The Social Network | David Fincher | 2010
I first started watching Dennis Farina in Crime Story, Michael Mann’s great retro cop drama set Vegas in the 1960s. I liked him from the start, but others in my circle of viewers were skeptical how much the ex-cop could really act.
My favorite of all his performances are in the two great Scott Frank-penned Elmore Leonard adaptations from the ‘90s - Get Shorty (clip above) and Out of Sight (where he played Jennifer Lopez’s dad - and it works much better than you would ever think). He was great in lots of stuff, but somehow he always seemed most at home in Leonard’s universe.
He was definitely one of those character actors who was, to some extend, always playing himself. Yet what a great character and who could bend good or bad and be equally convincing at both. So how much could he act? Plenty for me.
Rest in peace.
People always said I should really watch The Long Good Friday. Turns out they were right. Helen Mirren! Bob Hoskins! That ending! So great.
The Anniversary You Can’t Refuse: 40 Things You Didn’t Know About The Godfather
From early on in his legendary career, Marlon Brando used cue cards for his lines, which he felt increased his spontaneity. His lines were printed and placed in his character’s line of sight; stills from the production show that they sometimes required clever placement. In one photo, a cue card is taped on the wall behind a lamp. In another, Robert Duvall is seen holding Brando’s cue cards up to his chest. In the scene above, they are held just beyond the view of the camera.
Some thought Brando used the cards out of laziness or an inability to memorize his lines. Once on The Godfather set, Brando was asked why he wanted his lines printed out. “Because I can read them that way,” he said. And that was the end of the cue-card discussion. —Nate Rawlings
More: The Godfather at Cinephilia and Beyond
Real comments and notes from a test screening of David Cronenberg’s Videodrome. More here at the Criterion Collection Site.
The dangers of worrying about *all* the feedback.
