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Back in those days, we didn't have to run to Britain to find quality actors capable of handling these roles because they were home-grown in drama schools right here in the USA.[/url]
We have quality actors, but we have to contend with the ebb-and-flow fascination-fetish with Britain many people continue to have.
We have quality actors, but we have to contend with the ebb-and-flow fascination-fetish with Britain many people continue to have.
I don't know if there are many Americans under the age of 45 with the requisite talent level. Could you see Michael B. Jordan delivering this kind of performance?
I don't know if there are many Americans under the age of 45 with the requisite talent level. Could you see Michael B. Jordan delivering this kind of performance?
No. He's too pretty. But that calls for an actor above the age of 45.
I give you: Harry Lennix (b. 1964), a native of Chicago.
Lennix made his Broadway debut in August Wilson's Tony nominated play, Radio Golf. He was seen on the big screen in Working Title's "State of Play." In 2006, Lennix starred in the Golden Globe nominated ABC show "Commander in Chief" as Jim Gardner, the Chief of Staff. His other appearances include the Oscar winning film "Ray," "The Matrix: Reloaded," and "The Matrix: Revolutions." Lennix received critical acclaim and a Golden Satellite Award as Aaron in Julie Taymor's "Titus" starring Anthony Hopkins. A host of other film credits include "Across the Universe," "Barbershop 2," and "Love and Basketball." Lennix starred his as the legendary Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. in Showtime's "Keep The Faith Baby," for which he won a Black Reel Award and was nominated for both an NAACP Image Award and a Golden Satellite Award. He continued to make his presence known with recurring roles on "ER" and "Diagnosis Murder" and other guest starring appearances on shows such as "Law & Order: Los Angeles." Lennix has directed and appeared in stage productions across the country, including the Northlight Theater Company's production of Permanent Collection, at the Greenway Arts Alliance in Los Angeles. Under his directing consultation, it was remounted at Los Angeles' Kirk Douglas Theater.
He directed the stage version of Robert Townsend's The Five Heartbeats, which received 3 NAACP Theater Award nominations and The Glass Menagerie for the Steppenwolf Theater Company. As a stage actor, Lennix was the first distinguished recipient of an Ollie Award for his portrayal of Malcolm X at the Goodman Theater in Chicago and two Joseph Jefferson Citations for his roles in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and Caught in the Act. He also starred as King Hedley II, another play by August Wilson, at the Mark Taper Forum. In 2001, he was part of the first American company to be invited to the Royal Shakespeare Company in the production of Cymbeline. Lennix has also been extremely active in his native Chicago community where he was an English and music teacher before becoming an actor.
You know what forgotten '90s flicks hold up remarkably well? The ZORRO movies. Are they timeless classics? No. But they are a lot of fun and are actually way better than most people remember them.
Spielberg apparently made a good point about them:
“Steven Spielberg said to me once when we were shooting, ‘This is probably going to be one of the last Westerns shot in the way the Westerns were shot in the old days, with real scenes with real horses, where everything is real, [real] sword fighting, no CGI’. Everything was [practical].
And he said, ‘But things are going to change. they’re going to change, and they’re gonna change fast. And so you should be proud of this movie.'
I think it's best to judge an era by the the diversity and quality of its best movies than by its worst. Most people will never see even 1% of all films made in a year so it's almost impossible to make any judgments about the quality of the average movie. I would agree that the 90s has more garbage films than the 70s simply because there were more films being made period, including straight to DVDs.
Case in point - below is a playbill for my hometown theater, July 1978. It just had one screen, as it was originally a playhouse built in 1896 for live performances. The screen was enormous and behind/above the stage. It had main floor and balcony seating, with some gorgeous original interior features. Beautiful venue. Sadly, it no longer shows films and instead functions as (an admittedly terrific) event center - weddings, reunions, fundraisers, etc.
Even though we only had one screen, one can see that runs were short. They had to be, as the town only had about 10,000 people in the late 1970s. And as you can also see, the classics of that era were accompanied by a lot of films that are forgotten for a reason.
That said, the cinema of the 1970s had a lot going for it. The stifling censorhip of the Hays Code had been completely swept away in the sixties, along with the domineering social prudery that prevented much of what is remembered of that era's films from being produced in earlier decades. This happened to coincide with significant improvements in filming technology and the deveopment of modern acting sensibilities. All of this meant that there was quite a lot of blank space on the cinematic 'canvas', so to speak, that was suddenly open to being explored. And explored it was.
I worked in movie theaters from '92 to '96 and trust me, there were plenty of stinkers to go with some really great movies. I think the 90's certainly looks great in comparison to what came after because I would argue, to steal a turn of phrase from the auto industry, that the '90's represents the last complete decade in which Hollywood was a full-line creator for the masses. Comedy, romance, drama, action...the 90's had it all and we still consumed it as largely part of a singular mass culture.
Like everything else you used to love, it was killed by the internet. Too much choice, too many niches. Our evolution hasn't caught up with having that much choice. It's certainly shortened our attention spans, and it's not just kids, though they're mainlining snippets of internet content on social media like rats in a lab pushing the feeder bar. I can certainly notice that my attention span is far shorter that it used to be and I'm not on any social media outside of this site. The thought of sitting down to watch a 3-hour movie is an insane luxury.
I've read articles about "creator culture," where everyone with a smart phone is a creator, and that's true to some extent. When you have that many creators, you're going to loose the gems in all the noise. Hollywood did serve a gatekeeping function back in the day which did allow a lot of cream to rise to the top. Not so much anymore.
I'm pretty much done with new movies. Even streaming TV shows are getting tiresome and fewer hold my attention any longer. Maybe I'm just getting old.
My husband loves movies, loves them all. Loves to go and see a movie; well, we did that a lot until the 2010's. Even now, he says the movies are not what they used to be.
You said it well though. I'd go back to the 90's in a heartbeat.
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You said it well
