Let me ramble on for a bit here. I once saw Russell Crowe interviewed and he was asked who the was the best actor he had ever seen and he nominated Nicole Kidman, who was a nobody at the time, on the basis of a scene from a fine Aussie movie that no one overseas will recognize The Year My Voice Broke. She played a small part as a school prefect and Crowe’s admiration stemmed from the fact that when a comment is made about her character’s relationship to some boy, Kidman blushes from the chest up. He said that this is almost impossible to do, that you have to be so into the role that your body believes it is reality.
I recall a while ago watching Blood Diamond, the Leonardo DiCaprio vehicle and marvelling at a scene with Jennifer Connelly where his eyes glaze over when he thinks she is not interested in him, and then light up as he turns for another go at chatting her up.
I have recently discovered the first series of Dexter and just watched episode 10 Seeing Red. Halfway through when Dexter is checking out Paul Bennett’s place he finds a bag of dope and a loaded gun - “the trifecta …weapon, ammo and impaired judgement, throw in a little domestic violence and you have the perfect recipe for a family slaughter.”
And then he flashes back to his childhood and, without moving a muscle, Michael C Hall gets his left cheek to spasm.
Wreck it by proving to me it is CGI or otherwise bow down before a piece of “business” I cannot comprehend.
I like those moments too. I can’t think of a nominee at the moment, but…
I’ve never seen it, but I know that it stars Noah Taylor and it’s kind of a “prequel” to Flirting (with Taylor, Thandie Newton, Nicole Kidman and Naomi Watts). It’s odd, people on the IMDB message board seem to think that she isn’t in it, but it is listed on her IMDB page. What does she play? It couldn’t be the same character as in Flirting, could it?
Regarding Dexter - Michael C. Hall is a great face actor, IMHO. He doesn’t get as much of a chance to show it off in Dexter as he did in Six Feet Under, because of the nature of his character, but he’s really become one of my favorite premium-TV actors.
In the movie Reds there’s a scene where Diane Keaton goes to meet a dying Warren Beatty at the train station. She sees a body being carried off the train, turns around in grief and closes her eyes. When she opens them, Warren is looking at her. She slowly walks into his arms.
A made-for-TV movie called The UFO Incident tells the story of Betty and Barney Hill, a couple who claimed to have been abducted by aliens. James Earl Jones has a wrenching scene in which Barney Hill, under hypnosis, recounts his memories of the abduction. I’ll never forget the haunted look in Jones’s eyes and his tortured facial grimaces while he tells his story. I don’t know much about the real-life Barney Hill, but while I was watching Jones’s performance, I was willing to believe that this man truly believed he had been through the horrific experience that he was describing.
John Le Carre wrote some fine spy stories, including ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’ and ‘the spy who came in from the cold’.
When the BBC did Tinker, Tailor, the key role of George Smiley went straight to Alec Guinness.
Smiley is a quiet, thoughtful man. Sadly his wife sleeps around and everyone knows it. He is not very good at dealing with politicians. Yet he is fully determined to do his job.
The whole series rests on this part.
On the extras CD, Le Carre describes how Guinness thought himself into the part.
Guinness asked to meet a former Head of MI5 (UK internal spy network). He chose the glasses Smiley always wears. He practised acting specifically with each member of the cast.
In the key scene, Smiley finally sets a trap, which unmasks the traitor. Guinness was on set early, talking through his lines and movements. Now obviously he had read the script and knew who the traitor was. However when the director asked if he was ready, Guinness replied “Who is the traitor?! We’re going to find out soon!”
This passion leads to a remarkable performance.
Later when Le Carre was writing a TV adaptation of his follow-up ‘Smiley’s people’, he realised that his directions included mannerisms that Guinness had used in the first series.
The actor had become the role.
In the so-so movie Timecode, Stellan Skarsgård has a great early scene in which he is trying to have a business conversation on the phone a minute after his wife has just left him. He’s just barely keeping it together enough to get to the end of the call. You find out later that his character is kind of a prick, but that was a very convincing bit of emoting. (At least to me.)
The scene that always pops into my head when I hear the words “nice little piece of acting business” is the 2-minute one from *Cat Ballou * where alcoholic ace gunfighter Kid Shaleen (Lee Marvin ) wakes up with a horrible hangover and someone sympathetically tosses him a quart of whiskey. He drinks the bottle straight though, recovering from his hangover and demonstrating his gunman acumen, then soon dissolving into another drunken puddle. One of the witnesses says “I’ve never seen anyone go through his day so quickly before.”
I think this scene was directly resposible for Marvin winning the 1966 Best Supporting Actor Oscar.
I know exactly what moment you mean. This is one of my favorite films. I couldn’t find a trailer online, but I think that “look” was in it. I hate to nitpick anyone who’d bring up this amazing movie, sorrysorrysorry, but Jack Reed (Beatty) wasn’t dying. The train he was traveling on had just been blown up, and this train (I don’t remember if it was the same train, or another) was bringing back the wounded and the dead. She went to the train station not knowing if he was dead or alive but fearing the worst. Seeing him then was the first time she knew he hadn’t died in the explosion. Oh god I love this movie. It was recently released on DVD for the first time!
In the movie The Elephant Man there is a scene where Dr. Treves, played by Anthony Hopkins, sees John Merrick, unmasked, for the first time. We the audience only see Hopkins face, looking almost directly into the camera. His face doesn’t move a muscle, and then a tear starts sliding down out of the corner of one eye.
I suppose they could have put some sort of irritant in his eye, but he’s shown no sign of it as he began his “viewing”.
Leo actually had one of the first ones I recall noticing, as well. In Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo & Juliet, when he and Claire Danes are looking at one another from the top and bottom of the staircase, the longing that fills their eyes absolutely bowled me over. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve seen the, and I was going to waffle and say maybe the scene isn’t as good as I remembered it, but I’ve been replaying a couple of the other scenes in my head, and that was a damn good movie. I need to rewatch it.
P.S. I would totally love to be in a Leo/Claire love sandwich.
