Like many people on this board I am looking forward to the upcoming release of The Fellowship of the Ring. In order to pass the time until I can see it, I would like to familiarize myself with some of the actors in the movie(s) that I don’t already know. Ideally, I would like to see them with a large role in a good movie, but I will settle for a smaller but important role in a good movie, and if I must, any role in a crappy movie. I am especially interested in the following (I have consulted the IMDB for ideas):
Elijah Wood (Frodo): Never seen any of his movies!
Ian McKellan (Gandalf): Ditto!
Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn): Saw Crimson Tide, which he was in, but I don’t remember him. Wouldn’t mind seeing it again. Is it a small part? Or is there a better example of his talent out there?
Sean Astin (Sam): Only saw part of Rudy. Anything else better?
Billy Boyd (Pippin), Dominic Monaghan (Merry), Orlando Bloom (Legolas): None of them have much to their credit.
Hugo Weaving (Elrond): Nothing I’ve seen.
Christopher Lee: He has zillions of movies to his credit, I must have seen one of his older ones. I haven’t seen any of his recent ones.
Some reccomendations of my own:
Liv Tyler (Arwen): That Thing You Do. Cute movie.
Cate Blanchett (Galadriel): Elizabeth. Her and the movie are terrific.
Sean Bean (Boromir): I’ve seen Patriot Games and Goldeneye. Any movies where he plays a GOOD guy? Boromir is supposed to be a sympathetic character.
John Rhys-Davies (Gimli): I’m willing to entertain the notion that the Indiana Jones movies may not be his best work. I see in the IMDB he is in Stargate, the movie (which I saw) uncredited, as “Shouting Arab Digger”!
Ian Holm (Bilbo): Big Night, 5th Element, Madness of King George, Brazil, all seen, all good.
Brad Dourif (Grima Wormtongue): Familiar with his work on Star Trek: Voyager. Good casting here, I think.
So, that’s it. Any suggestions would be welcome on the actors I haven’t seen, or your own ideas on the actors I have.
You liked North? Wow, I just read about that movie, apparently Roger Ebert hated it so much he wrote a whole book about how much he hated it. Maybe I’ll try one of his others!
Weaving: I guesss I’m going to have to finally break down and see Matrix, huh? Does Priscilla take place in Australia? Me and Mrs. Lagomorph went there on our honeymoon.
Lee: Yeah, I saw the Star Wars credit listed, but I think that is coming out after Fellowship, anyway.
X-Men is a closed book to me, I know nothing at all about the comic. I will probably go with a different McKellan movie, am leaning towards Gods and Monsters because I like Brendan Fraser.
GI Jane sounds like an excellent choice for Mortensen.
Matrix: Main bad guy. Sounds good. And Deep Impact for Frodo.
The only thing I have against Goonies is it’s so old, the guy was what, 14? In that case I have seen Mortensen in one movie, he played the Amish kid in Witness! I might rent Rudy (and see the whole thing) instead.
Elijah Wood: The Faculty is pretty silly, but it’s one of his bigger and more recent roles. I liked Deep Impact too.
Viggo Mortenson: As well as GI Jane, he was in A Perfect Murder with Michael Douglas and Gwyneth Paltrow. One of his bigger roles that I know of. Oh, he was in 28 Days too.
BTW, you don’t need to know anything about the X-men comic books for the movie. The characters are all introduced pretty clearly.
I second that. I’ve never read a comic book in my life, and I liked X-Men a lot. It was an exciting, well-acted. reasonably intelligent action-fantasy.
Yeah, I liked North. it ain’t the greatest movie ever, but I enjoyed it both times I watched it. It’s all about this Kid who travels around the world looking for better parents than his own. It’s absurdly surreal, and has Bruce Willis in it. Roger Ebert and I rarely agree on anything. He sees far more classic movies than I do, so his viewpoint is skewed. I just want to be entertained, but he seeks more.
And Priscilla is most definitely set in Australia, though it’s a fairly arid location.
