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Post by roverpup on Nov 19, 2017 17:35:49 GMT
IMO the only cases that deserve criticism is when actors need brown or black painting on their faces to do believable their roles. Probably the last case I remember is A Mighty Heart and still Angelina Jolie was very good in it so even in those cases you can criticize the casting but applaud the performance. In classic films, I really enjoyed Charles Heston playing the heroic Mexican cop in Touch of Evil even when he looked ridiculous with his brown face! If the actor look the part then the criticism is silly. They are actors and actors doesn’t necessarily need to play themselves all the time. Diversity in movies is important but that it’s not necessarily the same theme because if it were then the racists that criticized the casting of Sophie Okonedo in The Hollow Crown were right and they weren’t! I’ve never really quite understood how that happens - the part about criticising the casting but applauding the performance. I mean to me, either the casting was wrong because it didn’t work or it was right because it did work and the performance was praiseworthy. But I have never seen it be both wrong casting and yet a great performance. We just watched The Human Stain the other night with Nicole Kidman and Anthony Hopkins and I thought it was a wonderful movie. Really intrigued by the complexity of the theme and thought it was something that presented some interesting arguments about race and the perception of prejudice. Then I read some reviews about it and there were quite a number of them who said that although AH did a fantastic job in his role he was completely miscast as the back man who was so white looking he passed for a “white” Jew his entire adult life (and thus he purposely set out to betray his race to have a different future). So how does that work? To be completely miscast for a particular role and yet execute the role to perfection when it comes to performance? To me if you are miscast then the performance should suffer by the mere definition that you are wrong for that role. Some reviewers also thought NK was also miscast in her role of a working class janitor/postal worker and yet again they thought she also was great in her performance. One review I thought really pegged the movie the way I saw it was one by the later great Roger Ebert - www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-human-stain-2003Roger at least puts the emphasis where it should be IMO - on the performance and thus can focus his ideas on this film on the themes it is presenting. Sophie Okonedo was THE right person for her role in THC! She was perfectly cast as far as I am concerned. Tilda Swinton was THE right person for the role of The Ancient One in Dr. Strange and was also perfectly cast as well. To me choosing the actor who fits the role isn’t about race or orientation or their accent in real life, it is about whether they can do the job and make the performance top-notch! That tweet by MW certainly indicates to me that someone very close to the source is very certain that BC is right for the role of his father, so it doesn’t seem right that some SJW on the internet think this casting should be automatically dismissed because identity politics are the only important factors in this story.
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Post by sgev1977 on Nov 19, 2017 18:56:45 GMT
I think it goes beyond being miscast. It’s about having to wear painting on the face! In the case of African Americans there is a long history about it and obviously it’s a very thorny theme. In the case of other ethnicities is just plain ridiculous!
The example of Anthony Hopkins is complex because the character needed to look white so who would you cast? How many mixed race actors who really look white are out there? I know of a young actress, Rebeca Hall but I can’t think of a big male star from that age who could had played the part instead of Hopkins. And of course, he didn’t put paint on his face to do it!
I’m not sure the mixed reviews were because the controversy, tho. Phillip Roth’s book are so complex that it seems it’s very difficult to adapt them or at least they aren’t very lucky with movie critics!
Jolie actually did blackface a few years later in A Mighty Heart and both her performance and the movie were very well received. Interesting enough the real subject defended her when it predictably caused furor but she is not a native from the USA so of course she wasn’t familiar, at least in a personal level, with the history of blackface. Her mother is an African Cuban and I think she born in France so a very different background. In contrast, Zoe Saldaña was viciously attacked for not being “enough” black and having to wear make up to look like Nina Simone.
Also The Human Stain, the book ( I haven’t seen the movie), kind of predicted the irrational social media left wing activism of today although I read somewhere there were a few similar cases in USA universities at the time.
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Post by sgev1977 on Nov 20, 2017 12:40:03 GMT
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Post by mllemass on Nov 20, 2017 15:03:36 GMT
I don't think I will ever understand why an actor's "poshness" matters so much to people in the UK. Do they know that the rest of the world doesn't care one bit about it?
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Post by onebluestocking on Nov 21, 2017 16:52:52 GMT
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Post by onebluestocking on Nov 21, 2017 16:57:00 GMT
P.S. I spy Marylou from IMDb (CumberBabylove0306) in the comments on his tweet!
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Post by roverpup on Nov 21, 2017 18:17:49 GMT
It’s nice to see all sorts of fans of BC are coming to the defense of him being cast in this role!
Hopefully the reasonable people will out number the nutbar haters, who just want to find something...ANYTHING to take offence at, and this issue will die a natural and timely “death”.
:-))
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Post by ellie on Nov 21, 2017 18:21:10 GMT
People do not seem to get the point of acting. If actors need to be exactly like the people they’re playing then what is the point of actors at all? Why not just get some random member of the public who best matches the person to play the role. Who needs professional actors who have spent years perfecting their skills?
Plus if only posh actors are only allowed to play posh people then “non posh” actors must be forever restricted to working class roles. And do those who demand that gay characters be played by gay actors have any idea of the restrictions that places on the careers of gay actors?. Because the corollary of that rule means straight roles must be played only by straight actors.
Colour is more complex but really only vitally important when the person’s colour is intrinsic to their actions etc. For example it would be weird to have a white person play Neldon Mandela or a black person play Hitler be ause who they were and what they did was inextricably linked to their colour.
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Post by queenzod on Nov 21, 2017 18:37:36 GMT
It’s identity politics and call out culture. Unless you can find something problematic in everything, you ain’t staying woke. 🙄
Never mind logic and reason.
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Post by roverpup on Nov 21, 2017 18:52:34 GMT
QZ, what does “staying woke” mean??
I’m not being a smartie-ass asking this - I really don’t know what that term means. I have seen the word “woke” used before in a way that is not familiar to me, and since you just used it in a vernacular fashion, I thought you could enlighten me.
Thanks in advance.
:-))
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