Coulda fooled me.
Anyone who hates Don Cheadle hates good film acting in general (exceptions allowed for his terrible cockney accent 
)
More specifically, he was a Roman general who had been given land grants in Hispania as a reward for his victories. I don’t think he was actually born on the Iberian penninsula.
Actually I’d have to divide all the performances in MAAN into two categories: British actors (Good) and American actors (Not Good). Keanu may be the worst of the lot, but Michael Keaton, Robert Sean Leonard, and even Denzel look like dinner theater amateurs when acting Shakespeare against Branagh, Thompson, et al.
jmesho, but tom cruise in anything. who ever decided that putz could act?
I’ll bet he didn’t do it all. An awful lot of it sounded very much like Peter O’Toole sing/speaking hi way through the part. But I don;'t recall any of it being really memorable.
No. No. He didn’t. I promise you, he didn’t. Read Devil In A Blue Dress and then get back to me on whether that flaky imitation Cheadle tried to play in the movie was the loud, jumpy, woman-loving, dangerous, funny-ass rapscallion deadly killer in Moseley’s book(s). Name one quotable line made memorable by Cheadle’s interpretation – ever. The only reason his part got so much play his that the screenplay had the good sense to keep most of Mouse’s lines and actions true to Moseley’s book, where the character is so outrageous he he routinely outshines Easy. Mouse is bigger than life incorruptible force of nature, not a mere “scene-stealer.”
Rii-ii-ii-iight. I dislike this twit so therefore my taste in all movie actors must be suspect. Riiii-iii-iiight. Like Cheadle’s stellar, Oscar worthy performances in Meteor Man, Rush Hour 2, Mission To Mars, Volcano, Bulworth, The Family Man, Swordfish, Boogie Nights, Rosewood, the Ocean movies, Colors and Out of Sight was anything to get excited about.
Cheadle can generally do his bit to keep from completely embarassing himself as a character actor in an ensemble cast within his limited emotional and emotive range as a stock authority figure, but Don Cheadle does not impress me in most of what he does, least of all when he tries to do comedy or bigger than life acting. Of all the movies I’ve seeb him in to date, I minded him least in Hotel Rwanda and *The Rat Pack * and that’s about it.
CalMeacham writes:
> Yeah, I know that South America has its own complex nationalities, but it’s still
> primarily Spanish and Indian ancestry, reflected in the people, the architecture,
> the culture, etc.
I can’t find a website to confirm it, but I’ve read that the largest ethnic group in Argentina is Italian, not Spanish. Certainly there are a lot more people of Italian ancestry than of American Indian ancestry. The websites I looked at in the past couple of minutes just say that the vast majority of the population of Argentina are of either Spanish or Italian ancestry.
I’ve searched page 1 and 2 and so I think these are 2 new entries.
In another thread, I mentioned that Gary Cooper was a horrible choice for the architect in the “Fountainhead”.
As of the moment, I’m watching “Flight of the Phoenix (2004)” which really sucks monkey balls. But if I had to pick the biggest problem with the film it was the casting of Giovanni Ribisi as the plane designer. I kept thinking about Hardy Kruger (as Dorfman) in that part and there is no comparison.
Remember the many rants he gives in the original?
Dorfman: “Mr Townes. A toy plane is something you wind up and it just rolls along the floor. I design model aircraft. All the principles of flight, thrust / drag coefficients …”
Liberace played a romantic (hetero) lead in Sincerely Yours, a melodrama about a musician who is going deaf. The results were… uh… yeah.
I hope that I don’t get flamed for saying this because I know it’s a sensitive issue (especially for white people to be talking about), but Halle Berry was miscast in the miniseries Queen. The miniseries was based on the true story of Alex Haley’s paternal grandmother, a woman who was literally spit at when she went into town with her own sons because white women thought she was a white woman who had had children by a black man (the ultimate No-No of course in southern culture at the time). Queen was the daughter of a white master and very light skinned slave and looked white- she passed as white at times in her life.
