This week’s Sympatico/MSN movie column is up, pondering the question of why some actors can effortlessly disappear into period roles — think of Daniel Day-Lewis fully occupying the very different worlds of “The Age of Innocence” and “The Last of the Mohicans”, or Kate Winslet in, um, everything — while others stick out like a sore thumb.
Okay, if we’re being honest, it’s less about contemplating how some performers can shed their contemporaneity, and more about making fun of the ones that can’t. It’s just more fun that way.
And yes, I thought about Melanie Griffith in “Shining Through”. But then my nose started bleeding and I had to lie down.
By the way, has anyone else noticed that it’s kind of warm out? Should we be worried?
Five words. Jack Lemmon – Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet. (A very small part, I know, but almost enough to make someone walk out in the first 10 minutes of a three hour movie.)
Branagh’s Hamlet had a lot of weird miscasting. Billy Crystal and Robin Williams were much, much worse in it than Lemmon (especially Williams). Oddly, Charlton Heston was pretty good as the Player King.