Beauty vs Beast: Happy 65, Bill Murray
Monday, September 21, 2015 at 12:54PM 
Jason from MNPP here nursing a slight Emmys hangover - my headache might be real but for once it's not from the terrible choices the Television Academy made; I for one was happy (or at least passably fine) with a lot of their picks! I mean yes Lisa Kudrow gave the best performance on television last year bar none so watching her go home empty-handed stung, but I can't really feel all that bad seeing one of the other best comediennes of all time get a little over-rewarded either.
But the brightest spot was all the love for my second-favorite 2014 Television Event (after The Comeback), the HBO miniseries Olive Kitteridge, which snatched up six worthy trophies... including one for birthday boy Bill Murray (typically a no-show at the ceremony), who's turning 65 today!
And this was totally the long way around but that brings me to this week's "Beauty vs Beast" which I'm devoting to his best performance (says me) in Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation, even though it doesn't entirely make sense for this series -- him & Scarlett are more of a duo that you're rooting for the whole time than much in the way of antagonists. But I'm gonna make you choose anyway because I love this movie more than silly logic.
PREVIOUSLY We headed to Bodega Bay last week where two gals pined for one hunky Momma's Boy amid a rain of seagulls from the sky - but unlike Mitch we tossed the Hitchcock Blonde right into that bay and went with doomed schoolteacher Annie (Suzanne Pleshette) instead. Said brookesboy:
"Pleshette plays my favorite character in this film. With everyone else teetering on the edge of hysteria, she conveys a calm, measured presence that is a consequence of a crushing sadness. Almost as if not even a force of nature--a flurry of birds--can lift away."
Reader Comments (5)
Mr. A, you've outdone yourself with those pros & cons. Almost voted for Bob because he knows what I need for relaxing times, but then I realized being an Evelyn Waugh snob is actually a pro.
Decision goes to Charlotte.
Bill Murray in Lost in Translation is just perfection. He was so real. One of those cases when you totally forget there´s an actor in the screen. My vote goes to him, here and for that year´s Oscars.
I don't want to choose. You bastards! My all-time favorite movie and you're making me choose between 2 characters that I love? No!!!! I won't do it.
You had me at "Whispers too quietly".
A vote up for Bob.
I feel like when a movie that is semi-autobiographical to Sofia Coppola still intellectually favors the Bill Murray character for his unspoken existential pains than her still interesting surrogate in Charlotte.
Well, it's no contest for me. Bobs all the way!