“I loved to make people laugh in high school, and then I found I loved being on stage in front of people. I’m sure that’s some kind of ego trip or a way to overcome shyness. I was very kind of shy and reserved, so there’s a way to be on stage and be performing and balance your life out.”
Happy birthday to the great Steve Martin!
“One of the reasons I got into acting is that I was trying to figure out how life worked. It was interesting to me to try and follow how other people, real or imaginary, would deal with problems, because I was trying to deal with my own.”
Happy birthday to Michael Shannon, a world-class thespian!
“Viola Davis is a deserted island as the bereaved ringleader at the center of Steve McQueen’s Widows. In certain scenes, when the character’s sorrow can no longer be contained, it spills out overpowering fits, only to be shored back up, tears wiped away and appearances kept. There is a split-second shot that occurs midway through the movie and its sheer devastation is impossible to shake: Davis’ Veronica, her eyes frozen with dread and her face inanimate, opens to door to the bedroom in which the boy she brought into the world once rested and dreamed. To linger on this expression would probably be too much to bear. In this single moment, Davis says more about the inescapability of a mother’s grief than Martin McDonough managed to do throughout the entirety of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. The shot lasts only a second, but Davis, that powerhouse, conveys the full weight of a woman forcing herself to stare into the void: an empty room where her child no longer sleeps but where her heart will always be buried.” — Matthew Eng
30 Memorable Moments from Great Performances of 2018
(Source: TribecaFilm.com)
“Skeptics might grumble that because ex-rodeo star Brady Jandreau has actually endured the physically and psychologically agonizing setbacks chronicled in Chloé Zhao’s The Rider that his star performance in this cinematic narrativization is not really a performance at all. Looking beyond independent cinema’s rich and rewarding history of employing nonprofessional actors, oftentimes in roles not far removed from their own lived realities, the emotional force of Jandreau’s front-and-center participation in this new American masterpiece could have only derived from a performer of obvious smarts and soulfulness. In recreating his own traumatic journey from superstar of the ring to reluctant retiree, Jandreau delineates identifiable moments by which to chart his character’s transformation, bringing his emotions to the fore in certain moments while elegantly letting them subside in others. He makes clear-cut choices about how to react in scene after scene, and by allowing this decision-making to oftentimes play out over the course of a single shot, and thus remain visible to the naked eye, Jandreau, in tandem with Zhao, shows us the inner tumult of a man who must choose between a perilous life of fame and fans or a modest, more responsible but no less important existence. How exactly Jandreau reached these heights may not always be clear, but what matters is that he reached them and, in doing so, supplied Zhao’s unique creation with the unbearably tender and ever-transparent performance it needed. After all, what difference does the divide between truth and fiction make when the tears this atypical actor sheds are as real and affecting as the complex heartbreak they evoke?” — Matthew Eng
The 11 Best Male Film Performances of Early 2018
(Source: TribecaFilm.com)
“I’ve never been particularly aware of my age. It’s like being on a bicycle — I just put my foot down and keep going.”
Happy 93rd birthday to the incredible Angela Lansbury!
“We’ve seen the archetype of the frowzy, tongue-in-cheek, and lovingly conspiratorial dad in so many coming-of-age movies, sometimes played wondrously (i.e. Tracy Letts in Lady Bird, Daniel Stern in Whip It, J.K. Simmons in Juno) but just as often played on autopilot, which is why Vahid Aghapoor’s performance in Sadaf Foroughi’s Ava is such a great reversal of this quasi-cliché. As the nameless father increasingly flummoxed by his uncontrollable daughter’s roughening edges, Aghapoor keeps his character housed in a place of exquisite ambiguity. His character may defend his daughter against school administrators and her highly-critical mother with a rough and fiery intensity, but Aghapoor’s understatement and clammy demeanor around Ava in surrounding scenes avoids turning this man into our young heroine’s biggest champion; for every word of reassurance he doles out to his daughter, there’s another of bruising and impatient disapproval. If you look closely into Aghapoor’s wounded, drooping eyes, whether his character is reprimanding Ava or cruelly extending the unbreachable chasm that has long existed between him and his wife, you can see the agony of a man both pathetic and plaintive, a patriarch stuck in a role he perhaps never aspired to fulfill. Aghapoor plays something far tougher than the doting dad we are accustomed to, and, in doing so, unearths the kinds of deeper, unpleasant truths about familial love and devotion that so many actors — and filmmakers — flinch at.” — Matthew Eng
The 11 Best Male Film Performances of Early 2018
(Source: TribecaFilm.com)