Halle Berry is many things, including drop-dead gorgeous and a great actress (one with enough chutzpah to pick up her own award at the Raspberries), and she is indeed biracial (white mother, biracial father), but she cannot pass for white- she looks biracial. The scenes in which Queen is dating a white man who does not know she is black, or in which other black women are surprised to learn she is black, just didn’t ring true.
Argentina, however, is an exception in that it is almost entirely European (Spanish and Italian) in its make-up. There was very little admixture with the Indians, who were mostly killed off, and there were very few African slaves in colonial times. Buenos Aires is one of the the “whitest” cities I’ve ever been to, including London or Paris. Most people look European.
Starship Troopers still sucked, though.
And of course there was Hello Dolly, in which she (at 26) played a middle aged widow (one who was wed for many years to a husband she loved) in love with a crotchety old widower. The role had been originated on screen by Shirley Booth (bka Hazel and the wife in Come Back Little Sheba- i.e. frumpy and middle-aged) and on stage was played by Carol Channing, Pearl Bailey and Phyllis Diller among others. She was way too young.
An odd one, but John Cullum, a good actor and great singer, was miscast in 1776. He was in his 40s at the time playing Edward Rutledge, at 24 the youngest member of the Continental Congress (and ancestor of Goldie Hawn/Kate Hudson), and it just didn’t work.
Other age inappropriate casting:
Faye Dunaway in Evita Peron- Faye portrayed Evita from 14 to her death at 33. Faye was 40 at the time (and fresh from filming Mommie Dearest with the worst actress ever in a major role/major movie not to have been related to the director).
Matthew McConaughey in Contact= the character was rewritten from the book, but a character who is that important a spiritual leader just wouldn’t tend to be that young. It was strictly a “give us some eye candy” casting, and yet they didn’t show him nekkid.
Glenn Close as the mother of Mel Gibson in Hamlet (she’s 6 years older)
The name Wendell Wagner reminds me-
Robert Wagner and Spencer Tracy as brothers in The Mountain. (IRL they had a 30 year age difference.)
For that matter: John Wayne, Dean Martin, Earl Holliman and Michael Anderson as brothers in The Sons of Katie Elder. Dean, Frank, Peter Lawford and Sammy might have been slightly more believable as brothers- at least they were the same age range. Evidently Katie Elder had babies by every man she ever liked, thus explaining the total lack of similarities in looks; she had the first (Wayne) when she was 12 and the last (Anderson) when she was 48.
John Wayne found his way into so many miscastings, but The Green Berets was another classic. It would have been hard not to cast him since he was the director and executive producer and it was his idea, but… a 60 year old man who’s about 40 lbs. overweight playing the leader of a Green Beret unit in-country- rightttt.
Christopher Plummer and Julie Andrews had great chemistry in Sound of Music, but On Golden Pond? Not so much. Her English accent reminiscing about her childhood on this New England lake, his way too suave Norman, just didn’t work. (It may have worked better if they’d cast her frequent costar James Garner instead- he’s believable as a crotchety lovable old fart, though her accent would still have been a problem, though ultimately the problem was that the movie simply did not need remaking).
Shelley Duvall in The Shining.
George Clooney (aka Bobble Head) as Batman in Batman and Robin.
Denise Richards as nuclear weapons expert Dr. Christmas Jones in The World is Not Enough.
Jamie Lee Curtis as Schwarzenegger’s wife, Helen, in True Lies. Jamie Lee did a creditable job - there was just zero chemistry between her and Arnie.
Ooh, that’s a good one, Vintage. You can’t help but watch her in that movie and think, “No, seriously, we’re supposed to buy this?”
Harpo Marx’s last ever film role was as … Sir Isaac Newton, in The Story of Mankind. Just sad.
Bosda, I also liked the guy playing the French Secret Agent.
Of course I also loved the irony of taking footage from the Able and Baker tests, and using that for proof that the French make Godzilla.
Dunno 'bout that; even the worst of them was trying - which cannot really be said for Keanu.
Although I agree that Branagh & Thompson gave sparkling performances, the others were also pretty good; Keaton very conspicuously brought his own character to Dogberry, but it wasn’t really out of place, since the role demands outrageous buffoonery.