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10 Surprisingly Good Portrayals of Iconic Figures

By Christopher Campbell posted 6 months ago

Many critics will no doubt rip apart Robert Pattinson’s performance as Salvador Dali in Little Ashes this weekend, but the truth is that it’s a surprisingly good portrayal of the artist. That is to say that given our expectations, combined with Pattinson’s own celebrity, added to the fact that anyone would look ridiculous sporting Dali’s signature mustache (even Dali), the Twilight actor does as well in the role as is possible. Is the performance Oscar-worthy? Certainly not, but it is deserving of some level of praise.

Pattinson’s Dali follows a long tradition of surprisingly good portrayals of iconic figures. Movie stars are constantly cast as famous persons they barely resemble, and often it’s difficult to shake off our identification with the player in order to accept him/her as the depicted individual. Some of these performances are better than others, and most have been honored by the Academy, but each actor and actress listed below either initially seemed like a wrong choice for the respective part or he/she was at least understood to be taking on a difficult task in attempting to portray such a familiar personality.
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Will Smith Has Worst Opening in Seven Years. Trade Roughage 12/22/08

By Christopher Campbell posted 11 months ago

Bad weather is being blamed for weak box office results this weekend from new wide releases Yes Man, Seven Pounds and The Tale of Despereaux, all of which performed worse than expected. Because there’s no other reason why moviegoers would just choose to avoid seeing lame-looking movies from Jim Carrey, Will Smith and Universal’s animation department. It is actually sad for Smith, who hasn’t seen an opening this bad since 2001’s Ali. And Seven Pounds marks only his third film to debut with less than $20 million since his blockbuster breakthrough in Independence Day.
Apparently snow couldn’t stop The Wrestler from achieving a screen average of more than $52,000 over the weekend. But isn’t that just because people in NYC don’t have to drive to the movies? Fox Searchlight’s other film, Slumdog Millionaire, finally broke the Top 10 after expanding to 589 screens. And although Searchlight’s stellar buzz team claims the Oscar-contender was “selling out everywhere,” its own average was actually embarrassingly below that of Seven Pounds.
We’re going to need a modern day Edward Arnold if Bernard Madoff-types are going to be the hot villain for ‘09.
You know your comic book publisher didn’t get the best production deal when it announces that its first adaptation stars Kevin Sorbo. Meanwhile, you know you’re experienceing a slow news day when that’s one of four stories worth bulletpointing.

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Hollywood

15 Will Smith Plot Songs

By Christopher Campbell posted 1 year ago

In response to Karina’s post from yesterday about plot songs, I feel it is necessary and timely to pay tribute today to the best plot song writer since Huey Lewis: Will Smith. From the ’80s on, Smith has provided the world with songs serving as storytelling supplements to his TV show, his movies and even other people’s movies. At times he has even prematurely released songs that could later be applied to movies for which he failed to attach an official plot song. Uh huh.

To get us started, here’s one for Hancock. It’s a song released three years ago, but it’s much more relevant now:

“Here He Comes” for Hancock

The above video is the closest thing I can find to a video for the song, which applies to Smith’s latest movie in three ways. (1) The title is close to the former title of the movie, “Tonight He Comes.” (2) It samples the theme to the Spider-Man TV series, fitting it in with the superhero plot. (3) It works as a big defense against all of the naysayers thinking he’s finally struck out with Hancock.

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