ALL THE KING'S MEN: How Could So Many Oscar-Winning Actors Deliver Such Awful Performances?

#1

ALL THE KING'S MEN: How Could So Many Oscar-Winning Actors Deliver Such Awful Performances?

Posted: 1/4/07 at 11:21pm

Seriously...

Every single actor plays up to the audience as if they're a high school drama club member sucking up to the judge of a local theatre tournament. Watching Sean Penn in this film is enough to make you cringe.

#2

re: ALL THE KING'S MEN: How Could So Many Oscar-Winning Actors Deliver Such Awful Performances?

Posted: 1/4/07 at 11:52pm

I thought Penn's performance was the only good one.

The fault in the film is the direction and screenplay.

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"The Spectacle has, indeed, an emotional attraction of its own, but, of all the parts, it is the least artistic, and connected least with the art of poetry. For the power of Tragedy, we may be sure, is felt even apart from representation and actors. Besides, the production of spectacular effects depends more on the art of the stage machinist than on that of the poet."
--Aristotle

#3

re: ALL THE KING'S MEN: How Could So Many Oscar-Winning Actors Deliver Such Awful Performances?

Posted: 1/5/07 at 12:03am

Penn was awful. His performance reminded me of something I would see at a high school theatre.

#4

re: ALL THE KING'S MEN: How Could So Many Oscar-Winning Actors Deliver Such Awful Performances?

Posted: 1/5/07 at 12:03am

Penn was awful. His performance reminded me of something I would see at a high school theatre.

#5

re: ALL THE KING'S MEN: How Could So Many Oscar-Winning Actors Deliver Such Awful Performances?

Posted: 1/5/07 at 12:08am

I tried watching this movie last week and I couldn't get through it, so I just ended up fastforwarding though the middle half.

Muffalo was okay in it though. He gave his usual Muffaloish performance, not good, not bad, just...normal for him. He's always the same in every single movie I've ever seen him in. Boyfriend needs to stop with the quaaludes for a little bit.

#6

re: ALL THE KING'S MEN: How Could So Many Oscar-Winning Actors Deliver Such Awful Performances?

Posted: 1/5/07 at 12:17am

A-HA!

so we've found a film from this year that Cruel DIDN'T like!

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"Picture "The View," with the wisecracking, sympathetic sweethearts of that ABC television show replaced by a panel of embittered, suffering or enraged Arab women" -the Times review of Black Eyed

#7

re: ALL THE KING'S MEN: How Could So Many Oscar-Winning Actors Deliver Such Awful Performances?

Posted: 1/5/07 at 12:46am

Why does Hollywood find it necessary to remake classic movies - and screw it up in the process ?

The Broderick Crawford version is definitive

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Poster Emeritus

#8

re: ALL THE KING'S MEN: How Could So Many Oscar-Winning Actors Deliver Such Awful Performances?

Posted: 1/5/07 at 1:17am

Almost every movie actor, no matter how talented, has made a fool of himself or herself onscreen. It seems to be a greater danger when accents are involved. Back in the 1930s, the great Katharine Hepburn was forced to play a backwoods hick in the ludicrous "Spitfire". Watching Hepburn, with her cultivated cheekbones, enunciating each line in a careful Midwestern drawl, is much more painful than watching Sean Penn in "All the King's Men."

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I ask in all honesty/What would life be?/Without a song and a dance, what are we?/So I say "Thank you for the music/For giving it to me."

#9

re: ALL THE KING'S MEN: How Could So Many Oscar-Winning Actors Deliver Such Awful Performances?

Posted: 1/5/07 at 1:26am

I don't recall Meryl Streep ever making a fool of herself onscreen.

#10

re: ALL THE KING'S MEN: How Could So Many Oscar-Winning Actors Deliver Such Awful Performances?

Posted: 1/5/07 at 1:30am

I mean, I primarily blame the writing and the direction, which did make the movie feel like one acting class scene after another...I feel like if you just watched one of the scenes you wouldn't mind the acting, but because you were forced to watch that style of acting for an entire movie by the end you were considering suicide. It's one of the perils of film, that because you're not shooting in sequence (nor do you have any say over which take is used) the actor actually has very little power over what the overall performance is going to look like. Film is a director's medium.


What a tragically bad film.

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-Anyone want to turn anarchist with me?

"Bless you and all who know you, oh wise and penguined one." ~YouWantItWhen????

#11

re: ALL THE KING'S MEN: How Could So Many Oscar-Winning Actors Deliver Such Awful Performances?

Posted: 1/5/07 at 9:02am

Oh, it was awful. I tried to watch it all the way through twice and just gave up.

Cruel...re: Meryl. You're correct. The answer is never. Falling in Love was a disappointing movie, but she still managed to have some luminous moments.

#12

re: ALL THE KING'S MEN: How Could So Many Oscar-Winning Actors Deliver Such

Posted: 1/5/07 at 12:51pm

"She-Devil" anyone?

#13

re: ALL THE KING'S MEN: How Could So Many Oscar-Winning Actors Deliver Such

Posted: 1/5/07 at 12:54pm

mattnyc, I can't help myself...She-Devil is a guilty pleasure for me. And I love Meryl in the movie!

#14

re: ALL THE KING'S MEN: How Could So Many Oscar-Winning Actors Deliver Such

Posted: 1/5/07 at 1:31pm

blueroses = Meryl apologist

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Salve, Regina, Mater misericordiae
Vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra
Salve, Salve Regina
Ad te clamamus exsules filii Eva
Ad te suspiramus, gementes et flentes
O clemens O pia

#15

re: ALL THE KING'S MEN: How Could So Many Oscar-Winning Actors Deliver Such

Posted: 1/5/07 at 1:59pm

Simple. Oscars are not based on talent. Film casting is not based on talent.

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"Winning a Tony this year is like winning Best Attendance in third grade: no one will care but the winner and their mom."
-Kad

"I have also met him in person, and I find him to be quite funny actually. Arrogant and often misinformed, but still funny."
-bjh2114 (on Michael Riedel)

#16

re: ALL THE KING'S MEN: How Could So Many Oscar-Winning Actors Deliver Such

Posted: 1/5/07 at 2:11pm

It's not always NOT based on talent.

If you ask me, the Oscars uphold excellence far more than the Tonys do.

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"If you are going to do something, do it well. And leave something witchy." -Charlie Manson

#17

re: ALL THE KING'S MEN: How Could So Many Oscar-Winning Actors Deliver Such

Posted: 1/5/07 at 3:14pm

I just rented this movie. Thanks for ruining it for me! lol

#18

re: ALL THE KING'S MEN: How Could So Many Oscar-Winning Actors Deliver Such

Posted: 1/5/07 at 3:51pm

It just proves that winning an Oscar has absolutely nothing to do with talent.

#19

re: ALL THE KING'S MEN: How Could So Many Oscar-Winning Actors Deliver Such

Posted: 1/5/07 at 4:11pm

i remember feeling STUNNED by the preview alone. i thought the whole film might send me into seizure.
and i love meryl in SHE-DEVIL especially after she has been dumped. hi-larious!

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Mind is Mantra.

#20

re: ALL THE KING'S MEN: How Could So Many Oscar-Winning Actors Deliver Such

Posted: 1/5/07 at 4:28pm

I don't recall Meryl Streep ever making a fool of herself onscreen.

Not even in STILL OF THE NIGHT?