June 29, 2005
Ben Kingsley Diagnosed With Acute CWS
I realize I am very late to the game on this- but Ben Kingsley is one hell of an actor! I've kind of gone Kingsley-Krazy the past few months. Double viewings of Sexy Beast, setting up a Ben Kingsley wishlist on my Tivo, talking him up quite a bit... But something's not right about this Oscar winning actor. He was Gandhi. He was Don Logan. He was in Thunderbirds?
Yeah, he's kind of got the Christopher Walken Syndrome (as in he's a great, strange, cool actor who says yes to way too many crappy films). I saw this poster for "Bloodrayne" on the web and I knew he got a bad case of it. He has made some great decisions in his career, and some astoundingly bad ones. His listing on IMDB is long and strange. Among the very very good: Sexy Beast, House of Sand and Fog (he was great, movie was disappointing), Death and the Maiden (must see with Sigourney Weaver!), Schindler's List and of course Gandhi. Then you have the bad: Bloodrayne, Thunderbirds, What Planet Are You From?, Spooky House (in which he is credited as having played "The Great Zamboni"), etc. etc...
As a fan who is thirsty for more Kingsley, I was a little disappointed after getting through those good ones. Quite a mystery. But let me say a bit more about his good...Sexy Beast
He's amazing. One of the very best. So why does he do these terrible movies? Surely he knows that Bloodrayne ain't gonna give him any room to really explore the character. Maybe he just needs to pay the bills. Hard to imagine.
Posted by keegan at 01:40 AM | Comments (3)
May 24, 2005
Phantom Limbs
Well I have been re-watching all of the Star Wars films in the lead-up to Return of the Sith (which I have now seen twice...goes without saying-I totally loved it), and I was struck by the sheer number of limbs that are cut off in the whole saga. Here is a visual audit of the best instances of severed limbs I could find...severed by lightsaber (or other means) in the pre-Sith saga (though I will need to update this after Sith comes out on DVD). Also, I was left with the nagging question: why, out of all the Jedi we see in the early films, are there none with limbs missing? I suppose that they would merely have robotic prostheses, ala Anakin and Luke. Though it would be cool to see some stumps, with all those lightsabers flying around...Seems that lightsabers cauterize the wounds, though I guess that wasn't the case with the Walrus-man's arm...
Posted by keegan at 09:31 AM