what criterion do you use to judge an actor's performance

was talking about this with a friend and i realized that i really have no way of differentiating between good and bad acting. and i always hear these causal but certain assessments of actor's performances and wonder what precisely people are basing these opinions on???

like i totally believe that people have a way judging these things that I just don't – it's basically never that i watch a movie or w/e and think "man I just didn't believe that actor" and i watch a lot of shitty movies… but sometimes it comes across as just received wisdom and totally circular. or like someone just hates a certain actor and so everything she does is terrible by default.

tittays

I use mark wahlberg as a calibration point for the performances of both men and women

i dunno man, whether my eyes are glued to them and i want to keep watching them i guess

i used to have this whole idea of 'believability' in this sort of 'oh he/she was believable as XXX' way where really the deal was, "can i tell that this person is an actor" but now i mostly just judge based on charisma, where the deal is, do i like this movie more when this person is on screen

yeah or what slocki said

which is why btw i get really annoyed at "omg denzel plays the same character in every movie" jokes--who gives a shit, most of the time when dw is on screen he is killing it and i want to watch him all the time

i dunno man, whether my eyes are glued to them and i want to keep watching them i guess

― s1ocki, Monday, February 23, 2009 7:08 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

pretty much, hence never trust film critics on 'the dazzling zooey deschanel/rebecca hall/michelle monaghan etc'.

i really hate it when crits do that drooly thing where they're all, "emily mortimer has eyes like a frightened gazelle's; they dart and weave and seem to deserve to be preserved as specimens of a uniquely female attribute—girlus foxius."

There's too much validation for "emotive" and/or technique based acting, and not enough on simply performing or the projection of certain qualities. I'm not sure what Setsuko Hara, Jennifer Connelly, Bowie, and Alain Delon qualifies as acting, but it's damn compelling.

*do qualifes as acting

im pretty sure those dudes are actors

idk, i reckon ~25% of movies for both sexes is about lookin at the pretty people up there.

xposts

other 75 is philip seymour hoffman

ya i got nothing against hotness in the movies but there's a certain way of writing about it that i find kinda lame and gross

movie star vs actors is often different.

Bogart & Spencer Tracy were never pretty.

or Bette Davis, particularly.

ya but the camera loved em

im pretty sure those dudes are actors

Yeah, but I can't imagine anything more ridiculous than casting or wanting to see, say, Jennifer Connelly as Desdemona.

idk, i reckon ~25% of movies for both sexes is about lookin at the pretty people up there.

Exactly, which is why boring pretty actors like Brad Pitt must really hate themselves in the morning.

Bogartseth rogen & Spencer Tracyjonah hill were never pretty.

god i'd hate to be in his shoes xp

brad pitt's haunted eyes convey a painful existence

A pity Brad Pitt didn't OD after Fight Club or he'd have a fucking Oscar for that

Rogen is hot now!

brad pitt can be an okay actor when he's talking and stuff and not posing

when Harrison Ford movies still made movie crits always mentioned "the haunted look" in his anguished eyes.

*still made money

movies making movies

A pity Brad Pitt didn't OD after Fight Club or he'd have a fucking Oscar for that

― Dr Morbius, Monday, February 23, 2009

what the fuck this isn't v ha ha ha, calm down

really, Brad Pitt is AT LEAST as good a film actor as PS Hoffman. he gets shat on cuz he's hot.

^^^ I kind of agree with this

He gets shat on cuz he often sucks!

nahhhh

who the hell is shitting on 2-time oscar nominee brad pitt??

brad pitt is better than hoffman imo

he was awesome in that jesse james movie, funny in that Coen brothers gym flick

i feel like he's got a pretty good rep and only gets "shit on" when he does "shitty" "movies" like the infamous meet joe black.

who the hell is shitting on 2-time oscar nominee brad pitt??

That's why I said "kind of"

who the hell is shitting on 2-time oscar nominee brad pitt??

― the schef (adam schefter ha ha), Monday, February 23, 2009 1:25 PM (24 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ANGELINA JOLIE, am i right, sexually

i think brad pitt is totally a good actor

lol max u r so right

Whether it assists me in achieving a top-notch catharsis. NB: usually requires using a certain amount of tongue.

hes best when hes being funny

better than PSH, probably not. psh's looks are actually an advantage tho, it allows him to disappear into more serious-seeming roles

i bet hes pretty fun to hang out with tho

schef: Alfred is!

omar so challopsy, so Rong

Know your strengths. Matthew McConoughheyneighhey isn't terribly gifted, but at least he gives moderately tolerable Tom Selleck-style performances as manflesh in loads of dinky comedies – after years of doing Serious Drama like Amistad and A Time To Kill.

psh was great in mi3 i thot

better than brad pitt would have been

mcconaughey picks the worst fuckin movies ever

dude if you were in dazed and confused it would all be downhill for you too

are there any actors in d&c for whom that isnt their best movie?

PSH is really good but i dunno, i just prefer brad pitt

better than PSH, probably not. psh's looks are actually an advantage tho, it allows him to disappear into more serious-seeming roles

― s1ocki, Monday, February 23, 2009

i am not sure if i agree with this -- psh is really distinctive in a different "i am a sketchy person and possibly maybe i will molest your children lol" kind of way that i actually find distracting, imo he HAS to play a character like that or i just don't buy it, entirely because of his looks/demeanor. so six of one half dozen of the other in this case.

xpost alfred please you are now repping matt mcconoughey please just stop

psh was great in mi3 i thot

― max, Monday, February 23, 2009 7:28 PM (12 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

sometimes an actor lucks out w. the material imo

i did like PSH in Synecdoche this year, but the Academy preferred his ridiculously miscast role as usual.

lol Alfred, you're really gonna big-up McConoughey

god morbius no one says you HAVE to care about the oscars

Know your strengths. Matthew McConoughheyneighhey isn't terribly gifted, but at least he gives moderately tolerable Tom Selleck-style performances as manflesh in loads of dinky comedies – after years of doing Serious Drama like Amistad and A Time To Kill.

