Take Three: Toby Kebbell

Craig here with this week's Take Three. Today: Toby Kebbell

Take One: War Horse (2011)
There’s a plethora of male British thespian talent in Steven Spielberg’s equine weepy War Horse: Benedict Cumberbatch, Peter Mullen, Tom Hiddleston, Eddie Marsan, Liam Cunningham and David Thewlis all add their tuppence-worth to the tale of Joey the one-stallion battalion and his toilsome travels through WWI. But Kebbell’s scenes, late in the film, were among the most subtly affecting. [SPOILER] Kebbel's 'Geordie Soldier' does more than keep watch from the trenches. He risks his life to free Joey from the barbed wire he’s trapped in, thus saving his life and eventually reuniting him with his real owner Albert (Jeremy Irvine). Waving the white flag, Kebbell’s brave soldier crosses the battle lines into No Man’s Land. A German soldier with a handy pair of wire-cutters joins him to further Joey’s wartime journey. (The scene, featuring stunning photography, was apparently achieved in only three takes.)

Kebbell’s even gets the honor of verbalising the film’s title:

You’re a war horse... what a strange beast you are”

Like all the character actors in War Horse Kebbell's screen time is brief...

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Take Three: Grace Zabriskie

 Craig here with this week's Take Three. Today: Grace Zabriskie

It was Grace Zabriskie’s 71^st birthday last week. She’s achieved a lot in her vast career over the 34 years she’s been acting: she had a daughter with oversized thumbs (Even Cowgirls Get the Blues); paid River Phoenix for sex (My Own Private Idaho); been killed by Chuckie (Child’s Play 2); ran on a brothel  (The Brothel); evangelized about vampires (Blood Ties); had a asteroid named after her (Armageddon); performed a voodoo sex-killing (Wild at Heart); fought for worker’s rights (Norma Rae); navigated b-movie space horrors (Galaxy of Terror); and turned mourning into a mad maternal art (Twin Peaks). And that's just ten of her 93+ screen roles.

Here are three performances that I feel deserve highlighting.

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Take Three: Chris Cooper

Craig here with this week’s Take Three. Today: Chris Cooper

Take One: Adaptation. (2002)
Cooper was up against a quartet of big names in the 2003 Best Supporting Actor Oscar race: Christopher Walken (Catch Me if You Can), Ed Harris (The Hours), John C. Reilly (Chicago) and Paul Newman (Road to Perdition). As the then least weighty name, his nomination didn’t necessarily guarantee success. But, conversely, his fifteen prior award wins and a further 5 nominations for the role spoke volumes. He emerged victorious, yet, inexplicably, Adaptation remains his only nod to date.

Spike Jonze’s very meta, self-referencing Adaptation was unique and playful in equal measure. It mulled over plenty of original ideas with its life-fiction overlap. Cooper, as orchid thief John Laroche, a real-life figure, stole the film away from actors as lively as Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep and Tilda Swinton. He played the wry humour and the tragedy of Laroche with equal skill. The event that haunts him (the death of his wife in a car accident) has plot repercussions that Cooper almost invisibly folds into his performance. He uses Laroche’s dry, off-kilter amiability as a subtle yet defining trait. And in the driving scenes featuring with Streep he can be glimpsed looking cautiously for each road turn, knowing danger can arrive out of anywhere, any day. Such moments reveal how immersed Cooper is in the role. But, further than that, he navigates the increasingly bizarre and intentionally conventional plot swerve into thriller territory with ease. It’s a cranky, clever piece of acting both oddly knowing and incredibly moving.

Thanks to his Oscar win here, his career since has been a plethora of top-drawer performances, not least his largely under-appreciated role in Take Two’s film...

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Take Three: Piper Laurie

Craig (from Dark Eye Socket) here with this week's Take Three. Today: Piper Laurie

Take One: Hesher (2010)
Laurie has played the grandmother figure a few times in recent years (Hounddog, Eulogy, The Dead Girl), but she best conveyed matriarchal feeling last year in Hesher. The film uses the familiar narrative coupling of a loveable old person and unruly younger person connecting despite obvious differences. This time it's carried out with keen subtlety because the people involved are Laurie and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who make this arrangement work in a delightfully fresh way. Their friendship isn’t the main thrust of the narrative, but a key characterful diversion, and the genuinely heartfelt union elevates the film with tiny moments of tender affection.

Laurie's Grandma is there for her grandson (Devin Brochu) through the mourning of his mother and later when Gordon-Levitt’s stoner/drifter crashes the family home. Her open acceptance of the stranger in their home starts as comically baffling but becomes almost profound. A bedroom scene where the Grandma and Hesher share tales of their lives over a bong contains obvious comedy. But Laurie’s performance – especially her indistinct and sweetly sing-song delivery – creates an odd pathos. She's giving us glimpses of her life before old age took its toll. This scene follows an earlier moment where nobody takes her up on her offer to accompany her on her morning walk. Unfazed, yet with a hint of melancholy barely audible to the others, she utters: “Well, you know you’re always invited.” She arouses a rush of emotion in five small words. "Grandma" couldn't might've been a mere peripheral presence or a parody, but she's more than a token old lady in Laurie's hands. 

Godfearing loons and corporate megabitches after the jump

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Take Three: Michael Rooker

Craig here with this week's Take Three. Today: Michael Rooker

Take One: Slither (2007)
Rooker has a very bad time of it in Slither. For starters, he plays a brute and tyrant, and is almost pathologically cocksure of his local status as a small-town car dealer. He’s horrible and unfaithful to his wife and his name, Grant Grant, is doubly dumb. So when he’s “killed” by an alien parasite in a meteor which re-animates him as a mind-absorbed, ET-hosting slug-mutant, you don’t exactly sob over his lot in life. But things get worse: he has a future as the head of a fleshy multi-person blob – the kind of thing that Brian Yuzna or David Cronenberg might cook up after particularly eventful dreams – to look forward to. Before that, Rooker leaves a slime trail of extraterrestrial carnage. And it becomes clear at this point that it’s not “just a bee sting.”

For much of his screen time, all he does is slither (the title has it) about sporting gruesomely daft prosthetics that make him look like an exploded can of refried beans or a particularly nasty dental accident. Kudos to him for embracing his OTT part in so heartily; he goes with the giddy flow of all the comically gory sci-fi/horror trappings, playing up his macho onscreen persona to great effect. Grant gets a slippery comeuppance, but he gets some of the best lines too (“It’s just a bee sting!”) More actors ought to take Rooker’s lead and cake themselves in elaborate special effects to debase themselves in the name of cheerfully grisly supporting parts.

Cliff Hanging and Serial Killing after the jump

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