Take Three: Eddie Marsan

Craig from Dark Eye Socket here with this week's Take Three. Today: Eddie Marsan

Take One: The Disappearance of Alice Creed (2010)
Marsan is elusive and perplexing as ex-con and current kidnapper Vic in J Blakeson’s British thriller The Disappearance of Alice Creed. It may be his best role to date. It’s certainly his most visible in terms of screen time and lasting impressions. Vic and Danny (Martin Compston) kidnap a girl called Alice (Gemma Arterton). We’re not initially certain why or what for, but surprising details emerge. It’s an intriguing, slow-burning three-hander, largely set in two rooms of one house, with a slippery plot that gets drip-fed to us with unsettling incremental unease. There’s a psychological and dramatic weight to Vic that Marsan smartly unearths. He utilises his familiar best attributes to expert effect, but twists them into something else. Vic spends much of the film in a desperate state. He gives orders to “assistant” Danny and threatens Alice. He’s in charge, but of what exactly is open to debate. But Marsan's expressive, layered acting style never lets caricature or over-indulgence creep in. Any more information will ruin the risk of ruining Alice Creed’s many wily turns; just know that both the film and Marsan are excellent.

Take Two: Heartless (2009)
In Philip Ridley’s spooky Brit flick Heartless things are often not what they seem. To rid his face of a heart-shaped birthmark, Jim Sturgess’ Jamie makes a pact with Papa B (the devil, by another name) to commit random acts of vandalism on his behalf. Not a great idea by any stretch, but he’s helped (or is it hindered?) in his pursuits by Marsan’s Weapon’s Man, a shifty, nameless visitor with a sly, blackly comic side. Heartless is an uneasy blend of grim humour and demonic horror but it's instantly more appealing during Marsan’s amusing one-scene appearance. Doing the devil’s legwork, he comes on like a dark salesman of the soul, using the over-practiced niceties and witticisms of a pushy middle man. Marsan's bite-sized performance is wickedly funny and unnerving, sending one or two shivers down the spine and a few along the funny bone. The last time an actor was this good in surrealistic character mode, with a snappy in-and-out turn, was Robert DeNiro in Brazil.

Take Three: Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)
It’s quite possible that Marsan has one of the best, or luckiest, or most deftly-managed careers in the movies. He's had some enviable bosses: J.J. Abrams (Mission: Impossible III), Alejandro González Iñárritu, (21 Grams), Terence Malick (The New World), Michael Mann, (Miami Vice), Richard Linklater (Me and Orson Welles), Guy Ritchie (Sherlock Holmes) and Martin Scorsese (Gangs of New York) among others. (War Horse, with Spielberg, and a Bryan Singer film are incoming). And this lot – Tom Cruise, Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Cameron Diaz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, Colin Farrell, Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Jamie Foxx, Will Smith and Charlize Theron – have all made for dependable work colleagues. But his best collaborator, with 2003’s Vera Drake and, especially, in 2008 with Happy-Go-Lucky, has been Mike Leigh.

To say that Scott, Poppy's (Sally Hawkins) temperamental driving instructor, had issues is like saying time is infinite. Marsan makes him feel like a pitiable, wrong-headed individual, sucked up into the throes of modern existence, instead of an easily discardable nutjob to be vilified. You could have parked a car in the gaping chasm of his social conscience, but he’s still very much part of the fabric that binds Poppy to her life of whimsical decency.

The neatly-trimmed goatee, ill-judged earring, generic dress sense and “En-Ra-Ha!” mantra are integral embellishments, and his misanthropic tendencies -- that defiantly ugly disdain for others -- are crucial characteristics. Marsan's control fully grounds this caustic character.  I bet nobody passes their driving test the first time, if at all, with Scott.

Three more  for the taking: Sherlock Holmes (2008), V for Vendetta (2006), Red Riding trilogy (2009)

It's Mother's Day

Rise and shine.

Do you have big plans? Whatever your mother wants today, she should have. Whether that's a bouquet of flowers, breakfast in bed, a night out on the town, "me" time, or any more unusual request... like, say, delivering a secret message to her lover that she's been forbidden to see, it should be hers...

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Mix Tape: "We'll Meet Again" in Dr. Strangelove

Andreas from Pussy Goes Grrr here, to talk about one of the most infamously ironic song choices out there. And spoiler alert -- if you care about such things for 47 year old movies -- it's all about the ending.

As Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb reaches its bleakly absurd denouement, everyone is plotting for an imagined future. The Soviet ambassador is snapping photos of the "Big Board," the hawkish General Turgidson is predicting a post-apocalyptic "mineshaft gap," and even the title character, an eccentric ex-Nazi, is rising from his wheelchair and crying out, "Sir! I have a plan!" before adding, "Mein Führer! I can walk!" All of their paranoid schemes are self-evidently ridiculous, and ultimately futile, because that's right when the world ends.

But it doesn't end with a whimper, or with a bang: it ends with British songstress Vera Lynn singing her WWII-era hit "We'll Meet Again" over a minute-and-a-half-long montage of mushroom clouds. In a single blow, Kubrick and editor Anthony Harvey (reputedly working from a suggestion by British comedy legend Spike Milligan) render all of the film's frantic negotiations pointless and greet Armageddon with a smile. It's about the most superficially cheery response to annihilation this side of Life of Brian's "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life," and like that song, it hides bitterness in its whimsy.

The power of this satirical finale lies in the song's historical roots...

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What's Your "Type"? (Of Director)

Making the Movies has a good piece up called "The Four Types of Filmmaker". On first impression it feels spot on, apart from some arguable placements once they get around to naming names. They divvy filmmakers up into four groups: The Meticulous Master (obsessive, detailed... sometimes they take forever), The Prolific Pro (wide range of quality but constantly filming), The Irrepressible Entertainer (uneven but always serving the audience first), and the Reverent Referentialist (mashing up recycling and reconfiguring all their favorite movies and movie tropes). I'm simplifying -- it's worth reading for fuller explanations.

Masters, Pros, Entertainers, Referentialists

You could and I think should argue for a Fifth Type, "The Hired Hand", the men and women who work but aren't regularly labelled as "auteurs". This type only wows when the project feels just right for them in a way, or when the project itself has so much else going for it. But they can "wow" nonetheless. The thing that I found most surprising about the four categories once I stopped to look at the people falling under each umbrella -- and there are a few who seem like they could flip categories with ease -- is how much there is to love in each group. Maybe I don't have a type. Maybe that means I'm a big whore for the movies?

Do you have a type?

Birthday Man George Clooney

We probably shoulda done some celebrating but today was the big "5-0" day for one of the world's most justly beloved stars, George Clooney.

Today offered up 50 Reasons to Love Him and if we had time we'd list 50 more. But we've always enjoyed his betting with Nicole Kidman & Michelle Pfeiffer about his private life and the fact that he starred with both of those goddesses early in his film career (Lucky man). They each owe him $20,000 because they keep losing, the last winning bet that he'd still be childless at 50.

Our ten favorite George Clooney performances presented without comment.

1. George Clooney
2. "Ryan Bingham" Up in the Air
3. "Michael Clayton" Michael Clayton
4. "Everett" O Brother, Where Art Thou?
5. "Danny Ocean"
   
6. "Mr. Fox" Fantastic Mr. Fox
7. "Archie Gates" Three Kings
   
8. "Dr. Ross" E.R.
9. "Seth Gecko" From Dusk Till Dawn
10. "Sparky" South Park

Which are yours?