"Tom Selleck" style? You mean the great cinema television actor Tom Selleck?

he means "shirtless"

"manflesh"

Truly mysterious acting like Vanessa Redgrave, Gene Hackman, and Robert Ryan's – in which they don't seem to be doing anything at all except being – is what I admire most.

schef: McConoughey woulda been fine in the Brad Pitt part in Burn After Reading; he wouldn't have even needed crazy hair.

btw this is now incredibly appropriate: http://hollywoodinsider.ew.com/2008/04/matthew-mcconau.html

If at regular points in a film I think, whether consciously or subconsciously, "here is Tom Cruise / Brad Pitt / Philip Seymour Hoffman / Jennifer Connelly" as opposed to just enjoying the images and sounds and story in front of me, then I don't chalk that down as a great performance. If I think someone was bad, but can't put my finger on why, I want to watch again and see if I actually think it's great. If I can't fathom how this character is played by the same guy who was that other character in that other film (A Dark Knight's Brokeback Tale), then I think that's a pretty good sign of an awesome actor.

I could write more but Hollyoaks is on!

mcconaughey isn't hyper enough for that movie, he plays all his roles at half-speed

because he is stoned

lollllllllllll dan's link

mcconoughey would've been ABSOLUTELY ATROCIOUS, like film-ruiningly bad, in burn after reading. are you stoned? seriously?

He's L-I-V-I-N'.

schef, i liked the Oscars a lot more when everyone realized they were trivial, and the general public actually did know this once. Now movie blogs talk about movies solely in terms of awards, all year, and if you bring up ANYTHING that played in less than 500 theaters ppl roll their eyes.

fewer than 500 theaters

btw this is now incredibly appropriate: http://hollywoodinsider.ew.com/2008/04/matthew-mcconau.html

LOL I didn't know.

mcconoughey would've been ABSOLUTELY ATROCIOUS, like film-ruiningly bad, in burn after reading. are you stoned? seriously?

We're not talking about a Preston Sturges film here.

schef, i liked the Oscars a lot more when everyone realized they were trivial, and the general public actually did know this once. Now movie blogs talk about movies solely in terms of awards, all year, and if you bring up ANYTHING that played in less than 500 theaters ppl roll their eyes.

― Dr Morbius, Monday, February 23, 2009 1:34 PM (8 seconds ago)

ok you can keep bringing up this strawman over and over and over again but the "general public" doesn't actually give a crap about "movie blogs" (which is why they're shutting down defamer i guess lol) and ratings will tell you that no one watches or cares about the oscars as anything more than just "oh good for that kate winslet character, she's pretty and charming i suppose!" watercooler fodder. i sometimes just assume you live in a different dimension than me. i mean when was this mythical "once" you are referring to? a much, much higher percentage of americans watched the oscar when you were a kid than they do now and you know it.

you can ruin films that are somehow beneath the level of preston sturges, alfred -- little known fact!

id say stop worrying about movie blogs you dont respect anyway

i work at a pr firm that deals w/ movies and not a single person here has mentioned the oscars yet today, because theyre mostly a hilarious joke and not even publicists give a shit anymore

We're not talking about a Preston Sturges film here.

― The Screaming Lobster of Challops (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, February 23, 2009 7:36 PM (36 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wtf does this even mean? i don't even think that BAR is slower than a p-sturg film. this is typical film-thread fronting.

People don't watch the Oscars because there's more than three channels showing shit on Oscar night.

yeah no one here has said anything about the oscars either, max. i mean it's like lol whatever that happened i guess kind of territory tehse days.

the oscars are trivial and yet they are fun to watch

schef of course i live in a diff dimension, w/ humping & nachos!

Alfred's right -- there was nothing else on 30 years ago.

Brad Pitt was funny for 5 mins in Burn, then he kept doing the same "look at me act the idiot' thing. Malkovich stole that film.

im not hating on the oscars, i enjoyed them a great deal last night and may even write a blog about them, im just saying, it used to be that everyone cared--then only publicists cared--now only the academy cares, which is why theyre just throwing the little statues at any movie that has a holocaust in it

Yeah, I mean, McConoughey would have been all "look at me, I AM an idiot." It's goofier, more honest.

haha arguing that brad pitt is more suitable to that role than matthew mcc is not exactly a shining endorsement of mr. pitt, morbs.

if you bring up ANYTHING that played in less than 500 theaters ppl roll their eyes.

who does this

xp

who the hell is shitting on 2-time oscar nominee brad pitt??

sounds like the tagline for a leaked scat vid

im not hating on the oscars, i enjoyed them a great deal last night and may even write a blog about them, im just saying, it used to be that everyone cared--then only publicists cared--now only the academy cares, which is why theyre just throwing the little statues at any movie that has a holocaust in it

― max, Monday, February 23, 2009 6:41 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

your twitter feed was strangely silent iirc

admittedly i am evaluating this from an unpaid online film critic persp. pay no heed!

i offered no McCon comparison, bcz I don't think I've seen him in anything but magazines since Contact. also I find his abs freakish.

