Bill Maher while promoting Religulous discusses the role of Religion in the upcoming election with Charlie Rose.

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BABYLON A.D. (2008) Director Mathieu Kassovitz Writer Mathieu Kassovitz & Joseph Simas Actors Vin Diesel – Toorop Michelle Yeoh – Sister Rebeka Mélanie Thierry – Aurora Gérard Depardieu – Gorsky Charlotte Rampling – High Priestess Mark Strong – Finn Lambert Wilson – Darquandier

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James Cameron , the director of classics like Terminator 2 and True Lies, talks about why he is not on the Canadian Walk of Fame.

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If you know what movie this is from please leave a comment. It’s weirdness has certainly piqued my interest.

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There is no way that Angelheart, as a remake, will turn out well. It is one of my favorite horror films of all time (if you can even call it that) and it was one of Alan Parker’s best films and made me a fan of Mickey Rourke. The pitch that it is a cross between Polanski’s Chinatown and Friedkin’s The Exorcist is very apt. Let me guess; that douchebag from Platinum Dunes is going to ruin it.

Also a remake of the Crazies will just come off lame.

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Right off the bat I am telling you this is not the be all end all list of bad performances. In fact if there are comments about other equally bad portrayals, I will likely expand this to other posts. This list is about terrible performances from actors we would usually consider the cream of the crop. You might disagree with my choices, and feel free to in the comments. I’ll be more than happy to argue.

5. Angelina Jolie in A Mighty Heart

Though Angelina Jolie has a plethora of bad performances, most of which were phoned in, A Might Heart may be her worst since I believe she genuinely thought she was a passing with that terrible accent. Otherwise a decent film directed by Michael Winterbottom that tells the true story of Marianne Pearl’s account of the abduction of her Wall Street Journalist husband. You’ll quickly notice in this list that my biggest gripe with bad performances comes from actors attempting to play an ethnicity that is not their own in a serious fashion. Evidence of Jolie’s bad performance can be seen throughout the movie but it stands out during her character’s mourning period of which the screaming comes off more comedic that sad.

4. Brad Pitt in Troy

The other of half of Brangeliina does not have a slew of bad roles but if I had to pick out just one terrible performance. Sure the source material is Homer but you have Wolfgang Peterson, the director of Outbreak and Poseidon, who is the epitome of a hack filmmaker. If he has made a personal film, I haven’t seen it. You’d also think that with a script written by David Benioff, screenwriter of the 25th Hour, you’d get a thoughtful well written story. Instead the only quote you get for Achilles is “Is there no one else?” which I have quoted as a mockery and not as a note of adoration. And that’s considered a good line for Brad Pitt in this movie. His performance is like watching a high school play. Not so much a bad performance, then a bad life choice.

3. Johnny Depp in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

This one is sort of a no brainer. Tim Burton has been in a huge slump with only Big Fish being watchable. Pardon me, their latest endeavor of adapting Sweeney Todd was quite good. I’d like to hear the preproduction meeting between Tim Burton and Johnny Depp who I am sure at this point after films like Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood have quite a rapport with one another. Who’s idea was it to play Willy Wonka as Michael Jackson. I know I am stating the obvious. Wonka is supposed to be crazy but not that creepy. Just remember the first actor tapped for the role was Christopher Walken. Imagine how much more appropriate that would have been.

2. Tom Hanks in The Terminal

What happens when you take one of America’s most universally liked actors and one of the best director’s (Steven Spielberg) of our time? You get a singularity creating a vortex that sucks in happiness and spits out sappiness. Tom Hanks plays an Eastern Immigrant stranded in an airport after his country no longer exists. If this was a dogme film done in a more genuine tone with I don’t know … an eastern immigrant for the lead actor it could have really worked. Instead you’re forced through two hours of sap and a terrible eastern accent, that’s as perfect as my own Brooklyn accent. Hey! I’m walkin’ ere!

