NEW: List some movies you've watched recently. Theatre, rental, TV... and give a */10

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mikeymikec

Lifer
May 19, 2011
18,014
10,191
136
That's not for Best Actor. It's for Best Supporting Actor.



Shooting stuff on screen for fun isn't the same as holding a villain in high regard, enough to duplicate his actions/way of thinking in real life situations which is what immature minds would do. "Oh it's cool to be like Deadpool. Imma gonna pull my dick out in public and laugh my ass off at the look on everyone's faces!".

I think you're making an argument along the lines of an actor should be careful about picking their roles in case someone with the mental capacity of a potato mistakes what they're doing for advocating real-life behaviour. In which case, huge swathes of fictional material should be banned for the sake of public health. Needless to say but I'll say it anyway, if a society has this level of problems, then the problem is rooted far deeper than in fictional material.

Still don't understand what I said to deviate the conversation away from the original point. All I said was, villains are unlikable in general despite their performances. Weird if they win the Best Actor award (meaning none of the protagonists in the other nominated movies were up to snuff so there was nothing to do but choose the perfectly portrayed villain).
Your use of the word "perfect" seemed like you were moving goalposts, but as I said before but I'll say it more explicitly this time: in hindsight I inferred something that apparently wasn't there. Moving on.

Do you think anyone plays these roles because they really want to?

Oh god yes, absolutely. Heath Ledger for example was thoroughly bored with playing the boyish heart-throb. Gene Hackman has a general rule of not wanting to play roles that he considers were written with him in mind, partly because good actors want to expand their repertoire.

Given the choice between protagonist and antagonist, a normal person would obviously want to be remembered as the hero.

A seriously sweeping statement that may be true (at least insofar as what a given person might consider to be heroic, which might horrify another person), but actors are not "normal people". An good actor goes on stage/set to deliberately portray something that they are not, the challenge is to deviate further from the actor's self-perception. A good actor needs to understand what makes / would make a realistic character tick, to try and adopt the mannerisms that they think such a character might have, like Heath Ledger's Joker putting emphasis on certain consonants, or Brian Cox's Hannibal Lector lip and tongue mannerisms that are akin to say a serial killer like Fred West (AFAIK). Their craft is to adopt all of these characteristics in a believable manner.

Is therefore an actor playing a protagonist or antagonist more like something they are not?

Also, an actor might want to play a villain like Homelander because the actor has something they want to express about a POS like that character that they feel needs to be expressed. Like the very matter-of-fact way that the rape scene is portrayed in 'Once Upon A Time in America', putting the notion right in peoples' faces how many men believe that when they've wined and dined a woman that they're entitled to sex at the end of the night.

The decision to choose the role of the antagonist may be based on many factors, like amount of work (maybe the villain is paid a lot more for lesser screen time and the job is "easy" compared to all the effort that the protagonist has to go through like training and bulking up for the role etc.), to make their career seem more diverse (actor A has pigeonholed himself for playing the good guy always. actor A is not happy about that. he wants to show his acting has "range") and plain boredom (what? winning and falling in love with the girl again? nah. I wanna rape the girl this time!).

I don't think any of this is factual TBH, except the point about diversity. Your last point about rape is a little odd; the only person (apart from a wannabe rapist) I might suspect of this is Mark Wahlberg, being the guy who said he dreamt many times about what he would have done if he was on one of the planes during 9/11. What goes into a sex scene as far as mainstream actors are concerned is not anything like the effect that is (presumably competently) portrayed on-screen. What you're saying is like an actor supposedly wanting to play Superman because they'll get to fly in the role... no, they'll get to be around green screens while hanging from wires often.
 
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Your last point about rape is a little odd;

What goes into a sex scene as far as mainstream actors are concerned is not anything like the effect that is (presumably competently) portrayed on-screen.
It might actually be fun, with plenty of laughter in between takes (and the actress crying out in jest, "rape me you mofo! rape me hard!" and the entire crew grinning from ear to ear and unable to believe how lucky they are to have a job where they can do something so serious yet have so much fun doing it.

At the same time, if they want to get REALLY serious, I can see that it wouldn't be fun at all if they want to authentically capture the trauma of the act. That would be stressful on everyone. Guess it would depend on everyone involved. I'm kinda remembering the filming of the worst rated movie ever (can't remember the name off the top of my head).
 