Yeah, I mean, McConoughey would have been all "look at me, I AM an idiot." It's goofier, more honest.

this is exactly what i took from Pitt's performance in Burn After Reading

sorry slocks, you should have called me

Truly mysterious acting like Vanessa Redgrave, Gene Hackman, and Robert Ryan's – in which they don't seem to be doing anything at all except being – is what I admire most.

yeah i agree with this - i saw kristin scott thomas in il y a longtemps que je t'aime recently and it was a revelation, kind of like: oh, THIS is what truly great acting is. there were these astonishing close-ups of her face, and she'd manage to convey these oceans of emotion while barely moving a muscle. and the power came from her, even more so than the script or direction.

that's kind of exceptional though, usually i just judge an actor's performance on believability - am i convinced by them or do they rupture the mood unnecessarily.

i figure, if theyre british, and over 40, theyre probably amazing

that's kind of exceptional though, usually i just judge an actor's performance on believability - am i convinced by them or do they rupture the mood unnecessarily

This is what I do and why I am convinced that had Tom Cruise not tried to go the "I AM SERIOUS ACTOR" route for a while, I wouldn't have started hating him.

Jordan, my editor was on some film site's "roundtable" and when he mentioned The Witnesses (French film set at the dawn of AIDS) as one of the best films he'd seen, these other film bloggies basically said "wow, that's obscure, who would ever see that?" very dismissively. i just found this typical of how where college grad ppl 30-50 years ago sought out international/low-budget films, 98% of them don't anymore, at all, ever. The mass-marketing film culture has become the only film culture, and I'm sad about it.

Yes, but bloggers tend heavily towards self-involved douchebags who should be ignored.

blogging brings out the dbag in the best people

no argument

xp

tho there are outliers

that's surprising since it's easier than ever to see obscure, limited-distribution films

yes, if ppl wanted to see them. they (generally) don't want to.

morbs thats not an argument, thats an anecdote

what evidence do you have that this is the case besides 5 bloggers whose sites you dont even remember?

i want to if they sound good, i think that's the same for most people. i'm sure a lot of people are lazy about tracking down films if they're not easily available, but i don't think i've met anyone who actually has a bias against obscure movies.

the bathos of this year's oscars was unbearable. maybe it's just me but it felt like the gulf between the general perception of the oscars' importance and the academy's perception of their importance reached a new pinnacle. particularly in the acting dept. however they are a guild.

i look at a lotta film sites, God help me.

oh u mean that art films are unpopular? film distributors going out of business.

xxp

there are definitely people who do, at least the bias that "well i should see the big important movies first and maybe eventually i'll get around to these obscure films"

thats as much evidence that theres a big shift occurring in the way we consume movies as it is that no one is watching art films morbs

last year wasnt a good year for big studios either! or for movie theaters for that matter!

b.o. biz is consistently up THIS year...

bcz of Paul Blart Mall Cop, Madea Goes to Jail, etc.

this seems the moment to say that i judge an actor's performance based on how hilarious he/she looks riding a segway

madea is an indie

but whatever. twas ever thus, dude. you're not going to gain anything by bitching about how people like to go to stupid movies.

Like everything else Tyler Perry touches, I am certain it will be amazingly awful

it "made a" fortune this weekend

argh

how frustrating it must be for you that his name can be broken into a pun

technically his name is actually tyler perry, hoos

"ty lerper ry" less funny tho

i dunno dude

i can't say i use any one criteria cos there are a lot of different, and maybe mutually exclusive, ways of being interesting or compelling.

i'm a huge fan of character actors and TV bit players, so i can be really satisfied and impressed with someone really knocking out a great 0:45 as a victim on csi or whatever. there's nothing wrong with figuring out what your schtick is and getting it down to a science. it was like a light going off, in the brief time in college when i thought i wanted to be an actor, watching the wizard of oz for the first time in forever and realizing that all of dorothy's companions were amazing performers, totally specific and fearless and seamless, total pros.

one thing i do really love tho is actor's who have the stagey discipline to really work on language, so I'll always probably over-rate actors who do well with material where the language is very uniquely constructed and moves at its own rhythm -- if u can thrive in mamet or the coens or on deadwood, i'll think you're a good actor.

eh stray apostrophe there

"Madea" is already a variation of "mother dear"

(according to the wikipedia page I was just reading a second ago)

which page makes no mention, in its name etymology, of any other famous theatrical woman whose name sounds a bit like that

fucking appalling

I don't mind Tyler Perry stuff -- sometimes it's entertainingly quaint. But a lot of it is really hard to swallow straight up, as opposed to sitting around thinking about how incredibly archetypal all the characters are and thinking about what those archetypes mean. At point they're practically pantomimes.

Also I don't know much about the guy, but I respect his whole deal here -- building something up from regional theater, being really in touch with his audience but in a way that's accessible to lots of people, being really prolific (it's easier to be prolific when you deal in archetypes, but still, I admire the ability to just churn out working narratives), keeping business control of all his stuff -- ... I mean, it's all stuff that seems commendable, and it's hard to begrudge the guy success he'd appear to have worked up pretty much on his own steam

I don't begrudge the process or his success at all! I begrudge the fact that I really, really, really hate what he does.

I am interested in serious answers to this thread because it's something thats always troubled me, how to judge a good vs bad performance, perhaps because it seems like something even more resistant to a consumer satisfaction response than other elements of a movie. Or not. Maybe I've just become sort of frustrated that the first thing people turn and say to me after a movie ends is " did you like that?" as if it's the most interesting thing to discuss.

er ryan there have been a whole bunch of serious answers on this thread

b.o. biz is consistently up THIS year...

bcz of Paul Blart Mall Cop, Madea Goes to Jail, etc.

― Dr Morbius, Monday, February 23, 2009 2:00 PM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

homie it is FEBRUARY

you're not going to gain anything by bitching about how people like to go to stupid movies.

