Monday, January 19, 2009

Out 1's 20 Actors Meme


All heil the meme! Recently, we were tagged by Tony at Cinema Viewfinder to participate in the 20 Actors Meme. You are basically supposed to choose your 20 favorite actors, no matter the time, place...you know, a good ole fashioned free for all! Tony included his favorite performance by each actor, which I thought was a pretty good idea so we have continued that here. With our plethora of writers here, I decided to have the four of us each select our top 5 actors. A tough call for sure, but it made things much more interesting (and European) than if we all selected 20...which would have been crazy. Anyways, enjoy the list. I have listed initials by each actor for the corresponding writer who chose him. If you're not sure who's who, check the contributors list on the right side of the page. That'll clear it up.

Thanks again to Tony! If you wanna participate, go for it and let me know. I'll call it a tag post-haste.

PS- You may be wondering why the Brakhage image is the heading for this post. Well...I don't know why. I just like looking at it. Can Brakhage's use of color count as an actor?


Tetsuo Abe - Boy (CW)
Charles Chaplin- City Lights (JH)
Robert De Niro - Taxi Driver (BC)
Alain Delon - Le Samourai (CW)
Bruno Ganz- Downfall (JS)
Elliott Gould - The Long Goodbye (CW)
Olivier Gourmet- The Son (JH)
Alec Guinness- The Bridge on the River Kwai (JS)
Erland Josephson - Nostalghia (BC)
Buster Keaton - Sherlock, Jr. (BC)
Klaus Kinski- Aguirre: The Wrath of God (JS)
Jean Pierre Leaud- Out 1 (JH)
Tony Leung - Happy Together (CW)
Marcello Mastroianni - 8 1/2 (BC)
John Malkovich- Burn After Reading (JH)
James Murray - The Crowd (CW)
Tatsuya Nakadai- Human Condition Trilogy (JS)
Jimmy Stewart - Vertigo (BC)
Max von Sydow- The Seventh Seal (JS)
Ulrich Thomsen- The Celebration (JH)

11 comments:

Tony Dayoub said...

Great list, guys. Thanks for posting Elliot Gould in The Long Goodbye. While Gould's career has been a little uneven for me, this is one of my very favorite performances ever.

I posted a link to your list on my site.

Brandon Colvin said...

This may be cheating a little bit, but I really wish I could have added Jeff Bridges in THE BIG LEBOWSKI.

James Hansen said...

Yeah. Since we only did five each, it took a lot of narrowing down so I'm sure we snubbed a lot of people. For me, Jack Nance and Dennis Hopper were brutal cuts, but if I'm picking actors as a whole, I'll still go with the ones I chose. Its not a best performances meme, so I need to like all of them in more than one or two things. At least, that's how I played it.

Brandon Colvin said...

Me too. I tried to pick five I felt were consistently great across a span of films.

Anonymous said...

See, that's why I don't get Elliot Gould. I mean, I love the Long Goodbye as much as the next guy, but Elliot Gould? Really? Top 5 of all time?!I'm starting to sound like an SNL skit but, Really?!

Brandon Colvin said...

I love him in LITTLE MURDERS and MASH.

Anonymous said...

Gould HAS been in an awful lot of crap. And the movies he's in that are good/great, usually only feature him in bit parts. But perhaps that's all the more reason to celebrate roles like Marlowe in THE LONG GOODBYE which are so outstanding.

And James, that Brakhage image is amazing. I sort of can't stop staring at it. Which film is it from?

James Hansen said...

I'm not sure which film it is. I just did an image search and it stood out. I'm not quite an expert enough to identify them on their own...maybe one day. Anyone out there know?

Chuck W said...

Thanks Tony D.!

For the record, I went in a completely different direction than Brandon and James. Instead of focusing on specific careers, I went with individual performances that have had a lasting impact on me; the selections were highly personal and, for the most part, played a significant role in shaping my obsession with cinema. This lead to a few nontraditional choices--performances filled by folks who lack the long-standing careers we typically associate with great actors. Hell, two of my choices are famous for falling out of cinema completely after career-making screen roles (in fact, Murray would go on to become a homeless alcoholic who eventually committed suicide). Hence: Elliot Gould. His career might be spotty (especially in the eighties), but he makes up for it with his singular, pomo take on the Marlowe character.

And for the record, if this had been actresses, I would have chosen Maria Falconetti--another one-hit wonder who deserves the recognition.

Joel Bocko said...

I'm still planning to tackle this; tomorrow, perhaps.

ProfessorWagstaff said...

I love Elliott Gould because he's still around despite a spotty career in the eighties, he's really stuck it out and to top it off with Reuben Tishkoff and maybe more great stuff coming as well, is kinda like icing on the cake