Thump553

Lifer
Jun 2, 2000
12,726
2,500
126
Best in Show (Christopher Guest, 2000) 2/10

Thorough going POS. Not funny. Stuck it out because just 90 minutes and it did improve when they finalllllly got to the show itself. Still, not funny and painfully reaching for material. Have to think the winged it mostly. This is not a movie to toss aside lightly, it should be heaved with all your might out the window.
There was a couple of movies like this from that era. My kids (teenagers then) loved them all. Looking back I think it was because Dad would get up and leave the room.
 
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IBMJunkman

Senior member
May 7, 2015
670
215
116
Predestination, 2014. Ethan Hawke and 2 others. 7/10

3 principle actors playing 2 characters. Can you impregnate yourself? Would that be incest? Is the child your sister? So many questions.
 
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mikeymikec

Lifer
May 19, 2011
18,014
10,191
136
Not 100% relevant to this thread, but:

The Lord of the Rings BBC audiobook (1981)

AFAIK / IIRC it's an abbreviated but otherwise verbatim version of the book, 13 CDs. They got some of the cast from the Bakshi 1978 film version of LOTR (though god I wish they had picked up John Hurt for Aragorn again), some other notable cast members such as Ian Holm (Frodo) and Michael Hordern (Gandalf) but also William Nighy as Sam... William Nighy, more commonly known as Bill Nighy but sounding nothing like how Bill Nighy typically does. I assumed it had to be a coincidence but I've double-checked that it was actually him

I find it interesting that in all three versions of LOTR I'm aware of, Sam sounds exactly the same I wonder if each was asked to channel the former performance.

This audiobook is pretty good. ROTK gets a bit too sing'y (think medieval minstrel music, not really my thing at all and therefore I have a low threshold for it). The only other niggle I have about it if that it would happily go from eloquent discourse between say Denethor and Gandalf and with a small pause to denote a change of scene you've suddenly got Gollum screaming in your ear.
 
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Really? I thought it was complete utter garbage.
Maybe because it was slow. Like it is badly in need of good editing (talking about First Omen in case anyone is wondering). Runtime just drags on. The last 30-40 minutes are enough if you don't want to waste time. The actress is great but the director just drags every scene too long (for the dread effect?). The sequel, if there is one, would be more promising because of the ending.

Also, that weird guy with the deep voice. I found him very, very unsettling. He didn't seem like a real human, from the way he moved his mouth and how the voice came from the back of his throat. I think most people would give it a score of 5.5, unless they like watching paint get dry.
 

MrSquished

Lifer
Jan 14, 2013
21,816
20,166
136
Apparently there's going to be a series on penguin, from Batman, on HBO Max, And Colin Farrell is going to play the title character.
 

DigDog

Lifer
Jun 3, 2011
13,615
2,187
126
shit, looks like i missed some good banter going on here.

1. @igor_kavinski you totally should watch Platoon. Better yet, you should time-travel back to 1986 and watch it as a kid.
2. @zinfamous don't agree on the BB / WW being a villain.
First, a villain is only a villain in a story where they oppose the protagonist. Every villain is the hero of his own story, duh. Walter White would be best described as an Tragic Hero or at most Anti-Hero.
Tony Soprano is the anti-hero of The Sopranos. Michael Corleone is the anti-hero of The Godfather II. They are certainly villains in someone else's story, but not in these.
Homelander *is* a villain because he is the antagonist to the hero, which uh .. i think is Billy Butcher. Idk i have only watched 2-3 episodes.
If by villain you mean he's a bad guy, then yeah, but that's not what it means in film tropes.
3. @mikeymikec once again surprises me with making some really smart points.
Films like The Usual Suspects, Verbal Kint is not the villain - Kaiser Soze is. And Verbal is not that character until he transforms. The "hero" of that film is Dean Keaton. Roy Batty is the villain, despite the fact that he's a good guy .. kinda. Let's say, good guy with murder.

It's not whether they are good or bad, but what role they take in the narrative. Walter sees himself as still the struggling highschool teacher, and that's still his story, despite the fact that he gets corrupted by power. The same for Dean Corso in The Ninth Gate, he is still the hero and Boris is still the super-obvious-from-page-1 villain, regardless of the fact that in the very last scene Corso gets corrupted by the devil.
 
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mikeymikec

Lifer
May 19, 2011
18,014
10,191
136
I googled anti-hero definitions to solidify my understanding and the general gist I get is that an anti-hero is a somewhat flawed person / has made serious "moral lapses" to not qualify as a conventional hero but with the added attributes of doing what they think needs to be done (ie. hang their morals up by the door if need be) to achieve a "morally righteous outcome". For example, a serial rapist/murderer is on the loose, and while a conventional hero would be interested in following the law and bring them to justice officially/properly and also saving the innocent parties in danger, an anti-hero would have no problem with torturing the villain for information on find where the innocent are being held captive and then killing the villain. Therefore I don't think Walter White, Michael Corleone or Tony Soprano qualify because they are just in it for themselves first and foremost, and the closest thing they would ever do to "save the innocent" would be to eliminate someone who threatened their family, but their motivation would be that their family being threatened hurts their feelings rather than primarily out of some feeling of righteous indignation, they wouldn't do it for some random person unless there was something in it for them. TBH I haven't watched the whole of Breaking Bad or The Sopranos, but I think I've watched enough to be correct.