Not remotely what I'm arguing! It's that the numbers are all out there that the % of foreign and non-Hollywood (not faux-Hollywood predigested pap like Slumdog and Madea) distributed "product" has never been lower; google and pick an article. It's hardly even a tiny niche market anymore.

Anyway, wrong thread.

I know! I like them! Sorry should have specificied "keep em coming"

there's a difference between star quality and acting. most american "event movie" leading role types are movie stars first, actors second. they have qualities that attract and hold attention -- looks, charisma, gravitas, relatabilty, the abililty to embody certain human types or emotional states -- but beyond that, they're usually fairly uninteresting as actors. they rarely break through the surfaces of their roles to anything rich or surprising underneath. instead, they simply do a decent job of not seeming too actorly while attending to the basic business of being magnetic.

great acting, to me, is that which expands on the character as written, opening up depths and subtleties that aren't simple explications of plot points or obvious character traits. versimilitude and truth are part of it, but aren't the whole thing. its possible for a performance to be highly stylized yet still intriguing, or for one to be superficially authentic yet dull. basically, i want to be shaken somehow, captured, taken through the outline of the character to something within.

Please try not to be frustrated by the fact that people, after watching a movie with you, will ask you if you enjoyed it. People do that with everything. I mean, people will ask you that about sleeping.

I think the difficulty of answering this is that different projects demand really different things from actors, yes? But I guess you're asking about sort of conventional dramatic acting, for the most part ...

(There's also a disconnect between skillful acting and acting that just serves the project -- e.g., one of my favorite acting things about Twin Peaks is the way the seemingly horrible acting of the guy who plays Leo makes the character seem a billion times scarier; he is like a developmentally disabled surfer who will beat you with soap in a sock)

Some stars are excellent actors, though (Davis, Bogart, Kate Winslet, to name just three).

so contenderizer, essentially you're going with "tittays"

http://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com/big-name-wga-showrunners-send-open-letter-to-producer-tyler-perry/

There's also a disconnect between skillful acting and acting that just serves the project

Yes. See most Bunuel films.

I find contenderizer's post to be almost meaningless. Dealing entirely in intangibles basically means you get to wave your hands around and say "that's acting/that's not acting" without actually having to say why.

c'mon dan he's very clearly asking where the titties at

Jordan, my editor was on some film site's "roundtable" and when he mentioned The Witnesses (French film set at the dawn of AIDS) as one of the best films he'd seen, these other film bloggies basically said "wow, that's obscure, who would ever see that?" very dismissively.

Way to misread.

ERIK: Ed, are those your five? If they are, then you win the Manohla Dargis Award for lauding the most little-seen movies of the year. The widest release of three of your five (Summer, Secret, Witnesses) didn’t even make double digits. I’m talking three theaters across the whole effin’ country.

Which is to say: More than people not seeing these movies, they’re not even getting the chance to not see them. This is not a comment upon your choices. This is a comment upon the system currently in place.

how do you judge a musician's performance? me I like to count the notes. more notes, better musician.

i think contenderizer should go to see more plays

I find contenderizer's post to be almost meaningless. Dealing entirely in intangibles basically means you get to wave your hands around and say "that's acting/that's not acting" without actually having to say why.

― Lots of praying with no breakfast! (HI DERE), Monday, February 23, 2009 1:44 PM (2 minutes ago)

well to be fair it's all intangibles! people are people innit. though i don't think there's much difference between star quality and acting.

sorry jaymc, "This is not a comment upon your choices" is very unconvincing in the whole context of that forum. ie, "I’m talking three theaters across the whole effin’ country."

I don't think acting is all intangibles. There are certain things you do to evoke particular emotions/characters and some people are more successful at doing this than others; one of the reasons why DDL tends to be so fucking amazing in movies is because of his psycho method style where he pretty much turns himself into whichever character he's portraying throughout filming, creating a consistency of character that others find difficult to match.

laurence olivier was able to match that consistency of character without doing any method work

"Star quality" is a form of performance, sure, whether it's in a film or not, but I do think isn't reasonable to that star-style screen magnetism is a different type of acting than what we consider really penetrating / vulnerable / emotionally deep acting. (Awards tend to go to the latter.)

I do think it IS reasonable to say etc.

i'm just articulating what i value. it's subjective and intangible because that's the nature of the art appreciation. there aren't any objective standards for this kind of thing. i seem to be especially attracted to what i perceive as the intelligence, wit and/or emotional complexity of a performance -- but different people judge and value those qualities differently.

i mean, the only cut-and-dried rule i can thin of is, "don't be stupid, fake and boring at the same time." which suggests that smart, convincing and compelling = greatness, and i suppose i can go along with that.

one of the reasons why DDL tends to be so fucking amazing in movies is because of his psycho method style where he pretty much turns himself into whichever character he's portraying throughout filming, creating a consistency of character that others find difficult to match.

But this is vague too!

how is that vague

I really like this idea of consistetency a lot.

stars are great at being themselves, actors are great at being other people

I like DDL's "star" acting in The Last of the Mohicans and The Boxer lots more than Gangs of New York.

i dunno, he's known for that know and his roles are all this off the charts operatic crazy shit. imagine him as say clooney's character in burn after reading, or some other comedy, it'd never work. i'm not down on the guy and i think he's great but i'm kind of over giving huge props to ppl doing the hardcore method shit.

xps

how is that vague

― Mr. Que, Monday, February 23, 2009 7:53 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

because all he is saying is that he is amazing because his performances are amazing

Dan said DDL is great because of his amazing technical skill makes his performances consistent, which may be true, but it says little about what this technique is, or its relation to consistency.