1. Edward Norton in The Illusionist

There are actually two utterly terrible performances in the Illusionist. The other is with supporting actor Paul Giamatti who does a sort of a really bad Watson impression that I am not 100% sure is unintentional. It also didn’t help The Illusionist one bit that the vastly superior Christopher Nolan flick The Prestige was out about the same time. But it’s Norton that stands out as a bad performance. Whether it his cheesy gestures (see left) or his incredibly nasally voice that negatively affects his whole performance. Also almost every scene he is in can be summed up to his character sitting or standing there and just brooding, then ending the scene with “I promise you you’ll enjoy the next show…”  with an unintentional bit of irony.

So there is the first list. I hope you enjoyed it. If you have any suggestions or feel like disagreeing with me, please leave a comment.

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Theresa and I decided to go to the Word on the Street Festival on Sunday, since we’re huge book nerds. We expected hundreds of people at this event (or at least I did), having never heard of this festival in past, but instead there are more in the thousands. We had some nice and costly lemonade and some fresh corn on the cob as a guilty pleasure. It’s the haul of books that I brought home that made my day.

I have been a Warren Ellis fan for a long time with his Transmetropolitan series, and I was quite happy to find a copy in a nice portable hardcover of his debut novel, Crooked Little Vein, from the Labyrinth store, and it was only 10$.

I also found at the Victoria College book sale running alongside the Festival a nice copy of Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Now I knew that Spielberg had been responsible for the screenplay but I had absolutely no idea that he had also written a novel. My gut tells me it was actually done by a ghost-writer just like all of those other terrible novelizations based ‘on the screenplay’.

Someday when I’m bored I will sit down and bite the bullet.Theresa also picked up a copy of Robert Sawyer’s Rollback, and Robert Sawyer just so happened to be there to sign it. Once Theresa is done reading it I’ll give it a go. I enjoyed Flashforward and if you find the Large Hadron Collider at all interesting you might like Flashforward’s sci-fi take on it too.

This is probably my favourite item of the day. It is an Alfred Hitchcock Pop-Up Book. There are some awesome pages for Psycho, Vertigo(above), and The Birds, but I am surprised there was not a page devoted Rear Window. It’s easily the best coffee table book I have ever seen and it only cost me $5. If only I had a coffee table…

Last but not least, Theresa also picked us up these Einstein Voodoo babies that I am not proudly adorning on my keychain. Out of the selection they had this was the only one I took a liking to. I only wish they had a Tesla or Philip K. Dick Voodoo baby.

I had a bit of a laugh when I saw that their website is VDbaby.com .

Not exactly the best choice for a product or domain name.

As for the photos from the festival. I hope to have them up later in the day when I take a break from my writing.

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Deep Thoughts: Season of the Witch really sounds like an interesting premise. However it does come off awfully vague. Is it going to be a case of an innocent woman who is victim of a witch-hunt, or is it going to be that she actually is the cause of the black plague and therefore deaths surrounds her? Either way I want to read this script.

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Paul Newman as Eddie Felson in The Hustler

At the age of 83, Paul Newman passed away on Friday after a long battle with lung cancer. Newman has easily one of the best resumes of any actor ever, with roles like Eddie Felson, Butch Cassidy, and capping his career as Doc Hudson in the Pixar Animated Cars. Having been nominated for the Oscar numerous times, he won in 1987 for his role as Eddie Felson in Martin Scorsese’s The Color of Money.

Paul Newman’s repertoire of films include Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Exodus, The Hustler, Torn Curtain, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting,  Slap Shot, The Verdict, The Color of Money, The Hudsucker Proxy, Nobody’s Fool, Message in a Bottle, Road to Perdition, and Cars. It was planned for Newman to return to the role of Doc Hudson in Cars 2.

He will be sadly missed.

Clips from some of Newman’s best roles are after the jump. Leave your own thoughts in the comments.
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This is yet another featured short out of YouTube’s featured screening room for Bill Maher’s Religulous (Review Here). This one is Laid Off and comes from Writer/Director Zam Salim and was nominated for Best Short in the Scottish BAFTA.

Laid Off follows recently deceased Martin (1966-2003) as he comes to grips with living after life. It’s funny and philosophical and highly recommended.

More info on Laid Off can be found here at the BBC.

Pop.
2008, acronym(a poor one) for a piece of procrastination. An article, be that a game, a video, or website, that distracts the user from participating in more critical acts of being such as having a life.

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