Riddick is an anti-hero (some of the time): He's a convicted killer, he's grown up with an experience that if you don't aggressively defend you and yours then it will be taken from you, however in 'Pitch Black' he serves the greater good by intentionally defending the innocent for selfless reasons. Only at the start of CoD when he defends the innocent does he qualify as an anti-hero, for the rest of the plot he's doing what he wants to do. In the third movie he's just doing what he wants to do.

Rorschach from the 'Watchmen' movie is probably a better example of an anti-hero because he doesn't deviate from doing what he thinks is the morally correct thing to do.

I disagree with @DigDog about 'The Usual Suspects' because even though the viewer is unaware, the character knows what he is and what he's done throughout the story. Otherwise it's a bit like saying that the killer at the end of every murder mystery is only the villain once they've been revealed as the villain.

'Blade Runner' is a great example that makes a mockery of pigeon-hole labels like 'hero' and villain': I'd say the overall villain of BR is the system that perpetuates slavery. Deckard is a semi-unwilling lackey of that system who kills runaway slaves, then gets sweet on a slave and wants to save her. Roy is a victim of the system and on the run for his life, IMO the only morally dubious thing he did was to kill JF Sebastian. Otherwise the only murder he commits is Tyrell who both profits from and generates the slave system, so obviously he deserves it (IMO). I suspect that he or his accomplice killed the eye maker though.
 
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Jul 27, 2020
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I googled anti-hero definitions to solidify my understanding and the general gist I get is that an anti-hero is a somewhat flawed person / has made serious "moral lapses" to not qualify as a conventional hero but with the added attributes of doing what they think needs to be done (ie. hang their morals up by the door if need be) to achieve a "morally righteous outcome".
Did you annoy your teachers/professors with your questions?

Judging by your examples, we may need to create a lot more labels!

I suggest writing a paper on it to generate a worldwide debate
 

MrSquished

Lifer
Jan 14, 2013
21,816
20,166
136
Started watching The Fall on Netflix. It's a British serial killer procedural crime thriller, with Gillian Anderson in the detective role.

Only one episode in but it's pretty good, and she is definitely one of the most beautiful women in the world.
 
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MrSquished

Lifer
Jan 14, 2013
21,816
20,166
136
What about https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3358233/mediaviewer/rm2659455488/?ref_=nm_md_2 ?

And it's hard to believe who she is married to.

IN all seriousness, this is all so subjective so there will always be disagreements.

She is beautiful too but to me in that kind of blond American cheerleader type look, whether she is American or not. Which I'm not going to say no to, duh, but I tend to find that beauty style to not be to that stunning level of beauty.
 

Charmonium

Diamond Member
May 15, 2015
9,526
2,907
136
Pennyworth S01 (Epix) - 9/10

That would be "Pennyworth" as in Alfred Pennyworth - Batman's man servant.

It falls broadly in the category of alternate reality, much like Batman itself, but you feel it much more with this series especially from a North American POV. Not sure how it would be perceived in the UK.

The plot does have holes but I suspect that even if you notice them, you won't be concerned.

The background is essentially the alt reality's version of the early 60's, so you get some cool background music if nothing else.
Finally finished S02. Still 9/10
 

DigDog

Lifer
Jun 3, 2011
13,615
2,187
126
you guys probably gonna hate me but i liked Furiosa - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12037194/reference/

not as a whole. it's badly laid out, too long, there's some sections that are quite mediocre, but, the middle bit - where furiosa is grown up and she rides on the rig - those are worth the watch. I really liked Tom Burke as Praetorian Jack, Chris Hemsworth was decent as Dementus, who also was a decent character, if not terribly inventive.
I liked how the story actually fit in properly with Fury Road, and Ana Taylor Joy is pretty damn great.

Fury Road: 8/10
Furiosa: 7/10
 
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Charmonium

Diamond Member
May 15, 2015
9,526
2,907
136
Secrets and Spies - CNN - 7/10

It chronicles the rapid sequence of Soviet leaders in the 80's and shows just how we came to nuclear annihilation.
 
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