(slocki: exactly)

charisma and onscreen confidence makes for great actors more than the other shit sometimes.

plus WTF is wrong with appreciation of tangible but non-quantifiable, subjective qualities? insistence that criticism must dwell primarily in the realm of the documentable, provable & measurable seems awfully boring to me.

not to mention impossible

"I will now scientifically prove that nicole kidman is a bad actress"

one of the reasons why DDL tends to be so fucking amazing in movies is because of his psycho method style where he pretty much turns himself into whichever character he's portraying throughout filming, creating a consistency of character that others find difficult to match.

you know who else did this? sean astin in lotr -- he was always looking out for elijah wood and was super protective on set, asking if he was getting worn out, getting him food and stuff, basically samwise mode 24/7 (i heard this on a very informative commentary track btw). no oscars for sean astin to date.

plus WTF is wrong with appreciation of tangible but non-quantifiable, subjective qualities? insistence that criticism must dwell primarily in the realm of the documentable, provable & measurable seems awfully boring to me.

― welcome little swetty (contenderizer), Monday, February 23, 2009 7:58 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

no but if you're having a discussion about what makes a performance good, saying something more substantial than "goodness" is helpful

charisma and onscreen confidence makes for great actors more than the other shit sometimes.

― omar little

i'd say that charism + confidence makes for memorable/appealing/compelling performances.

My point isn't that "method acting is the end-all, be-all", it was that method-acting is what makes DDL great; it is a tangible thing you can point to. There are things about every actor out there who gets accolades or who gets shat upon that you can pick out as evidence for their worth as an actor and how that informs "good acting" and describing that as "they bring out the inner meaning of the character" actually short-changes the whole process IMO.

One of my favorite performances of last year was James Franco in "Pineapple Express". He, to my knowledge, isn't a method actor, but he pretty easily slid into the skin of a desperate-for-friends amiable drug dealer who was equal parts likeable wkiw and clingily repellent and he made it seem effortless. I thought that was a great role for him and it really raised my impression of him as an actor.

Do I know what he did, technically, to get that? No. I wish I did; it would help me with the stage stuff I do.

i think contenderizer should go to see more plays

what is weird for me is that w/live performances i feel like i have better capacity for judging performances even if i dont understand the technical things that make a performance vital

but watching movies/tv im basically an aspie like i honestly cant tell the difference between a ddl performance and matthew mac one except that the idea of ddl in how to lose a guy in 10 days is megalulz 2 me. and i was listening to the S1 mad men commentary tracks this wknd and there were all these moments were the ppl commentating fell into a reverant hush about a performance and i was just ???. w/e level ppl process "believability" on i feel like i'm deaf and blind to

Well I understand consistency to mean that every part of the performance is consistent or harmonious with every other part. Which at the very least is coherent if perhaps still difficut to determine.

Mickey Rourke's oscar.

http://www.aqua-fish.net/imgs/fish/oscar-fish.jpg

not being snarky here but your post sounds like "I'm deaf, can you help me appreciate music?"

xp to lamp

"Consistency" means that, within the story as put forward on the screen, everything the actor does jibes with the way you believe the character would behave given what you know about them and given what is happening to them. Sometimes bad plots/direction make this impossible; when it doesn't, I blame the actor. (For example, I more often than not hate actors who can't/won't do accents.)

dvd commentary is the ultimate hollywod jack off sesh, 2nd to maybe james lipton

3rd was last night's chant of the ever-circling skeletal family around acting nominees.

no but if you're having a discussion about what makes a performance good, saying something more substantial than "goodness" is helpful

― s1ocki

but i did. i described the qualities that i value in performances, those that equate with "greatness" for me. some would say, "great acting is when you can't look away." others that, "great acting is when the peformer seems convincing to me in a wide variety of challenging-seeming roles."

don't see how my appreciation of "intelligence, wit and/or emotional complexity" is any different, or any MORE subjective than any of that.

The other thing I reacted to in your post is that you made it seem like it's only possible to be a good actor in a particular type of movie. Ann Hathaway struck me as a fantastic actress from the first time I saw her, which was flipping through cable channels and stumbling across "The Princess Diaries", a movie that is pretty much a total cookie-cutter piece of nonsense that she managed to imbue with sincerity. I don't know what she did, but she portrayed that character as a real person, to the point where her subsequent kudos in "Brokeback Mountain" and "Rachel Getting Married" are no surprise to me. (Actually, I feel the same way about Heath Ledger, who I first saw in "Roar" and thought was pretty great despite being in one of the dumbest, most ludicrous shows on television that season.)

So much of this is knowing how to approach your source material; there are pieces where approaching it with serious earnest is correct, while other things need to be scenery-chewing excess or else it will fall flat (see Clive Owen and his total bungling of "Sin City" compared to everyone else in the movie). It also doesn't help that acting doesn't exist in a vacuum; so much of what you do is at the whim of the director, who might be forcing you in a direction you can't go or a direction you don't believe in, resulting in a poor performance (I think this was Tom Cruise's biggest problem in "Vanilla Sky").

or an editor

^^^ yeah, I don't have experience with them (lol chorister in regional theater) so I forget about their influence

didn't mean to emphasize any kind of movie or performance over any other. i do think there is a difference between what clint eastwood did in the "dirty harry" movies and what linda hunt did in "the year of living dangerously" (former = movie star, latter = actor), but i don't know that the one is any better or more valuable than the other.

one can be both a great actor and a superstar celebrity type, just as one can deliver great performances in less "serious" sorts of films & roles. ledger's joker being this year's all caps example.

Michael Caine and Gene Hackman have been dreck most of their lives and emerged unscathed.

