in the Air, though, is soaring. The Jason Reitman comedy-drama, with Clooney as a corporate hired gun and frequent flyer, has swept awards - best film, actor and screenplay - from the National Board of Review and the Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association. That plus a fruitful 91% rating from Rotten Tomatoes, top critics. (Read "Clooneypalooza: A Star Is Airborne...