I don’t know why Ebert has such a bug up his fat ass about North. His likes and dislikes can be weird, but his hatred of this movie is downright pathological. It’s really not a bad movie, in fact I really liked it. It is a bit zany and the end totally rips off “The Wizard of Oz”.
Surprised that nobody’s mentioned The Ice Storm, that’s by far the best movie Elijah has starred in. (The Amish boy in Witness was played by Lucas Haas, not Elijah, BTW.)
Other Elijah movies that nobody’s mentioned yet: Avalon (snoozer), Paradise (good), Forever Young (decent), The Good Son (decent if you can stand Macauley Culkin), The Adventures of Huck Finn (good for a kid’s movie), and Flipper (blecch).
Sean Astin starred in Toy Soldiers, which is a fun movie if you take your brain out first…he was also in War of the Roses but only played a bit part.
I consider The Matrix to be required viewing, if only to participate in all the Matrix-bashing threads that go on around here.
Christopher Lee played Count Dracula in a series of films beginning with Horror of Dracula, which is a pretty good vampire movie.
Sean Bean plays the head villian in Don’t Say a Word, which is out right now, but I haven’t seen it.
John Rhys-Davies was in the Bond film The Living Daylights and the first three seasons of the TV show “Sliders”. He also played a holographic Leonardo da Vinci on a couple of Voyager episodes.
Sean Astin starred in Encino Man, however, his co-star is Pauly Shore. (You did say “any role in a crappy movie.”) Astin was alright in it, considering, but then, watching this movie would expose you to considerable amounts of the “humor” of Pauly Shore.
Don’t know about films but he starred in a whole bunch of tv movies in Britain called Sharpe, about a English soldier fighting in the Peninsular wars. They’re all called Sharpe’s Something: Eagle, or Sword or Waterloo or whatever.
Alex B
Viggo Mortenson was also interesting to watch in The Prophecy, with Christopher Walken. I thought the movie as a whole was a bit overhyped, but he was pretty good.
Ian Holm has excellent roles in Alien, Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, The Sweet Hereafter, Naked Lunch and Brazil.
I liked Sean Astin as the cameraman in Bulworth and Hugo Weaving as the blind guy in Proof (which also features an early Russell Crowe)
I second The Ice Storm for Wood, Gods and Monsters for McKellan, and Stealing Beauty for Tyler (though it’s really slim pickings with her)
In addition to Elizabeth, which garnered Blanchett an Oscar nomination, you could watch One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Dourif’s Oscar-nominated role) and Chariots of Fire (Holm’s Oscar-nominated role), although Holm’s good in so many things: as Lewis Carroll in Dreamchild, as the restauranteur in Big Night, Napoleon in Time Bandits, plus Joe Gould’s Secret, Wetherby, Henry V, Another Woman and especially The Sweet Hereafter, his best performance (though the other ones pldennison mentioned are good, too)
Although I don’t know the Black Beauty story, Bean is the star of a recent version and I do know that Danny Elfman’s score is perhaps the loveliest thing he’s ever written.
Some of my favorite Christopher Lee movies are The Wicker Man, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, and Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers
I also notice Bernard Hill is playing King Theoden. He’s best known as the captain in Titanic
Right you are, J.E.T. Viggo Mortensen was in Witness, but he didn’t play the kid-I knew that didn’t sound right. Thank you and everyone else for your input, I’ll be checking back later.
Someone else mentioned the “Sharpe” series for Sean Bean-they look promising but unfortunately I don’t think they are available at the rinky-dink video store down the street from me!
Just a nit, he titled one of his Books “I Hate, Hate, Hated This Movie” which is the opening line to his review for North. The book is a collection of bad movie reviews by Ebert and not completely dedicated to the one movie.
He was also in The Mountains of the Moon, and The Ghost and the Darkness, both of which I saw and reccomend. Mountains more than Ghost, maybe, because it is apparently more historically accurate. The Ghost and the Darkness is based on a true story, but they took a lot of liberties with it in the movie.