Chris Walken, as usual, is on another plane – that Zen state where technique, star power, and paying the morgage blur into deliciousness.

they're both actors, dude, they just have different styles and one just happens to be a movie star.

xp

Great thread. Nothing to add really, except it made me think of Spielberg's advice to George Clooney: "If you stop moving your head around, you'll be a movie star."

Too bad Robert Bresson is dead.

^^ of course they're both actors. i'm making a distinction between two acting approaches, one that i'm filing in bin called "movie star", the other in a bin called "acting". perhaps the bin-names i've chosen are unfair or misleading, but i think they convey a certain truth.

if that doesn't wash for you, you could call the second bin "being all self-effacing and technical and shit". same diff.

People get hired for different things. Some are hired because they are being typecast (ie, "just be yourself/do that one thing you do, that's what we want"). Others are hired because they will lose themselves into whatever the role asks ("we know you will shave your head and lose 40 lbs for this role"). Others are hired because of their fan bases ("your last film made $$$$$$$$$$, please read this script and we will make whatever changes are necessary for you to like it").

I don't think you can call Clint Eastwood out as a good example of a "movie star" as opposed to an "actor", particularly after seeing "Unforgiven" and seeing what he is like offscreen.

wasn't calling out clint, was calling out dirty harry. and by extension, the man with no name. clint's career as whole is much harder to pin down with a simple label.

lotta subtlety and good acting in that man with no name stuff

probably been mentioned before didn't read the entire thread but.. this is a tough question and the boring answer for me is: when i notice someone's ACTING, it's bad. for example i just saw Habana Blues, where most of the actors were really trying too hard with lots of arm gestures. or..maybe that's Cuban.

eastwood is fantastic in the leone flicks, but his acting seems to trade more in understatement than the tricky sort of human subtlety i'm thinking of. 90% of the performance consists of poker-faked diffidence taken to perverse extremes: staring, squinting, grimacing, pausing, whispering, spitting. he's got massive screen charisma, his timing is impeccable, and the character is both mesmerizing & totally convincing, but the net result lacks the sort of deep nuance & complexity i'm talking about. this isn't a fault. if the man with no name were more vulnerable, conflicted, transparent and messily human, he wouldn't be anywhere near so iconic.

But if you look at, say, Toshiro Mifune's performances in the Kurosawa flicks on which those Leone movies were based, it's the same kind of performance!

yup

you're really trying to tell me that he's more about understatement than subtlety??

i figure, if theyre british, and over 40, theyre probably amazing

― max, Monday, February 23, 2009 7:46 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah basically. this is why valkyrie is aight.

also, people saying no-one cares abt oscars: they do here in britishland!

tbh i think it's hard to judge a lot of acting perfs because quite a lot of them are constructed in the editing room, not just 'best takes' or whatever, but fundamental shit like timing too.

A: The ablility to behave truthfully under imaginary circumstances.

when i notice someone's ACTING, it's bad. for example i just saw Habana Blues, where most of the actors were really trying too hard with lots of arm gestures. or..maybe that's Cuban.

This is a tricky issue, because behavior that is credible in one culture (Russia, Italy, etc.) might read as exaggerated and schticky in another.

s1ocki:

yeah. given that i'm using the words to describe different things. some definitions for "subtle":

fine or delicate in meaning or intent; difficult to perceive or understand: subtle irony.
requiring mental acuteness, penetration, or discernment: a subtle philosophy.
insidious in operation: subtle poison.

the character (the man with no name) uses subtle strategy to make his way in the world. he's a subtle creation. but eastwood's characterization is not at all subtle. it's the opposite of subtle: it's simple, uncomplicated and clear, even obvious, composed of a small handful of iconic gestures and stances that mean exactly what they seem to say.

sooo... you are saying that you think good acting is when you can't tell emotions what the actor is attempting to convey...?

lots of subtlety in his relationship with tuco in the good the bad and the ugly w/r/t how they ultimately begin to interact and come to some sort of alliance, and how he conveys concern, respect, understanding, and affection for him.

hi dere & omar:

no, i'd say that the type of acting i'm describing (as distinguished from star quality screen presence) is characterized by complexity, subtlety, self-effacement, emotional risk & honesty, the avoidance of the broadly iconic.

eastwood isn't a block of stone. he does convey his character's emotions. but he does this in a more understated than a subtle manner. my language is failing me here. i mean, i understand the temptation to treat these words as roughly synonymous...

There is a reason for that temptation:

http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/subtle

Main Entry: subtle
Part of Speech: adjective
Definition: nice, quiet, delicate
Synonyms: attenuate, attenuated, deep, discriminating, ethereal, exquisite, faint, fine, finespun, hairline, hairsplitting, illusive, implied, inconspicuous, indirect, indistinct, inferred, ingenious, insinuated, mental, penetrating, profound, refined, slight, sophisticated, suggestive, tenuous, thin, understated

damn perry

haha my bit of pedantry in this particular festival of it is going to involve noting that the lists of synonyms in a thesaurus do not consist of exact synonyms -- in fact, they kind of shoot to do the exact opposite of that -- so this is a pretty poor way of proving anything

"hey kind of shoot to do the exact opposite of that "

no they dont u crazy

e.g., if contenderizer were making a distinction between "indistinct" acting and "profound" acting, y'all would not be doing thesaurus lols

xpost - umm wtf I think it is pretty safe to say that your average thesaurus strives to provide synonyms encompassing as many different aspects as possible of the original word -- they strive to be broad, not exact

yr. kinda proving my point, omar. "subtle" has connotative associations like: discriminating, exquisite, ingenious, mental (intellectual?), penetrating, profound, refined...

while "understated" is also associated with "subtle", it does not, in and of itself, carry the same connotative associations.

this thread is about to get "great" isn't it

been there for a while

I am relatively certain that neither "synonym" nor "exact synonym" mean what they would have to mean in order for your post to make any sense, nabisco.

when i notice someone's ACTING, it's bad.

