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Post by mllemass on May 24, 2018 22:03:31 GMT
Ha - that sounds so familiar! You have no idea how many times I've said the exact same thing in the past five years! Every time I discover something that he's done, I'm just more and more impressed.
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Post by roverpup on May 24, 2018 22:09:41 GMT
Well, William Golding’s most famous book is pretty well known (at least it used to be) - Lord of the Flies. It was standard reading when I went to school and was on the curriculum.
For Lord of the Flies Golding won a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954 (it was his first book). According to Wikipeadia -
“The novel has been generally well received. It was named in the Modern Library 100 Best Novels, reaching number 41 on the editor's list, and 25 on the reader's list. In 2003 it was listed at number 70 on the BBC's The Big Read poll, and in 2005 Time magazine named it as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.”
Not surprisingly for Golding, it has very deep themes about civilization and the way people interact with one another. Again from Wikipedia -
“At an allegorical level, the central theme is the conflicting human impulses toward civilisation and social organisation—living by rules, peacefully and in harmony—and toward the will to power. Themes include the tension between groupthink and individuality, between rational and emotional reactions, and between morality and immorality. How these play out, and how different people feel the influences of these form a major subtext of Lord of the Flies. The name "Lord of the Flies" is a literal translation of Beelzebub, from 2 Kings 1:2–3, 6, 16.”
And back to topic - yes, BC did an outstanding job in portraying the protagonist in this piece. It really was a complicated bit of acting. Especially impressive knowing that during this shoot was when he and some fellow actors were carjacked in an extremely traumatic situation whereby they met with an entirely real threat of being killed. There are some really good interviews where he talks about it and he wrote about it himself for the Prince’s Trust.
:-))
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Post by onebluestocking on May 24, 2018 22:13:44 GMT
Fun (?) fact: Denise Black, who played Mrs. Brocklebank in TTEOTE, and I believe a producer, were also taken hostage by the carjackers.
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Post by tlsafir on May 24, 2018 22:24:04 GMT
Ah, is that when the car jacking happened? i had no idea...I thought that happened in South Africa... but surely they didn't film TTEOTE there?
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Post by mllemass on May 24, 2018 22:33:32 GMT
Ah, is that when the car jacking happened? i had no idea...I thought that happened in South Africa... but surely they didn't film TTEOTE there? Yes, they did film it there!
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Post by queenzod on May 24, 2018 22:35:15 GMT
Yes, they filmed it in S. Africa. I envy you having seen it for the first time! What I wouldn’t give to be able to go back and watch all of Ben’s performances for the first time. Edmund is one of my most fav characters of his. He nailed all of it, the arrogance, the superiority, the heart of gold in there somewhere, bravery, shock, humor. God he was great in that. The music I find really moving as well.
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Post by dreamsincolour on May 25, 2018 2:54:32 GMT
I used to know Denise Black, many moons ago. Her name wasn't Denise Black then, though, it was Denise something else, although what it actually was escapes me for the moment. And I remember seeing her on a morning tv show suddenly lurching into talking about the kidnapping, rather to Philip Schofield's surprise (I think it was him), because she hadn't been supposed to be there for that. But another performance of BC's that I particularly liked was the short play by Michael Dobbs that was televised live for Sky Arts Theatre Live or whatever it was. "The Turning Point". The two handed fictional play of the meeting that did extraordinarily really happen between two men who were both at pivotal points in their lives, who chose to go on in diametrically opposed directions. Churchill, the great hero, during what was known as his Wilderness years when out of favour, and the great traitor Guy Burgess. It was a great little play! Well worth seeing, if anyone hasn't. I just checked and it's still on YouTube. The Turning Point
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Post by mllemass on May 25, 2018 8:25:31 GMT
How about one of my favourites, Inseparable? I originally watched it on YouTube, but I don't think it's there anymore.
I was thinking about it recently, after I watched Martin Freeman's new Netflix movie Cargo. It's a weird zombie movie (he does seem to like doing zombie movies!), and I'm not a zombie fan but it was surprisingly good! I later read that there is an original version that zombie fans love that's only seven minutes long. They decided to make a feature-length film out of it.
So I was rhinking about whether Inseparable would ever be made into a feature-length movie, too. It doesn't need it, of course, because it's just perfect at 15 minutes or so.
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Post by sgev1977 on May 25, 2018 11:43:33 GMT
Fun (?) fact: Denise Black, who played Mrs. Brocklebank in TTEOTE, and I believe a producer, were also taken hostage by the carjackers. This video is very heartbreaking: There was also a radio interview with BC when he talked about it and he was also very affected while telling the story. It should had been an awful experience! He told Jeremy Clarkson once he doesn’t want to talk too much about it because South Africa is much more than that and he doesn’t want to promote a negative image of the country. And a lot of people think he dodged a question about this incident on the Stephen Colbert Show. About TTEE, it’s also one of my favorite early performances. I remember a The Guardian review saying you can’t find an American young actor wanting to portrait a leading character with so many awful faults but BC just embraced them. I think that define a lot of his roles: he doesn’t mind to embrace the worst faults of his characters.
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Post by tlsafir on May 25, 2018 23:33:12 GMT
Thanks for posting, that was very meaningful.
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