I can't agree here totally (some of the time, yes)... thinking about Clooney keeping his head still made me think about the long final shot in Michael Clayton, which may have been a "thank you Steven Spielberg for the advice now I am a star!" moment. Watching it in the theater, that was the scene that suddenly snapped me back from the characters and story, and made me remember that I was watching ACTING. But I don't think it was any less effective for that!

i think if you watch a fictional movie and actually forget you're watching ACTING then you might be insane

like if you're sitting in a movie theater, you're probably not watching real life just fyi

Dan if you can't figure out the pretty straightforward thing I am saying in that post, you are either a hair-splitter, an alien, or should be suing Harvard

fine, whatever, I'm insane.

nabisco do you really think subtle and understated are that far apart????

i do not -- i also think a thesaurus is not a very foolproof way of trying to prove that

I'm not sure if that argument is subtle, or just understated.

*applause*

http://209.85.117.197/12413/88/0/e25948//e25948.gif

You opened the door on hair-splitting, you can't get mad just because I'm better at it than you are!

(btw "exact synonym" is technical jargon used in gene research; there is no such thing as an exact synonym in terms of language, which was my point to you; the rejection of the synonym list when the objection was "those words shouldn't be treated as synonyms" is willful at best)

the relationship betwee being good and being convincing (not "realistic", necessarily, but not obviously an actor in a role) is usually pretty staightforward: the more convincing, the better. but what about, like, isabelle adjani in "posession"? she's not always 100% on, but she takes it so far, and manages to hold both the center and the edges through such incredible extremity, that it becomes a kind of stand-alone, unconvincing greatness.

Hahaha Dan I have no idea what you're talking about and I repeat -- if you seriously can't tell what I meant upthread you are beyond hope, and I know you know this

(plus, if i'd been contrasting the words "subtle" and "understated" without any further clarification, i'd totally understand the continued bitching about the fact that they're very nearly synonomous. but i was real damn clear about the nature of the distinction i was trying to make. so, damn.)

I mean this is dumb but I'll just say it once clearly and go --

- That thesaurus also lists "ingenious" and "ethereal" as synonyms for "subtle."

- In the big picture, both of those words are really clearly distinct from "subtle." They operate on different levels and mean different things. BUT BUT BUT

- But there is a particular inflection of the word "subtle" that means something a lot like "ingenious," and a particular inflection that means something a lot like "ethereal," so those are both in the thesaurus -- because the synonyms in a thesaurus try to match up a lot of the different connotations and senses of the original word, not just words that mean exactly the same thing. Their goal is to give options and facets, not precise equivalents!

- If you were trying to convince someone that the words "subtle" and "ingenious" and "ethereal" all meant the same thing, you would be wrong as hell, and pulling out a thesaurus and saying "but look they're listed as a synonyms" wouldn't make you any more right.

- Hence, while I think "subtle" and "understated" are close enough in their connotations that the burden might be on Contenderizer to unpack the distinction he's making, I think "look at this thesaurus" is not exactly some hilarious foolproof way of proving that, so I thought that was kind of a lame thing to try upthread.

^^ Dan knew all this but was pretending not to in order to be more pedantic than me, I guess

http://photobucket.com/albums/v56/justhefacts/Myspace-Graphics-Fun-Animations-027.gif

I am wasting my life here

there is no such thing as an exact synonym in terms of language

mind blown O_O

eveybody so gloomy today

oh ffs

contenderizer: The word you are looking for is not "understated", it is "muted"; as you were using it, there was no practical distinction between "understated" and "subtle" despite your best intentions.

nabisco: The fact that not every usage of "subtle" is the same as every usage of "understated" does not negate the fact that they have usages the do overlap. This is a fact of language. Furthermore, the only point in contention was contederizer's claim that "subtle" and "understated" were not synonyms. Seeing as "understated" shows up as synonym for "subtle" in a thesaurus shows that his contention that they should not be treated as such is wrong. It's not rocket science and I would expect someone who is so clearly in love with his facility with language to be able to grasp that, certainly without resorting to being an insulting dick about someone going to a better school than you did.

Think you missed the point of that joke too, dude

If my point had been "all instances of the word 'subtle' mean 'understated'", your nitpicking would have made a modicum of sense, but since it didn't it seems that you basically saw a chance to call the Harvard guy stupid.

oh hey

lets take this there

ivy league fite!111

monocles at dawn

Hahaha seriously? Dan? Not trying to be a dick with you, man, but umm ... I did not call you stupid, actually? In fact what happened -- you can look upthread -- is that I said something about a thesaurus, you said I made no sense, and I actually said I knew you were smart enough to figure out what I meant. I still believe that, actually, so ... I dunno, have a good one.

incredible just how fast this thread went from subtle to understated

what you dont know is that nabisco is wearing this shirt

http://sfn.planetonline.com/psouvenirs_com/images/Products/Harvard%20Sucks%20T-Shirt.jpg

ffs

i was not looking for "muted", which carries a variety of connotations that i specifically did not intend. i was looking for "understated".

in many ways "understated" IS synonomous w "subtle" (just as it is in many ways synonomous w "muted"). but "understated" simply does notT carry the entire range of connotative meanings that "subtle" does. "understated" is a much narrower word. i.e., almost everything that one might mean by "understated" can at least be implied by use of the word "subtle" -- but the reverse is not true. we cannot substitute the world "understated" for the world "subtle" and hope to cover the full range of its meanings and associations.

this is why i chose the words i did, and i think i chose correctly.

i suspect you know this. i suspect that even if you disagree with my definitions & choices, you understood the nature of the distinction i was making about a hundred posts back. so the fact that you're continuing to argue the point is baffling to me.

and he just hacked this road sign http://overstated.net/photos/random/harvardsucks.jpg

Max I am on-record on ILX as a higher-ed stan, but I guess can understand why there's no way to use the word "Harvard" in an argument that's not interpreted as snarky

http://images.textbooks.com/TextbookInfo/Covers/0878300007.gif

All u need to know.

btw im wearing this shirt http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i114/bozcrow/nailyale.jpg so take that yalies

just posted on n**s*h's blog:

http://i39.tinypic.com/254ydzp.jpg

well knock ur spats off come the regatta

remember yr lines & don't bump into the furniture.

Guys, you're making this too difficult:

Good acting = Edward Norton without a beard
Bad acting = Edward Norton with a beard

lol at this thread. anyone who isn't nabisco otm.

People get hired for different things. Some are hired because they are being typecast (ie, "just be yourself/do that one thing you do, that's what we want"). Others are hired because they will lose themselves into whatever the role asks ("we know you will shave your head and lose 40 lbs for this role"). Others are hired because of their fan bases ("your last film made $$$$$$$$$$, please read this script and we will make whatever changes are necessary for you to like it").

these are all essentially the same thing - you cast christian bale because you like that thing (or things) christian bale does. if he loses 40 lbs for the role, great, but that's an "external" that doesn't change the particular bale-ish spark that the director is looking for. if you cast christian bale because he's got a huge fanbase, that fanbase exists because all those people like that spark too and will pay monies to see it. they will not pay the monies if they realize that christian bale is in fact going to transform himself so utterly that he becomes unbale-ish. if he did, the director would tell his casting director to hire someone else. there is a vast army of actors out there to choose from. there's no need to ask someone to play someone utterly unlike them.

my answer is basically goole's. for me there are two levels - the first is that the actor needs to tell the part of the story that her part is supposed to tell. characters are written for a reason. actors have to figure out what that reason is - what their character is trying to accomplish - and then use posture, tone of voice, various sorts of strategies (pleading, needling, teasing, seducing) to try to accomplish it. this is actually very difficult to do but if they can do it then you're focusing on the story and not them Acting, which is what most peoples' complaints here seem to be about. the second level is what lifts a competent performace like this into something great - the strategies they use - the way they use language, or their bodies - that shows us something interesting about the way human beings do things that we'd never been able to really see before without the complicated scaffolding of our own real-life goals and anxieties thrashing across our field of vision. they show us part of the repertory of MOVES that normal people, non-actors, employ in real life, with a kind of flair or elegance or concreteness that lets us recognize it.

That second part brilliantly stated.

Now take that eloquence over to the already-idiot-jammed Sox thread.

thank you G00bie

it seem that when people here are saying "method" they mean that an actor is "really getting into character". you can do this without doing "the method". for instance i have no idea whether jim carrey (who's famous for not breaking character on set) or ddl actually gives three shits about stanislavski or uses sense memory in the way stanislavski or lee strasberg recommend. the signature strategy of "the method" can be boiled down to an actor using the memory of an event from his own life in order to access a feeling that he thinks he needs for a certain moment that he's playing. many people find this useless, and actually counterproductive, since the memory itself is of a different circumstance than what's in the script (and furthermore the feeling isn't being generated between the actors in the drama but is welling up inside one actor, hence more static and less dynamic.) but some people are able to use it to great effect. (personally i think meisner has just the right emphasis on "affect memory" or "sense memory" - use it as a pinch, a goose, not to recall a specific emotion but to recall what trying to do a specific thing feels like. i.e. if your character is trying to get someone to make an exception for him, you can imagine what it feels like to try to convince an airline check-in guy to let you on a plane that's just closed its doors. a specific emotion isn't being summoned up here, but the memory of a specific action. and then you don't remember the airport every time you're on stage - you use it in rehearsal to get into the flow of how you need to be behaving.)

regarding the two levels i outlined above, obviously they can bleed into each other. and some actors (al pacino comes to mind) have become so virtuousic at the second level that they forget to do the first.

with ALL that said, it's interesting to me how successful non-actors can be in movies whereas a non-actor would have no chance on stage. maybe it has something to do with stage acting being a much more artificial thing, more of an art/craft in the classic sense.

somehow this ties in with the traditional diff between british and american acting traditions - brits treating acting as a skill, like sports training, repeating the same thing again and again until it is honed to perfection and outwardly indicative of a precise thing; and americans treating acting as this mystical zone where one never wants to play a line the same way twice, immersing their inner spirit into the truth of the fiction (or something)

some of my favorite films this decade have had nonprofessional actors.

with ALL that said, it's interesting to me how successful non-actors can be in movies whereas a non-actor would have no chance on stage. maybe it has something to do with stage acting being a much more artificial thing, more of an art/craft in the classic sense.

i think it's mostly because on stage you really DO have to maintain a character for 1-4 hours straight with no letting up, practically no breaks, it's much more of a rigorous workout. on a film set you might do 10 minutes of acting, total, in an 12-hour day. it's a completely different skill set.

not to mention stuff like this, by robert bresson - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049902/

xpost

No one has mentioned Robert Downey Jr. I'm unsure where he fits.

he's a Good Egg.

he's iron man (the film)

hes a wonder boy(s)

hes a goth(ika)

he's Chaplin

(did the gags really well)

He's a cartoon. (At least he was in "A Scanner Darkly")